(Washington, DC: August 29th, 2022) The growing influence of doctors of Indian heritage is evident, as increasingly physicians of Indian origin hold critical positions in the healthcare, academic, research and administrative positions across the nation. With their hard work, dedication, compassion, and skills, they have thus carved an enviable niche among the American medical community. The role being played by American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) has come to be recognized as vital among Lawmakers as wells by the Federal and State governments as many Indian Americans play important roles in shaping healthcare policies and programs.
In this context, AAPI, the largest ethnic medical organization in the United States, representing the interests of over 120,000 physicians/Fellows of Indian Origin has planned to honor India, their motherland on the occasion of India’s 75th anniversary of Independence with a Special Celebration on Capitol Hill at the US Senate Hart Building, Room # 902 in Washington, DC on September 21st, 2022 at 2 pm.
“India@75! It’s a milestone with mixed feelings, one with a sense of pride and joy for all the accomplishments and progress we have made, while preserving our integrity, unity, core values of freedoms, democracy and respect for different cultures and the groups that live and thrive in our beloved motherland,” said Dr. Ravi Kolli, President of AAPI. “We are proud to be part of this historic celebration of India on Capitol Hill, where we will have an opportunity to exchange views and express our concerns with the dozens of US Lawmakers, who will come to be part of the celebrations.”
“Indian American physicians have made vital contributions to the health care field,” said Dr. Sampat Shivangi, Chair of AAPI’s Legislative Committee. “As physicians, we provide critical care to patients from rural & urban communities across the Country. Indian American doctors are playing a critical role in filling the nationwide physician shortage. The India Day on Capitol Hill will be a unique opportunity for AAPI members to be part of the decision-making process on matters related to healthcare and advocate for stronger and closer ties between India and the United States, the two largest democracies of the world. We expect to have the participation from dozens of key Congressmen and Senators.”
“Our India day Celebrations on the Hill will include interactive sessions with the US Lawmakers. That evening, a reception and dinner hosted by Honorable Taranjit Singh Sandhu, Ambassador of India to the United States, with several dignitaries at the Indian Embassy,” said Dr. V. Ranga, Chair of AAPI BOT.
Dr. Anjana Samadder, President-Elect of AAPI said, “AAPI has been serving India and contributing to the effective healthcare delivery in the US and in India. In keeping with the mission AAPI, the celebrations on the Hill will provide us with a forum to facilitate and enable Indian American physicians share our concerns with the Lawmakers in pursuit of our aspirations in matters relating to professional and community affairs.”
“The historic 75th India Independence Day Day celebrations on Capitol Hill will provide us with an effective Forum to help renew our friendship with US administration under the leadership of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris and brief the Congressional leaders on issues that are important to us,” said Dr. Satheesh Kathula, Vice President of AAPI.
Dr. Meher Medevaram, Secretary of AAPI said, “The Executive Committee is working hard to ensure active participation of young physicians, increasing membership, and enabling AAPI’s voice to be heard in the corridors of power, and thus taking AAPI to new heights.”
“AAPI events on Capitol Hill are eagerly awaited by members as they rekindle and renew our energy in bringing up the issues that we need to bring to the attention of national policy makers and leaders of the US Congress on Capitol Hill,” said Dr. Sumul Rawal, Treasurer of AAPI.
According to Dr. Shivangi, “While the celebrations of India’s 75th anniversary will focus on India and its growing influence on world stage, it will also give AAPI members to meet and interact with Indian Ambassador to USA Hon. Taranjit Singh Sandhu and the Embassy officials during an evening dinner to be hosted by the Ambassador. I look forward to meeting with many of our friends in Washington, DC region and from all across the nation on September 21st. ” Dr. Shivangi added.
“AAPI has been seeking to collectively shape the best health care for everyone in the US, with the physicians at the helm, caring for the medically underserved as we have done for several decades when physicians of Indian origin came to the US in larger numbers,” says Dr. Ravi Kolli.
“AAPI is once again in the forefront in bringing many burning health care issues facing the community at large and bringing this to the Capitol and to the US Congress.” Dr. Kolli urged his all AAPI colleagues and everyone interested in or connected with providing health care to attend this event and ensure that our concerns and needs are heard by our lawmakers and ensure that they act on them.”
For more information on AAPI and its several noble initiatives benefitting AAPI members and the larger society, please visit: www.aapiusa.org
Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) whose birth anniversary we note on 29 August, was an English writer, educator and pacifist, socialist reformer. Carpenter came from a middle class intellectual family and studied at Cambridge University. As with some of his fellow students who were interested in philosophy and ideas, he was ordained in the Church of England hoping that its outlook and theology could be widened from the inside. However, once inside, he realized that the broadening goal would take a long time. Thus by 1874 he left the church for a new field − university extension courses − a program of night school education for the “working classes”.
Just as he was about to become a Church of England cleric in 1869, he discovered the poems of Walt Whitman which became the inspiration for his own poems as well as for an opening to a cosmic consciousness that Whitman manifested. As Carpenter wrote in Angels’ Wings “Whitman's verse in its most successful passages, so magnificent in its effects, so democratic in feeling, so democratic in form, is more absolute in expression, more real in its content, burns brighter in the nearness of sunrise, and yet lies so near along to Nature and the innocent naivety of speech of a child, that some people are inclined to deny to it the quality of Art at all!” Whitman was his life-long model, and Carpenter spent time in the USA to be with Whitman, an experience which he recorded in a book Days with Walt Whitman.
Like Whitman, Carpenter was attracted to Indian philosophy and travelled to India. He became a friend of Rabindranath Tagore. His Indian travels and attraction to Indian thought he recorded in Adam's Peak to Elephanta: Sketches in Ceylon and India. Carpenter kept up his interest in Indian thought through friendships in the then recently-created Theosophical Society.
As others influenced by the Theosophical Society such as the Irish poet and agricultural reformer George Russell (best known by his pen name AE), Carpenter saw the need to improve rural life and to bring intellectual and cultural enlightenment to the rural areas. Thus he gave up formal university extension work and bought a farm which became a meeting place for discussions among many in the area − an early “back to the land movement”. He stressed using hand-made clothes, the non-killing and non-eating of animals, and the use of herbs for health.
He lived in a homosexual relationship with a farmer at a time when homosexuality was considered a criminal offense. Carpenter wrote two books on homosexuality. For a long time these were the only books on the subject published by a major publisher: The Intermediate Sex and Intermediate Types Among Primitive Folk.
The Healing of Nations is his most important political book − a collection of essays for the most part published in newspapers and small journals written in late 1914 and early 1915 as World War I started. Carpenter had long held that a new age of fellowship was dawning in which social relations would be transformed by a new spiritual consciousness. His thinking on the outbreak of the war was close to that of Romain Roland and P. Kropotkin, both of whom he quotes at length.
Carpenter was close − though never a member − to the Independent Labour Party who’s 1914 Manifesto he quotes as its proposals were similar to his own:” We hail our working-class comrades of every land. Across the roar of guns we send greetings to the German Socialists. They have laboured unceasingly to promote good relations with Britain, as we with Germany. They are no enemies of ours, but faithful friends. In forcing this appalling crime upon the nations, it is the rulers, the diplomats, the militarists who have sealed their doom. In tears and blood and bitterness the greater Democracy will be born. With steadfast faith we greet the future; our cause is holy and imperishable, and the labour of our hands has not been in vain.”
Carpenter went on with his own call to action: “Thus we have to push on with discernment. Always we have to remember that the wide, free sense of equality and kinship which lies at the root of Internationalism is the real goal. Always we have to press on towards that great and final liberation − the realization of our common humanity, the recognition of the same great soul of man slumbering under all forms in the heart of all races − the one guarantee and assurance of the advent of world peace.”
At a time when in England and France there are commemorations of the anniversaries of the 1914-1918 War, it is useful to recall that there were voices in opposition and persons like Carpenter who saw that an awareness of the spiritual dimension of each person was the basis for the healing of the nations.
Rene Wadlow
He is the President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation on and problem-solving in economic and social issues.
Tuberculosis kills nearly 0.42 million persons (mostly poor and young), more than any other infectious disease, while nearly 2.8 Million persons acquire TB every year causing huge suffering to millions of families. India with the highest TB burden is a key player in the global quest to end Tuberculosis. India has incorporated Strategies to achieve TB elimination in its National Health Policy. It envisages Reduction in incidence of new cases, to reach elimination status by 2025 much ahead of the SDG target of 2030.
Understanding this huge challenge, India has initiated concerted efforts with Revised National TB Control Program, the private sector, civil society, communities, professional bodies and patients. However, Covid has had a devastating impact on the TB Free efforts for India. Most significantly, TB notifications have been reduced by 30%-50% in the initial stage of the pandemic and failed to reach the 2.4 million annual TB notification target for 2021. There is an urgent need to boost TB Notification, especially post-Covid.
“There is no instant solution for India’s myriad problems. But by collaborating with the governments both nationally and at state levels, and working with the government and NGOs, physicians of Indian origin can make a huge difference,” said Dr. Ravi Kolli, President, of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI).
Dr. Ravi was part of the closing ceremony of BOOSTING THE TB NOTIFICATION (BTN) CAMPAIGN, a training and certification program of DTO (District TB Officers) in India attended almost 370 DTOS and STO State TB Officer, organized by Drs. Manoj Jain and Salil Bhargava co-founders of CETI Collaboration to Eliminate TB in Indians, supported by USAID, Emory University and CDC etc. and discussed plans for future events.
According to Dr. Manoj Jain, “DTOs in the nation have initiated a TB Notification Campaign using the PDSA quality improvement process guided by CETI (Collaboration to Eliminate TB among Indians) and Emory University with the objectives of: Increasing notification for TB by 10% over the course of a year by implementing the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) -Quality Improvement Initiative (QII); Engaging over 500 DTOs covering all the districts in a virtual 8 week session for 1.5 hours each week; and, Providing certificate of completion from Emory University, Central TB Division, WHO, IIPH and CETI to successful DTOs.”
The Program engages Central TB Division and WHO consultants as key partners along with CETI, Emory Faculty, IIPH (Indian Institute of Public Health) staff and others. DTOs along with QIC and CETI Faculty developed a PDSA cycle with an aim statement, process measures, outcome measures, interventions, root cause analysis and run chart of the PDSA on increasing notification.
Dr. Manoj Jain, who has been part of this initiative of AAPI, since its launch, shared with AAPI leaders of the progress in involving local leaders to develop a Local Roadmap on how to make India TB Free. AAPI and USAID along with other NGOs will work together to utilize the 100,000-strong network of physicians of Indian-origin living in the United States to support health programs in India, engage AAPI’s network of private charitable clinics for TB awareness, detection and treatment, and explore opportunities for collaborations between U.S. and Indian medical schools to exchange cutting-edge health care solutions.
“AAPI in its unique way has made immense contributions to helping our motherland during the crisis and played a significant role in saving lives. TB Eradication Program by a committed team led by Dr. Manoj Jain in collaboration with USAID and now actively functioning in several states in Indi, and AAPI is honored to be part of this noble initiative and we extend our full support,” Dr. Kolli added. For more details on AAPI and its many noble programs, please visit: www.aapiusa.org
Following the conscientious resignation of Acting Senior Sergeant Krystle Mitchell of the Victoria Police in Australia, the international network Police for Freedom has just issued the statement below in support.
Krystle had served Victorians, with distinction, for 16 years as a police officer and has recently resigned over a matter of conscience in relation to policing of the Covid-19 restrictions.
Dr Vivek H. Murthy, who as U.S. Surgeon General under President Obama had served as the United States Surgeon General and advocated a “healthier and more compassionate America,” was confirmed last week by the US Senate with seven Republican Senators joining the 50 Democrats, with 57-43 votes in the Senate, giving him bipartisan support. While Dr Vivek Murthy says ending the coronavirus pandemic is his top priority, he's also raised concerns over a relapsing opioid overdose crisis. "I'm deeply grateful to be confirmed by the Senate to serve once again as your surgeon general," Murthy said in a statement. "We've endured great hardship as a nation over the past year, and I look forward to working with you to help our nation heal and create a better future for our children.
While offering AAPI’s wholehearted support in his efforts to lead the nation out of the Covid pandemic and opioid crisis, Dr Jonnalagadda thanked President Joe Biden for placing his trust in Dr Murthy, a member of AAPI to be America’s top doctor.
“The appointment and now the confirmation by the US Senate of Dr Murthy, including other experienced and competent senior officials to the US Health Department, will help round out Biden's team charged with addressing the pressing COVID-19 crisis, that has taken over 500,000 American lives,” Dr Sajani Shah, Chair of AAPI BOT said.
While describing the leadership of Dr Murthy as America’s Doctor, which is “cementing of the reputation of physicians of Indian origin have across America,” Dr Anupama Gotimukula, President-Elect of AAPI, that represents over 100,000 physicians of Indian origin in the United States, said, “We are proud of Dr Vivek Murthy and his many accomplishments and look forward to working together in his efforts, as the nation and the entire world seeks to find best possible solutions to tackle the pandemic that has taken the lives of millions of people around the world.”
Lauding Dr Murthy “who has been a key coronavirus adviser to President-Elect Biden, regularly briefing him on the pandemic during his campaign and the transition,” Dr Ravi Kolli, Vice President of AAPI said, “Dr Murthy was part of Biden's public health advisory committee as the pandemic first took hold in the US and has been serving as a co-chair of the President-elect's Covid-19 advisory board during the transition. His ethics, quiet leadership style and impeccable credentials make him the smart choice for this leadership role.”
“Dr Vivek Murthy represents the next generation of Indian American physicians,” Dr Amit Chakrabarty, Secretary of AAPI said. “Dr Murthy was America's youngest-ever top doctor, and he was also the first surgeon general of Indian-American descent, when appointed by President Barack Obama in 2014. Now that he has been confirmed by the Senate, Dr Murthy will play a key role in the administration's response to many daunting healthcare issues, including the pandemic that has taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.”
“Having a wide range of experiences and passion for science-based approach, Dr Vivek Murthy will bring in new perspectives to the many healthcare issues that require immediate attention and concrete action plan,” said Dr Satheesh Kathula, Treasurer of AAPI. Offering fullest cooperation from the Indian American Physician community, he said, “We at AAPI, look forward to working closely with Dr Murthy and his team to end this deadly pandemic.”
Dr Murthy 43, has said Americans need a leader who works with the people for the progress of the country. As surgeon general under Obama, Murthy helped lead the national response to the Ebola and Zika viruses and the opioid crisis, among other health challenges.
Dr Murthy’s commitment to medicine and health began early in life. The son of immigrants from India, he discovered the art of healing watching his parents - Hallegere and Myetriae Murthy - treat patients like family in his father’s medical clinic in Miami, Florida.
“I am proud of our community of Indian physicians for all the progress that we have made over the years, and I know that AAPI has been a critical force in making this process possible. The advice you shared and assistance you kindly offered were important pieces of this journey,” Dr Vivek Murthy, stated in a letter to Dr Jayesh B. Shah, a past president of AAPI, who along with AAPI’s Legislative Affairs Chair, Dr Sampat Shivangi and other senior leaders of AAPI had led several delegations to US Senators, lobbying for his confirmation in 2014, when he was appointed by President Obama.
While expressing pride at the confirmation of Dr Murthy, Dr Jonnalagadda pointed out to US President Joe Biden’s remarks, describing the Indian American physician to be the US Surgeon General as a “renowned physician” who could help guide Americans safely out of a still ranging coronavirus pandemic.
The United Nations General Assembly on 20 October 2010, by resolution A/RES/65/PV.34 designated the first week of February of every year as the World Interfaith Harmony Week between all religions, faiths and beliefs.
The General Assembly, building on its efforts for a culture of peace and non-violence, wished to highlight the importance that mutual understanding and inter-religious dialogue can play in developing a creative culture of peace and non-violence. The General Assembly Resolution recognized “the imperative need for dialogue among different faiths and religions in enhancing mutual understanding, harmony and cooperation among people.” The week has a potential to promote the healing of religion-based tensions in the world.
As the then Secretary General Ban Ki-moon wrote “At a time when the world is faced with many simultaneous problems — security, environmental, humanitarian, and economic — enhanced tolerance and understanding are fundamental for a resilient and vibrant international society. There is an imperative need, therefore, to further reaffirm and develop harmonious cooperation between the world’s different faiths and religions.”
Citizens of the World have called for a cultural renaissance based on the concept of harmony. Rather than concentrating primarily on conflicts, struggles and suffering which is certainly necessary if we are to help resolve the many armed conflicts, World Citizens have suggested that the focus should be on cooperation, coexistence and visions of a better future. Harmony includes tolerance, acceptance, equality and forgiveness of past pains and conflicts. Harmony leads to gentleness, patience, kindness and thus to inner peace and outward to relations based on respect.
Harmony is a universal common value. In harmony we can find true belief that transcends all cultures and religions. The meaning of life is to seek harmony within our inner self. Humans are born with a spiritual soul that develops to seek self-fulfilment. Our soul has a conscience that elevates us. As our soul grows to maturity, we achieve our own harmony.
However, harmony is not only a personal goal of inner peace but a guideline for political, social and world affairs. At this moment in history, our action should enhance peace, reduce conflict and activate a harmony culture. The 21st century is the beginning of a Harmony Renaissance. Our world mission is to be ready for humanity’s next creative wave to lead us to a higher level of common accomplishment. The World Harmony Renaissance should bring the whole world into action for this new millennium of peace and prosperity with unfettered collective energy.
Chinese culture can play an important role in the creation of this harmonious culture. In an earlier period in Chinese thought there was an important conscious effort to create a Harmony Renaissance. This was during the Sung dynasty (960-1279) which reunited China after a period of division and confusion. This was a period of interest in science — “the extension of knowledge through the investigation of things”. It was a period when there was a conscious effort to bring together into a harmonious framework currents of thought that existed in China but often as separate and sometimes hostile schools of thought: Confucianism, Buddhism, philosophical Taoism and religious Taoism. These efforts were called Tao hsuch — the Study of the Tao — an effort later called by Western scholars as “Neo-Confucianism”.
Chou Tun-yi (1017-1073), often better known as the Master of Lien-his, was a leading figure in this effort. He developed a philosophy based on the alternation of the Yin and Yang, each becoming the source of the other.
Thus today, after decades of conflict when the emphasis of the countries of the world both in policy and practice was upon competition, conflict and individual enrichment, there is a need for an emphasis on harmony, cooperation, mutual respect, and working for the welfare of the community with a respect for Nature. When one aspect, either Yin or Yang, becomes too dominant, then there needs to be a re-equilibrium.
Obviously, it takes time for a harmonious society at home and a harmonious world abroad to be put into place. The re-equilibrium of the energies of Yin and Yang do not take place overnight. Nor is this re-equilibrium only the task of the Chinese. The cultivation of harmony must become the operational goal for many. As Mencius (372-289 BCE) a follower of Confucius said “A trail through the mountains, if used, becomes a path in a short time, but, if unused, becomes blocked by grass in an equally short time.”
The World Interfaith Harmony Week is an opportunity to open new paths. As world citizens we must find a new guiding image for our culture, one that unifies the aspirations of humanity with the needs of the planet and the individual. We hold that peace can be achieved through opening our hearts and minds to a broader perspective. We are one human race, and we inhabit one world. Therefore we must see the world with global eyes, understand the world with a global mind and love the world with a global heart.
Rene Wadlow
He is the President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation on and problem-solving in economic and social issues.
Urging AAPI to bring in traditional Indian wellness practices to modern medical systems, President describes “AAPI as a link between two vibrant and democratic societies”
(Mumbai, India. December 29h, 2018) The Honorable President of India, Shri Ram Nath Kovind, inaugurated the 12th edition of the Global Healthcare Summit organized by the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) at The Taj Palace Hotel in Mumbai on Friday, December 28th, 2018.
In his inaugural address, the President of India said, AAPI is “more than just a platform of doctors and medical practitioners, the Indian President told the nearly 500 delegates who had come from around the world to attend the landmark Summit in Mumbai. “It is a link between two vibrant and democratic societies, both of which have addressed major public health challenges in their own way.”
He praised AAPI and the over 100,000 Physicians of Indian Origin in the United States for their great contributions. “The professional-ism and goodwill of Indian doctors in America has won them – won you, I should say – a well-deserved reputation,” he told the AAPI leaders. “In fact, it has occasionally led to diplomatic gains for India for which your Association must be appreciated.” He said India and the US shared complementarities in the pharmaceutical field – in clinical research, drug discovery and manufacture. He said that both countries can work together to address common challenges posed by lifestyle diseases.
In his welcome address, Dr. Naresh Parikh, President of AAPI said, “The past Global Healthcare Summit (GHS) have helped develop strategic alliances with various organizations and the government of India. It is these learning and relationships that have brought us all here in Mumbai, who are very passionate about serving their homeland, Mother India.”
Past summits have identified areas of mutual interest and also integrated advancements of healthcare facilities in India besides ways and means of tackling long term concerns leading to long-term collaborations. Dr. Parikh reminded the audience of many outcomes of the Summit, saying, over the past 12 years AAPI physicians have collaborated with several professional medical associations, academic institutions, Government of India, and have made significant contributions towards addressing diabetes with the launch of Sevak program, CPR-AED training for first responders with expert faculty from the American University of Antigua, Traumatic Brain Injury - the scourge of young India, and development of management guidelines thereby helping prevent deaths due to road traffic accidents, raising the importance and awareness on smoking cessation, Adopt a Village program and taking the initiatives to make quality healthcare accessible universally to village and taluka and district levels, and most recently a strong collaborative on making India TB Free with the signing of a MOU with USAID. Ten city pilots are well under way and significant progress is being made, said Dr. Naresh Parikh, President AAPI in his opening remarks. A significant collaboration has been reached between AAPI and Project Life to address the challenge of and to prevent Thalassemia.Dr. Parikh praised the contributions and efforts of Dr. Ravi Jahagirdar, Chair of GHS 2018, Dr. Sampat Shivangi, Co-Chair of GHS 2018, Dr. Vinod Shah, Chair of AAPI Legislative Committee, Dr. Raj Bhayani, Co-Chair of GHS 2018, Anwar Feroz, AAPI’s Strategic Advisor, Dr. Asha Parikh, Women’s Forum Chair, and his entire Executive Committee consisting of Dr. Suresh Reddy, President-Elect; Dr. Sudhakar Jonnalagadda, Vice President; Dr. Anupama Gotimukula, Secretary; Dr. Anjana Samadder, Treasurer; and Dr. Ajeeth Kothari, Chairman of the Board of Trustees. Dr. Ramesh Mehta, President of GAPIO, which has jointly organized GHS for the first time in association with AAPI, also addressed he delegates during the inaugural ceremony.
Dr. Ramesh Mehta, President GAPIO in his opening address said that AAPI GHS 2018 is the beginning of a strong collaborative approach along with the Global Association of Physicians of Indian origin (GAPIO) that together will make constructive and tangible ways of ensuring that healthcare is affordable and accessible to millions of people in India.
Dr. Prathap C Reddy, Founder GAPIO has envisioned the evolution of developing a united front for all NRI physicians to develop strong and effective programs that can be implemented with precision to face the challenges posed by Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs). GAPIO has launched several programs including Leadership Development Programs. GAPIO has representation from 34 countries according to Dr. Anupam Sibal, Vice President, GAPIO.
Devendra Fadnavis, the Chief Minister of the state of Maharashtra, in his address to the international delegates, welcomed the AAPI delegates to his home state, Maharashtra. While praising the many contributions of AAPI, he urged the delegates to work collaboratively in making health care more affordable. He promised whole-hearted support to the initiatives of AAPI in the state of Maharashtra. Chennamaneni Vidyasagar Rao, Governor of Maharashtra, and Raj Purohit, Cabinet Minister of Maharashtra were honored guests who attended the event.
The President of India acknowledged the professionalism and excellent reputation of doctors of Indian origin in the US. “It is a tribute to India’s culture of knowledge and of service that one of every seven patient consultations in the US is with an Indian or Indian origin physician,” he said.
AAPI, a three-and-a-half decades old organization with an impressive CV, is the largest non-profit ethnic medical institution in the United States. “Your Association is a mini-India, comprising doctors with origins in all parts of our country,” the Indian President said.
The President said that the goal of ‘Health for All’ must be integral to our programs and policies. He noted the several initiatives of the Government of India, which he said were intended to make healthcare in the country more holistic and affordable for all citizens of the country.
The President of India lauded the great contributions of the members of AAPI to public health and to the discipline of medicine across the spectrum. “You are consulted on legislative and policy issues and are involved in cutting-edge research. Most important, you are responsible for providing medical care and treatment to a wide variety of people, including, I am happy to note, communities living in underserved areas.
The Indian diaspora, spread across the world, “serves as a living bridge between the country of its adoption and the country of its origin – such as between the US and India,” the Indian President said.
He praised AAPI for its collaborations with the Ministry of Health, Government of India, with state governments and with several medical and academic institutions to take forward the agenda of public health. “AAPI and its members have helped in addressing diabetes, taking on the challenge of TB, development of management guide-lines for brain injuries, and rural health-care, among other themes,” he said.
The President of India praised AAPI’s contributions, especially, Imparting of “first responder training in several states of the country, including here in Maharashtra. Such training can be of immense use after road accidents or when dealing with an emergency.” He urged AAPI to take this process further and deeper, especially in rural areas, where there may be a considerable distance between the patient and a well-equipped multi-specialty hospital.
He appealed to AAPI leaders to work together with the government of India in finding innovative ways to offer quality and affordable care to millions of poor people in India, by building alliances – between doctors and patient groups, between civil society and industry, between researchers and practitioners and ultimately between countries “Disease does not discriminate, and the practice of medicine and health-care must not discriminate either,” he said.
“India’s experience with producing affordable but high quality drugs and medicines offers a huge advantage as the world – and America itself – seeks to drive down the cost of health-care and health insurance,” the Indian President pointed out. “Our countries can also work hand-in-hand in seeking answers to global pandemics and emerging zoonotic diseases.”
The President of India urged AAPI to continue its efforts in the prevention and management of life-style diseases, diabetes and obesity, where physicians of Indian origin can bring in “traditional Indian wellness practices to modern medical systems. Please see what your Association can do in this area,” he told AAPI delegates
“The goal of ‘Health for All’ must be integral to our programs and policies,” he said. “I am very happy to note that the Government of India has been doing exactly that – it had made delivery of holistic healthcare to all citizens of India, one of its primary goals.”
Appealing more collaborative efforts by AAPI, especially in the Ayushman Bharat Yojana, seeking to provide comprehensive medical care to all our people, from little children to the elderly, covering 40 per cent of Indian citizens, the Indian President said, Ayushman Bharat is of importance to more than just India. Its success will offer a blue-print to cost-effective universal health coverage in emerging economies and among vulnerable communities.
“That is why I would urge all of you to become part of this potentially game-changing initiative – by participating and supporting it as you can, or even by making suggestions in terms of its design and roll-out. I look forward to actionable ideas on Ayushman Bharat emerging from this Summit,” the President of India told AAPI delegates.
Representing the interests of the over 100,000 physicians of Indian origin, leaders of American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI), the largest ethnic organization of physicians, for 37 years. One in seven American is touched by a doctor of Indian origin. There is an equally large percentage of medical residents, fellows and students in the USA. AAPI’s GHS has provided a venue for medical education programs and symposia with world renowned physicians on the cutting edge of medicine. For more details, please visit: https://aapisummit.org/www.aapiusa.org
Shri Ram Nath Kovind, President of India, delivering inaugural address at AAPI’s 12 Annual Global Healthcare Summit in Mumbai
The powerful voice of the leaders and members of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI), the largest ethnic medical organization in the United States, was heard on Capitol Hill early Thursday, April 12th at the annual Legislative Day. Addressed by dozens of lawmakers from both the parties, the event was forum for AAPI to have its voices heard on the corridors of power and giving them a voice in shaping the healthcare policies and programs of the nation.
In his welcome address, Dr. Gautam Samadder, President of AAPI, expressed his sincere gratitude and appreciation to AAPI delegates and the Congressmen “for taking the time out to come and support AAPI’s agenda at the national level, in our efforts to make our voices heard in the corridors of power. AAPI’s legislative day on Capitol Hill, addressed by dozens of US lawmakers from both the major parties, a recognition of AAPI’s growing influence and having its united voice heard in the corridors of power.”
AAPI Agenda for its 2018 Legislative day included, expressing support for the H.R. 3592 “The South Asian Heart Health Awareness and Research Act of 2017,” providing for research and grants to improve the cardiovascular health care of South Asian Americans; Lowering the Cost of Prescription Drugs; Immigration Reform, enhancing H-1 and J-1 visas, Green Card that are used by many South Asian American physicians, playing an important role in providing critical health care across the country; Increased Residency Slots, help reducing the chronic physician shortage, urging legislation adding 15,000 more residency slots, which will help to train up to 45,000 more doctors in the next two decades; Medicare and Medicaid Reimbursements that have not kept up with the cost of care and the growing populations utilizing them; and, Tort Reform, to reduce the practice of defensive medicine, thus, bringing down the overall cost of health care, and limit the number of meritless lawsuits; and, discussing the disadvantages of Repeal of the Individual Mandate, especially, leading to patients drop their health care coverage and how will this impact premiums.
“I know you are hitting the Hill on a number of issues not the least of which is health care and your concerns about the direction of our country”, Democratic Congressman Joe Crowley of New York told a packed room of Indian-origin physicians in the Rayburn Building. “What really drives all of you is that you want to be able to carry out your profession in a noble way. At the same time, you want that respect which you deserve. More importantly, you want to save people’s lives, make the human condition better. That is incredibly admirable, something that is given short shrift”, he said.
Rep. Crowley assured, “I continue to work to increase the number of slots here in the United States” and spoke of the GME (Graduate Medical Education) Expansion Legislation which he introduced with Republican Congressman Ryan Costello of Pennsylvania, in 2017. The bill calls for an additional 3,000 residency positions for five consecutive years. “It is important that we increase the slots because we are going to need more doctors, more technicians, more physician assistants, not less”, Crowley said.
As Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ed Royce stated he “has worked very diligently to improving US-India relations”. The California Republican called for liberalizing changes in policy that create economic opportunity for everyone. Republican Congressman Steve Chabot who represents Cincinnati, Ohio, said, “The relationship between India and the US is, I believe, one of our most important. We are natural allies. We have so much more in common than differences”, he said.
Congressman Joe Wilson said, “I was not born in India, but I was born with an appreciation of the people of India. The lawmaker lauded the contributions of Indian-Americans, in particular Dino Teppara who has served as his chief-of-staff. Teppara, now a public affairs officer in the US Navy Reserve, has been working closely with AAPI leaders for the very successful Legislative Day on Capitol Hill.
Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, the first Hindu lawmaker to serve on Capitol Hill and current Democratic co-chair of the House India Caucus, pointed to how the relationship between “our two countries has progressed. It has only continued to grow stronger and stronger.” She acknowledged that “the H-1B visa issue is one of the biggest challenges facing the community” and lamented that a lot of people don’t understand the consequences of the backlog and continued effort to limit H-1B visas. “In Hawaii, we have a drastic shortage of physicians and it’s always difficult to get and retain doctors who can provide that care”, Gabbard told the AAPI delegates. “Your presence and your advocacy is very helpful as we try to construct substantive policy that best serves the American people”, she said.
Pramila Jayapal, the first ever Indian-American woman elected to the US House of Representatives, who had introduced ‘The South Asian Heart Health Awareness and Research Act of 2017′ with her Republican colleague Joe Wilson of South Carolina to improve the cardiovascular health care of South Asian Americans, said, “It is a bill that can actually move, that helps educate our community because frankly, we can be a little flip about heart health.” Stressing that the community has incredibly high incidents of heart disease, she believed that being able to use a few resources from the federal government to emphasize and target the South Asian community is very important. “I am going to continue to lift up health care for everyone”, she pledged. To AAPI leaders, she said, “Thank you for your incredible leadership, for your advocacy, for your friendship, for your support. It means so much to me. When I come here it feels like I am coming home”.
“I have seen Dr. Shivangi, Ramesh Kapur, Dr. Shah, Dr. Bharat Barai, knocking the halls of Congress before it was popular”, Congressman Ro Khanna said at the event. “Now, it is very trendy to be Indian-American. You get invited everywhere. Everyone wants to meet with you. That was not the case earlier. These folks have dedicated their lives to being a voice for our community. They have dedicated their skill at it”, he stated, adding he is “so proud of all the doctors” as they “are the ambassadors of the community” even in rural areas.
“Some of my favorite people in America are here in this room”, Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi said, looking around a venue packed with his supporters. “There is only one reason that I was elected to the United States Congress and that reason is you”, he stressed. “You are a success in the greatest country the world has ever known: the United States. And you are the pride of one of the greatest civilizations the world has ever known: India”, he said. Krishnamoorthi made a strong pitch for Indian-Americans to become even more engaged – to vote, volunteer on campaigns, run for political office. Referring to an adage he often repeats, ‘If you don’t have a seat on the table, you’re on the menu’, Krishnamoorthi added, “We will not be on the menu if we do the needful” by being engaged in public policy.
Democratic Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr., of New Jersey, co-founder of the House India Caucus, denounced the anti-immigrant fervor emanating from the White House. He referred to a bill he introduced with two other House Democrats which would prevent the ACA from being sabotaged by President Trump and Republicans in Congress. He explained that the legislation eliminates the cap on subsidies, increases the amount that is available to help people pay their premiums, and seeks to stabilize the market by having a reinsurance component to get more insurers and create more competition to lower prices. He was hopeful the bill will pass if Democrats win the House and Senate in the 2018 midterm elections. “We need to have a pathway to citizenship for H-1B and J-1 visa holders, and for the Dreamers”, he added.
Extolling AAPI members for their “incredible work ethic and strong family values”, Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro, who had supporting pro-immigration bill H.R. 392 (Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2017), said, “It is immigrants who have made America the great country that we are”. He was critical of the fact that in his home district in California, “we have 0.95 physicians for every 1,000 people, not even one physician for every 1,000 people”, he said. “The statewide average is 2.25 physicians. So, we are trying desperately, besides our Residency programs, to get a medical school in the San Joaquin Valley as part of the University of California system”. He highlighted the fact that between Bakersfield and Modesto in CA, there are over 900 Indian-American physicians, serving his district.
“We are blessed to have a great Indian-American community with physicians so well represented”, Republican Congresswoman Barbara Comstock of Virginia said. Referring to shortages in the whole medical field — doctors, physician assistants, nursing homes – the lawmaker told AAPI members, “As we are an aging population, we are facing all kinds of shortages and I know you are on the front lines of that. If we could work together, I would be delighted to”, she said. Regarding soaring pharmaceutical costs, Comstock mentioned she is part of a bipartisan group in the House called the Problem Solvers Caucus which, among other issues, is focused on bringing down drug prices.
Congressman Peter Roskam of Illinois, former Republican co-chair of the House India Caucus, spoke of the “enormous Indian diaspora in Chicago. Nearly every physician I meet is married to another Indian physician”, he quipped. “What is so interesting is how deeply connected and what a big leadership role these communities are playing in the Chicago area”, he said. The lawmaker, who chairs the subcommittee on health on the Ways and Means Committee, encouraged AAPI members to provide feedback from a medical point-of-view about the obstacles they face in caring for their patients.
Among other attendees at the AAPI event were: Republican Congressman Phil Roe of Tennessee, one of few physicians serving on Capitol Hill; Republican Congressman Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania; Republican Congressman Andy Barr of Kentucky; Maryland Delegate Aruna Miller (Democrat), currently running for Congress in the state’s sixth Congressional District; Jason Marino, Senior Assistant Director of Congressional Affairs at the American Medical Association; Dr. Naseem Shekhani, president-elect, Association of Physicians of Pakistani Descent of North America (APPNA); and Nuala Moore, Associate Director of Government Relations at the American Thoracic Society.
“AAPI represents, the growing influence of doctors of Indian heritage is evident, as increasingly physicians of Indian origin hold critical positions in the healthcare, academic, research and administrative positions across the nation. With hard work, dedication, compassion, and skills, we have thus carved an enviable niche in the American medical community. AAPI’s role has come to be recognized as vital among members and among lawmakers,” Dr. Vinod Shah, AAPI’s Legislative Committee Chairman, said.
Legislative Co-Chair Dr. Sampat Shivangi, said, “There are many issues affecting our community and the physicians across the nation. Now is the time to ensure our voices are heard on these vital issues. Additionally, those with good contacts with their own congressman, should reach out to his/her office and enlist their support on these issues dear to us.”
Dr. Naresh parikh, President-Elect of AAPI, said, “AAPI is a non-political umbrella organization which has nearly 90 local chapters, specialty societies and alumni organizations. Almost 10%-12% of medical students entering US schools are of Indian origin. AAPI represents the interests of over 60,000 physicians and 25,000 medical students and residents of Indian heritage in the United States. I am extremely happy that we have come together today to express our voices and as we all stand together to convey and communicate our concerns on this very special day to the lawmakers who have come to hear us and address our concerns.” The day began on Capitol Hill, and culminated at the Indian Embassy with a dinner and was addressed by the Indian Ambassador to the US and other senior officials. For more details on AAPI and its numerous initiatives, please visit: www.appiusa.org
The Harvard Environmental Law Review published an article entitled, “Broadening Common Heritage: Addressing Gaps in the Deep Sea Mining Regulatory Regime.” The article provides a new perspective on the incipient global industry of seabed mining, heralded as the next extractive frontier despite growing concerns and opposition from civil society, scientific experts, and indigenous groups worldwide.
“Deep sea mining has been framed by proponents as a lucrative mineral windfall with minimal impacts,” says author Julie Hunter, attorney and Clinic Fellow at the University of British Columbia. “This narrative entirely disregards recent scientific information linking the deep seabed with major climate regulation and biodiversity functions. Destroying these ecosystems before more can be learned about them not only risks major health and fisheries impacts - it could completely upend global climate change efforts.”
The article provides a brief overview of the so-called ‘gold-rush’ for seabed minerals, in which countries and companies have scrambled to buy up licenses for seabed exploration covering millions of square kilometers of ocean, before environmental and regulatory standards have even been drafted. With Japan becoming the first country to successfully mine its deep seabed in 2017, and Canadian company Nautilus Minerals scheduled to begin the world’s first commercial operation in Papua New Guinea’s waters in 2019, deep sea mining is rapidly becoming a reality.
However, the risks of operating in an unknown environment less documented than Mars are starting to become apparent. In 2016, a consortium of scientists and oceanographers released a study detailing the critical carbon sequestration functions of deep sea hydrothermal vents and methane seeps. Combined with other studies establishing irreversible impacts from seabed mining, these findings trigger a body of protective environmental and human rights law, including the precautionary principle and the need to obtain free, prior, and informed consent from indigenous and other affected peoples.
“Pacific Islanders have already suffered negative consequences as a result of mere exploratory mining in the region,” says author Julian Aguon, attorney and founder of Blue Ocean Law—a law firm that works throughout the Pacific region to defend and advance the rights of colonized and indigenous peoples. “Our work has documented impacts to fisheries and traditional customs in coastal communities in Papua New Guinea, Tonga and elsewhere, and the disconcerting absence of true and meaningful consultation with affected groups.”
Other acknowledged impacts of deep sea mining include contamination of the water column and fisheries by tailings and heavy metals, species extinction, coral reef acidification, carbon emissions from onshore mineral processing, and increased risk of oil spills and surface accidents, among others.
Given the unique biodiversity, genetic, and biomedical properties of deep sea ecosystems, not to mention their potentially critical role in climate regulation, the so-called “common heritage” of the seabed extends far beyond the value of its minerals. “It would be tragically ironic if, in our rush to obtain minerals for use in green tech and renewable energies, we end up bulldozing the most important climate regulator of our planet,” says Hunter. “That possibility alone merits a cautious approach.”
Fundamental scientific pillars to innovate sociocybernetics, sociology, economics, statistics and other social sciences. Intellectual summary of the GHA 13th anniversary
World “is waiting for new scientific solutions that will change the quality of people’s lives … the creation of internationally competitive products and breakthrough technologies.”
"The overall overriding goal of all Russians is to achieve a powerful leap in the development of the country in accordance with the priority world trends ... from the point of view of the quality of people’s life… We need to eliminate everything that hinders this movement, no matter how much we want to cling to something there that seems dear and close to us. All that prevents to go forward, must be cleaned, discarded ."
I. The Sociocybernetic ABC for Policy, Business and Management of Structural Harmony
The life of any society in history requires four necessary and together sufficient static spheral clusters/elements of conditions (s/clusters or s/elements):
Four resources/capitals: People, Information, Organization, Things (m/benefits and services) - PIOT resources (Comte, Park, Toffler, Parsons, Bourdieu, Braudel, Castells, Semashko and etc.)
Four processes of PIOT creating: Production, Distribution, Exchange, Consumption - PDEC processes (Smith, Ricardo, Marx, Keynes, Maturana, etc.)
Four spheres of PIOT creation: Social, Informational, Organizational, Technical - SIOT spheres (same as in 1, 2 and many others).
Four classes/Spherons employed in the SIOT spheres by the PIOT production: Sociospheron, Infospheron, Orgspheron, Technospheron - SIOT classes/spherons (Parsons, Maturana, Giddens, Semashko, etc.).
The statics of 16 s/elements constitutes the basis of society in all its units and determines the dynamics of social and individual life throughout their history. 16 s/elements make up a deep, genetic constant structure or SOCIOCYBERNETIC GENOME (SOCIONOME) of humanity and any society (Semashko), which is reproduced in the whole infinite set of historical diversity of EVERY of these elements as well as in the national and civilizational diversity of their systemic cultural integrity.
Scheme. Sociocybernetic GENOME of Spheres and Spherons’ Structural Harmony
Each of s/elements is EQUALLY necessary as a productive element, because the absence of ANY of them makes the life of society/human impossible. But only one of them - SPHERONS/PEOPLE is a living, defining and priority productive force, universal actor creating ALL elements, including oneself (Maturana’s autopoiesis). However the Spherons productive power depends and is impossible without each of the other s/elements. EACH Spheron is the productive force, necessary for the life of every society actor, resource, capital, heart, energy, motor, etc. The Spherons discovery is confirmed by several examples of statistical researches in different countries, which can be reproduced in any country, in any of its institutions and at the level of humanity as a whole in any year of its historical time based on the population census.
All s/elements can exist only in harmony (proportion, measure, consistency, coherence, balance, etc.) among themselves. it is expressed by the fundamental Sociocybernetic / Tetrasociological Axiom of Genetic Structural Harmony (SAGSH): Harmonious (sustainable) existence of society in any place and time is determined by a measure in the proportion of four equally necessary and sufficient social resources: People (P), Information (I), Organizations (O) and Things (T). The structural harmony of SOCIONOME constitutes a harmonious human/social nature (Kant, Poincare, Luhmann, Semashko, Soroko, Siebert, Baymuratov and etc.).
The natural state of social structural harmony is spontaneous, nonlinear, stochastic and thermodynamic. It is accompanied in history by the sporadic disharmonies: violence, wars, other armed clashes, crises, increasing risks and challenges of various levels from global to local, including the family and the individual.
The dynamics of the Spherons’ structural harmony, their direct and feedback connections constitute the subject of Tektology, Sociocybernetics, Tetrasociology, Organizational Governance science, system theory and management (Bogdanov, Wiener, Bertalanffy, Ashby, Foerster, Beer, Pask, Geyer, Hornung, Scott, Semashko, etc.). Sociocybernetics of spherical elements, first of all Spherons, determines the third-order Sociocybernetics, which organically includes the two preceding orders. The statics and dynamics of the spheral elements, as the alphabet of structural harmony, constitute the ABC of the third-order Sociocybernetics.
Sociocybernetics is organically connected with the "harmonic analysis and application" of Norbert Wiener's ideas, which are carried out by the corresponding "Norbert Wiener Center" within the framework of "the broad emerging area of Mathematical Engineering", which "advances the technologies of the new millennium" (http://www.norbertwiener.umd.edu/About/index.html). The sociocybernetics of the structural harmony of spheres and spherons is much pushing the horizon of mathematical engineering in its new spheral technologies, revealing the brilliant philosophical definition of Henri Poincare: "The world inner harmony is the only true objective reality" for all sciences, especially for mathematics.
II. Sociocybernetic Laws of Structural Harmony into Social Production
Holistic Objective Law of the equal necessity and sufficiency of the four spheral resources of PIOT (People, Information, Organization, Things) for the life of any community, which determines the equal necessity and sufficiency of the four spheres of social production and genetically is embodied in the deep structural harmony of the four equally necessary and sufficient network Spherons, stochastically employed in the spheres of production. Briefly: The Law of Spheral Structural Harmony (LSSH) or the Law of Spherons (LS).
Structural harmony of social production, its highest efficiency and productivity are determined by the structural harmony of the Spherons engaged in its four spheres as their main productive force.
Sociological, economic, statistical, and other sectoral scientific knowledge of the Spherons’ structural harmony integrated in their sociocybernetic holistic knowledge, determine the effectiveness of managing/governance the structural harmony of social production.
Continuity of social production requires continuous, holistic management of its structural harmony, which in turn requires a continuous, holistic sociocybernetic monitoring of the structural harmony, primarily their statistical monitoring.
The integral nature of monitoring the Spherons’ structural harmony requires their integral sociocybernetic knowledge and continuous scientific research, which requires the creation of an integral and independent (Global and National) Academy of Social Sciences subordinate to the continuous production of relevant scientific information and technologies for continuous spheral management of the Spherons’ dynamics into social production system at all levels from global up to local.
The quality and effectiveness of continuous management of the dynamics of the Spherons’ structural harmony is determined by the quality of the continuous development of its scientific information produced by the integral Academy of Social Sciences.
The law of the sociocybernetic gene modification of pathological societies and civilizations. Spherons as actors of genetic structural harmony are the only makers of non-violent, conscious and harmonious gene transformation/therapy of pathological societies and civilizations. Spherons release them and their governing bodies (governments, UN, UNESCO, UNICEF, WTO, IMF, IOC, etc.) from the pathologies of militarism, corruption, inequality, nationalism, systemic crises, risks and other disharmonies on the base of integral socio-humanitarian scientific knowledge of the Spherons’ structural harmony and through the institution of global spheral democracy, universally replenishing the deficit of structural harmony at all levels. Spherons genetically transform the disharmonious militaristic industrial civilization into a harmonious civilization, adequate to its genome with full preservation of cultural diversity during 50 years of the 21st century on the basis of conscious governance of structural harmony in spheral democracy. (A more concise wording is required).
III. The Transition from Spontaneous Structural Harmony to a Conscious One
Based on the laws of structural harmony, it becomes clear that its key transition from a spontaneous and ineffective state to a conscious and effective state is possible ONLY on the basis of a global SCIENTIFIC sociocybernetic knowledge of its statics and dynamics. This knowledge provides for conscious control (together with the creation of its organizational and digital technologies) by deep structural harmony at all levels of social production. Governance of the interactions among the spheral elements is a holistic, systemic management of the structural harmony of social production as a whole, primarily the management of its only active / living actor and the first productive force - the Spherons’ structural harmony. From their structural harmony depends the structural harmony of all other spheral elements, as well as all the qualities of social production. The management of structural harmony requires, first of all, a statistical and sociological researches of Spherons at all levels of social production. This management is impossible without these researches and design, which constitute the subject of the relevant business.
These sciences/management/technologies open a fundamentally new, universal and breakthrough business of the 21st century with endless profit: BUSINESS of SPHERAL MANAGEMENT for structural harmony or SPHERAL BUSINESS of PRODUCTION GOVERNANCE. This management prevents disharmonies, crises, risks and simultaneously ensures sustainable development, harmonious growth and top quality, efficiency and productivity of social production everywhere and ubiquitously. Therefore, the business of spheral management is a business with endless demand/benefit/need and incomes in the endless future history of humankind! The management of structural harmony will become the ubiquitous and everyday business norm of the life of people and social institutions, along with its science and education, like arithmetic and grammar.
This global breakthrough of social mega science, management and business is prepared by all of their past development. Therefore, contrary to all ideologies, it will inevitably be recognized for the first time in any advanced country by the creation of a corresponding Business Center for Management/Governance by Structural Harmony, for a start. He will ensure the social production of this country a breakthrough development in all spheres, primarily in the economy and management.
IV. Practical Consequences of Structural Harmony that Make its Knowledge and Governance Inevitable
For more than 40 years (including 13 years in the GHA), the idea of a deep (genetic) structural harmony of the Spherons has led to the following breakthrough scientific and pragmatic conclusions, fundamental discoveries and achievements. They constitute concrete results of those new scientific solutions, which can "change the quality of people’s lives", the world development and thinking of humanity in the 21st century, starting with:
The Law of Spheral Structural Harmony (LSSH) or the Law of Spherons (LS), from which all the following scientific conclusions, achievements and discoveries follow.
TetraSociology and Sociocybernetics of the third order: the integral social MegaScience of structural harmony of production’s spheres and Spherons
Global Peace Science (GPS) from the Spherons’ structural harmony
Multipolar harmonious world order and geopolitics of global peace
Management of structural harmony of spherons - holistic harmonious management at all levels from local to global on the basis of LSSH
Priority of children and youth through the law "Children's Suffrage Executed by Parents"
Spheral harmonious development of the family, children and youth
Social and political equality of women through the equality of spherons
Population: the transformation of quantity into quality through education
Global peace from the world harmony of spherons through the GPS and education
General complete disarmament for 50 years on the basis of spherons’ harmony
Nuclear disarmament for 10 years on the basis of spherons’ harmony
A fundamental global harmonious peace education based on GPS
Harmonization of world religions through the spherons’ harmony and their believers
Global harmonious 100% democracy of the spherons and their harmonious parties
Global harmonious currency
Overcoming extreme poverty on the spherons’ harmony basis
Global economy of moderate harmonious growth and wealth
MINIMAX/MAXIMIN: harmonious interconnected minimization of the maximum of incomes and property and maximization of their minimum
The law of spheral surplus value on the basis of LSSH: defining the economic law of a harmonious balanced crisis-free economy at all levels
Spherons' responsibility for mutual material welfare
Harmony of humankind with nature: sustainable ecology and climate on the basis of LSSH
Global harmonious, humanistic, ethical worldview and consciousness
Holistic harmonious thinking of spherons
Spheral digital and organizational technologies
The first right of human and humankind to life, global peace and harmony
Reforming the UN disharmony in the UN Harmony and Global Peace
Evolutionary elimination of linguistic disharmony and the establishment of global bilingualism: recognition of two world languages - English and Esperanto
Harmonious civilization of spherons on the basis of LSSH: an alternative to the disharmonious industrial militaristic civilization in all its forms of capitalism and socialism / communism, which have exhausted and discredited themselves in history. This is the "third way" of the development of humankind, overcoming the "evil of capitalism and communism", about which Pope John Paul II began to talk at the end of the past and the beginning of the new century. This is now understood by Putin also (see below). Their "evil" is inherent in the "absolute evil of their nuclear weapons" (Avery), which generates the "civilizational crisis of the 21st century" (Avery).
Management of spherons’ structural harmony as the crystallization of their scientific consciousness in its pragmatic application in harmonious forms of a new universal business, managerial revolution, digital economy, spheral democracy, global peace education, etc.
This is, in the first approximation, the scale of the unique sociocybernetic futurological imagination of the 21st century, which grows out of a new, emerging social megascience. This scientific imagination defines an unprecedentedly new quality of life for people and humanity as a whole in a new harmonious multipolar world order.
These fundamental achievements and discoveries for more than 40 years constitute the Copernican scientific revolution of social cognition, providing it with a "powerful leap" from age-old ideologically conditioned stagnation and "oblivion" of the 20th century to a fundamentally new level of holistic harmonious thinking of the 21st century that is necessary for the survival of humankind in sustainable development. More than half a century ago Einstein wrote about the vital necessity of a "substantially new manner of thinking" for the survival of humankind.
The main obstacle to these achievements and discoveries in the mainstream of the world trend to sustainable development are unilateral narrow ideologies of capitalism and communism of the last century that discredited themselves and die. They "prevent us from moving forward," so the ideological obstacle "must be cleaned, discarded" and "we need to eliminate all that hinders this movement" of sustainable harmonious development and solving its super task (http://tass.ru/politika/4915051).
The thinking of these fundamental achievements and discoveries allows us to overcome the narrowness and limitations of traditional ordinary consciousness, in which we "do not think at all what is going on around us." It provides for the world citizens "self-preservation and the future of our ... generations." This is the ultimate meaning of the Sociocybernetics of spheres and Spherons as a global breakthrough of social megascience. Only on this path is not death waiting for it, as some pessimists predict, but fundamentally a new heyday as a megascience of spheral structural harmony.
Naturally, the presented summary of third-order Sociocybernetics is only the first and rude approximation to its integral scientific structure, requiring new and active international and interdisciplinary researches, of which the first is the statistical study of the spherons of different countries. GHA plans them in nine countries in the second half of 2018 and invites all interested scientists to them in other countries (http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=801). This is a call to those of them who have retained their love for new fundamental discoveries, dozens of dispositions of which are filled with an integral socio-humanitarian knowledge of third-order Sociocybernetics free from any ideological restrictions.
Five main sources
I, together with hundreds of the GHA members since 2005, with the support of many outstanding scientists and peacemakers from dozens of countries, including the President of India and the Nobel Peace Laureates, dedicated more than 40 years, since 1976, to Spherons’ structural harmony and development of its peacebuilding, social, political and economic consequences. It is presented in my / our almost two dozen books and hundreds of projects and articles. Of these, I will only mention 4 key books and one practical project of the UN global governance:
Sociology for Pragmatists. 1999;
Tetrasociology: Responses to Challenges. 2002;
The ABC of Harmony. 2012;
Global Peace Science. 2015/16 by 174 coauthors from 34 countries, including the President of India and Nobel Laureates;
The UN Harmony. 2017.
All of them are published on the GHA website: http://peacefromharmony.org/. More than 600 sources are named in 4. Of these, the key source is Eduard Soroko. Structural Harmony. 1984.
The first practical, but unrecognized for an infamous reason systematic use of the ideas of spheral structural harmony was found in the project Institute of urban economy of St. Petersburg (5 million population) "Systemotechnika" in 1981-1989. This experience was reflected in the author's first book: "Sphere Approach", 1992 (see ibid.).
Prof Leo M. Semashko, Ph.D.
State Councilor of St. Petersburg, Russia. Founding President, Global Harmony Association (GHA) since 2005. Honorary President, GHA since 2016. Director: Tetrasociology Public Institute, Russia. Philosopher, Sociologist and Peacemaker from Harmony. Author of more than 400 scientific publications, including 18 books in 1-12 languages. Author of Tetrism as the unity of Tetraphilosophy and Tetrasociology – science of social harmony, global peace and harmonious civilisation. Director, GHA Web portal “Peace from Harmony”. Initiator, Manager, Coauthor and Editor in Chief of the book project “Global Peace Science” (GPS).
Prof Rudolf J. Siebert Professor of Religion and Society IUC Course Director and Yalta Course Director, Director of the WMU Center for Humanistic Future Studies Western Michigan University Department of Comparative Religion Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA
We wish you and your dear family a healthy, happy, creative, and peaceful New Year 2018. We are writing this letter to you, in order to invite you wholeheartedly to our 42nd international course on the Future of Religion: The Dialectic of Secularization ? to take place in the Inter-University Center for Post-Graduate Studies (IUC) in Dubrovnik, Croatia, from April 23 - 28, 2018. We invite you to our discourse, because we are convinced, that you as a scholar are most competent to contribute to the clarification, understanding, explanation, and comprehension, and praxis of our rather difficult new topic: TheFuture of Religion: The Dialectic of Secularization. It is of highest actuality in the present context of religious and secular terrorism. Can we make a contribution to the resolution of the present problem of international terrorism? We hope so, small as it may be.
Golden Rule
Also our new discourse of 2018, like the previous ones, embraces both sides of the modern antagonism between the sacred and the profane, the religious and the secular, faith and autonomous reason, revelation and enlightenment. Religious as well as secular people have an ethics, which may motivate them in discourse: a communicative, or discourse ethics. All religious people share the Golden Rule. Many enlightened people share the translation and rationalization of the Golden Rule, i.e. the categorical imperative, or the communicative ethics, or the principle of the apriori of the unlimited communication community, and strive for personal autonomy and universal, i.e. anamnestic, present, and proleptic solidarity, in the on-going crisis-loaded transition situation between Modernity on one hand, and Post-Modernity, on the other. Our new discourse wants once more to bring together religious and secular people, who are interested in the question, what the religion and the secular enlightenment of the future, and their new interrelationship, may possibly and probably look like, on the basis of 42 years of research into the future of religion in the IUC, with the practical intent of cooperation concerning the solution of the present, often bloody and in any case most painful national and international culture wars, and to create a civilization of life, or oflove, or of mercy, as suggested by Pope Francis I , in remembrance of Saint Francis of Assissi, the greatest saint of the West, recognized by believers and non-believers alike. We want to explore, what a new religion and a new secular enlightenment may contribute to the moral improvement of individuals and nations: to a spiritual, as well as political, and economic revolution, or pro-volution, toward a truly humane civilization instead of an inhuman barbarism. We share with the humanistic theologian Hans Küng the conviction, that there can be no peace among nations without peace between the religions and the modern secular enlightenment movements. There can be no peace between religion and secular enlightenment without discourse between them. There can be no discourse between the religions and the secular enlightenment movements without foundational research in them concerning their mutual interpretation of reality, and their mutual orientation of action. What may a future new religion and a future new secular enlightenment, and their global ethos, committed to build and maintain a sustainable, peaceful world civilization, possibly and probably look like? Please, see our website: http://www.rudolfjsiebert.org/.
Plurality
We hope very much, that you can follow our invitation, and that you can come to the IUC in beautiful Dubrovnik, a pearl of civilization, which for centuries was able to keep all barbarism outside of its walls, in the last week of April 2018, and that you can join us in our 42nd international course on the Future of Religion: The Dialectic of Enlightenment , and that you can present a paper to us out of the center of your own presently on-going research-activities, interests, competence, and teaching, concerning the dialectic of secular enlightenment and religion. To be sure, while we may have a research preference for the three Abrahamic Religions, - Judaism, the Religion ofSublimity, Christianity, the Religion of Freedom, and Islam, the Religion of Law-, we are, nevertheless, open for a plurality of world religions, alive or dead , in Africa, Asia, Near East, the European, Slavic and American Worlds. Likewise, while we may have a research preference for the critical theory of religion, or dialectical religiology, we are, nevertheless, also open for a plurality of theories of religion, and methodologies.You are also very welcome, if you do not want to be a resource person and to read a paper, but rather prefer to appear as a participant, and thus contribute as such to our, to be sure, very lively discourse. Our course will be part of a very rich IUC Program of courses and conferences in the Academic Year of 2017/ 2018, with some of which we may inter-act. Dubrovnik and the IUC are, indeed, alive and well, and have been rising again like the mythical Phoenix Bird out of the ashes, and have been growing again, in spite of all the tragic events of the past decades, and have been able heroically to resist and to survive a terrible wave of barbarism, which cost the lives of 200 000 people. We shall read our papers and discuss in the hope, that in all parts of the world the Jus or Lex Talionis will be replaced by the religious Golden Rule, superseding the barbarous motive of retaliation and revenge - eye for eye, tooth for tooth, foot for foot, leg for leg, hand for hand, . etc. - which makes the whole world lame and blind, and by the secular categorical imperative, and by the likewise secular principle of the apriori of the universal communication community of the discourse ethics, and by a global ethos, built on these religious and secular principles, and by a secular international law, which is rooted in them and will, therefore, never be without mercy and the power of at-one - ment, and of reconciliation, without which a true civilization can not exist, and barbarism will prevail. All ethics and legality must, - in order to have real motivating power - , ultimately be rooted in the insatiable longing of people for the utterly Other than what is the case in nature and history, for the X-experience, and for the ultimate Reality. With such longing civilization begins, and it ends, and barbarism breaks through and prevails, when such longing disappears.
Martyrs of Freedom
In this year's discourse, we shall once more remember the men and women, who in the present conflicts in the Near East, and in Africa, and in Europe, and elsewhere, stood up and were brave in the many, recent culture wars between religion and modern, secular enlightenment, and have confessed and witnessed, and became martyrs of freedom for a more civilized and reconciled world. We think, e.g., of the many refugies from Syria,Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistant and several African states., streaming into Europe and America.We remember the young Jordanian pilot, who was shot down by ISIS over Syria during a bombing run, and was then, on January 6, 2015, burned alive in a cage, while bravely standing up and praying, as once Jordano Bruno and Vanini, and many so called witches, and heretics, and atheists had done. We remember the young American woman Kelly Mueller, who had spent her life in caring for the poor, the sick, and the wounded people in all parts of the world, and who was then kidnapped by ISIS in Aleppo, and was killed on February 5, 2015, as so called collateral damage, by a Jordanian F 16 bomber, who in retaliation and revenche for the burned Jordanian pilote, bombed Raqqa, the capital of the new Islamic State, or Caliphate, where she had been held captive for months. If ISIS wants really to revive the Arabic Empire Paradigm, including the Umaijadic Caliphat of Damaskus from 661 to 750, and the Classical-Islamic World Religion Paradigm, including the Abbasidic Caliphate of Bagdad from 750-1258, they must conquer both: Syria and Iraq, Damaskus and Baghdad. They have been driven out of Mosul, but have moved West into Africa. The barbarous war may, nevertheless, take a long time, depending on the resistance. We also think of the Charlie - journalists, and the Jewish people in the cosher store in Paris, who all were murdered by ISIS soldiers in revench for Mohammed in January 2015, and then again many others in December 2015: either because they practiced the freedom of speech, or simply because they were modern secular Europeans, or Jews. The ISIS attacks happened, symbolically enough, in Paris: the city of the great secular bourgeois, and then socialist enlightenment movements and revolutions. We remember the pious Shiite Sheik Nimr al- Nimre, who was brutally executed by the Sunni-lead Saudi - Arabian Government on January 5, 2016, together with over 40 other martyrs, including chidlren, and whose violent death rocked the whole Mideast. All that happens, while in the enlightened secular world of the West sometimes global stock rises dramatically under Trumpism, and then plunges again in the midst of fears of a new financial catastrophe like that in 2008. Democracy changes into plutocracy more dramatically than ever before. Fascism, or corporatism, including nationalism and racism, rises once more its ugly head in Europe and America. Social advancement slows down. A vicious cycle of wealth and power threatens capitalism. Barbarism threatens the Western civilization. In January 2016, in the nearby Flint, Michigan, the portray of an American city, residents died as a result of an outbreak of Legionaires desease, linked to the city's lead - contaminated drinking water: in addition to the 9000 children who have been put at risk for lead poisoning. The city's spiraling public health disaster is the result of its move in April 2014, to draw the drinking water from the polluted Flint River, in order to save money, after the Detroit Water Department demanded higher rates in the aftermath of the Detroit bancruptcy. In America by-weekly mass shootings make Wallstreet see gold in gun companies, and in gun production, and in massive gun sales. The theodicy, the defense of the highest Wisdom of the Creator against the accusation, which reason makes against it on the basis of the counter-purpose and counter-teleology in the world, this apology of the cause of God, which neither religious people, nor secular enlighteners can perform adequately any longer, at least not theoretically, becomes more and more unbearable in all these events and cases, and in many others. The Trump Administration differentiates between three forms of capitalism:
Ayn Rand libertarian capitalism - greed and selfishness are good;
State capitalism, which does not allow for personal autonomy; and
Judeo-Christian capitalism, which is supposed to guarantee civilization and protect us against barbarism.
Is such Judeo-Christian capitalism really possible, or is it not rather a contradictio in adjecto. Please see John 2: 13-25; Rudolf J. Siebert, Moral Polemics and Revolution in Christianity and other World Religions. New Delhi: Sanbun Publishers 2017; Rudolf J. Siebert and Michael Ott. Future of Religion: Creation, Exodus, Son of Man and Kingdom. New Delhi: Sanbun Publishers 2016.
Sister Course Yalta
In 2016 and 2017 , we hoped very much, that our friends from our sister course on Religion in Civil Society in Yalta, Republic of Crimea, particularly Tatiana and Alexandra, would be able to be with us again. Unfortunately, our Yalta friends could not get a visa, and thus were not allowed to come. In November 2016 and 2017, we also hoped to be able again to participate in our 20 year old sister course on Religion in Civil Society in Yalta, Republic of Crimea. In the past two decades, Tatiana had edited one book each year, which contained all the research work of the Yalta course resource persons. Unfortunately, the Executive Order 13685 by the Obama Administration forbid us to participate in our Yalta course, because the Crimeans had supposedly not had a Referendum to separate from the Ukraine, but the Russians had supposedly occupied and annexed the Crimea, and had to be punished by sanctions. In the process we were punished as well, and our freedom of speech and our academic freedom were repressed nationally and internationally. We still hope very much, that the Trump Administration will cancel the respective Executive Order 13685 of the Obama Administration, and we shall be allowed again freely to particiate in our Yalta Course on Religion in Civil Society, in November 2018. There must not be any Second Cold War! Its ending would probably be more tragic, than that of the first one, in the face of the availability of 77 000 nuclear weapons in the East and in the West. It would lead our civilization back into the stone age, and possibly even further. It would end in absolute barbarism. At present, not Europe as such, but one which would act as proxi of the American World, is a danger for the Slavic World, after the Crusaders marched to Novgorod, and Napoleon to Moscow, and Adolf Hitler to Leningrade, Moscow, Stalingrade, and Kursk, where he and the first wave of fascism or corporatism found their catastrophic end: his whole dark dream of Mein Kampf, which is now a new bestseller again in Germany, and in Europe. A Second Cold War would contradict any global ethos, religious or secular! It would be the opposite of all the peace work we have done for decades in Dubrovnik, and in Yalta, and in general between the American and the Slavic World, in theory and in praxis, and which we would like to continue into the future. In any case, at the end of Modernity, there is no way back into the Middle Ages, not to speak of Antiquity, for anybody anywhere, but only foreward into Post-Modernity. Antiquity, Middle Ages, and Modernity are concretely to be superseded into Post-Modernity: hopefully not toward Post-Modern alternative Future I - the totally computerized, robotized, technocratic signal society, or toward Post-Modern alternative Future II - the entirely militarized drone society, but hopefully toward Post-Modern alternative Future III - a society, characterized by the reconciliation of the religious and the secular, faith and reason, revelation and secular enlightenment, as well as of personal autonomy and universal, i.e. anamnestic, present, and proleptic solidarity; and conseqently characterized by the priority of the democratic constitutional state over the market; by the primacy of social solidarity over merit; by the rejection of the law of the stronger; and by the commitment to peace as a result of the historical experience of loss. In contrast to the barbarism of Future I and II, only Future III would deserve the name of civilization. Our new discourse on the dialetic of religion and secular enlightenment, aims ultimately at Post-Modern alternative Future III, which can not come about without such kind of practical discourse, and the connected praxis. We have expressed our pain concerning Executive Order 13685 in an Open Letter to President Trump and President Putin, asking them to become agents of peace rather than war, of civilization rather than barbarism, in the spirit of our international discourses in Dubrovnik and Yalta: discourse understood as future-oriented remembrance of human suffering with the practical intend, to diminish it.
Papers
Please, prepare your paper out of the material of your present research, in the horizon of our specific theme of this year, and in the context of the present economic, political, historical, and religious situation, and in direction of our common goal - alternative Future III: Shalom, Salaam, Peace, Friede between the Abrahamic and all other living world-religions, on one hand, and the modern secular enlightenment movements, on the other, as well as among the nations, in which they are situated. Our texts must not be perfect. Nobody is perfect! You can still complete your paper to the level of publication-maturation after you have presented it, and after we have discussed it together. Our new discourse may help you, to complete your paper, and to make it ready for publication after you return home. It may then be included into our new Dubrovnik Book, which shall be edited by our colleague Professor Dr. Dustin Byrd.
Publications
Professor Dr. Michael Ott has completed the collection of our research papers once more for a third volume, following the late Professor Reimer’s excellent first volume - The Influence of the Frankfurt School on Contemporary Theology. Critical Theory and the Future of Religion. Dubrovnik Papers in Honor of Rudolf J. Siebert. Lewiston, New York, Queenston, Ontario, Canada, Lampeter, Dyfed, Wales, United Kingdom, and his own most outstanding second volume The Future of Religion: Toward a Reconciled Society, which has appeared with the publisher Brill in Holland, and with the publisher Haymarket in 2007/2009 in England. Michael has worked once more very hard for the new third volume, entitled The Dialectic of the Religious and the Secular. We are most grateful to him, and all contributors. We thank Professor Dr. Dustin Byrd for having volunteered with his great publishing talent and experience, to bring out our third volume. In the future my own three volume Manifesto of the Critical Theory of Society and Religion: The Wholly Other, Liberation, Happiness and the Rescue of the Hopeless, which is very much based in our discourses and experiences in Dubrovnik through the past 42 years, and reflects very much our common interests and efforts, and has come out with the publisher Brill in Leiden, Holland, in 2010, can also be of help to us in our present and future discourses. We celebrated the arrival of the Manifesto during our discourse in April 2012 with an excellent presentation by Professor Dennis Janz, in the framework of our work done in the past 4 decades, which it reflects. Our gratitude goes to Professor Dennis Janz for his excellent review of the Manifesto in Mike's third volume. Also Professor Reimon Bachika from the University of Kyoto, Japan, has produced an excellent review of the Manifesto. Professor Michael Ott and I have authored a 40 Anniversary book, entitled The Future of Religion: Creator, Exodus, Son of Man and Kingdom. It sums up the history of our course, and all the work we have done in the past 40 years. The book has been published by Sanbun Publishers in New Delhi, India. It is available: see E-mail : sanbunpublishers@hotmail.com. Copies were available and distributed in Dubrovnik, at the occasion of our anniversary celebration in April 2016. My new book Moral Polemics and Revolution in Christianity and other World Religions, which deals with the enlightenment religion and Christology from Kant to Hegel,has beenpublishedby Sanbun Publishers in New Delhi, India, in 2017. We hope very much, that we can also publish the papers of our 39th and 40th, and 41st and 42nd, and further discourses in a later publication. Professor Dustin Byrd, Olivet College, Michigan, has generously volunteered to produce a fifth volume of our more recent papers. You may send your paper to him after you have presented it to us in Dubrovnik.We always wanted to share our findings about the possible futures of religion, and the religion of the future, not only with each other, but also with a broader, even global audience of interested scholars. Please, see our website http: //www.rudolfjsiebert, org/.
Democratic Procedure
Thus, we - the Directors Professor Rudolf J. Siebert, Western Michigan University, Professor Mislav Kukoc, University of Zagreb, Professor Gottfried Künzelen, Emeritus, from the University of the Federal German Army, Munich, Professor Denis Janz, Loyola University, New Orleans, Professor Michael Ott, Emeritus, from Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan, Dr. Dinka Marinovic-Jerolimov, nstitute for Social Research Zagreb, and the Coordinators Professor Tatiana Senyushkina, Taurida National University, Simferopol, Ukraine, Dr. Goran Goldberger, Institute for Social Research, Zagreb, and Professor Dustin Byrd, Olivet College, Olivet, Michigan 49076,USA, - invite you very personally and heartely in the name of the IUC, to join us as resource persons, or participants, in our 42nd international course on The Future ofReligion: The Dialectic of Secularization in the IUC Building, from April 23-28, 2018. We chose this year's course title once more in a democratic procedure. It grew logically out of the texts, and the contexts, and motivations of our previous discourses on the Future of Religion. This year’s theme is certainly once more of highest actuality considering the present world situation, in which our civilization is continually threatened by utter barbarism: a situation characterized by the so-called war against terror, which unfortunately has also continued under the Trump Administration in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Jordan, Africa, and elsewhere, and by the Ukrainian civil war, which are continually fought on both sides according to the cruel Jus or Lex Talionis, without any real peace, or liberation, or redemption in sight, as the possible result of the praxis of the Golden Rule, in personal, national, and international affairs: a praxis, driven by the yearning for the totally Other, for perfect justice, for unconditional love, and by the longing, that the murderer shall not triumph over the innocent victim, and by the hope for redemption, liberation and happiness, and the rescue of all the hopeless victims of society and history, who have never had their day in court. The present dissonance and antagonism between the religious and the secular, and the consequent ongoing culture wars, threaten the religious expectation of Exodus and Kingdom, as well as the secular hope for Post-Modern alternative Future III - a more reconciled society, based on a global ethos, and our civilization with barbarism.
Room and Board
In case you have any further questions, please address them to the IUC, to me, or to the other directors at the following addresses and through the following media: Prof. R. J. Siebert - RSieb3@aol.com -http://www.rudolfjsiebert.org/, 630 Piccadilly Road, Kalamazoo, Michigan 49006, USA. Tel.: 269-381-0864 / Fax: 269-381-1935. Secretariat of the Inter-University Center, Don Frana Bulica 4, HR 20000 Dubrovnik, Croatia, Tel.+385 20 413626/7 /Fax +385 20 413628. Please, also contact either Hotel Argentina (Tel + 385 20 440 555 / Fax + 385 20 432 524), Hotel Lero (Tel. + 385 20 411 455 / Fax + 385 20 432 501), or any other hotel or private pension of your choice in Dubrovnik for room and board. Hotel Lero is the less expensive one. Hotel Argentina is the most expensive one. Most of us will probably stay at Hotel Lero. You can get a lower hotel price, if you make your reservation through the IUC Secretariat as early as possible. You may also get inexpensive rooms in the IUC.
Frankfurt School
The Loyola University in Chicago is once more organizing a Meeting on its Campus in Rome, Italy, on the critical theory of society of the Frankfurt School, shortly after our Dubrovnik event. You are aware, that we have developed out of the critical theory of society of the Frankfurt School our own Critical Theory of Religion or Comparative, Dialectical Religiology.We have invited the members of the Rome event to join us in Dubrovnik. Some of us will participate in next year’s Rome event again, as we have done in recent years, in order there to present our critical theory of religion, or dialectical religiology. You are very much invited, to participate in the Rome event.
Funding
As far as OSI support is concerned, unfortunately, the IUC has not yet managed to replace it with a similar foundation. At the moment the IUC has only the modest IUC support, with which they can fund one participant per course according to the criteria that are listed at: http://www.iuc.hr/iuc-support.php. The IUC would be happy to help resource persons and participants in finding more convenient accommodations. Lately many of the resource persons and participants stay in the nearby monastery, which offers the most convenient prices that could be found in Dubrovnik. Since the nuns do not speak English, nor do they have an e-mail address, all the reservations must be done through the IUC.
Continuity and Direction
Please, allow me to make a few more concrete suggestions concerning the form and content of our discourse on The Future of Religion: Dialectic of Secularization in April 2018. One reason for such suggestions is to constitute further continuity among our discrete past 41 courses, on one hand, and the coming 42th discourse this year, on the other. In fulfilling this task of continuity, we are greatly supported by Professor Reimer's book The Influence of the Frankfurt School on Contemporary Theology. Critical Theory and the Future of Religion. Dubrovnik Papers in Honor of Rudolf J. Siebert; and by Professor Ott’s new books The Future of Religion: Toward a Reconciled Society and The Dialectic of the Religious and the Secular; and by Professor Siebert’s Manifesto of the Critical Theory of Society and Religion: The Totally Other, Liberation, Happiness, and the Rescue of the Hopeless; as well as by his more recent publications The Evolution of the Religious Consciousness toward alternative Futures, New Delhi: Sanbun 2013; and by his The Development of Moral Consciousness toward Global Ethos, New Delhi: Sanbun 2013; and by his Toward a Radical Interpretation of the Abrahamic Religions: In Search for the Wholly Other. New Delhi, Sanbun 2013; and by his The Realization of Harmony in Religion, Philosophy and Science, in St. Peterburg: GWA (Global Harmony Association) 2014; and by his The World Religions in the Global Public Sphere:Towards Concrete Freedom and Material Democracy, New Delhi: Sanbun 2014; and by his Early Critical Theory of Religion: The Island of Happiness. New Delhi: Sanbun, 2014; and by the cooperative work of Rudolf J. Siebert/ Michael Ott/ Dustin J. Byrd. The Critical Theory of Religion:From Having to Being, in Critical Research on Religion. 2013. April. Vol. 1; Issue 1; and by the book of Rudolf.J.Siebert and Michael Ott, The Future of Religion: Creator, Exodus, Son of Man and Kingdom, and by the most recent book by Rudolf J. Siebert, Moral Polemics and Revolution in Christianity and other World Religions. New Delhi: Sanbun Publishers 2017. The other reason for the following suggestions is to indicate the possible direction, which our new international discourse on the Future of Religion: The Dialectic of Secularization may, or could, or should take, when we meet in Dubrovnik from April 23 - 28, 2018. The few suggestions may indicate the possible theoretical framework, methodology, level, and goal for the texts, that we shall produce in writing or orally in, about, and for the present, turbulent, more barbarous than civilized world-situation,and toward the goal of further human emancipation, as reconciliation, on the long road of humankind from animality and barbarism to civilization, to Post-Modern, global alternative Future III: the reconciled, free, just, and, therefore, peaceful society, instead of Post-Modern alternative Future I - the totally administered society, as predicted by Huxley, Orwell, Kafka, Flechtheim, Horkheimer, Adorno, Fromm, Marcuse, etc., or Post-Modern, alternative global Future II - the entirely militarized society continually engaged in conventional wars and civil wars, and in drone strikes, with their terrible collateral damages, and in the preparation of ABC wars, and their consequent environmental disasters, maybe in the framework of a collission of religion-based and -guided civilizations, as predicted by the late Samuel Huntington - a disciple of Carl Schmitt, Adolf Hitler’s main jurist and general council, and political theologian - and a former Pentagon advisor during the Vietnam war, and the more recent Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The following suggestions are, of course, only that - suggestions - and you may feel entirely free, to follow your own dialectical imagination and creativity, and to move in other directions as well, inside, of course, of the wider framework of the general thematic of 2018.
Dialectic
The word dialectic in our course title is a great riddle for many people today.There has been a great confusion about this word particularly since the dialectical logic has been repressed in the Western civilization during the Great Depression of the 1920ties, and postivism has reached a monopoly position. Adolf Hitler rejected Hegel's dialectic, but replaced it by his own Satanic one, which confused a whole nation and continent. He wanted to make Germany and Europe great again, but brought them to the very brink of total disaster. If Hitler and Joeph Goebbels had won the war, they would have been praised as the greatest positivists. Thus dialectic is in need of explanation. According to the critical theory of religion, or dialectical religiology, which we have developed in recent decades, religion is the longing for the totally Other than the horror and terror of nature and history; for perfect justice and unconditional love; that the murderer shall not triumph over the innocent victim. Each particular, positive, historical religion has a dynamic, dialectical, trinitarian structure. Any positive religion consists of : 1.Its notion: the God or the Gods; 2. Its judgement: their relationship to the believers; 3. Its conclusion: the cult as the relationship of the believers to their God or Gods. and the believers transition into the social world, family, civil society, state and history. Dialectic means determinate negation. In world history one positive religion determinately, or concretely, or specifically negates the previous one: critizices it, but also preserves some of it, and combines it with new elements.
Methodology
We approach the dialectical structure of any positive religion with the help of the dialectical method, the triplicity, the trinity, as it has been developed in Greek and Roman Antiquity by Platon and the Neo-Platonists, particularly Plotin ad Proclos, and as it has been rediscovered, to begin with, by instinctive insight, but then left liveless and uncomprehended for a long time: with the exception of Bonaventura, Meister Eckhart, Nicolaus of Cusa and Jacob Boehme. But then the dialectical method has been raised again to its proper significance as an absolute method, and adopted in Modernity in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, the greatest modern enlightener, and then it has been further completed by Georg W. F. Hegel and Karl Marx, and Paul Tillich. Johann Gottlieb Fichte summed up Hegel's dialectical method in the popular, ritual formula of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, which Hegel himself never used. Through the dialectical method the true form has been set up in its true content, and a new conception of science has come to light. The method of dialectic constitutes the Modern enlightenment, and separates it from mythology, as well as from positivism, enlightenment’s very perversion: the metaphysics of what is the case; it is as it is; the glass is still have full . The method of triplicity, or of trigonomy, or of the logical law of the three moments, or of the trinity, or of the dialectic, means determinate or concrete negation, or double negation. Dialectics can be found in many particular, positive religions: 1. The universal thesis, the principle, the God or the Gods, is 2. determinately negated by the particular antithesis, the relationship, the means, which negation is 3. determinately superseded by the singular synthesis, the purpose, the cult, the liturgy, and the transition of the believers into the social world.Dialecticscan be found in many positive religions already long before the Platonic or Neo-Platonic philosophy: in Daoism, the Religion of Measure, in Hinduism, the Religion of Imagination, in Zoroastrianism, the Religion of Lightand Darkness, Good and Evil, in the Egyptian Religion of Riddle, in the Gothic Religion of Blood and Soil; and afterwards most of all in Christianity, the Religion of Freedom. In the history of religions, as elsewhere, bourgeois skepticism has abstracted from the fact, that the death, the nothing of one particular positive religion is determinate, or concrete, or specific, and is the nothing of that positive religion, out of which it came as a historical or logical result: e.g. the Roman Religion of Utility or Purposiveness, out of the Greek Religion of Fate and Beauty, or Christianity out of the Jewish Religion of Sublimity, and out of the Greek Religion and the Roman Religion. Positive religions do die, and are born again in a different form: like the Phoenix Bird, or better still, like the death and the resurrection of the God in the Syrian Religion of Pain, in the Egyptian Religion of Riddle, and in Christianity as the Religion of Freedom. There is a metamorphosis going on in the history of religions as elsewhere in nature and history. Bourgeois scepticism is abstract negation. This scepticism is conservative out of fear, that nothing may follow the negated old paradigm. Dialectic is concrete negation. When once the result of the end, or the death, of one positive religion is apprehended as it truly is, not skeptically, but dialectically, as determinate, or concrete, or specific negation, then a new form of positive religion has thereby immediately arisen. Dialectics is not magic. In the concrete negation the transition is made, by which the progress through the complete succession of forms of positive religions, comes about of itself. Ours is a dialectics of transition inside and between positive religions. Thus, according to our dialectical religiology, the formation, for instance, of the Roman Gods, did not simply negate abstractly the Greek Gods, but, inspite of all skepticism, also preserved them to a large extend, if also under different names. Thus, the formation of the Roman Gods was dialectically seen hardly differentiated from their cult, or worship. This was so, because this difference and the free Roman cult presupposed a truth, which was in and for itself, a universal, an objective, a truly Divine one, and one which existed for itself through its content above the particular, subjective need or want of the individual Roman citizens.Then, the Roman worship was the process,in which the individual Roman citizen gave himself, or herself, the enjoyment and the celebration of the identity of the Divinity with himself, or herself, his or her consciousness and selfconsciousness, in Republic or Empire.
Union, Disunion, Reunion
Our course theme this year, the dialectic of secularization, presupposes a dialectical view of the history of religions: from the traditional,Medieval union between the religious and the secular, through their modern disunion, to their possible, future, Post-Modern reunion. The Modern antagonism between the religious and the secular started in Christianity itself with the heliocentric discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Kepler, and continued through Darwin, to Marx, and Freud, and all their disciples and followers through the centuries. But it had its deepest roots already in the first Apocalyptic and Eschatological Paradigm of Christianity, in the Gospels.The early Christians were not allowed to serve God and secular Capital at the same time. Early Christians could not stand with one foot in Heaven and the other on Earth. There was a separation between the kingdom of Heaven and the kingdom of men, the sacred and the profane, idealism and materialism. From the beginning of Modernity on, the Christian community split into those believers, who followed the Medieval interpretations of the Gospels naively, and others who made use of their reason and applied the scholasticism, they had learned in the Church, newly to nature and man. No modern science without the Church! As those believers, who made use of their reason, and learned, and developed the natural and social sciences, were, nevertheless, repressed by the ecclesiastical authorities, the antagonism between the religious and the secular became deeper and deeper, and continues to deepen today in many different, ongoing, culture wars. Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther's Reformation was, inspite of its deeply religious character, nevertheless, dialectically enough, the first form of adaptation of Christianity to the arising, secular Modern World. From Henry VIII to Napoleon Bonaparte secularization meant economically and politicically the appropriation of church property by the more and more secular state.
Threefold Dialectic
In the critical religiology, we differentiate among three forms of dialectics: 1.the dialectic between the religious and the secuclar; 2.the dialectic in the secular; 3. the dialectic in the religious. The secular enlightenment movements wanted to free people from their fears and make them into masters of their fate. The unconscious was to become conscious. Where Id was, Ego was to appear. But then the secular enlightenment turned against itself. The bourgeois enlightenment and revolutions turned into fascism; the socialist enlightenment and revolutions into Stalinism, or Red Fascism; the Freudian enlightenment and revolutions into the porno society. The founder of Christianity, Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth, pronounced the Truth and the Love. But then the Churchfathers made a positive religion out of his teaching, which transformed him from a subject of imitation into an object of worship, and which then allowed itself to be used as ideology, in the critical sense of false consciousness, necessary appearance, shortly the untruth, to legitimate the domination of slaveholders, feudallords and capitalists, and initiated loveless heresy trials, crusades, inquisition tribunals, and torture, e.g. waterboarding, to be inherited by the Gestapo and by the CIA,until ended by the Obama Administration. Today, in 2018, we have again, against all this, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's religionless Christianity, and Christian imitation ethics, and his consequent martyrdom of freedom under the first wave of fascism or corporatism: a theology and ethics transcending the modern antagonism between the sacred and the profane. Today both, religion and secular enlightenment, are in desperate need of rescue and renewal.
Contemporary Conflicts
The Modern dialectic between the religious and the secular, produces splits in the religious communities between those believers, who onesidedly emphasice revelation and tradition and become Anti-Modernists, on one hand, and those believers, who as believers want also to be open toward Modern secularity. Thus in Judaism as the Religion of Sublimity we have the orthodox group on one hand, and the conservative and reformed groups, on the other The two groups come in conflict with each other.They may deny the others to be real believers. In the extreme case they kill each other. Talaban, Alkaida , and ISIS, and other groups of the Islamic Brotherhood have killed more Muslims, suspected to be too secular, than secular Westerners. They may kill Christians, not because they are Christians, but because they seem to be allied with the secular West. The Modern dialectic between the religious and the secular also splits the enlightenment communities between those enlightened people, who want to establish a truly catholic, universal religion of reason and freedom, internal to all human beings, in opposition to all particular, historical, positive religions, but who still see some value in the latter, on one hand, and other enlightened people, who want to wipe out as fast as possible all positive religions as non-temporenaous, primitive, or archaic residuals of earlier stages of human evolution. While the first group of enlighteners definitely rejects the criminality of the world religions, they at the same time are, nevertheless, also willing to allow good religious moments, e.g. the Golden Rule , to migrate into the secular discourse of the modern expert cultures, and into the secular life world, based on mimetic or communicative rationality and action, and still mediated by ethical and moral norms and values, and even into the secular social system, the secular economic subsystem of civil society, based on instrumental rationality and action, and mediated by money, and into the secular political system, also based on functional rationality and action , but mediated by power. This first group of secular, enlightened people still know very well that there is something missing in secular Modernity and Pos-Modernity. They are waiting for new religious interpreters of religion, with whom they can enter into practical, communicative-rational discourse.
Reconciliation
The often murderous conflicts in the religious groups and in the secular enlightenment communities, can be resolved only, when the dialectic between the religious and the secular can come to a reconciiation. The difficulties of this task are enorous and can hardly be overestimated. Religious people still believe in angels and miracles, and for them the world was created 6000 years ago, and all the species separately, and all of mankind came from one human couple, Adam and Eve. Enlightened, secular people do no longer believe in angels or miracles, and reduce everything in nature and history to natural laws, and for them the universe is 14 billion years old, and came about through the Big Bang, ironically enough discovered by a Belgian Catholic priest, and all the species, including the human one evolved out of each other, and mankind came from several couples in Africa in terms of polygenesis, etc. . While Christianity and many other positive religions are trinitarian and are based epistemeologically on faith and dialectical reason, the secular enightenment is unitarian and based on analytical understanding. For five hundred years the religious communities have lost all of their rearguard struggles against the secular enlighteners in the field of science, and of politics, and of economics. Religious communities had a hard time even only to recognize and to admit their defeats. Pope John Paul II admitted that the inquisition may have been wrong against Galileo Galilei. But his successor, Benedict XVI, rescinded again the step foreward his predecessor had taken, and asserted in the context of his general Anti-Modernist attack, that Galileo had been wrong. He was not allowed to speak at the secular University of Rome. There must be the possibility of a discourse, in which all oneidedness, abstraction, and untruth can be overcome. Religious people may admit, that Copernicus had reached agreement with the Pope concerning the same heliocentric theory, which 70 years later Galileo tought; that it was the shock of the Reformation, which made the difference; and that the inquisitors tried to gain time in order to prepare the masses of the faithful for the innovation; and that, in any case, the threat of imprisonment and torture is ultimately powerless gainst the truth. The goal does not sanctify the means. Immoral means are also finally ineffective.Not only did the Inquisition not preserve Christian unity through torture and executions , it even produced, dialectically enough, even more disunion: 1200 Christian churches, denominations, sects, and cults in the USA alone , which all contradict each other. Secular people may admit, that the inquisition was not entirely wrong, when it asked Galileo to continue his research, and improve his telescope, and his mathematical formulas, and thus further to strengthen and confirm his theory. They could admit, that it would have helped, if the 70 years old Galileo had been less arrogant in the face of power, and had not called the inquisitors children, and stupid, and demanded from them to study more, as justified as this was. Up to the present, Protestant countries have advanced further in capitalism than Catholic countries. In Kalamazoo, Michigan, where this letter is coming from, Protestant communities are still better adjusted, in terms of morality and legality, to the secular world, than Catholic communities: when patients of the Catholic Borgess Hospital want to have birthcontroll pills or abortion, then they can not get it there, because of the Catholic natural law ethics, but they must take a taxi to the Methodist Bronson Hospital, which follows the secular, positive laws of the State of Michigan, or of the US Federation.
Openness
Today, in the midst of the turmoil of culture wars, raging on all continents, it is most important, not to close the discourse between the religious people and the enlightened, secular people fundamentalistically or materialistically, or naturalistically, or positivistically, or humanistically, or atheistically, but rather to keep it open under all circumstances. Discourse denial means war! Whoever wants to have peace, must be willing and ready for discourse. As in discourse subjects produce their texts with a certain logical, and grammatical structure, and vocabulary in a particular social and historical context , aiming at the goal of truth, they can find out not only, what separates them, but also what they have in common. Religious and secular people discussing the issue of stemcell research , may find out, that they have in common the goal: the healing of Altzheimer's or other deseases. They may also discover, that they both are of the opinion, that human embryoes are really human, and thus differentitated from a chimpanzee embryo, insipite of all similarities. But then the religious and the secular discours partners find out, that they differ concerning the point in time, when the human embryo becomes a person with rights. The religious people think, that the embryo is human and a person from the moment of conception.That was not always that way. Thomas Aquinas taught, that the human embryo became a person after three months. But that did not change his attitude toward abortion. It was forbidden because already before the embryo became a person. It was teleologically destined to receive a specifically human soul, and had therefore to be protected. Likewise up to the seventeenth century the Church protected the human body also after death against the science of anatomy and any surgical destruction for the purpose of research. Stemcell research requires, that an embryo is produced through artificial insemination,and that the stemcells are removed from it, and that it is then killed after two weeks of life.That precisely is the problem for religious people with stemcell research: the goal does not justify the means.Maybe the scientists could gain stemcells from adults. But they are already too differentiated and not plastic enough for the purpose of healing illnesses. So the secular scientists return to stemcells from embryoes. The secular scientists have no promble with this, because for them, the human embryo becomes a person only after the birth,when through the interaction with other persons Id, Ego, Super-Ego and environment are differentiated. At this point, religious and secular people have to agree to disagree for the time being. However, religion and secular scientific enlightenment are in motion. It may happen that the sciences rediscover again the causa finalis , which they abandoned during the scientific revolution of the 17th century.Some biologists have done so already.In this case, the secular scientists could come to an agreement with their religious partners, that the embryo is teleologicall not only human but also a person from the moment of conception. The stemcell research problem would be one step closer to its solution.This open discourse procedure could be helpful for the solution of many other culture war issues as well . There is no need for violence. It solves nothing.
Survival
There will be no survival of a civilized human species without the reconciliation of the antagonism between the religious and the secular, the sacred and the profane, in a new religion and a new enlightenment through discourse. That is our presupposition! Our main question is, how such a new reconciliation can possibly come about in the face of a large plurality of diverse, positive, historical religions and secular enlightenment movements, and their different moral codes? How can specific good reasons be given for the transformation of the traditional religions and enlightenment movements? Can it be founded on empirical fact, and data, and experience alone, or does it also need judgement and insight as well? We must ask, if religion and secular enlightenment, and their interpretation of reality and moral orientation of action, are at all needed for a humane, non-barbarous, civilized future? And if they are needed, is autonomous human reason sufficient for such transformation of religion and secular enlightenment, and its legitimation without any religious revelation? That, precisely, has been the general content of all our discourses on the future of religion in Dubrovnik since 1975. If religion and secular enlightenment are needed, what should be their specific contribution to the moral improvement of individuals and nations, moving toward a higher civilization rather than a lower barbarism ? Whatever the contribution, it will presuppose a coalition of believers and secular enlighteners, who are able to connect revelation and autonomous reason: Moses and Kant, Jesus and Marx, Mohammed and Freud.
One World
In recent decades, it has become always clearer, that the one world, ( Wendel Wilkie ), in which we all live, has only then a chance of civilized survival, if in it no longer exist spaces of different, contradictory, antangonistic and mutually exclusive, and struggling, and terrorizing against each other forms of religion and secular enlightenment movements, and their forms of ethics and social ethics. This one world needs, in order to be civilized, the reconciliation of a new religion, and a new secular enlightenment, and a new ethos, rooted in both. This one world does not need a unity religion, or a unity enlightenment, not to speak of a religious or secular ideology, the word understood in the critical sense of the masking of racial, national, or class interests, or simply the untruth in the form of fake narratives. But, in order to be truly civilized, it may very well need a few binding and connecting religious and secular enlightenment norms, values, ideals, and goals: as e.g. the Golden Rule, the categorical imperative, or the discourse theory’s principle of the apriori of the unlimited communication community, pointing to Post-Modern alternative Future III - a reconciled sciety, instead of alternative Future I- the totally administered society, or alternative Future II - an entirely militarized society.
Comments and Objections
We hope very much, that those few concretizing suggestions about the dalectic of the religious and the secular, may give us some general orientation for our own preparatory work for our new international course. You can make your own comments and objections to those suggestions, and to this general orientation, when we come together in Dubrovnik in the last week of April 2018. We hope very much, that you shall be able and willing to come to our discourse, and that you shall, if possible, present a paper, concerning aspects of our general theme, shortly unfolded in the above suggestions and orientation, or not. The general theme is broad and gives you much freedom to adjust your paper to it. If you have a hard time to connect your paper to our general theme this year, we shall do that for and with you in our argumentative discourse. Please, let me or the IUC know as soon as possible, if you shall join us in Dubrovnik, and if you like to give a paper during the last week of April, available to us in the IUC building. Please, tell us also, if you desire to give your paper at a specific day and hour, and how much time you would like to have. I shall do what I can, to give you as much time as possible. We shall meet in the IUC Building on Monday 23, 2018, at 10.00 a.m. See you then!
I am with all my best New Years wishes for you and for your dear family, and for your good work,
Professor Siebert has taught, lectured, and published widely in Western and Eastern Europe, the United States, and Canada. He is a professor of Religion and Society in the Department of Comparative Religion at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA.
He is the director of the Center for Humanistic Future Studies at Western Michigan University since 1980, the director of the international course on the "Future of Religion" in the Inter-University Center for Post-Graduate Studies in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia/Croatia since 1975, and the international course on "Religion and Civil Society" in Yalta, Crimea, and Ukraine since 1999. The Inter-University Center is sponsored by the University of Simferopol, Simferopol, Ukraine, and Western Michigan University.
Professor Siebert's main works are The Critical Theory of Religion: Frankfurt School, and From Critical Theory to Critical Political Theology: Personal Autonomy and Universal Solidarity. From 1955 to the present, Professor Siebert has developed the critical or dialectical theory of religion out of the critical theory of society, from the endeavors of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt, globally known as the "Frankfurt School," and in continual discourse with sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, economists, philosophers, religiologists, and theologians from the United States, Canada, England, Belgium, Holland, France, Germany, Yugoslavia / Croatia, Israel, and Columbia.
The dialectical theory of religion emphasizes the three global alternative futures of society: Future I - the totally administered society; Future II - the entirely militarized society; and Future III - the reconciled society. It stresses the three global alternative futures of religion: Future I - religious fundamentalism; Future II - total secularization; Future III - the open dialectic between the religious and the secular aiming at a post-modern reconciliation between a reformed religion and a transformed secular enlightenment.
Igor Kondrashin President, WPF Secretary-General, the Supreme Council of Humanity, SCH
Dear colleagues,
The Committee of atomic scientists, which includes 15 Nobel Prize winners, 25 January, this year, decided to reduce in 2018 the symbolic time before the End of the world for another half minute. Now only two symbolic minutes are left until the world Apocalypse. See at - https://thebulletin.org/2018-doomsday-clock-statement
Prof Igor I Kondrashin
According to the opinion of the Committee members, in 2017 the national leaders of the separated sovereign States were unable to respond effectively to the looming threat of the nuclear war and climate change, making the security situation on the planet more dangerous than a year ago and most hazardous since the Second World War. In addition to nuclear and climate threats, new technological developments in the field of informational technologies as weapons began to pose a threat to the world, including the online campaigns of deception aimed at undermining the election and public confidence in the institutions necessary for free thinking and global security.
The Doomsday clock is an internationally recognized symbolic indicator, which means how close we are to the destroying our Earth civilization through dangerous technologies of our own production. First is the nuclear weapons, but besides it global threats include climate technologies, new biotechnologies, and cybertechnologies, which can cause irreparable damage, whether by intention, miscalculation or accident, to our way of life and the planet as a whole.
However, the international practice shows that national leaders begin to respond only then, when citizens insist on it. According to scientists, only citizens are able to require from the present rulers actions to reduce existential threats of nuclear war and uncontrolled climate change. Only they, using now in addition also the opportunity of the Internet, have the power and potential to make the world safer and healthier in long term.
But unfortunately, they do not do it, because there is no properly formed supranational global civil society on the planet. All the recent calls by former UN Secretary-General |Ban Ki-moon and UNESCO to form a global citizenship remained without attention, and therefore the world, according to adamant opinion of the nuclear scientists, rolls into the abyss.
The formation of global citizenship is hindered by the lack in humanity's common mind of a healthy supranational global social consciousness. So, according to the most cautious evaluations of WPF experts the mentality of more than three quarters of the Earth population is affected by Dementia in varying degrees, more than half of the planet's inhabitants suffer from schizophrenia, or/and oligophrenia (mental retardation) of varying severity, the main manifestations of which are autism and delusional complexes - phobias and manias!
To oppose this global phenomenon, the special test program was established on the website of World Philosophical Forum -http://wpf-unesco.org/ - for the diagnosis of the mentality of any inhabitant of the Earth, determination of its dementivity, including the dementivity of his consciousness, named the "Mirror of my soul" at - http://wpf-unesco.org/eng/dem/diage.htm
If you are particularly alarmed by the recent Statement of the atomic scientists, if your consciousness is not so sickly dementive as in others, then you have the opportunity to join the ranks of global citizenship and become a Citizen of the Earth-XXI - http://glob-use.org/id.htm - so that by the joint efforts in the framework of supranational Universal State of the Earth - http://glob-use.org/ - to affect really on situation in the world and to prevent the imminent and very close self-destruction of Humanity.
About WPF
The World Philosophical Forum (WPF) is an international independent Greek founded non-governmental, nonprofit organization (NGO) with branches in many countries (now in 53) on all continents all over the Earth. Being international & independent, WPF expresses and protects the interests of Humanity as a whole through disambiguation and acting on behalf of all the Earth civil society for a better everyone’s future.
Registered in Athens, Greece in 2009 by philosopher Igor Kondrashin (now WPF President and CEO – see profile), WPF vision of Life on the Earth from the very start of its foundation and activity was as protected, prosperous BEING for all, governed by reason, wisdom, morality, responsibility and justice with no place for people using in their everyday life double standards, corruption and falsehood. Such people should be civically reeducated in a correct way until they realize the true values for happy and peaceful life for all. The human rights on the Earth are to be respected by everybody, but be preceded and combined with human duties. According to WPF ideals, the all human ideology should be sort well with the ideas of transuniversalism, which blend together the best ideas of neohumanism with the ideas oftranshumanism and allow everyone to live in dignity, peace and prosperity.
The WPF is headquartered in Athens, Greece, having also national branches The WPF is headquartered in Athens, Greece, having also national branches all over the planet Earth. The WPF cooperates with UN-UNESCO, offering its reasonable ideas to their officials, trying from its side to assist in implementation of their progressive initiatives, supporting their strategies and global goals. Still, from the beginning of its own activity, the WPF displays more and more influence on the progress of all human consciousness by its global activities in information and education, enlighting & integrating the Earth population into Earth CIVILIZATION, uniting the peoples on all continents of the planet into a single hyperstated Global CIVIL megasociety. All WPF work is founded on the ideas of ancient Greek Philosophers, which are now considered as classical. As it is well known, they were prohibited in 529 by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. Later, practically until now, they were substituted by not-practical ideas of the scholastic philosophy, which helps in no way to solve Humanity's current problems.
The WPF is best known for its annual Summits in Athens, Greece as revived Dialectical Symposia, which reflect the ancient Greek tradition of the same importance as traditional ancient Olympic Games. Such autumn meetings, having the format of a think tank, brings together top Earth thinkers, philosophers, scholars, selected intellectuals, and just thinking individuals, aim to discuss the most pressing issues facing the Earth, but firstly the questions of updating and improvement of all human mentality, the formation and education of all human consciousness on the basis of reason, morality and justice. These meetings accelerate understanding of the necessity for Humanity to foster global, Earth-XXI citizenship. The meetings of Dialectical Symposia also take place in other countries of the Earth as WPF national sessions. After each annual October Symposium its participants approve a special Resolution-appeal with advices and recommendations to Humanity how to solve in the best and reasonable way their current general problems and most important challenges.
The World Philosophical Forum (WPF) is the only place and platform where the Humanity can discuss solutions of general Earth problems in favor of all human interests irrespectively to the local (national) leaders’ interests. The WPF activity continues round the year through contacts and intercommunications. The results of these activities are reflected on the regularly updated WPF website - http://wpf-unesco.org/.
The WPF is the sole global unitor for all habitants of the Earth regardless their race, gender, nation, education, ideology, age, health condition, well-being, language, religion, faith and world-view, social position and status rank. The only basis and features of their unity and solidarity are the recognition of wisdom, reason, morality, responsibility and justice as top human values and their willingness to fight such modern vices as double standards, corruption and falsehood.
Meanwhile the situation in the world continues to deteriorate. WPF experts have found even the main reason to it. According to their most cautious evaluations the mentality of more than three quarters of the Earth population is affected by Dementia in varying degrees, more than half of the planet inhabitants suffer from schizophrenia, or/and oligophrenia of varying severity, the main manifestations of which are autism and delusional complexes - phobias and manias!
WPF has worked out and starts a new BIOPHILOSOPHICAL program – “MIRROR of my SOUL” to make easy the diagnostics and healing of the human mentality. It is planned to open all over the Earth “WPF Centers of diagnostics and correction of consciousness”. The first ones will be established in Russia, Greece, Malaysia and India. Thus, it will become real WPF actions to update and improve the Earth humans’ mentality.
The WPF has 3 types of facilities constantly ready to assist the habitants of the Earth to raise gradually the level of their mentality:
All of them are working distantly & constantly through the WPF website.
Thus, the principal goal of the whole WPF activity in times of continuing deepening process of total globalization - to help fragmented Earth POPULATION to become well educated, enlightened & integrated, wisely & reasonably self-governed Earth CIVILIZATION (Global single CIVIL megasociety).
This WPF final goal would be considered as reached only after all 7 billion Earth habitants pass 3 stages in series in their mind and social development:
Stage 1. The formation of Earth-XXI (global) Citizenship;
Stage 2. out of Earth-XXI Citizens – the formation of new, global leadership (Earth-XXI Aristocrats);
Stage 3. out of new, Earth-XXI leaders - the formation (through election by Earth-XXI Citizens only) of the Earth-XXI self-administration based on the Universal Constitution of the Earth through establishment of the Supreme Council of the Humanity, Earth Parliament, Earth Government, Earth Supreme Court, Earth Bank, Earth Academy, etc.
Only after it happens, dignity, peace and prosperity on the Earth equally for all can be respected and guaranteed by the all human CONSCIENCE.
Sociocybernetic Model of Spherons’ Global Harmonious Governance (SMSGHG) at the UN level
*The network societal spherons (a network of spherons of different levels from micro to mega) is a special "soft" cluster of network structures that cover the population as a whole and all people from birth to death in the form of extremely large classes/groups engaged in four spheres of social production. Their primary cohesive criterion is productive employment ("autopoiesis" of Maturana). Autopoiesis constitutes all the fundamental attributes of spherons: equality, harmony, peace, freedom, democracy, etc. See for more details below 2.3.5.
We propose a Spheral Model and Architecture of the UN Harmony
Instead
National Model and Architecture of the UN Disharmony
Model-1
Spheral Structure of the UN Harmony
The UN Sociocybernetic Reform Proposal:
After more than 72 years of its existence, the structures and organisational processes of the United Nations (UN) are still dominated by dangerous militaristic disharmony among its members. This is bringing humanity closer to the threat of a new world (nuclear) war. The world’s peoples need a non-militaristic, harmonious, sociocybernetic, scientific structure and organisational process for the UN. A fifty years strategy for making the needed reforms is proposed.
The proposal is motivated and described in detail below.
GHA 57-th network spheral project,Started on: July 15, 2017Approved: December 16, 2017
Created on the basis of the "Global Peace Science" (2016) by 173 co-authors from 34 countries:
Synopsis of the World Textbook for the UN global harmonious sociocybernetic education:
"Spherons of Harmonious Peace, Governance and Cooperation"
Leo Semashko (Russia), Project Initiator, Manager and Editor in Chief.
Bernard Scott
Subhash Chandra
Rudolf Siebert
Vladislav Krasnov
Ramesh Kumar
Sanjay Tewari
Uraz Baymuratov
Irina Medvedeva
Ayo Amale
Subhash Sharma
Takis Ioannides
Bishnu Pathak
Maitreyee Roy
Surendra Pathak
Alexander Semashko
Vera Popovich
Guy Crequie
Julian Korab-Karpowicz
Pravat Dhal
Michael Ellis
The GHA 21 members from 11 countries Australia, Great Britain, Ghana, Greece, India, Kazakhstan, Nepal, Poland, Russia, USA, France.
With the support of 173 coauthors from 34 countries of the book "Global Peace Science", none of whose coauthors rejected this project including support of two Nobel Peace Prize Laureates:
Prof. John Scales Avery, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (shared 1995 award), Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 1976, stopped the terror in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Community for Peace People.
Dr. Leo Semashko is Project Initiator, Manager and Editor in Chief, Russia. GHA Founder and Honorary President; Honorary Member of the RC51, Sociocybernetics, International Sociological Association.
WWIII: The Third World War
WWII: Second World War
UNH: United Nations Harmony
TUN: Traditional UN or UND: United Nations Disharmony
PIHSC: Peaceful International Harmonious Scientific Cooperation
IHLO: International Harmonious Law and Order
IPAF: International Peacekeeping Armed Forces of UNH
JHC: Joined Harmonious Command of IPAF
SMSGHG: Sociocybernetic Model of the Spherons’ Global Harmonious Governance
GPS: Global Peace Science from harmony
SGC: Spheral Governing Clusters
SGCC: SGC Consensus
EUN: Experimental UN, identical to UNH
FSEUS: Four Spheral Equations Universal Standard
SHD: Spheral Harmonious Democracy
GHC: Global Harmony Charter for UNH
UNHSGA: UNH Spheral General Assembly
UNHSWG: UNH Spheral World Government
PHC: Peace from Harmony Council (analogue of the modern UN Security Council)
PHSC: Peace from Harmony Supreme Court
SAGH: Sociocybernetic Axiom of Global Harmony
PIOT resources: People, Information, Organizations, Things
SIOT-spheres: Sociosphere, Infosphere, Orgsphere and Technoecosphere
SIOT-classes, Spherons: SocioSpheron, InfoSpheron, OrgSpheron and TechnoSpheron
SOCIONOME: Sociocybernetic Genome of humankind, or the genetic code of world peace from harmony
HTSM: Humankind Thermodynamic Spheral Model
TMDESE: Thermodynamic Model of Distribution and Exchange of Solar Energy for Natural Spheres of the Earth: Litho-, Hydro-, Atmo- and Bio-
TSSH: Tetranet Spheral Statistics of Harmony
SSHM: System of Spheral Harmony Matrices
ULNSSH: Unified Logical Network Statistical Space of Humanity
SHT: Spheral Harmonization Technologies
SIST: Spheral Information-Statistical Technology
IAHP: International Academy of Harmony and Peace
CPWE: Children's Priority and Women’s Equality
CSEP: Children's Suffrage Executed by Parents
GPD: Governments Peace Departments
GCDH: General and Complete Disarmament from Harmony
IPAF: UNH International Peacekeeping Armed Forces
INPCH: UNH International-National Peace Corps from Harmony
GFHHPE: General Free Higher Harmonious Peace Education
HRC: Harmonious Reserve Currency
ROEP: Roadmap for Overcoming Extreme Poverty
MMMM: Minimizing the Maximum and Maximizing the Minimum
EHFC: Earth Harmonious Federation Constitution
SIHA: Spherons’ Integral Harmony Axiology
Harmony will save the world, because:"The internal harmony of the world is the only true objective reality."
Henri Poincare
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Buckminster Fuller
The significant problems that we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
Albert Einstein
Einstein affirms here the necessity for a spheral, harmonious and holistic thinking as its historically new level, on which the significant problems created by traditional thinking solve.
GHA
“Vasudheva kutumbakam”, humankind is one family.
Ancient Indian Vedas
“Our Global System of the United Nations is not equipped to deal with today’s risks. It is no longer fit for purpose to deal with 21st century risks ... We urgently need fresh new thinking”
Laszlo Szombatfalvy
Therefore, govern global harmony can only by harmoniously and holistically excluding militarism, aggression, wars and other risks.
Authors
“Boldness has genius and power and magic”.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence― It is to act with yesterday’s logic.”
Peter Drucker
The Science of War is being replaced by a Global Science of Peace based on love, Harmony, reverence for life and creation.
The United Nations is a disharmonious organisation of nation states, in which the dominant powers are mired in an arms race and various wars. The project proposes a new holistic sociocybernetic and tetrasociological model of global harmonious governance for a new UN of harmony. The model is based on the four spheres of social production of the young Karl Marx, when his ideas were still free from political dogmas about a struggle between different classes, and the concept of autopoiesis of Humberto Maturana. The global population is engaged in the activities of the spheres as ‘spherons’. The four spherons are: 1. the sociospheron which produces people; 2. the infospheron which produces information; 3. the orgspheron which produces organisations; 4. the technospheron which produces things. Spherons, by definition, by their activities reproduce the human social world. Spherons can be viewed as the stochastic sociocybernetic genome of humankind - the genetic code of its harmony. Their dynamics are revealed in the information and organizational technologies that harmonise the entire range of direct and feedback linkages of society such that society is reproduced. Their harmonious working is prevented by mankind’s lack of awareness of these processes. Instead of learning about how the spherons are functioning so as to avoid disharmony, with the emphasis on nation states and individualism we are subject to conflict and other societal and individual pathologies. If we were to be aware of how spherons reproduce the world we would agree with this peace science and its proposals for how to move towards a more harmonious world.
The project offers a unique sociocybernetic and tetrasociological model of global harmonious governance of spherons to replace the UN of disharmony by a new UN of harmony and peace.
Key words: UN, USA, NATO, war, militarism, disharmony, peace, harmony, spherons, sociocybernetics, tetrasociology, global harmonious governance
The US Has Killed More Than 20 Million In 37 Nations Since WWII. Lucas
The US has deployed 240,000 troops in 172 countries around the world. Reimann
You can't have a democracy that organizes itself around war. Giroux
We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive. Einstein
Join together for a common vision – the total abolition of Militarism and war. Maguire
Preamble: World Harmony or a Nuclear World War III?
“Today, people are finally waking up to the dangers of a world war, which might emanate from the highest levels of the US government as pre-emptive strike against a ‘rogue’ state. [1]
Seventy two years of the continual militarism of the United States since WWII, have proved two simple and ingenious truths of the XX century. One belongs to Albert Einstein: "Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be achieved through understanding." The other belongs to Martin Luther King: "The US government is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world". It is also true that other nation states and totalitarian ideologies have given rise to wars, terrorism and violent conflict.
In the postwar period, the United Nations, established in 1945, called for peace and the prevention of wars, but has been largely incapable of fulfilling its peacekeeping mission. Why has this happened? The GHA 57th project is devoted to this urgent question, the main conclusion of which is the necessity and the possibility of creating a qualitatively (structurally) new UN of Harmony (UNH), which gradually will replace the existing UN of militaristic disharmony. But what are its main shortcomings?
Critical Part: The UN Main Shortcomings and its Charter Weakness
We list the fundamental shortcomings of the UN, which make it disharmonious/militaristic during 72 years under the protectorate of the US-NATO militarism that prevails in the world and in the UN. It is confirmed by numerous facts, a small part of which is presented in Appendix 2 (below).
1. Ontological deficiency
The level of military danger for the survival of mankind and the preservation of a global peace for 72 years of the UN has not gone down but has grown to the extreme limit of a momentary (30 seconds) catastrophe.
2. Teleological defect
The absence in the UN documents and in its goals of the millennium of the first key goal is the global peace. Explanation. Is it possible to qualify and recognize the UN as a peacekeeping organization that does not even mention or plan the global peace among its own purposes for a thousand years (!!!)? No one can! Because if its ultimate goal is not global peace, then it becomes a global war! Therefore, such a UN is not a peacemaker but a disharmonious /militaristic institution whose real purpose is to preserve the war for a thousand years!
3. Humanitarian/humanistic shortcoming
The actual absence in the UN documents [118] of the first human right - the right to life (it is mentioned by the single word in article 3), which would put the war, armed violence and militarism outlawed as a crime against humanity. In the absence of a legitimate human right to life, war, armed violence and militarism in the UN are legitimized and not recognized as a crime, gaining the right to an endless life.
4. Epistemological defect. Superficial pacifism
the complete absence in the UN documents of a scientific definition and understanding of the global peace, its deep structure, source, guarantor and actors, as well as awareness of the primary need to create and develop the science of global peace as an alternative to military science blooming over 200 years. Pacifism prevails in the absence of the peace science, which will replace it when it (science) finds public recognition and support. Traditional pacifism, impotent against all wars of the 20th century is the main epistemological defect as a deficit of the scientific (systemic, holistic, harmonious) consciousness of global peace. This is a defining shortcoming that generates all the other shortcomings of the UN. Epistemological deficit is focused in the traditional non-systemic, torn, superficial, fragmentary and militaristic way of thinking, which engenders all negative globalizations and is powerless before them. In the middle of the last century, Albert Einstein defined its danger for humanity: "We must demand a fundamentally new way of thinking if humanity wants to survive." [71] The UN was unable to find in 72 years a" fundamentally new way of thinking", so it was powerless before the domination of the militarization negative trends. Our project offers for the UN a "fundamentally new way of thinking" - harmonious, peacemaking, networked, systemic, spheral, multidimensional and holistic in a single scientific sociocybernetic paradigm (below) that makes up the core of both natural and artificial intelligence. Without such thinking, repair and reforming of the TUN are impossible.
5. Axiological insufficiency. Complete disregard of the key integral value of social harmony, which expresses the genetic social structure of the spherons, constituting an objective source, guarantor and actor of global peace. The reason for this is an epistemological defect, or, more simply and clearly, - the scientific ignorance of traditional pacifism.
6. Praxiological defect. The UN is completely dependent from US-NATO militarism, which established, in fact, a protectorate over the United Nations, imposing to all its members a general arms race and total militarism without alternatives. Militarists have learned to profitably use the weakness of the pacifist UN in its mercantile purposes and as an ideological cover for their wars and aggressions, which enrich them with maximum profits.
7. Organizational shortcoming. Membership of the UN is militaristic; all members of the UN, without exception, have armies, military science and military budgets without borders, presenting a constant military threat to each other and therefore are forced to spend a total of about $ 5 billion each day to protect themselves from others [70]. The UN membership does not put any barrier to total militarism, which excludes all hope for peace. Another organizational shortcoming of the UN is the "inverted totalitarian" democracy organized around the war, devoid of scientific knowledge of peace, excluding the peaceful equality of all the UN members and incapable to organize itself for peace instead of war.
8. Information flaw. All the so-called "UN peacekeeping" resolutions, in the conditions of the above-mentioned limiting gaps, turn out to be unfounded, verbose, repetitive and crowded with "information noise", depriving them of true peacemaking sense and hiding their secret militaristic essence, disavowing any peace. All of them are practically inaccessible to the understanding of the majority of the population and alien to it.
All the UN shortcomings are signs of a crisis and the degeneration of traditional pacifist peacemaking and its thinking, intellectually incapable to break with militarism and countering it with a constructive scientific alternative, an example of which is presented below. These shortcomings of the UN determine the weakness of its pacifist Charter.
The UN Charter begins with the following remarkable pacifist statements:
“WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED
to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
AND FOR THESE ENDS
to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and
to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and
to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and
to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,
HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS
Chapter I
CHAPTER I: PURPOSES AND PRINCIPLES
Article 1
The Purposes of the United Nations are:
To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression …;
To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples,…;
To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.”[119]
Which of these intentions and goals of the UN Charter have been fulfilled in 72 years?
1. Do the innumerable facts of continuous wars give grounds for "succeeding generations" to recognize that "the peoples of the UN", in the first 72 years of its existence, demonstrated a full "determination to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war"? It's impossible to recognize! We can only recognize the opposite!
2. Where is the UN as "the center for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment" to peace, when for 72 years on its agenda there was not one fundamental issue of global peace and no significant approximation to it? Instead, humanity sees only a steady approach to the final world war.
3. Where is "armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest "? When the US-NATO carried out armed aggressions and interventions in 37 wars almost every two years for 72 years!
4. What kind of "faith in fundamental human rights" can there be, if among them actually there is not (it is mentioned by the single word in article 3 of the Human Rights Declaration) the fundamental human right to life? Its ignoring makes the endless wars a legitimate, legally justified international norm.
5. What could be "the dignity and worth of the human person" if its life is not recognized as a original right and fundamental dignity and worth that opens up unlimited scope for military killings?
Without the recognition of the fundamental human right to life and without the consequent prohibition of any war (other than the war on terrorism) as the highest crime against humanity, all other articles of the UN Charter remain empty gestures for global peace. This was confirmed by the 72 years of the UN.
The way out of the reality of extreme militarism, historical ignorance of pacifism and the intellectual tragedy of the United Nations, like the League of Nations before it, is the development of Global Peace Science [78]. Only on its basis can the scientific Charter of a UN of Harmony be created. Only in a UN of Harmony is it possible to recognize the human right to life and the criminality of war. Only a UN of Harmony is capable of proclaiming the uniting peoples in harmony of the deep communities – spherons,engaged in global social production with the provision of a universal peace from their genetic code.
Of course, there are many positive particulars in the UN Charter that must be preserved in the new paradigm and architecture of a UN of Harmony and in its Charter. But this is only part of the general question: What is positive in the UN? What are its achievements in 72 years? Of course, they are some, but no one has summarised them. We did not find any scientific work on this subject with evidence and facts. This is also a shortcoming, but not only ours. We intend to fill it in 2018 in the collective work "Achievements of the United Nations for 72 years, their quantity and quality" in order to separate the "wheat from chaff" and highlight those that should be included in the science of global peace and preserved in it and in the UNH project.
Instead of a weak pacifist UN Charter, we need a scientific and strong UNH Charter, the general statements of which are formulated in this project.
Constructive part: Towards a UN of Harmony (UNH) and its Charter. Sociocybernetic Model of UNH
2.1. Foreword. Tetrasociology and Sociocybernetics: concepts of societal spheres and network spherons for the UN harmony
The mutually complementary fruitful collaboration of Tetrasociology and Sociocybernetics as the holistic and pluralistic system theories that fully recognize each other began with the preface to the "Tetrasociology" [121] of the two leaders of the International Sociological Association's (ISA) Research Committee on Sociocybernetics (RC51) Dr. Bernd Hornung, Germany [122] and Dr. Bernard Scott, England [123]. The last of them kindly agreed to be the editor of the English edition of this book, which was presented at 32 sessions of XVI ISA Congress in Brisbane, Australia, in July 2002, where tetrasociology first became known to Western scholars. At the same time, the three of us wrote a long article about the correlation of the categories of our two sciences, especially the four spheres of social production and the four harmonious classes of the population employed in them [124], which were later laconically called "spherons" – "employed, engaged, occupied in spheres".
In tetrasociology as a theory of social harmony, global peace and harmonious civilization, the concepts of spheres and spherons have been developing since 1976 [125]. Integrating with socio-cybernetics, tetrasociology acquires systemic cybernetic wealth from it and at the same time raises it to the level of the third order, enriching it with system categories of spheres and spherons and preserving all the achievements of its previous orders [126]. At this level, it becomes the sociocybernetics of the harmony of the societal spheres and the spherons occupied in them. Therefore, the proposed "Sociocybernetic Model of Spherons’ Global Harmonious Governance" (SMSGHG) for UN harmony is simultaneously tetrasociological, which is fundamentally revealed in "Global Peace Science" [78]. This model has long been prepared theoretically as a result of the scientific cooperation of Tetrasociology and Sociocybernetics, which are free from theoretical narrowness and scientific limitation of the traditional ideologies of the 20th century.
2.2. Introduction
Global Harmonious Scientific Governance on the UN level:Sociocybernetics of the Spheres and Spherons’ Harmony
Historically developed forms and models of national and global governance demonstrate the inability to effectively address growing national and global problems, risks and challenges. It expressed well here: “OUR GLOBAL SYSTEM IS NOT EQUIPPED TO DEAL WITH TODAY’S RISKS. Our current international system – including but not limited to the United Nations – was set up in another era, following the Second World War. It is no longer fit for purpose to deal with 21st century risks ... We urgently need fresh new thinking in order to address the scale and gravity of today’s global challenges, which have outgrown the present system’s ability to handle them” [70].
The root cause of the global governance insolvency after 1945 is disharmony, i.e. fragmentation, mismatch, imbalance and disproportion of international cooperation of the states-nations. Their disharmony engenders constant conflicts, tensions and mistrust between them in all directions, manifested in a multitude of global crises and risks: military, economic, financial, trade, migration, sports, religious, etc. The status quo of objective disharmony of international cooperation of national states is directly broadcast and continues in the UN for more than 70 years, which remains powerless before them for the same root cause of internal disharmony. Overcoming the disharmony of international cooperation and global governance is possible only by their harmony, the necessity of which was recognized by the outstanding thinkers of all civilizations: Egypt, Greece, India, China, Africa, Latin America from ancient times.
Scientific global governance can only be harmonious in wholeness of all diversity of its parts; and the holistic in harmony (or harmonious in integrity) governance. It can only be scientific, not spontaneous and intuitive, requiring a new systematic harmonious scientific thinking. The absence of a scientific model of harmonious governance determines the absence of a harmonious model of organization and the subject of governance at all levels, including the UN.
Based on the formulated fundamental prerequisites, we propose to govern international cooperation in order to address and prevent the global risks of disharmony and ensure the harmonious sustainable evolution of humankind by the United Nations in Harmony (UNH) on the basis of the fundamental scientific transformation of the traditional UN.
From our point of view, the most promising way of developing fundamental social knowledge is focused in interdisciplinary Sociocybernetics. [see below]. It integrates the achievements of traditional knowledge, raising it to the level of global systemic integrity and overcoming its fragmentation. Our model of global governance develops within the framework of Sociocybernetics of spheres and Spherons’ harmony as Sociocybernetics of the third order, including its previous orders.
It determines the "Sociocybernetic Model of the Spherons’ Global Harmonious Governance" (SMSGHG), which we suggest for the UNH. In this universal for all levels model, the Spherons are harmonious classes/communities of humanity constituting the key object and subject/actor of global harmony and its governance, revealed below. They are its center and heart.
The UNH SMSGHG is based on the following fundamental scientific premises of Sociocybernetics:
1. The discovery of Norbert Wiener society as a cybernetic system of all diversity of its parts with feedback/influence of each of them to all others [127]. This idea develops in the writings of Ludwig Bertalanffy [128] and other system thinkers, for example, the background of Heinz von Foerster, [129], Felix Geyer [130; 131] and Bernard Scott [132-138], which led to the creation of Sociocybernetics.
2. The discovery of Humberto Maturana: he determined the basic quality of "autopoiesis" (self-production) of all living beings including individuals engaged from birth to death in autopoiesis along with other people. The system of individual autopoiesis creates a system of public autopoiesis as a social production [139].
3. The young Karl Marx’s hypothesis, before his materialism, of four spheres of social production [140]. This conjecture was scientifically confirmed and detailed in many works, starting with the fundamental works of Robert Park [141], Fernand Braudel [142], Talcott Parsons [143], Stafford Beer [144], Gordon Pasck [145], Niklas Luhmann [146; 147], Alvin Toffler [148; 149], Pierre Bourdieu [150; 151] and many others. They viewed the whole society as a system of those or other four socio-cultural production systems/spheres and corresponding actors, which provide society with four necessary and sufficient resources: people, information, organizations and things (PIOT resources).
4. The pluralistic philosophy of harmony Henri Poincare, the basic propositions of which he formulated as follows: "The internal harmony of the world is the only true objective reality. The best expression of this harmony is law [nature's regularity]... mathematics... The world is divine because it is a harmony."[152] This philosophy remained virtually unnoticed in the 20th century. But it has deep historical roots in knowledge of harmony of the cosmos, society and human in the works of Confucius, Buddha, Pythagoras, Plato, Neo-Platonists, Kepler, Kant and many other outstanding thinkers of humankind. Especially important are the ideas of Kant's social harmony as a deep human nature, ensuring eternal peace and sustainable functioning of society at all levels from the family and the nation to humanity as a whole. [153] The history of philosophy and sociology of harmony in the perspective of its blossoming futurology is considered in many of our works [154 and others].
5. The Duality Law of "Harmony - Disharmony" and their mutual ousting in any society. [155; 156]
Based on these prerequisites, we formulate the main, structural difference and alternative to traditional branch governance - the spheral Sociocybernetic structure of global governance and its subjects/actors in the UNH SMSGHG. To four spheres of social production and four Spherons employed in these spheres correspond four spheral organizational subsystems of governance and four spheral subjects/actors of governance in it at all its levels.
Legislative, executive and judicial bodies in the SMSGHG are structured and constituted into spheral governing clusters (SGC), which form typical modules of management institutions and ensure their structural similarity and their functional coherence at different levels that overcome the disharmony and structural mismatch of traditional branch governance. Spheral structural symmetry of the SMSGHG governing institutions at all levels is a necessary condition for effective global harmonious governance. This is its first rule.
Its second law is coherence to establish and maintain the permissible limits of minimum and maximum for all operating parts/subsystems of the controlled and controlling systems. This is a universal law of harmony of effective global governance. Other rules are detailed below.
Democratic decision-making procedures at the UNH SMSGHG are based on dialogue and spheral consensus of SGC at each level. Spheral consensus is the unanimity of the spheral actors of governance by the majority of votes in each of them. There can be no confrontation between the spheral actors of governance and the opposition on the issue of harmony as a single goal and strategy, but they are permissible and possible within these actors, between their different parts on ways and means of their implementation. This excludes antagonism between them and the suppression of any spheral actor, but leaves room for internal system opposition in resolving differences between their parts through the widest possible dialogue. The mechanism of built-in systemic opposition prevents any possibility of dictatorship and usurpation of power by any party and any official in the system of spheral democracy of UNH.
A dynamic mechanism for mutual control of SGC in SMSGHG is ensured by free association of any of them for verification and control of any of them. It minimizes the total corruption that is irresistible in the traditional management and excludes it in principle.
The procedure for the appointment of key persons in the SMSGHG is also exercised through the democratic mechanism of spheral consensus.
2.3. The UNH SMSGHG Description
1. International need for a fundamentally new model of global governance
The founder of the Global Challenges Foundation in a result of his vast intellectual and practical experience for more than 60 years, came to the following irreproachable conclusions regarding the international need for a fundamentally new model of global governance:
Sovereign nation-states are unable to manage the global challenges in a satisfactory way.
No national politician is accountable for the good of all humankind.
The American electoral system should be reviewed.
Even though every nation says it wants to live in peace, we spend nearly five billion dollars every day to defend ourselves against each other. My belated conclusion is that no governance system can guarantee that there will be no future wars – unless we implement global and total disarmament.
I can only see one rational solution: We have to find a new, more effective way to cooperate globally. We urgently need to find a new system of governance, which would effectively and fairly manage the major global challenges.
I’m convinced that new ideas will continue to hatch as long as humans exist. New and better models can start a much-needed global debate.
Now there is a great risk and problem complex which the world urgently needs to address.” [157; 158].
In these 7 points, a correct assessment of the absolute inability and insufficiency of traditional global governance is expressed, and on the other hand - a firm awareness of the need for an alternative model and a clear strategy for its development. Both requirements are laid in the basis of the global governance model proposed below, which fully meets them.
2. Risks’ ranges and governance’s priorities
According to the survey “The UN is considered the most able to respond to global risks (60%) but there is overwhelming support for it to be reformed (85%).
Usage of weapons of mass destruction is ranked as the global risk needing the most urgent response (62%), followed by politically motivated violence (57%) and climate change (56%).
Eight adults in ten (85%) think that the UN needs to be reformed to better address global risks. Only 7% do not think that it needs to be reformed.” [159]
3. Brief overview of the traditional global governance models
The review of "Global governance models in history" showed the main weaknesses of traditional management models and some necessary requirements. The main one is that the global governance of mankind must lean "on the basis of what all have in common," which is revealed only by science in the best way. [160] However, scientific understanding of the general structure and actors of humankind is still missing.
Another weakness of traditional management is the ignoring of the "fundamental law of Republic" of Montesquieu: "The firmness and prosperity of democracy always depend from the correct division on the classes of the population with the right to vote". [161] Purely legal models of global governance are helpless without scientific social grounds, as demonstrated by the failure of many attempts to implement them in the 20th century.
The UNH SMSGHG can only be democratic, but in an updated form of spheral democracy, which, unlike traditional, "will allow us to make collective decisions at the global level, taking into account the interests of all." [160] We found the most adequate for it the system of legislative procedures proposed by lawyers Grenville Clark and Louis Sohn in 1958 [162 pp. 12-17; 163; 164]. This system, aimed at ensuring global peace and general disarmament is using with some modifications in our model of global governance. It can include some other legal projects of global governance and world democracy.
4. The UNH SMSGHG Structure
This Model is proposed for the beginning, for 4-5 years of testing as an experimental mode of functioning of the traditional UN. Therefore, we will distinguish between two orders and two UN systems: "traditional UN" (TUN) and "experimental UN" (EUN) identical to the UNH. Both modes operate simultaneously, in parallel, but the experimental regime in the annual dynamic range of 2-6 months, is included in the TUN and is subordinate to it although it must have a relative autonomy enshrined in its Charter. Their fundamental difference is that the TUN has reconciled over 70 years with endless disharmonies, especially militarism and wars, and the UNH excludes them by harmony in all ways and in all dimensions.
For this the highest principle of the experimental UNH proclaims the "reality of global harmony" (Poincare) in its "deep societal structure" of four constant production spheres and the four constant Spherons of humankind. This "four-spheral" structure was discovered and explored in the first approximation by the spheral Sociocybernetics and Tetrasociology for more than 40 years [165; 166; and others], which requires further international systemic development in view of its extreme complexity and exceptional importance.
The four-spheral structure is recognized as the highest structural law of all UNH management bodies, ensuring equal consideration of the interests of each of the four Spherons of humankind. The equality of the Spherons extends to the equality of the UN member states and the genders equality, regardless of their number. It is expressed for all levels by the Four Spheral Equations Universal Standard (FSEUS), which is recognizing in the UNH “Global Harmony Charter” (GHC). The three named governance equality (of spheres/Spherons, nation-states and genders) are integrated by the fourth, defining: "Spheral Harmonious Democracy" (SHD), based on an equal distribution of power between the Spherons and their genders.
In the UNH Charter, the Supreme Legislative Body recognizes the “Spheral General Assembly” (SGA) of the UN 196 member-nations, the number of which, taking into account their dynamics, equates to 200 with the representation of each sphere from each state by one "spheral emissary" employed in the corresponding sphere, with a mandate for 3-4 years with equal gender representation of the spheres. The spheral emissaries are appointed by the highest legislative body of each UN member state. (Then they can be elected by the population of each country).
As a result, the UNH SGA of the 800 members is created with an equal representation of the interests of each state, each of its production spheres, each of its Spherons and each of its gender, regardless of their number and dynamics. It is possible to expand the SGA twice (1600 emissaries), i.e. on 2 emissaries (woman + man) from each sphere of each member-state will be recognized. This option is more harmonious, fair and preferable, although it is more expensive. The spheral structure of the UNH legislative body with equal representation in it of four spherons from each of its member state is expressed by the corresponding Model-1 above.
The UNH SGA is structured into four legislative "Spheral Committees" with the relevant subcommittees on the largest sectors/branches of each global sphere and with equality in all FSEUS dimensions: state, sphere/Spheron, gender and their power. The UNH SGA approves all their rules for the democratic procedures of decision-making.
In the UNH Charter, the "Spheral World Government" (SWG) is recognized as the supreme executive body, which is approved by the UNH SGA from "Spheral Ministers" engaged in the relevant spheres of each member state with equal gender representation, with a total of 1,600 ministers who are appointed for 3-4 years by the highest legislative body of a UN member state. The SWG creates for the operational resolutions of the most important issues the "Peace from Harmony Council" (PHC) - analogue of the modern UN Security Council - from the spheral ministers of 20 countries with their alternate annual turnover. The structural similarity of the UNH highest bodies will ensure the equality and harmony of both its power branches.
Its SWG is structured into four executive "Spheral Ministries" with the relevant Agencies for the largest sectors/branches of each global sphere and with equality in all FSEUS dimensions. SWG is also structured according to regional continents and subcontinents. The UNH SGA approves the rules and democratic procedures for decision-making and harmonious interaction of Spheral Ministries and their Agencies on the SWG proposal.
At the next stage, after 2-4 years’ work of the UNH, SGA establishes its “Peace from Harmony Supreme Court” (PHSC) and approves its staff from the judicial Spheral Emissaries appointed by the UN member states.
The UNH Departments should be established in the most conflict regions and hubs of contact of many civilizations: the Middle East, the Balkans [167] and others.
This is in general terms the UNH SMSGHG organizational structure.
The main attributes of UNH in contrast to the traditional UN:
1. A spheral structure of legislative, executive and judicial bodies, based not on the militarism of nation states and totalitarian ideologies, but on the fundamental peacefulness of the spherons - the harmonious classes of their population employed in the spheres of social production as a single deep structure and common societal denominator of all nations.
2. Membership of nation states in the UNH implemented on the basis of peaceful and equal spherons.
3. The first peace condition for joining to the UNH is the rejection of militarism and a strict guaranteed obligation of voluntary annual reduction of the military budget of each country by 2%, which will end the arms race and lead in 50 years to general and complete disarmament.
4. The second peace condition for joining to the UNH is a rigorous guaranteed commitment to participate in a Peaceful International Harmonious Scientific Cooperation (PIHSC) with a reduction in military cooperation with other countries.
5. The third peace condition is the transfer of defense and protection of the national sovereignty, integrity and security of each country of the UNH member within the established borders to the competence of UNH and its International Peacekeeping Armed Forces (IPAF) for a transition period of 50 years and further. The Joint Harmonious Command (JHC) of the IPAF is created from the military specialists who are exclusively members of the new UNH, which finances it and the IPAF via 2% deductions from military budgets.
6. All the foundations, attributes and conditions of the UNH, including the creation and functioning the UNH IPAF are regulated by its Global Harmony Charter (GHC), the Earth Harmonious Federation Constitution (EHFC) and the Universal Declaration of the PIHSC. These three legal documents are the basis for a new International Harmonious Law and Order (IHLO), excluding war, aggression and militarismю They will be prepared jointly by the International Scientific Harmonious Commission (ISHC) and approved by the UNH legislative body during the 5-6 year transition period from the UN to UNH.
The scientific and humanistic justification for the UNH model and its main structures and details are set out in the GHA project, which was prepared in it during more than 12 years. It provides for all peace-loving countries and governments a scientific "understanding" of global peace and the corresponding model of UNH as an alternative to the current UN.
5. Sociocybernetic model of humankind as a governance object in
the UNH SMSGHG
A scientific model of governance is possible only on the basis of a scientific model of its object. Both models are associated by the sociocybernetic feedbacks: the model of governance object includes and defines the model of its subject as its organizational, controlling, and observing subsystem, which in turn includes the scientific image/paradigm of governance object as an information basis for an adequate correction of changes in governance object. It is the supreme goal of all governance. The adequacy and other qualities of the object scientific model are the source of vitality, efficiency, stability and all other positive qualities of governance, its subject and its model.
The UNH SMSGHG object is the humanity in the unity of all its communities and states in its historical system of integral life-supporting production system. Spheral Sociocybernetics analyzes the humanity universal integrity in four research subsystems: Statics, Dynamics, Structuratics and Genetics. We confine ourselves to the brief summary of only the first three. All of them are based and integrated by the fundamental Sociocybernetic Axiom of Global Harmony (SAGH):
The harmonious (sustainable) existence of a society in any place and at any time is defined by the measure in proportion of four equal necessary and sufficient social resources: People (P), Information (I), Organizations (O) and Things (T). (Things are any material benefits and services). Social resources are expressed in the chain: People (P) – Information (I) – Organization (O) – Things (T). In the acronym: P-I-O-T, or: PIOT. Their main attributes are:
1. Artificiality: they do not exist in a ready form in nature, therefore the society (population) in order to live should constantly produce PIOT resources;
2. The equal necessity of these resources clusters, because the absence, zero of any of them excludes the life of society and human;
3. Inseparability and mutual inclusion of "everyone in each", i.e. the impossibility of producing one without others and superposing the qualities of one to all others;
4. Sociocybernetic harmonious integrity of PIOT resources to a certain measure/proportion. It expresses society in static: S = P + I + O + T, where S is a whole society.
Harmoniousness of PIOT resources determines the harmony of the spheres of their production and the classes occupied in them - the Spherons.
PIOT resources logically require corresponding structures in which processes and resources are connected and which, according to the final product, are classified into four societal (macro) spheres of social production:
Social sphere, Sociosphere (S), the subject-product of which are people (P);
Information sphere, Infosphere (I), the subject-product of which is information (I);
Organizational sphere, Orgsphere (O), the subject-product of which are organization/s (O);
Technical (economic/ecological) sphere, Technoecosphere (T), the subject-product of which are things (T). Four spheres of production are: SIOT.
PIOT resources logically require corresponding spheral communities or societal classes of the population, SPHERONS. [165]
SPHERONS, spheral classes of people are extremely large “soft, stochastic” groups of the population, covering it as a whole, employed in four spheres of social production of PIOT resources and differing in term of primary (in time) employment in one of the spheres. They are the actors of social harmony, i.e. are harmonious by nature classes, because outside the harmony between them they are unable to produce PIOT resources. Therefore, they are the ultimate cause of global peace, its guarantor and actor/creator.
Spherons are network social groups/classes of people in the spheres of production. These groups have a stochastic, probabilistic nature of employment/inclusion of people in the spheres, therefore spherons are "soft" classes, and they are not attached rigidly to any other permanent social attribute: property, power, income, etc. They are closely interrelated, dynamically flowing into each other and interacting at all levels, starting with the individual. This creates their network integrity parameter in conjunction with all their other properties. Spherons are a common network denominator of all the partial and transitory communities of humanity in its history from family and nations to civilizations. On this fundamental and everlasting community of spherons, the UN model of Harmony and Global Governance is being built.
Summarizing, we can formulate the following definition. The network spherons (a network of spherons of different levels from micro to mega) is a special "soft" cluster of societal network structures that cover the population as a whole and all people from birth to death in the form of extremely large classes/groups engaged in four spheres of social production. Their primary cohesive criterion is productive employment ("autopoiesis" of Maturana). Autopoiesis constitutes all the fundamental attributes of spherons and their elements: wholeness, integrity, stochasticity, systemic, equality in employment, balance, proportion, measure, harmony, peace, freedom from each other, independence from rigid parameters of property, power, income, race, nationality, sex, age and other partial properties. Polycentricism and the productive thermodynamic negentropy of spherons’ autopoiesis [168] make them, hence, humanity, the most adaptive to survival and sustainable development in the natural and cosmic environment. An attempt at a broader biological substantiation of autopoiesis and negentropy of harmonious spherons as an "anatomy of peace" was undertaken in the work of Michael Ellis. [169]
Why does the knowledge of spherons begin only in the 21st century? Because their endless cultural diversity in human history and at different social levels from family to humanity was not allowed to see their community, as for the trees we cannot see the forest. The ultimate objective complexity of the spherons is the main epistemological reason for the lack of their scientific knowledge to this day, which was fixed by the temporary political interests of the temporary dominant partial classes of the fragmented world. The globalization of human society, on the one hand, makes spherons more mature and accessible to scientific perception, and on the other hand, it requires scientific penetration into the deep spheral structure of the population. In more detail about this structure in the nature of spherons see Chapters 1 and 2 of the book "Global Peace Science" [78].
The basis by which Spherons are differing between them is employment/autopoiesis in four spheres of social production. But employment (autopoiesis) has an ambivalent, dual biosocial nature, which is expressed by two axioms of employment: in society, autopoiesis/employment is part of the social sphere, and in the biosphere, autopoiesis/employment of a person includes four spheres of social production as their own parts.
Taking into account the social nature of the human, he/she stochastically joins to the next four Spherons (classes) employed autopoiesis in four spheres of social production SIOT:
SOCIOCLAS, people employed in Sociosphere, P1;
INFOCLASS, people employed in Infosphere, P2;
ORGCLASS, people employed in Orgsphere, P3;
TECHNOCLASS, people employed in Technoecosphere, P4.
Abbreviation of these classes is the same (SIOT) as the spheres, so they will differ by adding the word "class": SIOT-classes, SPHERONS.
The population number at any level is the sum of four SPHERONS:
P = P1 + P2 + P3 + P4.
The products of three other spheres are divided in a similar manner, resulting corresponding matrix of the basic spheral statistical indices. This matrix is the foundation of global spheral mathematical statistics and its IT (below).
P = P1 + P2 + P3 + P4
I = I1 + I2 + I3 + I4
O = О1 + О2 + О3 + О4
T = T1 + T2 + T3 + T4
All spheral resources, processes, structures and classes-Spherons in the UNH SMSGHG, as well as a mathematically calculated measure of their proportions in harmony and disharmony are expressed in this matrix of spheral statistics, which has infinite dimension in its decomposition.
6. Tables of Spheres and the Model of Humanity’s Spherons:
the UNH SMSGHG object expression
Indissolubility of the SIOT spheres and the Spherons involved in them is that the products "exits" of all spheres constitute their resources "inputs". It is expressed in the spheres statistical tables of their sector/branch structure in statics. These tables, presented in many of our works [78; 121; 125; 154; 165; 166; 168 and others], because they are very cumbersome, cannot be shown here. We confine ourselves to their simplest form. It is important that these tables are universal, include all, without exception, production functions and relevant professional groups of humanity’s spherons at all its levels.
TABLE-1. Statics of SOCIOSPHERE and employed in it SOCIOSPHERON, P1
SOCIOSPHERE
SOCIAL SECTOR,
Branches
Subjects/Products:
P = P1 + P2 + P3 + P4
SOCIOSPHERON, P1,
Employed in Sociosphere
Resources
P1, I1, O1, T1 for Sociosphere
Education
People (P)
Teachers, etc.
Health
People (P)
Doctors, etc.
Sport, Tourism
People (P)
Athletes, Coaches, etc.
Social Care
People (P)
Social workers
Other services (Church, Philanthropy, Trade Unions,… )
People (P)
Priests, Philanthropists, Trade unionists, Rescuers, etc.
INDIVIDUAL SECTOR
Family, family employment
Family (P)
Parents, children, family members
Individual employment for oneself = autopoiesis
Individual (P)
Non-laboring individuals
Notes to the table.
1. People/population (P) is the product of Sociosphere. People/population is produced for four spheres, therefore P = P1 + P2 + P3 + P4, where:
P1 – is employed in Sociosphere; P1 constitutes SPHERON-1 or SOCIOCLASS,
P2 – is employed in Infosphere; P2 constitutes SPHERON-2 or INFOCLASS;
P3 – is employed in Orgsphere; P3 constitutes SPHERON-3 or ORGCLASS:
P4 – is employed in Technosphere; P4 constitutes SPHERON-4 or TECHNOCLASS.
2. The employed in Sociosphere (P1), i.e. SPHERON-1 consists of two parts: the professionals working in social sector of this sphere (P1w) and all non-working (P1n) employed in the individual sector with self-production (pre-school children, students, housewives, non-working pensioners, disabled unemployed, etc.) and in the households. Therefore, the number of SPHERON-1 is the sum of employed in all sectors of this sphere: P1 = P1w + P1n.
3. To every SPHERONS a socially useful labor corresponds: P1w are employed by humanitarian labor, P2 – information labor, P3 – organizational labor, P4 – material labor.
TABLE-2. Statics of INFOSPHERE and employed in it INFOSPHERON, P2
INFOSPHERE
SOCIAL SECTOR,
Branches
Subjects/Products:
I = I1 + I2 + I3 + I4
INFOSPHERON, P2,
Employed in Infosphere
Resources P2, I2, O2, T2 for Infosphere
Culture
Information (I)
Cultural workers, etc.
Science
Information (I)
Scientists, etc.
Art
Information (I)
Artists, etc.
Religion (as information)
Information (I)
Priests, etc.
Media, publishing and advertising
Information (I)
Journalists, Publishers, Advertisers, etc.
Designing
Information (I)
Designers, etc.
Communication
Information (I)
Communicators, etc.
Information service
Information (I)
Programmers, etc.
INDIVIDUAL SECTOR
Information (I)
Family, informational employment
Information (I)
Parents, children, family members
Individual informational employment for oneself = autopoiesis
Information (I)
Individuals in their inf. employment for themselves
Notes to the table.
1. Information (I) is the product of Infosphere. Information is produced for four spheres, therefore: I = I1 + I2 + I3 + I4, where
I1 – Humanitarian information of SPHERON-1. I1 is required for it to produce people;
I2 – information of SPHERON-2. I2 is required for it to produce information;
I3 – organizational information of SPHERON-3. I3 is required for it to produce organizations;
I4 – technical information of SPHERON-4. I4 is needed for it to produce things, material wealth.
These clusters of information constitute the spheres of information or informational spheres of each SPHERON.
2. The number of SPHERON-2 is the sum of the employed in all sectors of this sphere.
TABLE-3. Statics of ORGSPHERE and employed in it ORGSPHERON, P3
ORGSPHERE
SOCIAL SECTOR,
Branches
Subjects/Products:
O = O1 + O2 + O3 + O4
ORGSPHERON, P3,
Employed in Orgsphere
Resources P3, I3, O3, T3 for Orgsphere
Policy
Organization (O)
Political figures, etc.
Right
Organization (O)
Lawyers, etc.
Army and security
Organization (O)
Military, policemen, etc.
Tax Inspectorate
Organization (O)
Tax officials
Governance
Organization (O)
Managers, etc.
Banking and Finance
Organization (O)
Bankers, Financiers, etc.
Non-governmental organizations
Organization (O)
Relevant workers
INDIVIDUAL SECTOR
Organization (O)
Family, organizational employment
Organization (O)
Parents, children, family members
Individual, organizational employment for oneself = autopoiesis
Organization (O)
Individuals in their org. employment for themselves
Notes to the table.
1. Organization (institutes, rules, order, norms) (O) is the product of Orgsphere. Organization is produced for four spheres, therefore: O = O1 + O2 + O3 + O4, where:
O1 – humanitarian organizations (schools, hospitals, etc.) of SPHERON-1. O1 is necessary for it to produce people;
O2 – informational organizations of SPHERON-2. O2 is required for it to produce information;
O3 – administrative organizations of SPHERON-3. O3 is required for it to produce organizations;
O4 – technical (economic and ecological) organizations of SPHERON-4. O4 is needed for it to produce things and nature protection.
These clusters of organizations constitute the spheres of organizations or organizational spheres of each SPHERON. Each cluster organizations combine 4 types of organizations: political, legal, financial, management. To every sphere of society and each SPHERON corresponds its own organizational area of politics, law, finance, and management. Each SPHERON has his own money as an organizational tool of its sphere: social, informational, administrative and economic money [170].
2. The number of SPHERON-3 is the sum of the employed in all sectors of this sphere.
TABLE-4. Statics of TECHNOECOSPHERE and employed in it TECNOSPHERON, P4
TECHNOECOSPHERE
SOCIAL SECTOR,
Branches
Subjects/Products:
T = T1 + T2 + T3 + T4
TECHNOSPHERON, P4,
Employed in Technoecosphere
Resources P4, I4, O4, T4 for Technoecosphere
Industry
Things (T)
Workers
Agriculture and forestry
Things (T)
Farmers, foresters
Construction
Things (T)
Builders
Transportation
Things (T)
Transporters
Trade, marketing
Things (T)
Traders, etc.
Housing and household services
Things (T)
Workers, repairmen, etc.
Fish industry
Things (T)
Fishermen
Conservation of nature
Things (T)
Environmentalists etc.
INDIVIDUAL SECTOR
Things (T)
Family, material employment
Things (T)
Parents, children, family members
Individual, material employment for oneself = autopoiesis
Things (T)
Individuals in their material employment for themselves
Notes to the table.
1. Things (T) are the product of Technosphere. Things are produced for four spheres, therefore: T = T1 + T2 + T3 + T4, where:
T1 – humanitarian things (buildings and equipment of schools, hospitals, etc., housing, food, etc.) for SPHERON-1. T1 is required for it to produce people;
T2 – informational things (buildings and equipment of institutions of science, culture, media, etc., books, televisions, computers, etc.) for SPHERON-2. T2 is required for it to produce information;
T3 – organizational things (administrative buildings and equipment of institutions of politics, law, finance and management, office equipment, etc.) for SPHERON-3. T3 is required for it to produce organizations;
T4 – technical things (industrial buildings and equipment of enterprises of the Technosphere, the means of material production) for SPHERON-4. T4 is required for it to produce things and for nature protection. These clusters make things realm of things, the economy or economic spheres (physical environment) each SPHERONS.
2. The number of SPHERON-4 is the sum of employed in all sectors of this sphere.
Basing on the proposed classification and definition of Spherons, covering the entire population of the planet, humanity appears as the unity of its four constant, harmonious Spherons (classes), which constitute its deep eternal societal structure of harmony and peace. This structure is the most complex object of human cognition; therefore it approached to its investigation in Sociocybernetics and Tetrasociology only at the beginning of the 21st century, although some of its properties and elements were discovered before (2.1. and 2.2.).
Proceeding from what has been said, the total number of humankind (population, people of the planet) is composed of the sum of the number of global Spherons:
PEOPLE (P) = P1 + P2 + P3 + P4.
We know today: “World population reached 7 billion on October 31, 2011 according to the United Nations Population Fund. According to current projections, the global population will reach eight billion by 2024, and will likely reach around nine billion by 2042.” [171].
The generalized representation of the humanity’s spherons is expressed by the following model.
Model-2: SPHERONS of Humanity
The total number of humankind (population, people of the planet) is composed of the sum of the number of global Spherons: PEOPLE (P) = P1 + P2 + P3 + P4. We know today: “World population reached 7 billion on October 31, 2011 according to the United Nations Population Fund. According to current projections, the global population will reach eight billion by 2024, and will likely reach around nine billion by 2042.” [171].
Today there are no statistics of Spherons. Therefore, the number of each Spheron of humanity today can be hypothetically determined according to the pattern of their statistical proportion found for one country according to its population census in 2010. These calculations are presented in detail in Chapter 2 of "Global Peace Science" [78].
The number of SPHERONS of thiscountry (Russia) in millions of people and in percentage of the total population (rounded) is equal to:
SOCIOSPHERON = 85 million or 59.4%
INFOSPHERON = 4 million or 2.8%
ORGSPHERON = 10.8 million or 7.5%
TECHNOSPHERON = 41 million or 28, 6%
Statistical error = 2.3 million or 1.6%
The size of humanity’s SPHERONS in 2011 ($ 7 billion) in this proportion is:
SOCIOSPHERON = 59.4% = 4.2 billion
INFOSPHERON = 2.8% = 0.2 billion
ORGSPHERON = 7.5% = 0.5 billion
TECHNOSPHERON = 28, 6% = 2 billion
Statistical error = 1.6% = 0.1 billion.
It is obvious that similar extrapolation of proportions of one country to the whole humanity is rough but the other does not exist today. The proportions of sizes of Spherons in each country and each region are very different. Their definition requires appropriate statistical studies as proposed in this methodology, which was tested on one country statistics. These computations are very labor-intensive work for all countries and they are available only to the UNH.
The logic and ontology of SPHERONS are simple andindisputable although they are deep, do not lie on the surface and are not visible empirically, with the naked eye (see Appendix). If we recognize, on the one hand, the Maturana’s "autopoiesis" (productive employment) of every person from birth to death, which can be carried out only in the spheres of social production, and on the other hand, if we recognize the reality of four equal necessary and sufficient spheres of social production of PIOT resources, we are forced to recognize the reality of four equal necessary and sufficient Spherons. They unite ‘softly’ all people/individuals employed by autopoiesis in the relevant spheres of production, which cannot exist without Spherons as they are their main productive force.
7. Sociocybernetic Genome (SOCIONOME) of Humankind
as Genetic Code of its Harmony
Above we defined 16 constant universal components of social production at any stages of its evolution: four PIOT resources, four PDEC processes, four SIOT spheres/structures and four Spherons - SIOT classes. The constancy of these components, their reproducibility in any and infinitely diversity of socio-cultural and civilizational forms, their integrity, mutual dependence and continuity constitutes them as the Sociocybernetic Genome of Humanity (SOCIONOME), which persists in any of its changes at all its levels and in all its societies. The carrier of this genetic code of harmony of any society and humanity as a whole are Spherons.
They are able to perform their key productive function only in peace among themselves. Between them only harmony and peace from it is possible. Throughout human history, this genetic code ensures the reproduction of the deep societal structure of the Spherons harmony, which determines the peaceful nature of human and society (Kant) [153]. This nature is often violated by the disharmonies of partial, transitory classes, nations and groups, ignorance of which in the deep social harmony leads them to wars and violence, which ultimately restore the broken harmony but at the cost of colossal sacrifices. SOCIONOME is presented in the following scheme below, created in its basis back in 1978 [125] but it is constantly being improved.
Scheme 1. Sociocybernetic Genome (SOCIONOME) of Humankind.
Genetic code of social harmony and global peace
SOCIONOME and its 16 components detailed description can be found in dozens of our articles and books in almost 40 years, some of which are listed here: [78; 121; 125; 154; 165; 166; 168 and others] and on the GHA website: http://www.peacefromharmony.org
SOCIONOME is the network core of the governance object in the UNH SMSGHG, on which defines the entire systemic set of global risks and challenges of humankind for their harmonious solution in the UNH. In it the different mathematical interpretations of SOCIONOME are constructed. We confine ourselves to only two: thermodynamic and statistical interpretations.
8.1. Thermodynamic interpretation
SOCIONOME as a unity of four constant spheres of production and four constant in the structure of spherons occupied in them can be interpreted in dynamics as a four-chamber thermodynamic stochastic societal heart of humankind, which opposes to entropy of its energy and ensures the constant growth and strengthening of its negentropy. Only the continuous work of this heart ensures the life of humankind and its social "autopoiesis" as a whole throughout its history. The dual, biosocial nature of a human being requires interpreting functioning of the four-chambered productive heart of social harmony with its inputs and outputs of PIOT resources within the "autopoietic" heart of biological harmony with its birthrate entry and mortality output. Moreover, "Autopoietic systems are thermodynamically open but organizationally closed" [129]. The result of this interpretation is a five-block sociocybernetic model of biosocial harmony as a source of survival and sustainable development of humankind/noosphere in the Earth's biosphere. Let's clarify some details and their some important characteristics.
If the spheres are the producing chambers of this heart, then the Spherons are their muscles, strength, motor and energy. Their "blood" is a continuous circulation through the channels of distribution and exchange of pulsating counter flows of life-sustaining PIOT resources, which they continuously reproduce every part of their life for the nutrition of all the Spherons, including themselves, but not only themselves. Each of them cannot exist without feeding others. The destruction or absence of at least one of the Spherons exsanguinates society and deprives it of life. Without each of the Spherons, society is dead. Therefore, they are equally necessary for society, regardless of their number. The reliability, stability and historical survival of this heart is ensured by its almost infinite division in levels from mega-, macro-, meso- to micro-levels in all human settlements to the family inclusively.
Continuous pulsation of PIOT resources flows through inputs/outputs mechanisms of feedback and export/import channels of distribution and exchange can be expressed mathematically for all levels discretely of any dimension from a second to decades, centuries and millennia, depending on the practical and scientific goals of the managing subsystem - in our case – for the UNH SMSGHG. Based on any discrete dimension, the mathematical "Humankind Thermodynamic Spheral Model" (HTSM) is constructed with global inputs/outputs of people's birthrate/mortality (or migration/immigration by regions) and production/consumption (or export/import) of other resources. Its first example is the "thermodynamic model of global peace" [168]. Similar approaches of thermodynamic modeling are demonstrated in other sources especially in the works of the Nobel laureate John Avery [172; 173; 174; 175].
Our HTSM rests on two interrelated nonlinear laws of stochastic distribution of PIOT resources between its chambers/spheres: 1. The law of proportions, measures and harmony (LPMH) of Spheron's integral employment and 2. The law of harmonious spheral limitation (LHSL) of PIOT resources. They exclude disharmony and entropy of any unbounded parts and attributes: the planet population, the richest people property and incomes, unlimited power, endless freedom, etc.
By analogy with this model, we can build a “Thermodynamic Model of Distribution and Exchange of Solar Energy” (TMDESE) between four natural spheres: Litho-, Hydro-, Atmo- and Bio- (including Noo/Anthropo/Socio) spheres for global harmonious governance of the Earth ecology and climate.
Another thermodynamic model. The spherical Sociocybernetic approach allows us to find a semblance of natural and societal spheres and express it in appropriate models not only for society but also for nature, for harmonious governance of global energy on the Earth, for its harmonization in order to solve and prevent its environmental and climatic risks. For this purpose, we can build a “Thermodynamic Model of Distribution and Exchange of Solar Energy” (TMDESE) between the socio/noosphere and the four natural spheres. It is a model of the five-chamber spheral energy heart of the Earth, composed by the inseparable unity of its spheres: Litho-Hydro-Atmo-Bio-Noo/Socio spheres. This model is similar to SOCIONOME and TMDESE models (above), therefore it reflects the coherent part of the UNH SMSGHG object for global harmonious governance of the Earth's ecology and climate to harmonize them in the 21st century. [176]
8.2. Statistical interpretation
The dynamics of qualitative elements of SOCIONOME require their quantitative expression in adequate mathematical statistics. If the basis of the SOCIONOME is PIOT resources, then their quantitative, statistical measurements are necessary and sufficient for the quantitative measurement of all components of SOCIONOME.
Based on these measurements, statistics, developed about 40 years, is called “Tetranet Spheral Statistics of Harmony” (TSSH). It is built on alphanumeric indices of resource elements of PIOT, called spheral indices. It is presented in detail in many previous works; therefore here we confine ourselves to a brief description of only its core - matrices of spheral indices or harmony spheral matrices.
The units of measurement of spheral indices, generalizing natural units of measurement, can be cost, time and energy units. We confine ourselves to the most developed today - the cost/money units.
We have established above that any society, including global humanity, in statics is expressed by the sum of all its resources PIOT: SOCIETY = P + I + O + T (1).
To produce each of the PIOT resources, an appropriate set of their parts is needed. Therefore, each PIOT is divided into four parts, necessary and sufficient as resources for the production of new PIOT. This regularity is expressed by a 4x4 matrix of indices, which is called the basic matrix of spheral indices or spheral statistics.
In the pure state, the 4-by-4 spheral matrix of PIOT resources looks like:
P1 + P2 + P3 + P4
I1 + I2 + I3 + I4
О1 + О2 + О3 + О4
T1 + T2 + T3 + T4 (2)
All matrixes that derive from a basic matrix are referred as spheral matrixes, which form spheral statistics. It is essentially different but connected with the traditional (branch or industrial) statistics. All branch indices are integrated in spheral indices, where they are systematized in harmonious spheral logic and Sociocybernetic system.
The spheral matrix columns represent inputs of the corresponding production spheres using PIOT as the resources, and the spheral matrix lines (rows) represent outputs of the corresponding manufacturing spheres that produce PIOT as the products.
The dual nature of the spheral resources (and the spheral indices) as input/resource and output/product of the SIOT spheres is expressed in double letter/numerical (alphanumeric) representation of these resources and corresponding indices.
On the foundation of the 4-by-4 basic matrix, the infinite hierarchical system of spheral matrixes may be created in the dimensions of 4-by-16, 4-by-64, 4-by-256, and so on. Their continuum is possible not only in the positive but also in the negative, in fractional and in other infinities. However, at the first stage, we are bound by spheral matrixes only in a positive infinity, that is, 4х4"n", where "n" is the row of natural numbers from +1 to infinity.
The entire infinite series of spheral matrices is constructed by a single algorithm: each line/row of any matrix turns into a column of the underlying matrix, and each index in the underlying matrix line appears as the sum of four indices that express a cluster of resources, necessary and sufficient for its production.
This generating algorithm expresses the fractal nature of social resources and their indices, which are connected with Benoit Mandelbrot’s fractal mathematics. "A fractal is a structure consisting of parts which are in some sense like the whole" [177]. Here, the main mathematical problem of harmonious statistical and fractal proportions / measures between the fundamental components of SOCIONOME, which are represented by matrices of sphere indicators, should be solved [178; 179]. They were used in some management projects of a large 5 million city in USSR in 1982-1988 [125], but for known reasons they were not recognized by the leadership.
The system of spheral/fractal matrices creates an “Unified Logical Network Statistical Space of Humanity” (ULNSSH) that is able to integrate, compose and decompose by the PIOT indices all the diversity of national statistics, overcoming their inherent fragmentation, rupture and disharmony. Without such a single statistical system of indices, effective global harmonious risk governance is impossible in the UNH. Therefore, the mathematical statistics of similar matrices of spheral indices is a necessary scientific tool of the UNH SMSGHG. Its recursive, fractal use can be successfully integrated with other similar technologies, for example with recursive, fractal cybernetic processes in Stafford Beer's VSM Model [180].
The mathematics of the Sociocybernetic spheral governance may be one of the fundamental scientific basis for the global harmonious digital economy, politics, education, artificial intelligence and management of the 21st century.
9.SOCIONOME: Digital and Structural/Organizational Technologies
Based on the subject and mathematical models of SOCIONOME, a wide range of different Spheral Harmonization Technologies (SHT) is being created that integrate, streamline and fundamentally expand traditional technologies. SHT includes two large clusters: digital and structural-organizational technologies of harmonization. On the SOCIONOME mathematics a cluster of digital technologies is formed, which was called the “Spheral Information-Statistical Technology” (SIST). For almost 40 years of development, this technology has found wide application in dozens of projects. In particular, it was used to manage a large city with a population of 5 million people in 1982-1988 [125]. SIST provides universal digitalization and global statistical informatization of the economy, politics, education, Internet and other sectors of society.
SHTs develop at new level the global processes of informatization and globalization, supplementing them with two fundamentally new and inextricable system processes of global harmonization and pacifization. Harmonization is represented by components and functions of the UNH SMSGHG. Pacifization is a permanent universal process of appeasement as prevention and resolution of any international relations conflicts in a result of their harmonization, in which pacifization is one of its most important consequences. Pacifization should not be confused with local attempts of forced reconciliation – “pacification” [181].
Structural-organizational technologies on the basis of the spheral structures are presented in the main details below as aspects of the UNH universal and long-term Agenda below.
2.4. UNH Agenda
This agenda presupposes the management of current and prevention of new challenges and risks in the long term at least 50 years in the UNH SMSGHG through structural-organizational technologies and strategies, which are systematized and defined in the most concise way below. They are presented in hundreds of works of our organization GHA, some of which have already been submitted [78; 121; 125; 154; 165; 166; 168] and others will be listed below.
1. Priority development of the Sociocybernetic science of spheral social harmony
Today we are witnessing a powerful priority development of military science, which began more than two centuries ago with the book of Adam von Bülow in 1799 [182]. This science creates now new amazing means of destroying people and global disharmony especially in the 20th century, putting humankind at risk of constant self-destruction. The science of social harmony and its global peace science (GPS) [78], unlike it, is in a pitiful embryonic state, marginal, has lagged behind military science for two centuries and it practically does not exist until now. None of the governments and their UN, mired in wars, does want to recognize and develop it for militaristic reasons (see above). Therefore, its practical effect is zero today. Harmonious prevention and harmonious resolution of global risks is possible only at the priority development and financing of the Sociocybernetic science of spheral social harmony will as GPS. Its main content is presented in this project.
These risks and challenges were generated in the 20th century by capitalism and communism, first of all, by their harmful partial disharmonious ideologies of "false consciousness" into dying industrial civilization, which totally fills its fake propagandist media. Therefore, they are unable to offer a new, alternative vision, which lies in the scientific, harmonious consciousness that defines the "third way" of development. For its working and constant development it is required to create under the UNH auspices an "International Academy of Harmony and Peace" (IAHP) with affiliates in the largest countries [183; 184; 185] with appropriate scientific and cultural support. [186; 187; 188; 189 and others] The most important work of this Academy is the scientific research of the spherons of each country and of humankind as a whole in their dynamics, beginning since 1950, according to the established and tested methods [190].
The main historical trend of this science of the 21st century comes from the periphery to the centers, because traditional centers (the USA, NATO, China and Russia) have become militaristic, they are completely absorbed in global militarism and the arms race, but in different ways. The US-NATO is initiating it, and others are forced to participate in it, so as not to become victims, similar to the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The science of global harmony and peace cannot go from militaristic centers that we see more than 70 years after the WWII end. It can go in our time only from the periphery: India, non-aligned and neutral countries, Africa, Latin America, etc. Many such peacemaking initiatives are born in local peripheral centers as well as new political ideas. [191; 192 and others].
The second priority task of this Academy is to prepare for the global harmonious education of the world textbook: "Spherons of harmonious peace, governance and cooperation", the synopsis of which is this project. This textbook combines the previous GHA textbooks [78; 154; 165], and includes the following chapters (approximately):
1. The 20-th century: outburst of violence, militarism, wars, revolutions and terror2. World history of philosophy, sociology, politics and culture of harmony,3. Network spherons of global harmony, peace and sustainable development,4. Statistics of the spherons dynamics in countries and humanity as a whole,5. Information-statistical technologies of harmony and cooperation of spherons,6. Structural-organizational technologies of harmony and cooperation of spherons,7. Individual and family harmonious development,8. Yoga: an instrument of individual and family harmonious development.
9. The 21 century: non-violent victory of the spherons over the war and global risks
10. Future: Harmonious civilization of spherons in global peace and sustainability with nature. Additional chapters of this textbook are possible.
Similar harmonious education during at least one year is mandatory for all emissaries and staff of the UNH SMSGHG. Only after this testing it can be recommended for global use.
2. Priority of children and youth, equality of the women human rights and population reduction:
transformation of quantity into quality
Global harmony requires, first of all, the “Children's Priority and Women’s Equality” (CPWE) together with the gradual decline in the population, to begin with - to minimize its growth, which only exacerbates all global risks. Harmonious decline of the population is a necessary condition for improving the quality of human capital and its life and most importantly - overcoming its excessive, disharmonious burden on the natural environment, on ecology and climate. The humiliating position of women and children in the American world order, legalized in the UN, is presented in many works of this kind [192a].
Many international and regional instruments have drawn attention to gender-related dimensions of human rights issues, the most significant being the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), adopted in 1979 [193], which the United States has not yet ratified. In 1993, the UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna confirmed that women’s rights were human rightsbut they are not enforced. This statement speaks that women’s status as human beings entitled to rights is absolutely rightful and should have under no circumstances been in doubt. In identifying neglect of one half of humanity’s rights as human rights violation, clearly reveals as gender and human rights violations. In spite of these international agreements, the denial of women’s basic human rights is persistent and widespread. The UN was able to make these decisions but it was completely incapable to fulfill them because of its preoccupation with militarism.
The empowerment and autonomy of women and the improvement of their political, social, economic status is fundamental for the achievement of sustainable development and global peace. There is the urgent need to advance a wider range of women’s rights and to ensure gender equality and women’s empowerment, which remain impracticable in the existing UN, despite the inclusion of this requirement as one of the eight goals of the UN Millennium Declaration [194]. The rights of children, approved in the relevant UN Convention [195] remain unfulfilled also. The only country in the world, which has not yet ratified it is the United States - the UN chief militarist. This once again confirms the truth that the UN under the USA militaristic protectorate and leadership is powerless to solve the problems with the rights for women and children. The possibility and practical ability to realize these obligations promises only the UN harmony and global peace through Spherons’ approach, proposed in our project.
Global harmony requires prioritizing of children and youth and also the inclusion of women and gender expertise in designing and fulfilling peace accords, in which their role was far too low that the Security Council resolution 1325 (2000) on women, peace and security what it stressed [196]. Real peace required that the political, economic and social structures be comprehensive and include young people who must be acknowledged as a core heir in the maintenance of peace and security and they should be included in the decision-making process, preventive diplomacy and peace processes. The numerous appeals of Member States "to increase the inclusive representation of youth in decision-making at all levels" in Security Council resolution 2250 (2015) [197] remained an empty ineffectual "voice crying in the desert". The UN is deprived of such mechanisms, focusing on the peace-loving cover for the US militarism.
The role and power of women and the youth in peace building and conflict prevention must be recognized as crucial to forging sustainable peace [198]. But it is able to do only the UN Harmony and global peace through harmonious structure of Spherons, ensuring real equality and advancement for women and youth. Consequently, they are the first advocates of this scientific vision and practice to approve the children’s priority and gender’s equality through children’s suffrage in Spheral democracy (or Spherons’ democracy).
The priority of children, women's equality and harmonious reduction of the population (with the gradual prohibition of abortion) is provided by the structural-organizational mechanism of the "Children's Suffrage Executed by Parents" (CSEP), which was proposed in the first approximation 14 years ago [199; 200; 201]. It is inseparably linked with general harmonious education (see below).
3. Global peace from global harmony
Global peace is the most acute systemic problem of humankind in the 20th and 21st centuries, the solution of which excludes the threat of its military thermonuclear destruction as the highest risk today. Achieving global peace is possible only on the basis of the science of global harmony, the priority of children and the equality of women, who in the first place need peace. Its decision requires recognition of its natural eternal peacebuilding actors - the Spherons of harmony, which are the only and completely interested in peace, unlike all partial, disharmonious and transient actors of the past. Therefore, global peace can proceed and be provided in full only by conscious Spherons owning the science of social harmony and overcoming their past ignorance and spontaneity in it. Its solution able provides such a structural-organizational mechanism as the "Governments Peace Departments" (GPD) in each country, united by the UNH SMSGHG. Only they, along with the science of harmony, disarmament and Spherons will make UNH completely antimilitarist that the TUN cannot achieve for more than 70 years. Hundreds of the GHA works are devoted to this problem, some of which are mentioned above [78; 121; 125; 154; 165; 166; 168+202; 203; 204; and others].
4. General complete disarmament during 50 years and nuclear disarmament - over 10 years
Global peace is impossible without “General and Complete Disarmament from Harmony” (GCDH), which in our project is proposed on the basis of global harmonization under the UN auspices and under the control of the National Peace Departments in two structural-organizational forms:
1. Establishment of the “International Peacemaking Armed Forces” (IPAF) financed by UNH and under the Joint International Command of UNH, necessary and sufficient to prevent and suppress any armed aggression on the planet, to suppress terror, drug trafficking, armed crimes and any armed groups at the request of the local government if its police do not cope with them. The IPAF deployment is distributed to the main regions (10-20) with all necessary means, and
2. Transformation of the remaining parts of the national armed forces into an “International-National Peace Corps from Harmony" (INPCH) of the UNH SMSGHG with the functions of priority social services: building roads, hospitals, schools, housing and other social infrastructure facilities with part-time employment in them and with the priority transformation of military academies into the Academy of Peace and Harmony.
The main lever of disarmament is a gradual annual reduction in the funding of the armed forces and the military industrial complex (primarily military science) of every country by 2% for 50 years, which will be enough to transform them into peaceful institutions and find peaceful application to hundreds of millions of military personnel and workers of the military-industrial complex in them. Priority, nuclear disarmament is carried out by the UNH for 10 years by reducing annually the funding of nuclear forces, armaments and manufacturing plants by 10% under UNH control. Hundreds of the GHA works are devoted to this problem, some of which are mentioned above [78; 121; 125; 154; 165; 166; 168 +202; 203; 204; and others].
5. Global harmonious education and yoga as his tool
The global harmonious education based on the science of social harmony provides not only a harmonious transformation of the younger generations’ consciousness, aiming them not at violent solutions but at harmonious cooperation through appropriate knowledge creating the first condition for solution of all risks. The structural-organizational solution of this task begins with the creation of the IAHP in the UNH not only for scientific research but also for harmonious education.
The IAHP most important task is to establish within 10-20 years the "General Free Higher Harmonious Peace Education" (GFHHPE) with the total education time of the Earth each citizen not less than 14 years: 11 years - high school and 3 years - higher education at the bachelor's level. It is implemented at the expense of disarmament funds and will be a material guarantee of the children and youth priority. It will become the spiritual condition of antimilitaristic immunity, which excludes all wars. Such education during 30-50 years will provide a new quality of the world's population, its conscious and voluntary reduction. Hundreds of the GHA works are devoted to this problem, some of which are mentioned above [78; 121; 125; 154; 165; 166; 168+202; 203; 204; and others].
Peace education as part of the educational curriculum in schools is attributed to Maria Montessori [205], John Dewey [206] and Paulo Freire [207], although earlier thought on education for peace is traced to Erasmus and Socrates, among other scholars.
Conflict is the function of misunderstanding or lack of knowledge of the other which induces fear and mistrust. Learning permits the learner a greater context that promotes harmonious coexistence.
The world is hungering for harmony and peace that can only be achieved by mutual respect and understanding of other culture, race, and religion. There is an urgent need for a culture of peace through using peace education in all that we do by integrating peace in good manners and right conduct, values formation, social studies, religion, social sciences, ethics, philosophy, and other curricular courses.
UNESCO has established the education for a Culture of Peace to create and inspire peace ‘in the minds of men and women’, based on the universal values and fostering:
1. Culture of peace through education
2. Sustainable economic and social development
3. Respect for all human rights
4. Equality between women and men
5. Democratic participation
6. Understanding, tolerance and solidarity
7. Free flow of information and knowledge
8. International peace and security [208]
Unfortunately, these eight values and areas of the peace culture are fragmented and not integrated by a holistic, systemic and constitutive for them value of harmony that defines a global harmonious peaceful education as the highest level of education. [209].
Declaration and Program of Action on a Culture of Peace, outlines eight critical action areas and calls out for actors of peace to act at national, regional and international levels to eliminate the roots of conflict.
The way to peace, conflict prevention and harmony is possible only through peace education. However in wider context conflict prevention and peace building will be sustainable when progress is made in creating a secure environment, in the promotion of sustainable democratic systems, economic and social well-being. Progress in peace education and all these sectors is necessary for sustainable peace and harmony.
The UN should invest greatly in global harmonious peace education based on the science of social harmony because holistic education is the key to uniting nations and bringing human beings closely together. Therefore it is very important to recognize the crucial role of holistic education in contributing to building a culture of global peace from harmony.
An important tool of harmonious education is Indian Yoga, which has been practiced for thousands of years [210]. Yoga is also evaluated as "the science of inner peace and practical tool of the global peace science (GPS)" [211].
6. Harmonization of world religions
Harmonization of world relations is impossible without harmonization of relations between world religions through global harmonious education, harmonizing religious principles, the first of which is the "Golden Rule of Religions", opposing the law of retribution "Jus or Lex Talionis" and etc. The social ground of interfaith relations harmonization will be the social harmony of the conscious Spherons and their believers, educated in its science. Conscious harmony of Spherons as an alternative to disharmonious violent fundamentalism is the social foundation of religious harmony and antiterrorist immunity. Dozens of the GHA works are devoted to this problem, some of which are mentioned above [78; 121; 125; 154; 165; 166; 168; 202; 203; 204; + 212; 213; 214; 215].
7. Spheral global 100% democracy or "Harmonious Democracy of Spherons"
The deep systemic evolutionary risk of the traditional political democracy, dominating since the 20th century, with its rampant pathologies of militarism, corruption, nationalism and inequality began to threaten the survival of humanity. It is a risk of ruling in democracy elite of 1% billionaires [84 and others]. Research literature about liberal, "full" democracy is filled with its anti-democratic estimates and definitions: "plutocracy, oligarchy, totalitarian democracy, democracy for the few, democratic despotism, fascist democracy, democracy of billionaires, brainwashing, zombie, manipulation democracy," [33; 40 and others]. As one scientist said, "You cannot have a democracy that organizes itself around war" [86].
An alternative to this militaristic pathological 1% democracy is the really full, 100% "Harmonious Democracy of Spherons" (HDS) or “Spheral Harmonious Democracy” (SHD), including the entire population, which is based on equal division of power between the Spherons elected representatives in gender equal proportion at all levels. The HDS is the political center and key of the proposed UNH SMSGHG. The fundamental advantage of the HDS over traditional democracy is the mechanism of internally built spheral opposition, in which the spherons are united in a harmonious goal and a peaceful way of its realization, but can differ in the ways and means of achieving it [216; 217; 218]. Therefore, only Spherons are those truly actors of antimilitarist democracy and governance, which are capable to provide a deep spheral harmonious democratization of the entire social life of humankind to prevent and resolve all risks. It will constitute a new form of international and national cooperation at all levels. Hundreds of the GHA works are devoted to this problem, some of which are mentioned above [78; 121; 125; 154; 165; 166; 168; 202; 203; 204].
8. Global harmonious currency
The traditional global reserve currency, based on the dominant disharmonious national currency, has long been a source of catastrophic financial risk, which is maturing in an almost continuous financial crisis. Global harmonious governance cannot be successful on the basis of a fundamentally risky reserve currency that is unfair for all nations. Therefore, the UNH SMSGHG suggests an experimental verification of the new forms of reserve currency. One of them is a “Harmonious Reserve Currency” (HRC) [219; 220] together with the corresponding structural-organizational forms, was considered in other GHA projects. Only such a currency with uniform fair and harmonious rules for all without exception can overcome total fraud and corruption of national currencies, especially the US dollar, which stimulates the flowering of financial frauds and global economic crises. [63 and others]
9. Overcoming extreme poverty
The sociopolitical systems of capitalism and communism, which prevailed in the 20th century, demonstrated a complete inability to fundamentally solve the problem of poverty, in fact only reinforcing it in its "globalization" [64]. The UNH SMSGHG presupposes and creates all the necessary structural-organizational prerequisites, the first - a full 100% democracy for system solution of this challenge in "Roadmap to Overcome Extreme Poverty" (ROEP)in accordance with the spheral laws for 20-30 years [221 and others]. It is based on the principle of social partnership between different strata of the population, especially the poor and the rich, whose wealth growth will depend on improving the welfare of the poor. [Ibid.]
10. Global economy of moderate harmonious growth, its minimization and zero
The creators of a balanced, just, crisis-free and efficient market economy of moderate harmonious growth, ensuring the guarantee of its sustainability, can only be harmonious Spherons. Spheral market economy is built on the constant mutual dependence of the Spherons’ economic position and all their partial groups and classes on the harmonious economic principle of "Mini-Max and Maxi-Min" (MMMM). [Ibid.] This is an endless evolutionary process of minimizing the maximum economic status and maximizing the minimum economic status in an integrated global economic system. Its norms are determined by the mechanisms of spheral democracy. The MMMM principle of the spheral harmonious economy is a spheral generalization and expansion of the "Tobin’s law" [222]. It develops on the basis of the mathematical theory of strategic games of John von Neumann [223] and it presupposes a sustainable economy, ultimately, without growth [224; 225]. Spheral democracy establishes dynamic, "floating" borders for harmonious, fair competition, excluding disharmonious limitless capitalist competition, collusion of monopolies and other vices of the imperialist economy [226]. Such competition, together with the economy demilitarization and the life of humankind, will ensure a stable but minimally necessary, economic growth that will smoothly decline to an environmentally required standard.
11. Harmony of humankind with nature: sustainable ecology and climate
Previous social evolution, especially since the 20th century, is associated with the predatory destruction of nature in the disharmonious industrial economic civilization that led to environmental degradation and the ever-escalating environmental and climatic risks. These systemic risks require a systemic holistic approach, proposed in our UNH SMSGHG, integrating other system approaches [172-176]. In the UNH creates a global ecological-climatic model of the Earth on the basis of thermodynamics and socio-cybernetics of the natural and social spheres of the Earth for permanent global monitoring, control, harmonious governance and prevention of any environmental and climate risks [ibid.]
12. World Harmonious Consciousness and "Earth Harmony Constitution"
The world harmonious consciousness centered on the Sociocybernetic science of global harmony synergistically synthesizing all partial achievements of the past humanitarian history of humankind is focused and finds one of the important expressions in the global legal structural-organizational regulator of harmony - in the "Earth Harmonious Federation Constitution" (EHFC). It is built on the basis of the constitutional recognition of the Spherons as universal actors of global harmony, social production, global peace, harmonious democracy and other structural-organizational institutions designed to solve and prevent all global risks. It integrates all the achievements of numerous versions of similar Constitutions.
This Constitution proclaims the main human right - the right to life guaranteed by global peace and the recognition of any armed violence and war (except the war on terror) as crimes against humanity. The right to life is virtually absent in the current "Declaration of Human Rights", it is mentioned by the single word in Article 3. This fundamental militaristic flaw in the American Declaration can be made up by the peacemaking Constitution of the Earth created by humanity’s spherons in their UN Harmony and Global Peace, excluding militarism from it. This Constitution is approved by the first goal of Global Peace, which is absent among the UN Millennium goals. It can also be supplemented by a special Declaration: The human right to life, global peace and social harmony (Appendix 4).
The Constitution determines the conscious evolutionary transition of humanity from a militaristic, disharmonious and therefore dying industrial civilization to a harmonious civilization during 50 years, starting with the launch of the UNH SMSGHG. It ensures “shift of the arms race into a peace race” as Martin Luther King Jr. wrote [56].
13. Two fundamental general risks of all risks:
disharmonious partial reason and similar civilization
Above, we named the main contemporary global risks and challenges and proposed strategies for their systemic harmonious solution in the UNH SMSGHG. The picture of multiple risks and their solutions will be incomplete if we do not find their deep logical generalization. It is expressed by the definition of two interconnected fundamental general risks of all risks: a disharmoniously limited and disciplinary fragmented industrial partial mind (reason, consciousness, thinking), which generates a disharmoniously limited reality of the militaristic fragmented nations-states in a partial industrial civilization and vice versa. Both constitute the integral key historical risks of modern humanity [78 and others].
Therefore, no understanding of partial risks and their partial solutions outside the context of the holistic evolution of consciousness and civilization cannot be strategically effective. Therefore, they will exist as long as there is a disharmonious civilization. The solution and prevention of these risks as a whole can only be the new reality of a harmonious civilization, conditioned by its scientific harmonious consciousness/mind, which is laid in the UNH SMSGHG. [ibid.]
3. Assessment criteria
1. The main criterion: expected result
The expected result of our UNH SMSGHG project, as defined above, is a solution and overcoming all global risks of the 21st century, as well as preventing the emergence of new ones within 50 years, starting with the launch of this model.
2. Decision-Making Capacity.
The decision-making capacity within the framework of the UNH SMSGHG, in view of the distribution of its preparatory and preliminary discussions among the spheral sectors of this governance model, is maximally freed from crippling delays. It excludes any veto power as it presupposes a spheral consensus with the majority within the spheral segments of this governance model.
3. Effectiveness.
The UNH SMSGHG handling all global challenges and risks, with its development and distribution to the lower levels, allows us to concentrate resources to eliminate, neutralize and prevent global risks at all levels. This will ensure high efficiency of practical implementation of solutions in this model.
4. Resources and Financing.
The UNH SMSGHG universality in its scale and depth will provide it with sufficient spheral PIOT resources including human and material ones. An equitable manner of their provision and financing is guaranteed by an equal sharing of power between the elected organs of the Spherons in this governance model.
5. Trust and Insight.
The UNH SMSGHG, built on universal recognition of the value complex of harmony, its science and organizational structure, establishes an unshakable foundation of mutual trust of all the Spherons organs and the completeness of the necessary transparency and trust. It is ensured by universal mutual control, verification of all activities of these bodies and mutual monitoring of decisions and their implementation.
6. Flexibility.
The UNH SMSGHG possesses a wide flexibility and adaptability due to the almost unlimited variation of sectoral components and structures at different levels and for different regions within a single spheral structure.
7. Protection against the Abuse of Power.
Protection against the abuse of power is pre-installed at the UNH SMSGHG by its democratic spheral structure and continuous mutual control both outside and inside it. This monitoring control system will work the necessary preventive measures both for cases of the abuse of powerincluding lobbying and for the cases of favoringthe special interests of specific individuals, groups, organizations, nation-states or groups of states for the benefit of humankind.
8. Accountability.
The UNH SMSGHG ensures successful resolution of global risks and prevention of new ones within 50 yearsand beyond. This is a sufficient time for their solution. But it can be delayed because of the inability of separate individuals and bodies to take timely decisions in a qualitative way, for that they are held accountable for their actions. It is stipulated in the UNH SMSGHG Charter.
Conclusion.
The key meaning of this project and its implementation lies in the fact that it provides a scientific, constructive and nonviolent transition for humankind from the past history of wars, violence, militarism and growing risks of survival to a new history of global peace, prosperity of all nations and harmonious sustainable development in the nature for the future generations.
This project was able to include only a small fraction of the GHA work for more than 12 years of its active scientific and peacemaking activity. Therefore, it was able to express only some properties and capabilities of the proposed governance model and its unique Sociocybernetic spheral approach. It provides not only the prevention and resolution of global challenges and risks in new forms of harmonious international cooperation of the 21st century, but also constitutes an inexhaustible source of socio-economic, political, educational and information innovations and technologies, including artificial intelligence.
Appendixes
Appendix 1: Picture "SPHERONS"
This is a visual illustration of spherons and Socionome a deep harmonious structure of humanity that provides its peaceful nature, which, under conditions of scientific ignorance of this nature is broken sporadically on its surface by partial and transitory disharmonious actors: some nations, classes, groups, etc. in their armed conflicts and wars. The depth of human nature and global society are harmony and peace, and on the surface we see disharmony, violence and war. They will be overcome by humankind, when the spherons will know and master the laws of a deep human nature, that is, laws of one's own being, life and sustainable development.
The picture gives a visual expression of the global harmonious governance object with the main militaristic risk of humankind as the first for its solution in the UNH SMSGHG.
Appendix 2: Motivation. Facts.
Globalization trend of war, genocide, neo-fascism, democracy of "inverted totalitarianism", environmental and climatic destruction, corruption, inequality, poverty, falsehood, "fake media", lawlessness, mafia and pathologies of fraud, crime and drugs.
US-NATO militaristic protectorate over the UN:
Vacuum of peacemaking leadership.Elimination of global peace from the new millennium goals.Note.This part is Facts. It determines the motivation of the sharpest necessity to reform the UN in the face of inevitably approximating danger of a new world (nuclear) war.
US Has Killed More Than 20 Million In 37 Nations Since WWII. - Lucas
The US has deployed 240,000 troops in 172 countries around the world. - Reimann
You can't have a democracy that organizes itself around war. - Giroux
We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive. - Einstein
Join together for a common vision – the total abolition of Militarism and war. - Maguire
1.1.Introduction.
Militaristic leadership of the US-NATO:War Globalization or Peace Globalization?
“Today, people are finally waking up to the dangers of a world war, which might emanate from the highest levels of the US government. We are no longer dealing with a hypothetical scenario. The threat of World War III is real. Public opinion has become increasingly aware of the impending dangers of an all-out US-NATO led war against Iran, North Korea and the Russian Federation. WW III has been contemplated by the U.S. and its allies for well over ten years”. [1]
72 years of the continual ferocious and atrocious militarism of the United States in their "long war against humanity" after WWII, after the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945, proved two simple and ingenious truths of the XX century. One belongs to Einstein: "Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be achieved through understanding." The other belongs to King: "The US government is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world".
All these years, the US has been waging a continuous war, “killing more than 11 million in 37 countries after WWII”. [2] “The US has deployed 240,000 troops in 172 countries around the world – a sprawling global network which serves as a permanent gesture of threat.” [3] This means that under the UN's wing, the USA has occupied almost all of its members for 72 years, threatening to violate all naughty nations that is globalization of the USA violence and dictate and their militaristic protectorate over the UN, over almost all of its members.
They immersed "The Earth in the Pentagon’s wars woe" and turning America into a "nation of war": "We are waging war. We are the Nation of War. We destroy. We kill. Everyone fears us." [4] This trend is rightly assessed as "Historical Tradition of American Empire War and Genocidal Crimes Against Humanity" [5; 6], excluding peace in the UN, under the wing of which the USA has built a real threat of "WW III on the horizon" of humanity [7].
Unfortunately, Russia, China, Iran and other peace-loving countries that did not attack anyone, unlike the US-NATO, in fact, without an alternative constructive model of the United Nations, are not able to take Einstein's truth as their strategy. Following the United States, they also rely on achieving peace not on "understanding", but on violence, on a reciprocal arms race, on their balance and military deterrence, which ultimately are also meaningless for global peace as the hegemonic aggressive arms race of the US and its allies. This is the main tragedy of modern peacemaking, weakened by the lack of scientific understanding of global peace and the scientific model of its UNH, which is the only one capable of liberating humankind from the arms race and new wars, including nuclear ones.
1.2. UN Disharmony:
The US-NATO leadership of militaristic empire
It is obvious that an international organization uniting all nations of the planet is called upon to ensure the life of humankind, but not to keep it for decades under the rapidly growing threat of total self-destruction that the UN demonstrates. What is the main reason for this fundamental defect of the UN? The fact that it was created by the most powerful economic and military power - the US - to legalize its militaristic imperial policy in the post-war unipolar world order. The United States suffered minimal losses in the Second World War (WWII) but was maximally militarized and enriched from it, becoming the world hegemon, the legalization of which was the UN, created for this purpose by the USA. Apple from the apple tree fell not far.
Therefore, such a UN can rightfully be qualified as a UN disharmony (UND) or a traditional UN (TUN) like to the infamous League of Nations. The ultimate goal of humankind - global peace, was practically excluded from its agenda and tabooed in it; therefore, like the League of Nations it in fact did nothing fundamentally for peace in 72 years. At best the UN limited by peace in special fragmented cases. The UN Charter and its Declaration of Human Rights lacks the main right - the human right to life, according to which every war, mass armament and militarism are declared a crime against humanity and excluded from society. The absence of this right and an unswerving taboo on war, armament and militarism opened for them an unlimited free space of prosperity and endless growth that the UN was unable to overcome in 72 years.
We will name only a few of the weightiest proofs confirming our conclusion.
1. Four months after the signing of the UN Charter in April 1945 in Los Angeles, the United States destroyed over 200,000 civilian populations of Japan in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic bombing, without any military necessity, by showing the world and the newborn created by them the UN, who is now the boss and dictator in the world, whose “Ownership of the World”[8]. It was an act of conscious and intentional genocide. The US refuses to apologize for this crime against humanity until now, reserving the right of the first nuclear strike [9; 10; 11]. This is perceived by the UN during 72 years as a norm, which exposes it as an organization not of peace, but of war. With this bombing, the USA launched a new unprecedented round of the arms race of the UN members, accompanied by an uninterrupted cycle of their wars around the world.
2. The USA has not yet abandoned from the misanthropic right of a preemptive nuclear strike, threatening to destroy the North Korea (25 million people) in 2017, from the UN rostrum, with a new nuclear bombardment [12], which is being prepared in front of UN members with their silent encourages US war, militarism and aggression, with the exception of some votes. For 72 years, the USA has made dozens of "disliked" UN member countries with targets of aggressive invasions and militaristic preparations: "Target Russia, target China, target Iran" [13], and so on without end with the natural total indifference of the American UN war. For example, for Russia, the US-NATO is preparing a new version of Hitler's plan ‘Barbarossa’ on its Western border [14] and “Reckless Congress ‘Declares War’ on Russia”[15].
3. All 72 years of the UN existence, the USA in its framework practice, in fact, a continuous genocide, with the full, practically, connivance of the UN. The genocide of the United States and Britain is well known against the Iraqi people [16; 16a]. The US genocide has deep historical roots since the destruction of many millions of American Indians [17]. Therefore, it is not surprising that all 37 US-NATO wars after the WWII in 37 countries in which they killed over 20 million innocent victims [2] are an openly continuous "democratic" genocide in the eyes of a powerless UN and astonished humanity after the secret genocide of the US Indians.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the US is planning genocide constantly so far. “According to a secret document dated September 15, 1945, “the Pentagon had envisaged blowing up the Soviet Union with a coordinated nuclear attack directed against major urban areas… to annihilate and kill the inhabitants of selected urban areas. The documents confirm that the US was involved in the “planning of genocide” against the Soviet Union.” The USA continues to plan genocide until now 72 years, under the UN hood, expanding targets on Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, etc. [18]
America is a spiritually dead civilization whose government plans genocide rather than global peace, including genocide against several other nuclear powers.This USA plan at the governmental level could cause the global genocide of humanity, including itself. This is the insanity and tragedy of the American people not so different from the Germans under Hitler. Therefore Dr. Johan Galtung predicted the USA fall on 2020. [19] This is the result of its complete disharmony with humanity, to which it was led by its policy of hatred, misanthropy and dictate during 72 years: “US Has Killed More Than 20 Million In 37 Nations Since WWII”.[2] Therefore, the US and not terrorists, "keep the world record of the murder of innocent citizens" [20] under the UN wing.
“A million Somali children have starved to death in the past 24 months and this crime goes unnoticed in the international media [UN and UNICEF]. ..The world had the food to prevent all these deaths, something the UN is supposed to be on top of. But then one of the top dogs at the UN is the Executive Director of UNICEF, supposedly the number one (N)o (G)ood (O)utfit with the responsibility to prevent this crime, headed by former National Security Advisor to Pres. Clinton and later failed nominee to head the CIA, Anthony Lake, whose appointment was a favor returned by Pres. Obama. Loyalty to empire can have its rewards in the form of being overlord of a multi-billion dollar a year aid empire internationally, UNICEF, and the ability to carry out “long term solutions” as in genocide by starvation of the Somali people.” He preferred "genocide by starvation for Somali children", as well as in the Rwanda Genocide in 1994 he preferred to "not doing anything” to stop the mass killings. [21] Under the helpless and indifferent observation of the UN, genocide of various forms is expanding in many countries: Somalia, Yemen, Burma and others, which can be qualified as "globalization of genocide" under the UN aegis [22;23;24]
“If one asks the question “who benefits from the South Sudanese civil war?” the answer is clear. The USA is presently the only beneficiary of the ongoing horrors in South Sudan, for this latest round of conflict has once again shut down the Chinese run oil fields in the country…. the USA and its western vassals [are guilty] into these holocausts,… who really benefits and when it comes to the civil war in South Sudan the only party presently benefiting from these crimes is the USA.”[25]
4. For 72 years before the UN eyes, the USA has created a global network of more than 800 military bases around the world. [26; 27] For 72 years, in the UN eyes, American intervention without borders flourished and found globalization in the "long US war against humanity" [28]. This war demanded a "globalization of NATO" in the interests of the "American Empire": "Starting from Yugoslavia, NATO began its journey towards becoming a global military force. From its wars in the Balkans, it began to broaden its international area of operations outside of the Euro-Atlantic zone into the Caucasus, Central Asia, East Africa, the Middle East, North Africa, and the Indian Ocean. The Atlantic Alliance’s ultimate aim is to fix and fasten the American Empire." [29].
All NATO’s wars in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Africa were ‘dirty’: “Peace talks were subverted. Libya was barred from representing itself at the UN, where shadowy NGOs and “human rights” groups held full sway in propagating exaggerations, outright falsehoods, and racial fear mongering that served to sanction atrocities and ethnic cleansing in the name of democracy.” It is “the concept of humanitarian intervention” of imperialism; “hypocrisy of the U.S. elite, of the Gulf ruling classes and of the liberal bombardiers who emerged in the crucible of ‘humanitarian’ wars of the 1990s [with] NATO carried out extensive war crimes during the ‘liberation’ of Sirte” Libia [30; 31]. Now the US-NATO’s "shadow continental war" covers almost the whole of Africa: "The U.S. is waging a massive shadow war in Africa"[32] All US-NATO interventions are carried out under the banner of the "war on terror", which only extends it around the world [33].
The US-NATO uses the UN and its structures as a tool to justify the falsified, fake situations of their 'dirty wars', with the goal of blaming the countries they do not like, as was the case with the Syrian "chemical attack" recently. Such a disgraceful use of the UN has been practiced by the US-NATO many times in the UN. [34]
Therefore, UND, like the League of Nations, deserves the dissolution and replacement of the new UN Harmony.
5. For 72 years, the US, together with its NATO allies and under the wing of the pocket UN, has created in their "new world order" a regime of "totalitarian democracy and a full spectrum of domination" [35] with the Pentagon's plan of "total war and military dictatorship". [36; 37]
While China, Russia and other peace-loving countries "pivot to world markets,” militaristic America "pivots to world wars" [38] and prepares a "third world war with China" [39] and with Russia [15], etc. All of these wars of the United States are prepared in front of a silent and humbled UN, which is helpless to oppose anything by the USA, and whose peace-loving will is paralyzed by the militarism of the boss at the UN as a rabbit before a boa. This allows the US to be a "world mafia leader", as the Brazilian artist portrayed in a cartoon [39]. What becomes the UN for her 72 years? Maybe, "as if" its unintentional nest for 72 years? ... There is something to think about here.
6. Under the wing and guardianship of the UN, the USA is transformed into an "inverted totalitarianism and a fascist state" [40], provide "globalization of fascism" [41], "plan a nuclear war by Pentagon Fascism" [42], "established and supports ISIS" [43], providing it with weapons in defiance of the UN Charter, and because they constitute "the greatest threat to global peace" [44; 45; 46]. The USA has made terrorism an "ultimate weapon" of its imperial policy of "eternal war and genocide". [47]The USA lives in the UN with the full hope of "a win of nuclear war". [48] Therefore, "It's a Fairy Tale to Call the US the World's Peacekeeper" [49]. In reality, in the history, "the US fears peace." [50] During the time "from Hiroshima to the war of drones", the US-NATO approved "state terrorism" [51] and became the "spark of nuclear war" [52].
7. The UN is powerless before the military-industrial-media-financial-scientific-congressional complex of the USA [53; 16], the manager of this UN. It is helpless before the US-NATO war crimes against humanity; they long ago deserved the "American Nuremberg" [54], which the UN is powerless to launch. Foreign policy trumps justice. “Justice Belied marks a turning point in understanding how tainted international criminal justice undermines political solutions and imposes superpower dictate.” [55] Summarizing such countless facts, Martin Luther King said: "The US government is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world." [56] Can this happen at the UN peace? No! This is possible only in the American UN disharmony! The USA ignores or violates the UN decisions and international law that interfere to its militaristic politics. They have withdrawn or are withdrawing from the ABM Treaty, from the Paris climate agreement, from the nuclear deal with Iran, from UNESCO as the most important UN body and etc. The Pentagon is the "privileged" destroyer of the planet's ecology and climate. [57]
8. Therefore, calling the UN a "global peacemaker" is the same tale as "calling the US a global peacemaker", which created the "American Century of Violence" [58], which “has plunged the world into crisis” [59]. The US constitutional law authorizing the possession of weapons, militarized half of the country's population, which almost monthly turns into mass executions, such as the "slaughter in Las Vegas" on October 1, which the UN cannot oppose anything. The war has become the American "narcotic addiction" [60], which will become the most important reason for the "American Empire fall" in 2020, most likely with a "military bang" than "with weeping," according to Galtung forecast [61] and others. The USA's groundless pretension to exclusivity and its rude assertion by absolute militarism is unequivocally deadly. The fall of the USA global militaristic empire is inevitable. It will put before the UN the question about its radical, anti-militaristic peacebuilding reorganization, which is proposed in our project.
9. Militarism generates a global economic crisis: “The economic crisis is accompanied by a worldwide process of militarization, a “war without borders” led by the U.S. and its NATO allies.” [62; 63] Militarism exacerbates poverty, "globalizing it in a new world order." [64] Militarism provokes dangerous genetic experiments, in particular with nutrition, "sowing seeds of destruction through genetic manipulation": "Control the food and you control the people.” This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO.” [65] All this borders with the total "soft genocide" [66]. Militarism and militaristic democracy generate total corruption and fraud as evidenced by millions of facts, before which the UN is powerless. [67] Militarism and the militaristic democratic establishment led by Hilary Clinton are conducting a global "war on truth" to justify their defeat in the presidential election. [68] “Clinton supported America’s endless wars, which have brought chaos, death and misery to million of people throughout the world.” [69]
10. Thousands of facts confirming the militaristic essence of the USA in the UN lead to an inevitable simple question: Why “the Exceptional Country once describing itself as Christian, along with its allies in Europe, now appear to be the oppressors?” [62].
Of course, we must admit that during the UN 72-year history, in it has sounded many remarkable peacemaking ideas, but they were all consigned to oblivion, they did not provide any fundamental approximation of humanity to global peace and drowned in its bottomless militaristic swamp. Therefore, the UN, like the League of Nations, has actually remained the institution of war, not of peace, despite the dense veil of peaceful declarations, resolutions, proclamations and speeches.
But in the traditional UN, "Sovereign nation states cannot cope satisfactorily with global challenges ... Our global UN system does not cope with today's risks. We urgently need a new way of thinking "[70]. This was brilliantly realized and expressed by Einstein: “We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive”.[71] New, spheral thinking is presented in the constructive part of the project below as an alternative to the dying traditional ideologies. [72; 72a]
The traditional ideologies of the past and the new centuries - Marxism and liberalism discredited themselves with the justification of various forms of violence and proved completely incapable to offer a constructive and effective model of peaceful global governance in the UN. Communism as a theory and practice debunked itself in 100 years. Because of the dominant of the total class struggle, it could not become a constructive alternative to capitalism and its boundless militarism. In the analogous position is liberalism as a "failed ideology and zombie doctrine" powerless before the crisis that "cannot be stopped without a coherent alternative."[73].
The UN's real global ideology in 72 years, the US-NATO made total militarism, removing from its agenda of any fundamental peacemaking problems and ignoring those constructive effective ideas, which were repeatedly offered to it. [74; 75] Militarism became the center of the dominant geopolitical picture of the world in the UN, which determined its peacemaking helplessness to solve any global problems, for example, such as Israel-Palestine armed confrontation for more than 60 years, peace between which is deliberately ‘obstructed’ by the USA and the UN. [76]
The elementary truth is that "peace movements’ common vision is the abolition of militarism" [77], but if the total US-NATO militarism feeds the UN, this organization cannot be recognized and qualified as a peacekeeping one.
Our project, presented briefly below, offers for the UN a fundamentally new, alternative geopolitical picture centered on HARMONY as the source of the life for nature, society and human, which was intuitively realized in all world civilizations, but ignored by dominant in the UN American militarism. Only such a geopolitical picture can transform the UN disharmony into the UN Harmony.
Our analytical part covered only a very small fraction of the vast array of tens of thousands of facts and evidences of the US-NATO militarism excluding the really peacemaking and effective work of their UN. More significant factual material on this topic is presented in two chapters (9 and 13) of the "Global Peace Science" [78]. But the fundamental generalization and systematization of these facts and the corresponding testimonies in thousands of books, articles and video still await their honest, strong and courageous peacemaking thinker. GHA and its friends made only the first step in this direction. This is a scientific aspect.
The axiological aspect is that science, conscience and morality cannot and do not have the right to ignore the endless facts of US-NATO militarism, violence and aggression that dominate in the UN and turned it from an instrument of peace into an instrument of international legalization and justification of their criminal genocidal militarism. Ignoring these facts and refusing their scientific analysis and moral assessment can be regarded only as the encouragement and support of this militarism, its wars, deaths and violence. This is peculiar only to the militarists, but not to the true peacemakers. This is position of the GHA and its peacemakers for more than 12 years.
1.3. The USA Imperial Militarism:
Exceptional Perversion of Human Values,
Especially Freedom and Democracy
The only moral justification in the UN and the world of all aggressions and genocide of the US-NATO, they made "Western values", especially freedom and democracy. But total US-NATO militarism has only perverted them, extremely pathologized and transformed them, in fact, into their opposite.
The trend of the militaristic "exceptional perversion" of fundamental values has long been established and has long been studied, beginning with the "inverted totalitarianism and USA transformation to fascist-like state" [40] and "full spectrum dominance: totalitarian democracy" [35]. Thousands of similar studies reveal the details of this "exceptional perversion", exposing, for example, "corporate fascism of the USA," whose militarism became "the murder of American democracy" [79], led to "the death of democracy and freedom in America" [80], "destroying democracy"[81], "broke democracy" [82] and turned it into an "oligarchy and plutocracy" [83], into a "democracy of billionaires" making up no more than 1% of the population [84], etc. A more detailed analysis of the militaristic perversion of American democracy with its ineradicable vices of violence, corruption, inequality and nationalism is presented in our work [85]. It is well summarized by the genius thought of the Canadian scientist: "you can’t have a democracy that organizes itself around the war" [86]. Similar militaristic democracy is naturally imposed by force, fire and sword in the world and in the UN, which silently tolerates the "America’s deadliest export of democracy" [87], which turned it into a "rogue state" [88].
"The deadliest export of democracy by a rogue state" is well illustrated by Africa: “The west uses “democracy”… to control Africa. This has resulted in over half a century of murder… Western “democracy” is all about controlling Africa for western benefit,… It is African blood that pays for the rich lifestyles of the western populace, and African blood that pays for social peace in western societies…. Western “democracy”, a system adopted by slave owners and redesigned to enable the preservation of a system of barbarism, maintained by force and violence, which has been forced on Africa” [89]
The exceptional perversion of values in the USA, the transformation of freedom into permissiveness of any violence, weapons and militarism, -- “bad American values of freedom to lie, cheat, steal & kill” [89a] with unlimited aggression and the transformation of democracy into totalitarianism, fascism, hegemony and a world dictatorship which grew early-ripe on the short, 240-year-old historical soil of America, which is 93% filled with wars: “The US has only been at peace for 21 years total since its birth. For 222 out of 239 years – or 93% of the time – America has been at war. No U.S. president truly qualifies as a peacetime president. Instead, all U.S. presidents can technically be considered “war presidents.” No wonder polls show that the world believes America is the number 1 threat to peace.”[89b]
For the sake of truth, we must note that the first and only US president who formulated the peacekeeping program of foreign policy in a powerful paradigm of global peace [89c] - Donald Trump, who thanks to it won the election, even with a minimum margin of 52% of the electorate, was immediately subjected obstruction and impeachment by the American "democracy of inverted totalitarianism" [40] not only in the face of "democratic" (militaristic) party of Hillary Clinton but also the USA "democratic" militaristic Congress and the militaristic "fake mainstream media." Their militarism completely paralyzed the Trump's global peace paradigm. [89c]
The US historical militaristic soil, which absorbed Trump's only peace attempt of the USA, is devoid of fundamental harmonious traditions and reasonable restrictions, measures, proportions and accords of thousand-year civilizations: Indian, Chinese, Greek, Persian, Russian, Latin American, Egyptian, African and others. The American United Nations has suppressed these traditions by the total militarism of one country, whose population does not exceed 4% of the population of humankind, condemning it to imminent thermonuclear self-destruction. This deprives the UN of the mandate of an international governance body designed to preserve the peaceful life of humankind rather than leading it to destruction and keeping it under this fear for decades.
America repeats the tragedy of the Great French Revolution values: "Ultimately, this revolution led to a blood bath, preceded with much fanfare and propaganda consisting essentially of the words “Liberté, égalité, fraternité,” ie, freedom, equality, brotherhood. It failed tragically." [62] These values were also failed in American militaristic execution under the fanfare and manipulation of fake media in the rampant imperial aggressions of the US-NATO global militarism.
The UN of harmony and life cannot have a leader the country, even the richest and strongest, which degrades spiritually and agonizes in its perverted values, without promising the world anything but an imminent military collapse. If the US-NATO, with its values of freedom and democracy, unleashes a nuclear, pernicious for all war, this will not be surprising. They go to it and prepare for it during 72 years in the framework and under the cover of their UN war. Who should be blamed humanity in this case, if from him someone remains??? To the like UN the remarkable words of the brilliant French writer are: "To tolerate and ignore the actions that threaten humanity with war does not mean serving to peace" [90]. Therefore, we must act in search of a new, harmonious UN model with the foundation of the harmony values.
An alternative model of global governance in the UNH requires an alternative value system, which retains all the advantages of traditional one but elevates them to the level of a new, scientific understanding and solution of global risks. What is the main drawback of the traditional value system? It is based on the absolutization and priority of one partial, albeit very important value of freedom. We are in no way rejecting its large achievements in the 15-20 centuries. Nevertheless, we cannot fail to see its degradation and degeneration into permissiveness as the main value risk in the 19th and especially in the 20th centuries bordering with the "free" extermination of humankind. The freedom degradation today begins with the freedom of "communism", Nazism, genocide, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, militarism, terrorism, etc. It is evident to almost everyone, almost in everything and is stated by almost all outstanding thinkers and writers of these centuries.
Holistic and universal “harmony, as a value, stands distinct from all the rest at this juncture of history… So, harmony becomes the first priority because the very existence of human kind is threatened by forces of disharmony. … Even if harmony is not the most fundamental or most important value, it is presently to be given a high priority because, without it, the humankind is in danger of being lost. It should further be seen that though Harmony seems to be one single value, yet, in truth, it is the group name or corporate name given to a set of values, for, ‘Harmony’ has love, unity, concord, amicability, sociability, friendliness, spirit of co-existence and reconciliation, proper communication, openness of mind self-control, non-violence, sweetness, tolerance, consensus, etc. as its essential components. Without these values, there cannot be an enduring and holistic harmony.” [91]
The priority and integral value character of harmony was emphasized long ago by many thinkers, especially the Indian and Chinese civilizations based on it. No other value, apart from harmony, is able to perform a holistic system mission in relation to other values, because only harmony expresses the eternal and universal source of the life of nature, society and human.
Therefore, harmony is the priority value of every person from birth to death, as well as each society and humanity as a whole, even if they temporarily and ignorantly replace it with partial values of wealth, profit, power, etc. But it becomes available theoretically and for conscious practical embodiment only to the spherons, who consciously create the appropriate science and thinking of harmony.
The partial values cannot preserve their viable potential without harmony, but harmony cannot be complete and viable without them, without their organic unity in it. Spherons consciously unite traditional partial values in harmony, providing a new public consciousness, a new spiritual appearance and a new moral level of humanity.
On the holistic and system value basis of harmony, which unites all other values and protects them from any perversion, the UN Harmony is built.
1.4. Conclusions of the UN 72-year history for its repair via reorganizationin a harmonious scientific paradigm
The facts of Chossudovsky and Luсas [1; 2] and similar [3-89 and others] provide a sufficient scientific basis for the conclusion that since Hiroshima, more than 72 years continuously, the USA is really leading an undeclared “‘long war’ against humanity” [28] under the wing and cover of their UN, flouting international law. The United States has never done anything fundamental for global peace in 72 years, never initiated it in the UN in any form. The USA excludes global peace from the life of humankind and the UN agenda. Their global and eternal postwar strategy was only their own national security and the "national interests" of world domination, which became the flag and justification for their exceptional militarism, wars and aggressions without end. Only such militarism became the true "exclusiveness" of post-war America, which frightens the whole world for 72 years since Hiroshima. Militarist security of the USA is imposed on all countries, it draws them into the American arms race, forcing all the nations that do not want to become innocent victims of American aggression like Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc. The USA militaristic security has superseded and suppressed both the consciousness and practice of global peace.
All of the endless array of the facts of US aggressions and interventions, together with NATO allies since 1949 - all of them - neither together nor alone, have been convicted in the UN for 72 years. They are the facts of militaristic indulgence of the UN for the USA. Both clusters of militaristic facts - for the US/NATO and for the UN - are interdependent, but different. Together they constitute the necessary scientific basis, both for theoretical generalizing conclusions and for immediate pragmatic solutions.
The inevitable logical conclusions from clusters of militaristic facts.
1. All 72 years, the UN has been and still remains the UN disharmony/militarism and not peace for all peoples, to which humanity has not approached a single step, but only rapidly approached to a global nuclear war and complete self-destruction.
2. All 72 years, the UN has been and still is a militaristic organization of the USA and its military security, and not an institution of global peace, as it was formally proclaimed by the UN Charter.
Necessary pragmatic solutions based on militaristic facts and their scientific generalization.
1. Either immediately dissolve this UN, like the League of Nations, for its powerlessness before the wars and indulgence for them. Declare the annual period of the International Scientific Competition for the Best Project of the Global Peace Governance: the UN Harmony Project.
2. Or, for the same reason, launch an immediate process of cardinal reform of the UN disharmony to replace it with the UN Harmony, capable of beginning to defend global peace of all peoples, and not security of the world dictator. The UNH project for its discussion, initiation and adoption by peace-loving countries was prepared by international peacemaking organizations in this text on the basis of the "Global Peace Science" [78].
The political will to initiate pragmatic decisions on UN reform.
The most difficult question in any matter, the more global, is the personnel one. Who among the modern peace-loving political leaders would be able to initiate UN reform and unite around themselves and his country the supporters of this reform for its practical implementation and overcoming the inevitable confrontation of US-NATO and their allies? Are there really many truly peace-loving countries and truly peacemaking leaders who can unite to achieve a global peace on a scientific non-violent and anti-militarist basis? The GHA researches on this score and our repeated sounding of different groups of political leaders in the UN, G20 and others in different years [92] do not inspire optimism in us. We came to the sad conclusion that the political leaders for reforming the UN are more likely to wait for the American nuclear WWIII with its usurped right of the first nuclear strike than to warn it with the necessary reform of the UN that it would become the guarantor of its impossibility and remove it from the public consciousness forever.
Of course, everyone knows the world leader who would be able to start implementing UN reform today. He admits "that there is no alternative to the UN" and stands for immediate nuclear disarmament. But he still does not realize what an alternative to the existing disharmonious/militaristic UN can, is and should be. If this alternative is sought by a Swedish billionaire in an international scientific competition [70], then why cannot our promising leader organize such and lead it? Unfortunately, he does not yet have that Einstein "understanding" that "alone ensures the achievement of peace." This is a scientific understanding of harmony. Peacekeepers from harmony can only hope for the progress of this leader consciousness, the awakening of his constructive peacebuilding political will on the basis of a scientific understanding of peace from harmony and not from militarism. But this hope is not unpromising, because in his consciousness the idea of social harmony and a "harmonious future" is growing and developing, as it can be seen from all his speeches, especially from the latter at the Valdai Club. He perfectly expressed here the main trend of the present to the future in the title of his paper: "The World of the Future: Moving Through Conflict to Cooperation" *. [93] (* It is very strange that the Russian term "harmony" is translated into English by the weak in this case and the inadequate term "cooperation.") Paraphrasing Joseph Schumpeter, one can say that "from the creative destruction" of the disharmonious UN "a new order and a new world are born" - the harmonious order of global peace. But harmony requires science, which is not exist until now and which must be created. God grant that all political leaders understand this!
Now in Russia people also are beginning to understand more and more the need for a radical reform of the UN, which turned into "the USA puppet." "Why does Russia need an organization (the United Nations) that works for the United States, which is increasingly degrading ... Perhaps Russia should not wait for a new war so that the new victors (and whether will be they?) will determine the just organization of the world but to propose that this be done peacefully?"[94] But constructive structural ideas for the UN reform are not proposed. Together with their absence, there is also no political will or diplomatic initiative by Russia in this strategic direction.
UN: prospects for the future.
Today, looking at the UN, a legitimate question arises: why the peace-loving countries in the UN should trail behind the ruling militarists? Why from the peace-loving countries in the UN do they not sound global peacebuilding initiatives? For 72 years, they see that the UN was not able to resist any US-NATO aggression. They actually resigned themselves with them as an inevitable fate. Although they are sometimes outraged, they cannot do anything with them. All got used to the fact that the King (UN) is naked! - Powerless to ensure peace and eradicate militarism for 72 years and does not even try to promise it! How long can this continue? Until the new Hiroshima and nuclear WWIII? Meanwhile, the US does not sit idly in the UN, like peace-loving countries. The United States is actively using the UN to discredit the peace-loving countries and their peacekeeping actions by all unworthy means. Only under pressure from the USA, could the UN exclude the global peace from the "Eight Millennium Goals" [95]. The disharmonious/militaristic UN does not promise a global peace even in the third millennium, obviously believing in favor of the USA that this will be the millennium of American militarism. But some leaders like the Prime Minister of India are beginning to understand the need to change the unipolar world order and its UN [96].
The disharmonious UN has no future and no prospects for it in any case. Ultimately, only conscious harmony ofthe UNH is capable to improve not only the UN, but every UN member, every state and society, every government and party, every family and every citizen of the planet. Only conscious harmony is able to resist and non-violently overcome all social pathologies, including militarism, nationalism, Nazism, terrorism and any fundamentalism as disharmony. The trend of expanding the conscious harmony [97] covers more and more citizens and sooner or later it will find and put forward worthy young political leaders capable of initiating and boldly leading UN reform. These young leaders of the near future will understand that scientific and harmonious peacefulness of the UNH is the most powerful economic, political and social stroke (but nonviolent, "soft"!) by which to overcome the militarism of the USA and other countries to the extent that corresponds to the scale of their militarism. But this blow is stretched in our project for 50 years, so that it was minimally painful. At the same time, this will be a powerful breakthrough into a harmonious digital economy that will ensure prosperity for all nations; into harmonious democracy ensuring equality and justice for all peoples and productive classes; into harmonious education and way of life and into spiritual culture of harmonious civilization in the XXI century.
Only such a perspective creates and ensures the eradication of militarism, violence and wars from the life of the future of humankind, "shift of the arms race into a peace race" (King [56]). It is presented in detail in the Global Peace Science (2016) by 173 authors from 34 countries in Chapters 8 and 10 [78].
1.5. The American militarism peak is the UN "nuclear club":Zero nuclear ban that guarantees a nuclear world war.
The USA is the “father-founder” of the UN nuclear club, the instigator and promoter of the nuclear arms race because America was the first to invent and first tested nuclear weapons twice in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, destroying more than 200,000 civilians easily and quickly. The US only usurped the right of a "first, preventive nuclear strike" that, within 72 years of the UN, became a permanent source of the nuclear arms race, turning into a "perpetual motion" for the race of all other weapons of the UN members, which was powerless to transform it into an "eternal engine" of global peace. For 72 years, the deadly right of the "first nuclear strike" in order to protect against it created a "nuclear club" of 9 members in the UN. [98] Five of the strongest of them (USA, Britain, France, China and Russia), the UN elevated to the highest rank of "permanent members of the Security Council" and gave the absolute right of "veto" to all proposals, including peacemaking initiatives. This is a perverted militaristic logic: in the UN the greatest privileges and honor are given to the most powerful militarists, who pose the greatest threat to global peace, primarily to the USA and its allies.
This logic, imposed by the USA, cannot be assessed otherwise than as an "American mockery" over the UN peacemaking mission, to which it is called by its Charter, but which the UN actually neglects. The nuclear club is constantly growing at the expense of countries that are secretly engaged in the development of technology for the manufacture of these weapons, contrary to the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has not yet been signed by four countries [99]. There are at least 11 countries with military nuclear programs. The extreme danger of nuclear thinking was expressed by Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Prize laureate: “The thought that we have the right to use nuclear weapons and commit genocide is the most disturbing thing of all. [Therefore we should] join together for a common vision – the total abolition of Militarism and war.” [100]
American militaristic leadership in the UN has perverted its peacekeeping logic, according to which the only nuclear countries that are the greatest threat to the survival of mankind and to global peace must be deprived of domination in an international peacekeeping organization and the right of veto. But this did not happen in the UN, which, under the influence of powerful nuclear powers, set out in pursuit of the mythical "checks and balances" of nuclear weapons, ensuring its firm endless preservation in the "balance" instead of its destruction. Preservation of nuclear weapons - a constant "powder keg" under the globe without any "counterweights" - excludes the possibility of saving humanity and the planet from a guaranteed military catastrophe - the "Nuclear Winter", which "US leaders reject" [ 101], which constitutes a "crisis for human civilization and the biosphere". [102] This is ignored by the US, still hoping "to win the nuclear war." [48]. The US only exacerbates and destabilizes the situation in the world, undermining the "nuclear deal with Iran" approved by the UN [103]. They also destabilize relations with nuclear North Korea, manifesting themselves as the "true axis of evil": instead of negotiations - blackmail, provocation and threats from the UN rostrum on "total destruction" with the full connivance of the "silent pro-American majority". Where is here the peaceful UN? Who can fill the vacuum of peacekeeping leadership in the UN?
Confrontation and contradictions within the nuclear club are constantly growing, the disastrous result of the dynamics of which is predictable for all sane people, including the majority of UN members, except nuclear powers and their satellites. In July 2017, 122 of them approved the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons, except nuclear powers and their satellites. "The world's nine nuclear-armed powers - the US, Russia, Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel - all of whom boycotted the UN in July 2017."[105] "All of the countries that bear nuclear arms and many others that either come under their protection or host weapons on their soil boycotted the negotiations." [106]
Where are democracy, justice and equality here, when out of the UN 193 members, the majority - 122 approved the ban on nuclear weapons, but it remains an empty sound for nuclear members and their satellites led by the USA? This fact proves that the UN does not have any hint of democracy, equality and justice, which are suppressed by the US-NATO militaristic dictatorship and their allies. This fact proves that the UN is under the protectorate of a militaristic minority led by the United States, in which hopes for a nuclear ban are empty and groundless, because in the UN 72 years there is no democracy and peacemaking. The nuclear ban is excluded in it because of its militaristic nature. It is possible only in the UN Harmony and global peace provided that there is a world leader who will have the mind, peacefulness and courage to initiate it.
From the nuclear powers leaders, only the president of Russia, who deserved the highest recognition in the world, including the proposals of the Nobel Peace Prize [107; 108], has long offered nuclear disarmament, which he confirmed for the last time at the Valdai Club in late October 2017 [109]. But the US-NATO is resisting nuclear disarmament. Only Putin, having unified all non-nuclear countries and unilaterally, for at least one year, having begun reducing nuclear military spending, is able to launch global nuclear disarmament and UN reform on the peaceful principle of harmony that eradicates its militarism. There is no other start to real nuclear disarmament and UN reform. But can Putin and Russia initiate a historic global reform? And if not they, then who is? Will there be a similar country and a similar leader in the world? These are questions of the nearest history.
Obviously, most likely, they will be leaders from the BRICS and SCO group, which recognise its priority: "To Strengthen International Peace and Security" and "Peace, peaceful life has been and remains the ideal of humanity." [110; 111; 112; 113] This aspiration and appeal are expressed in the GHA Message to BRICS leaders and other peace-loving countries [114]. Here, the peacemaking will of the peaceloving part of global civil society is focused [115; 116; 117] in contrast to its apathetic or militaristic zombie by the fake media part.
Appendix 3: Philosophy and Dialectics of the UN Spherons:Consolidation and Uniting Nations in Deep Structural Harmony
For God in his dispensation of all events, perfects them into a harmony of the whole.[Harmony of the whole perfects and improves all its parts and opposites]Logos/Cosmos: harmony and war of opposites.[Harmony of opposites is in depth and their war, disharmony are on the surface]The hidden harmony is better than the visible. [The hidden harmony of depth is better - wider, more important and stronger than visible harmony of the surface]Much learning does not teach one to have understanding.[Much knowledge of the empirical, disharmonious surface does not teach the deep mind of harmony]Heraclitus of Ephesus, 5th century BC.
The internal harmony of the world is the only true objective reality.Henri Poincare, early 20th century.
The harmony of natural law reveals an Intelligence of superiority.
Albert Einstein, 20th century middle.We approached to the philosophy, dialectics and science of the societal spherons deep structural harmony, which determines conscious harmony of the social surface excluding its wars, militarism and other social pathologies and risks of disharmony.
Leo Semashko, 20th end and 21st beginning.
The GHA project (http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=769) proposes a cardinal reform and a restructuring of the UN. Reforming the UN is required by the life of modern humanity and is supported by 85% of the population in international polls. Reforming the UN it needs not only in the public opinion support and a scientific project but also in its philosophy, both general and social. It is detailed in the GHA books, especially in “The ABC of Harmony” (2012) and in the “Global Peace Science” (2016). It is summarized in the “Table. Dialectics of the Spherons Harmony.”
Table. Dialectics of the Spherons Harmony
Two levels of social Cosmos: surface and depth
Philosophical and social paired categories expressing the levels of social Cosmos, its extreme characteristics or attributes
The struggle/war of opposites / differences. Partons are the innumerable historically transitory parts of the Spherons: humanity social surface, its disharmony
Parts, phenomenon, surface, many, difference, variable, temporary, random, mobility, immensity, imbalance, disproportion, asymmetry, chaos, external, limitless, finite, etc.War, violence, struggle, hatred, slavery (unfreedom), human rights, lawlessness, inequality, injustice, enmity, violent rivalry, rupture, priority of material wealth, monarchy, "democracy of inverted totalitarianism" (or "totalitarian democracy" of 1% of billionaires) etc.,.. …..
Deep harmony of the Spherons opposites:Social foundation andGenetic code (genome) of humanity
Whole, essence, depth, single, identity, constant, eternal, law, stability, measure, balance, proportion, symmetry, order, internal, limited, infinite, etc.Peace, nonviolence, friendship, love, freedom, human rights, legitimacy, equality, justice, brotherhood, nonviolent competition, unity, priority of children and spirituality, democracy, spheral 100% democracy, etc ....
In this table, we try to summarize almost the entire history of philosophy in its fundamental categories, to which millions of philosophical works are devoted over many thousands of years. Therefore, naturally, our generalization, like any other, cannot pretend to be final and complete. But this does not mean that we cannot make some relative generalizations for specific purposes of justifying individual practical projects.
Based on this methodology, we can conclude that the UN, like the League of Nations, was created at the surface level of disharmonious militarized nations immersed in the infinity of their historical social, economic, political, cultural, religious and other differences. This is good, because the richness of the differences and diversity ensures the survival and vitality of the peoples in various geographic, spatial, temporal and international conditions. Differences are eternal; they were, are and will increase. But the differences change the sign from positive to negative, when they become more acute and turn into irreconcilable contradictions resolved by this or that power and military methods, which undermine all the foundations of human existence. The more such destructive differences-contradictions become, the stronger the centrifugal forces of mankind, tearing up its unity and cooperation of different countries, the more their cohesion, harmony and its centripetal unifying force is needed.
Today is such a critical period of human history when the risk of a world war of nine nuclear countries/parts/nations of humanity threatens now with destruction for it and for its common planet in 30 seconds proximity to this irreparable disaster. Therefore, the international organization of almost 200 countries, designed to prevent this catastrophe and any of its risk - the UN, should find the unity of nations not in militarism, chaos and disharmony of their centrifugal superficial contradictions, but in harmony, peace, love and brotherhood of their common and constant deep structure of spherons. (Let us recall that spherons are four societal groups of the population, covering it as a whole and engaged in four spheres of social production).
Only this structure constitutes their genetically unified essence, law and wholeness. One experiment with the superficial League of militaristic nations failed with the beginning of the WWII. An even more hard failure is the repetition of similar 72-year experiment with the UN, in which the risk of a new world, nuclear war flared up to the extreme limit of a half-minute affinity. Maybe humanity and its UN should not bring this knowingly failed experiment to the end and wait for the start of a new world war? The failure of this experiment for 72 years is proved by that small set of facts, which is collected in Appendix 1 of this project. It sufficiently motivates the need for the proposed reform of the UN. The sad age-old experience of the UN and the League of Nations to prevent war and ensure a global peace should make it necessary to seek a new, viable and effective way of uniting nations on the basis of social harmony but not militaristic security, ready at any second to explode nuclear catastrophic war.
The peacemaking effectiveness of harmony is confirmed by history long ago, beginning with Numa Pompilius (7 century BC), the second king of Rome, who was able to pacify the militant Roman people and provide it with a peaceful life during 43 years of social harmony. Other similar numerous facts are considered in the GHA mentioned books. This remains an unattainable goal of humankind and its international organizations, primarily the UN, of the 20th and 21st centuries.
The general philosophy and dialectics of harmony was laid by the "founding father" of ancient dialectics - Heraclitus of Ephesus more than 2,5 thousand years ago, whose key ideas of harmony together with their modern transcription are given above as epigraphs. The depth of his philosophy of harmony - the hidden dialectics of the "harmony of opposites" in social reality has not been known so far, except for a few intuitive guesses of geniuses; for example, Poincare and Einstein (see epigraphs). Unfortunately, for 2.5 thousand years after Heraclitus, human knowledge could not penetrate into the structure of the social "harmony of opposites", which contains the genetic code of humanity or the social genome of the human race and its global eternal peace.
Today humanity knows harmony no better and no more than Heraclitus 2,500 years ago, and in something less and worse than he because of the domination of violent ideologies and superficial one-dimensional disharmonious philosophies of the last two centuries. This is the result of disharmony in the development of the "two cultures", which Charles Snow already noted in the middle of the last century. In this disharmony, the rapid development of technocratic and military knowledge, supported by violent ideologies and excessive military budgets of national militaristic states, suppressed and practically stopped the development of social knowledge and the humanities that found themselves in a deep more than two-century stagnation and depression. The disharmony of two cultures can only lead to one result - to the military self-destruction of humankind, to which the priority of its military-technical culture was brought closer to maximum, for 30 seconds. The only way out is in the revolutionary Copernican shift to a deep structural knowledge of social harmony, the beginning of which Heraclitus laid. It is necessary, but not enough. It was continued only in the pluralistic spheral harmonious philosophy and sociology of the late 20th and early 21st century on the basis of the discovery of spherons, which became the main scientific hypothesis of social cognition today. But we will back to Heraclitus.
The main shortcoming and weakness of the philosophy of harmony with Heraclitus to the present day, as well as the practice of its application as a tool of reconciliation, lies in the absence of scientific structuring of social harmony, which has become the epistemological cause of the stagnation of social cognition. Passing through all the numerous attempts, we can say that the conscious scientific (sociocybernetic and tetrasociological) structuring of social harmony began in 1976 in a small youth club "Demiurge" in which about 30 members were divided into four equal spheral "micro-groups" reflecting the deep societal harmonious structure of Spherons (http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=305). The UN should unite nations not in their superficial and eternal dividing militarism of any nature and degree, but in their one and common denominator of a deep harmonious structure of spherons. This constant production structure ensures the life of every nation always, everywhere and without exception, therefore it must become the foundation for UN peace and harmony. Only such a UN is able to overcome the national militarism of all sorts and degrees and save humanity and the planet from a nuclear catastrophe.
On this basis, the "Axiom and the Structural Law of the UN of Harmony" is formulated, which constitutes its philosophical and scientific foundation: "The consolidation of nations in the UN Harmony is carried out on the basis of their deep harmonious structure of spherons, one and constant for all nations, excluding wars, militarism and violence between them. On the basis of a unified structure of national spherons, the UN spheral structure is formed with equal representation of the spherons of each nation in it (including gender equality), ensuring the harmony of the UN and the exclusion of any militarism from it." On this axiom, the UN harmony structural project, proposed here, was built. The war of nations and opposites is always on the visible surface, and their harmony is deeply hidden in the spherons natural structure that unites them. Wars will not cease until nations know their common structural spherons of harmony in order to follow and obey to their laws of peacefulness.
The UN Harmony should unite the nations in this structure in order to assist them in its cognition and share its awareness into joint building global peace, for the liberation of humankind from the debris and slavery of historical militarism, trampling and ignoring the first exclusive human right to life, which is not recognized by the modern UN.The global peace will be included in the UN Harmony Millennium Goals, of which it was excluded by the modern UN. This is the exclusive purpose and priority mission of the United Nations of Harmony: to help nations to free themselves from wars and militarism through scientific cognition, use and conscious implementation of the structural harmony of spherons. Now, no one is helping nations in this, so they often prefer war instead of peace, constantly preparing for it in a continuous and endless arms race instead of building a global peace. Effective for a global peace, the UN can be created only at the deep harmonious level of the national spherons, which (and those, and others) should be equally represented in the UN Harmony. Only the conscious scientific structural harmony of the spherons at the national and global levels is capable "to shift of the arms race into a peace race," as Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of.
This is the significance of our UN Harmony project in its constructive part. His motivating part is presented in "Appendix 2. Facts. Motivation" in the composition of this project.
Appendix 4: Declaration - Human Right to Life, Global Peace and Social Harmony
(The original version)
Preamble
1. Declaration of Human Right to Life, Global Peace and Social Harmony - hereinafter abbreviated as DHRL is the continuation, deepening and development of the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" (1948), hereinafter abbreviated to UDHR, one right - right to life, which is mentioned only once (Article 3 of the UDHR), without justification of its role, without its definition, decoding and detailing and without its maintenance. All this is filled in this Declaration. The concept of "freedom" in different combinations and linguistic forms is used in the UDHR 33 times, and the concept of "right to life" is used only once in Article 3,although without life freedom does not exist.
2. Recognition of a human's life - the fundamental existential attribute of a person, which determines his/her first natural-biological right to life, as well as the existence of the human race - is the basis of all human rights as they do not exist outside of a person's life. Therefore, the right to life is the foundation of the Constitutions of almost all countries of the world.
3. Neglect of human life led to hundreds of millions of acts of his murder only in the last century, the most massive of which are committed during world wars and other armed actions of the different states and also various terrorist and bandit groups.
4. The human right to life must be fully protected by the rule of law, so that people are not forced to resort, as a last means, to an uprising against lawlessness or powerlessness of power to ensure the human right to life, primarily from threats of military genocide and terror.
5. The human right to life in its fully safety is ensured by global peace, unity and brotherhood, which are consciously built by the world’s peoples together from the most profound, genetic structure of social harmony of the spherons in humanity, in each nation and each settlement. They cover all population as a whole, without any exception at all levels.
6. The human right to live in its fully security can only be guaranteed by the global peace of all nations from the deep conscious harmony of the spherons, which frees people from any weapons, militarism and wars and prevents any conflict by spherons consensus, consent or compromise through the mechanisms of spheral democracy with the built-in institution of harmonious opposition of the spherons, with equal representation in it of men and women who, as parents legislatively provide the children's suffrage, which makes the spheral democracy by 100% representative democracy. The children's suffrage exercised by parents is a necessary political and legal condition for ensuring the right to life from birth and childhood.
7. The lack of human right to life frees any mass military assassination of people from any responsibility and actually reduces the value of human life and human resource to zero. It opens an unhindered path for the prosperity of wars, the arms race and militarism, which are still thriving in human history. Only the recognition of right to life, supported by the recognition of any war, apart from the war on terror, the crime against humanity and genocide, can put an end to the militaristic inhuman history. But this requires the UN Harmony, because the previous pacifist international organizations were powerless to do anything in this direction for almost two centuries.
8. Taking into account the key importance of human right to life among all its rights/freedoms and for the existence of each nation and all of humanity, the UNH General Assembly proclaims this Declaration of human right to life, global peace and social harmony as a task that are for all peoples and all states so that every person and every institution of society, constantly keeping in mind this Declaration, aspires through education and enlightenment to promote respect for the human right to life as a foundation of all his rights and freedoms, and strict execution in all national and international actions of states - members of the UNH and others.
Article 1
All human beings are born for life, therefore the human right to life is the first natural-biological and continuous human right from birth to death, constituting the fundamental base of all of its rights, its dignity, freedom and equality with similar human beings endowed with reason and conscience for life behavior in the spirit of peace, harmony and brotherhood.
Article 2
The human right to life, given by God and nature, does not know the difference in any natural or artificial features, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, class or other provision. Furthermore, no distinction should be made on the basis of the political, legal or international status of the country or territory, to which a person belongs, regardless of whether this territory is independent, trust, non-self-governing, or otherwise limited in its sovereignty.
Article 3
Everyone human being has the right to life, which is directly related to his/her and is expressed in his/her personal safety and personal immunity, determined by the whole systemic set of national and international existential conditions.
Article 4
Architecture and context of natural-biological human right to life are not only broader than other human rights but also deeper, encompassing the entire natural, ecological human habitat, the unfavorable conditions of which can be deadly to the individual. Therefore, the social and legal care of humanity and every society about the life of each person should be more universal, scientifically fundamental and humanisticly exhaustive.
Article 5
The scientific fundamentalism of the human right to life in the biosphere is determined by the Umberto Maturana’s discovery of the general nature of all living beings, including human, in "autopoiesis" (self-production) from birth to death. Human life is his/her autopoiesis in four spheres of social production, which ensure the life of human and society with four necessary and sufficient resources: people, information, organization and things (all material goods and services).
Article 6
Human right to life is provided only by the harmony of all natural and social conditions of life, because any of their disharmonies directly and indirectly and in time dynamics lead to death and to the murder of a person. Harmony is the life of human, his/her noosphere / humanity and disharmony is their death. Intuitively, this discovery was made by mankind a long time ago, but Henri Poincaré first expressed it scientifically: "The inner harmony of the world is the only true objective reality," because only this reality survives, and human and his/her noosphere along with it, if he/she is in harmony with it, inside it and not outside it for their own free or involuntary disharmony.
Article 7
The third fundamental scientific discovery that reveals the human right to life is the participation of each person in social solidarity autopoiesis with other people in a deep harmonious structure of four spherons engaged in the production of four necessary and sufficient resources for the life of each person and each society. The stochastic, probabilistic transition of each individual from one network spheron to another during his/her life from birth to death and every day is investigated by the sociocybernetic science of the infinite system of direct and inverse connections of spherons that always strive for balance, equilibrium and harmony as a condition for their survival along with all individuals included in them. Outside the spherons harmony their production activity of the necessary resources is impossible, i.e. autopoiesis of every individual and every society, regardless of place and time.
Article 8
Human right to life is identical with the human right to global peace and social harmony that constitute the universal, integral and fundamental conditions of human life on the planet. Human life in a global society is ensured by the social harmony of humanity spherons, from which their global peace flows and arrives. Therefore, the human right to life is inseparable and identical with his/her right to a global peace and social harmony.
Article 9
On the background of three fundamental discoveries of key human life conditions that determine the structure of his/her natural right to life, its most dangerous disharmonies are revealed as its massive and persistent threats. They include environmental and climate disharmonies and threats to human life, the overcoming of which is possible only through the consciously harmonious attitude of the noosphere/humanity to the biosphere and all nature as a whole. That, in turn, is possible only through the formation of a conscious harmony of spherons and all their parts - nations, classes, cultures, religions, etc. within the noosphere.
Article 10
The inner harmony of the noosphere/humanity faces a number of persistent and even growing disharmonies in the form of such challenges and risks as continuous and increasingly bloody and dangerous wars, arms race, militarism, terrorism, growing inequality and poverty, uncontrolled population growth, deepening crisis of traditional democracy, the growing stagnation and lag in the social sciences, a moral crisis, etc.
Article 11
The UN Harmony (presented in a special project), based on the fundamental scientific discoveries that determine human right to life, recognizes all wars apart from a war on terror, as well as related militarism and arms race, as a crime against humanity and genocide, since every war is a deliberate and intended mass murder of people, regardless of the causes and conditions that motivate it. All wars must be criminalized and recognized as a crime in the same way as the crime is recognizing the murder of an individual in each state.
Article 12
The UN Harmony only legitimate war recognizes the war on terrorism, which should not be imposed on individual countries but on joint UNH forces, designed to counter and suppress any armed violence, especially terrorism. Terrorism is individuals or any groups that recognize only armed violence and murder in order to achieve their own goals. Any illegal armed groups for any criminal purpose - robbery, banditry, seizure of power, violence against any groups of people or an individual, etc. equated and united in terms of "terrorism", "terror" and "terrorist group/individual". Only an international organized war on terror is legitimate for the sake of human rights for life.
Article 13
The independent, conscious and deliberate refusal of the individual from the right to his own life - euthanasia - is regulated by national legislation in accordance with the norms of his culture and traditions. Outside of them, as suicide, it is recognized as an unworthy act that tramples the dignity of a human.
Article 14
The right to life excludes the death penalty in all its forms and allows us to recognize only life imprisonment the highest penalty.
Article 15
Human right to life is recognized by the UNH as the primary, fundamental and most powerful right not only for societies and states, but for every individual, imposing on his/her the duty to keep and preserve own life not only as a higher social value, but also as a higher individual value and vice-versa. The individual is obliged to observe all the fundamental both natural and social requirements of life, to take care of his/her health and harmonious all-round filling and development of his/her life, using for this purpose all the necessary spiritual, material, political, educational and natural conditions and qualities of the own character.
Article 16
1. In exercising own right to life, each person shall be subject only to such restrictions as are established by law solely for the purpose of ensuring due recognition and respect for right to life of others and for the satisfaction of the just requirements of morality, public order and general welfare in a democratic society.
2. The exercise of right to life should in no way be contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations of Harmony.
Article 17
Nothing in this Declaration can be interpreted as giving any state, group of persons or individuals the right to engage in any activity or to perform acts and abuse aimed at the destruction of human right to life, set out in this Declaration.
(This draft was drawn up by Dr. Leo Semashko on 12-12-17 for further discussion, correction and approval by the GHA)
Appendix 5: The UN Harmony Goals of the 21st Century instead of the UN Disharmony "Millennium Goals"
In 2000, the UN approved the UN Millennium Declaration [194], where it solemnly proclaimed seven "key objectives" of the third millennium, which the UN "assigns special significance". They are presented in the following table in two languages.
Table 1. The "Millennium Goals" of the traditional UN
The UN stressed that its members bear a "collective responsibility" for the fulfillment of these goals. But the means to achieve them were reduced, as a rule, to common promises and appeals. For example, the achievement of the goals of "peace, security and disarmament" was limited to the following: "We will spare no effort to free our peoples from the scourge of war, whether within or between States, which has claimed more than 5 million lives in the past decade. We will also seek to eliminate the dangers posed by weapons of mass destruction." This means that the UN does not plan to exclude the wars in the next millennium; it preserves them and plans only “to free our peoples from the scourge of war"! Only!
To this was added a small list of very narrow measures: "respect for the rule of law", implement "the decisions of the International Court of Justice", "to make the United Nations more effective in maintaining peace and security by giving it the resources and tools it needs for conflict prevention, peaceful resolution of disputes, peacekeeping, post-conflict peace-building and reconstruction." "To strengthen cooperation between the United Nations and regional organizations,","to ensure the implementation, by States Parties, of treaties in areas such as arms control and disarmament","to take concerted action against international terrorism", "to intensify our efforts to fight transnational crime in all its dimensions "," strive for the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons," "to strive for the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons", “to call on all States to consider acceding to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-personnel Mines”, "we urge Member States to observe the Olympic Truce". We can name also dozens of similar partial measures completely powerless to eradicate wars and ensure a global peace.
At the end of the Declaration, it is again declared "We solemnly reaffirm, on this historic occasion, that the United Nations is the indispensable common house of the entire human family, through which we will seek to realize our universal aspirations for peace, cooperation and development. We therefore pledge our unstinting support for these common objectives and our determination to achieve them." It seems that the UN recognizes its "solemn statements and pledges" as the most effective means of achieving peace, which in reality it and its members have never fulfilled in 72 years.
We think that in the world there is not a single sensible person who believes that such "solemn promises" and similar half-measures as the "Olympic Truce", the banning of anti-personnel mines and drugs, the fight against terrorism, respect for the rule of law and the International court, and dozens of appeals to "strengthen," "ensure," "intensify" can achieve the goal of "peace, security and disarmament." Because none of the promises for 72 years has been fulfilled and instead of approaching to peace we see a rapid approach to a new world war. It is ridiculous and foolish to believe this, because all this has nothing to do with the reverse reality of the globalization of wars, genocide, militarism, the arms race, the growth of military budgets, the invention of new types of mass destruction, and the like. The UN, which accepts such Declarations, lives in a different, fantastic world, completely inadequate to reality.
The tragedy of this Declaration for humankind lies in the fact that among its countless "solemn promises" there is no promise of global peace in the future. To us are promised only "to free from the scourge (sorrows - L.S.) of war", obviously, assuming it (war) in the endless future! The traditional UN does not promise a global peace even in the third millennium! The global peace goal is excluded from the Declaration for the next thousand years! It lacks a scientific definition of its essence, as well as a necessary and sufficient system of means to achieve it. It is limited to purely pacifist, unsystematic and superficial means, unable to provide peace and bring humanity closer to it, that it sees 72 years of the UN existence. Similar Declaration rather serves the interests of growing militarism than the peace-loving expectations of humanity. It testifies the limitations and impotence of traditional pacifist thinking, which, contrary to Einstein, tries to solve problems at the same level of thinking that created them. No one intellectual or theoretical innovation in this Declaration is present.
But these "Millennium Goals" lasted only 15 years in the UN itself, because in 2015 it adopted another Declaration: "2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development" with its "17 Sustainable Development Goals", which, in fact, crossed out the "Millennium Goals" although the Agenda was declared they "are broader in scope and go further". [238] Among the "Millennium Goals" there is no "sustainable development" and among its purposes there is no separate special goal of a global peace, which in fact is absent and among the "millennium goals" as we have seen above. Both UN Declarations, at a distance of 15 years from each other, testify to the insignificant nature, in content and form, of the UN superficial pacifist thinking, which created all global problems in its 72 years of existence. At this superficial level of thinking there is no understanding of the deep identity and continuity of sustainable development and global peace that are divided in the UN documents. Their pacifist weakness and incapacity have served the whole of the last century and up to the present day the screen for prosperity to the most ferocious militarism of the US-NATO.
The UN poor level of traditional thinking can be overcome only at a new, deeper level of spheral thinking, which is represented in this UN Harmony project. If the traditional UN for 72 years of existence was unable to promise global peace and sustainable development, even in the new millennium, the UN Harmony guarantees their joint, inseparable achievement and ensuring during 50 years. It preserves some of the most important partial goals of the traditional UN and subordinates them to the goals of global peace, social harmony, sustainable development and the human right to life as the defining right for them. Therefore, these goals of the UN Harmony will be goals not of a vague millennium, but of a modern, 21st century, within which it guarantees the achievement and maintenance of both a global peace and sustainable development within a 50-year period of complete and universal disarmament. All these goals are goals of a single social harmony of the spherons.
Based on the "UN Harmony Agenda" in this project, we formulate the "Goals of the 21st Century" within the spheres/spherons’ thinking in the following table:
Table-2. The goals of the 21 st century of UN harmony and global peace.
Цели гармонии 21 века
Harmony goals for the 21st century
1.В течение 50 лет глобальный мир и устойчивое развитие в природе из сознательной социальной гармонии и равноправного партнерства сферонов на всех уровнях, начиная с ООН на основе «Науки глобального мира» (НГМ) [78] что обеспечит человечеству переход в гармоничную цивилизацию в конце 21 века
1. During 50 years are: global peace and sustainable development in nature from conscious social harmony and equal partnership of spherons at all levels, starting with the UN on the basis of "Global Peace Science" (GPS) [78] that will provide humanity with the transition to a harmonious civilization to the late 21st century
2.Развитие НГМ и всего комплекса социальных наук через исследование сферонов человечества, каждой страны и каждой ее части вплоть до семьи и индивида [190]
2. Development of GPS and the whole complex of social sciences through the study of humanity spherons, in each country and every part of it, up to the family and the individual [190]
3.Развитие глобальной духовной культуры гармоничного мира и гармоничной цивилизации на основе глобального гармоничного образования высшего качества с детства, семьи и школы и обеспечение соответствующей достойной работы
3. Development of global spiritual culture of harmonious peace and harmonious civilization on the basis of global harmonious education of the highest quality from childhood, family and school and ensuring appropriate decent work
4. Обеспечение полного разоружения и безопасности в течение 50 лет путем ежегодного всеобщего сокращения военных бюджетов на 2% с приоритетом ядерного разоружения в 10 лет
4. Ensuring complete disarmament and security for 50 years through an annual general reduction of military budgets by 2% with the priority of nuclear disarmament in 10 years
5. В рамках устойчивого мирного развития общая охрана окружающей среды; обеспечение доступной и чистой энергией; экологичные города, поселения, производство и потребление; сохранение климата и биосферы
5. Within the framework of sustainable peaceful development, overall environmental protection; providing affordable and clean energy; ecological cities, settlements, production and consumption; conservation of climate and biosphere
6. Полное искоренение голода и нищеты путем установления материальной, ресурсной ответственности богатейших слоев за беднейшие слои в границах их гармонии
6. Complete eradication of hunger and poverty by establishing the material, resource responsibility of the richest strata for the poorest layers within their harmony
7. Обеспечение хорошего здоровья, жилища, санитарии, чистой воды, воздуха и благосостояния для всех слоев
7. Ensuring good health, home, sanitation, clean water, air and well-being for all strata
8. Гендерное равенство, приоритет детей, снижение других неравенств путем учреждения сферной 100% демократии как глобального гармоничного управления, начиная с ООН, с равным распределением власти между сферонами; с механизмом внутренней гармоничной оппозиции и эффективной политической системы; с сильными и справедливыми институтами, свободными от милитаризма, коррупции и национализма; с обеспечением всех прав и свобод человека на основе приоритетного права человека на жизнь
8. Gender equality, children's priority, reduction of other inequalities by establishing spheral 100% democracy as global harmonious governance, starting with the UN, with equal distribution of power between the spherons; with the mechanism of internal harmonious opposition and an effective political system; with strong and just institutions free from militarism, corruption and nationalism; with the provision of all human rights and freedoms on the basis of the priority human right to life
9. Гармоничный рост экономики, индустрии, инфраструктуры, технических инноваций с приоритетом гуманитарных инноваций на основе гармоничного социального знания
9. Harmonious growth of the economy, industry, infrastructure, technical innovations with the priority of humanitarian innovations based on harmonious social knowledge
10. Гармоничное развитие ООН путем ее качественного, структурного реформирования в ООН Гармонии и Глобального Мира на основе НГМ, как предложено в данном проекте. Эта реформа – единственный способ усилить и уберечь ООН от печальной участи Лиги Наций, к которой она стремительно приближается вместе с крайним ростом вероятности новой мировой войны.
10. Harmonious development of the UТ through its qualitative, structural reform in the UN Harmony and the Global Peace on the basis of GPS, as proposed in this project. This reform is the only way to strengthen and protect the UN from the sad fate of the League of Nations, to which it is rapidly approaching, together with the extreme increase of the likelihood for a new world war.
These 10 UN goals of 21st century harmony include all the goals of both UN Declarations, but transform them, reinterpreting them in the new sociocybernetic paradigm of spheres and spherons at a new level of tetranet thinking [165]. Deep scientific thinking of spheres and spherons overcomes / resolves all global problems, challenges and risks generated by traditional surface thinking. The first, the main and holistic goal, including all the other goals is the achievement of a global peace during 50 years on the basis of GPS and UN Harmony as proposed in the GHA project. In the first comparison, the undoubted effectiveness of deep goals and means of UN harmony in relation to the unsystematic, unscientific and superficial, essentially empty and devoid of any effectiveness of the traditional UN disharmony goals becomes clear.
(This draft was drawn up by Dr. Leo Semashko on 14-12-17 for further discussion, correction and approval by the GHA)
Appendix 6: Spherons of the USA and Russia: transformation of "enemies" into friends and partners. How can an enemy be a partner?
The USA has long regarded Russia as an "enemy" (like many other countries in the world [38a]) and is constantly preparing for war with it [15; etc.]. Taking into account the period of the USSR, this lasts a century. On the contrary, Putin on behalf of Russia constantly names the US "partners" and is preparing not only to repel possible American aggression, but also to broader peaceful cooperation. Why such mutually exclusive assessments? Do they have a common denominator?
We, thinking representatives of both sides, who recognize only one, perspective of peaceful cooperation, with all our differences tried to answer questions about "enemies, partners, their war or peaceful cooperation." We will have to touch history, philosophy, science and politics a little, and we start with Einstein's simple genius thought: "The significant problems that we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." At what level of thinking did the hostile confrontation between the US and Russia arise?
It arose at the level of superficial ideological thinking of the USA ruling elite, defending the imperial domination and superiority of America in the world order, which it creates under its global leadership. What is in its end? The USA is constantly and continuously waging wars with all countries and peoples that somehow encroached to dispute or oppose the American dictate. As a result, "US Has Killed More Than 20 Million In 37 Nations Since WWII " [2]. Among the "enemies" of varying degrees in the past two decades, the United States is recorded today by more than 10 countries, with a total of almost a third of humanity [38a]. Russia is surrounded along the entire perimeter of land borders by US military bases: Western Europe, Afghanistan, Japan, South Korea. The US is planning a third world war, considering its different scenarios with different victims [1; 18[. Some of these scenarios were approved by the "insane Congress" [15]. As a result, the US is mired in the "globalization of war" for a century, and "The US government is the main supplier of violence in the world" as wrote Martin Luther King Jr.[56]
What is Russia in the past century? As the USSR foundation, as a result of communist ideological terror, it lost tens of millions. After the collapse of the USSR, especially in the era of President Putin since 2000, Russia has embarked on an independent development beyond the American dictatorship and the necessary build-up of military capabilities necessary to repulse. As a result of an independent policy, Russia has become an "enemy #1" for the American ruling elite. Putin repeated a thousand times that Russia was not going to attack anyone, but would give an adequate response to any aggressor. Therefore, Russia is focused primarily on cooperation and is ready to partner with any country, including the United States, despite all its hostility. Therefore, he always names the US "partners" of Russia.
The different geopolitical approaches of the US and Russia and the reciprocal contrasting definitions of "enemy" / "partner" are not accidental, not political terminology or petty cunning but intuitive expression of different levels of thinking. One of them is immersed in the surface layer of the apparent contradictions of the irremovable ruling elite (under the propaganda tinsel of the pseudo-democratic signboard of the replacement puppet presidents), who cares not about the life of the nation, but only about its world domination. Another of them takes into account visible threats, prepares for their active military repulse, but is not limited to the militaristic surface, but rests on the life foundation of universal peace and harmonious cooperation, Putin: "Peace, peaceful life were and remain the ideal of humanity", and his way to it he sees thus: "The world of the future: through a clash to harmony" [93,111].
Putin's intuition is deeper than the traditional superficial militaristic thinking of the US ruling elite, its military (Pentagon)-industrial and media-congressional complex [53]. The depth of Putin's thinking lies in his ability to feel behind the clashes of interests the fundamental harmonious foundations of the peaceful life of all nations without exception, including the United States and Russia. About these levels of reality, Heraclitus reflected more than 2.5 thousand years ago, speaking of "harmony and war of opposites", where war is surface and appearance, and harmony is depth and hidden. (Please, see Appendix 3: "Philosophy and Dialectics of the UN Spherons")
Unfortunately, the scientific understanding of structural harmony remains unknown until now. The first scientific approximation to this structure was carried out in the GHA, in its statistical studies of the spherons presented in the "Global Peace Science" [78].Only a scientific understanding of the harmonious structure of spherons as the genetic code of each country and the genome of humankind as a whole raises the mindset to that new level where the solution of the global problems of humankind opens, first and foremost the problem of achieving global peace that is revealed in details in the GHA named book. At this level, the "partnership of enemies" - cooperation between the US and Russia - becomes clear. At this level, the fundamental reform of the UN, which calls for the unification of nations not on a disharmonious militaristic surface, but at the level of their deep structural harmony of the spherons, becomes understandable at this level. At this level, the structure and essence of the fundamental law of the United Nations - the "Earth Constitution" as the Constitution of harmonious spherons of humanity, which constitute the common denominator of all nations, becomes understandable at this level.
If "peace is achieved not in war but in understanding," as Einstein wrote, an historic summit of the USA and Russia is needed to understand the new scientific level of thinking that has reached the level of knowledge of the deep structural harmony of the spherons, as the basis for peaceful life and cooperation of all countries of the world, including the US and Russia. The USA and Russia Summit (maybe with the invitation of China, India and the European Union) on this topic, ccoul be called "Global Summit of Peace, New Thinking and Harmonious Cooperation", or otherwise, keeping the main thing in the title: transition to a new level of thinking that provides deep, fundamental vital interests of the US and Russia, like all other countries, harmonious cooperation without wars, violence, sanctions, threats, militarism and superiority. Only then the US and Russia will be able to fulfill the great testament of Martin Luther King: "shift the arms race into a peace race."
The first shift that is required for this is a shift of the USA surface militaristic thinking, on which they think of themselves and Russia (and others) as "enemies", to a deep harmonious thinking of the spherons, in which all nations are friends. Russia and Putin are at this deep level, intuitively sensing the spherons in the long historical perspective of Orthodox sobornost, consent and peace. Without it, the shift in thinking from the traditional surface and militaristic level to a deep harmonious and peace-loving level, it is impossible to transform the military confrontation into peaceful, harmonious cooperation. Only in this case, the enemies can become partners, or, as Christ said, "the enemies will become friends."
(This article was written by Dr. Leo Semashko on 30-11-17 for its further discussion, adjustment and approval in the GHA).
Appendix 7: Aphorisms and statements about harmony and peace of different thinkers for the UNH:
Indian Vedas: ‘Let all men live in peace and harmony’, and ‘Let all people be happy in life’.
This knowledge enables us to live in harmony with all beings and our environment.
They had harmony of the mind, heart and hand in a way that was beneficial to the society as a whole.
Buddha: Harmony comes from within. Do not seek it without.
Happiness comes from harmony, not money or fame.
Confucius: 70 years is understanding of the harmony of the universe.A noble husband strives for harmony and consent with others and with himself.
Pythagoras: (Pythagoras discovered the laws of harmony and harmonic relations between sounds).Measure is in all things. Measure is in all respect.
Consider sacred numbers, weight and measure, / Here are the children of equality of grace. It is the greatest of the blessings that are given to us. / Know, the numbers are the gods on earth.Where there is a weapon, there are no wise there laws. Do not avoid there and the war and the grief of mountains. What is Wisdom? The first principle of it is in harmony of mind. Only approaching a harmonious sound, we comprehend secrets hidden in silence. That in Tetraktida, being, is known. It is Harmony, in which the forces of the world. From death, that soul will be saved, that in love, / In harmony friendly, in harmony of the family.
Hierocles of Alexandria (V century AD, commentator of Pythagoras):
The basis of everything is a measure. Chetveritsa, an inexhaustible life source.Chetveritsa is a well of the eternal world order, it is the same as the god-creator.
Plutarch, about Numa Pompilius, the second Roman king (7th century BC):
He (Numa) divided the whole (Roman) people into several parts / classes by employment (by professional shops) in order to make a difference between citizens of the other kind, to destroy the first, the main reason for disagreement between (the two enmity parts / tribes of the Roman people) ... that brought harmony and unanimity (into the militant Roman people, providing its with 43 years of peaceful life, eliminating any wars and insurrections).
Heraclitus: Cosmos is harmony and war of opposites.
The hidden harmony is better than the visible.
Plato: (Teachings on the harmony of the four spheres and elements Plato expounds in "Timaeus.")Cosmos is a living being, the harmony of four elements: fire, water, air and earth.The body of the sky was born visible, and the soul - invisible, participial to harmony ...The soul harmony the Muse was bestowed upon every sensible admirer ...All things were a state of complete disorder, and only God brought each of them to harmony ... the God first arranged all this, and then composed from this our Universe - a single living being ...All good, no doubt is beautiful and beautiful is proportionate (harmonious) ....Of all the types of purification and strengthening of the body, gymnastics is most preferable.The thoughtful discretion of the world's harmonies and revolutions...
Aristotle: Harmony is a combination of opposites.
Zoroaster/Zarathustra: Absolute Goodness is harmony of the World, absolute Evil - destruction ...
Zarathustra preached harmony of three levels of order ...
Leonardo da Vinci: A creative person must first of all know the mathematics, be able to master it, in order to comprehend harmony, because it rests on proportion, measure and number, serving as the fundamental principle of order in the world.
Kepler: Harmonices Mundi. Harmony of the World
Kant: Natural harmony among men is the guarantee of perpetual peace,
Poincare: The internal harmony of the world is the only true objective realityThere is peace at the heart of the din, concord in babel.
Dostoevsky: Russia …is all world, … of great general harmony, fraternal final consent.
Tolstoy: In the hands of war is billions of money, millions of obedient troops and in our hands is only one, but the mightiest tool in the world — the truth.
Having been born, a person represents a primordial harmony of truth, beauty and goodness.
Alexander Bogdanov: Philosophy changes its tasks, changes itself, as soon as it forgets that in the living experience lays its material and its starting point, that the harmonization of life is its unchanging goal.
Roerich: Humankind, although slowly, is moving towards harmony. ... Such far-off concepts as love, good, perfection, that is, all satellites of harmony? Harmony is often not understood. But harmony is not an abstract chant. Harmony, harmonization of centers is the identification of activity in all its power ...
Gandhi: Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
Einstein: Harmony of natural law reveals an intelligence of such superiority ...
We have to admire in humility the beautiful harmony of the structure of this world.
Gordon Pask: Evil is that which restricts the right of actors to interact.
Gregory Bateson: The only way out is spiritual, intellectual, and emotional revolution in which, finally, we learn to experience first hand the interloping connections between person and person, organism and organism, action and consequence.
George H. Mead: Warfare is an utterly stupid method of settling differences of interest between different nations.
"Imitation". Konstantin Kushner:-Worldwide Spherons:Winged words are a peaceful alternative to winged missiles.Winged words know no boundaries and fly further winged missiles.
"Imitation". Leo Semashko’s aphorisms and statements about harmony, life and death:
- Harmony is life, disharmony is death, war, struggle.-Harmony gives birth to life, and disharmony is violence and death.
-You can live only with harmony, but not with war, with which you can only die.
-Spherons are the heart of the social harmony of social production.
-If you cannot, or do not know how, or do not want to live in any ideology by harmony, then you have only one thing, to live in struggle, violence and war of all with all, to die ingloriously and without a trace. These are terrorists and other rapists.
-Violence, by its primitivity, quickly finds leaders; but harmony, by its complexity, finds them for a long time, hard and little.-Violence is too tempting with its simplicity and apparent efficiency.
-Total violence, as absolute disharmony, is ruthless to life, depriving it of every place and displacing it by death.
-Anyone who is not able to live harmoniously, intuitively or consciously, is doomed to death.- Marxism-Leninism is a "dead dog" of its own class struggle violence, devoid of harmony.
-Marxist violence, like any other, was superfluous for life.-Studying harmony almost all my life, at the end of it I can say, following Socrates: "I know that I do not know anything in world harmony."
-People live in harmony by intuition, remaining ignorant in it, consciously venturing into all minor disharmonies.
-Violence is permissible in harmony in the only case to protect life from violence.- Aphorism is a compressed harmony of words for peaceful mutual understanding.- People come in and out into different network spherons of harmony many times a day and master it in different spheres and in their different networks.
-Production is possible only in the harmony of spherons, between which parts there can be temporary disharmony and violence, paralyzing the corresponding part of the production.
-Violence needs arms and legs, and for harmony the main thing is mind.- Health is the harmony of everything, always, in everything that does not harm life.
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PEN Internationalcontinues to call for the release of blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah, in light of the two-year anniversary of his imprisonment last week. He was sentenced to five years in prison on 23 February 2015 following a retrial, for contravening a repressive law which restricts peaceful demonstrations. PEN International believes he is imprisoned for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression and assembly and is calling for his immediate and unconditional release.
PEN is also concerned by recent reports that Abd El Fattah and other prisoners at Tora Prison Complex B (where Abd El Fattah is imprisoned) are not allowed to receive any books, apart from textbooks for study purposes. The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners states that recreational and cultural activities should be provided, and that prisoners should be allowed some contact with the outside world, including by receiving correspondence from family as well as having access to newspapers, periodicals or special institutional publications. PEN believes that books and newspapers are essential for the transmission of thought and enrichment of culture and education, and calls for the authorities to allow Alaa Abd El Fattah and all other prisoners in Tora Prison Complex B to receive books and other printed materials such as magazines and newspapers.
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Protesting the continued imprisonment of Alaa Abd El Fattah;
Calling for the immediate and unconditional release of Alaa Abd El Fattah, and all others held solely for the peaceful exercise of their right to freedom of expression and assembly, in accordance with Egypt’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which it is a state party.
Urging the authorities to allow Alaa Abd El Fattah regular exercise and access to fresh air while in prison; Urging the authorities to allow Alaa Abd El Fattah and all other prisoners in Tora Prison Complex B to receive books and other printed materials such as magazines and periodicals, newspapers and any personal correspondence, in addition to text books for study purposes, in line with the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi,
Office of the President,
Al Ittihadia Palace,
Cairo, Arab Republic of Egypt,
Fax: +202 2 391 1441
Email: p.spokesman@op.gov.eg Moh_moussa@op.gov.eg
Salutation: Your Excellency
Twitter: @AlsisiOfficial
Minister of Justice Mohamed Hossam Abdel Rahim
Ministry of Justice,
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Fax: +202 2 795 8103
Email: mjustice@moj.gov.eg
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Read Alaa’s extraordinary piece for the Guardian, written from Cairo’s Tora Prison in January 2016
Background Alaa Abd El Fattah was one of the very first bloggers in Arabic and was the first to aggregate blogs coming out of Egypt. He has always worked for freedom of expression whether in his writing or in his work designing open-source digital software. His popular blog — established with his wife, Manal—helped spark a community of bloggers in the Arab World committed to the promotion of free speech and human rights.
He was one of the first Egyptian netizens seeking to facilitate a movement for political change in the wake of the January 2011 uprising, and he started a nation-wide people’s initiative enabling citizen collaboration in the drafting of the Egyptian Constitution. He was later among the many activists and political activists to fall foul of the controversial November 2013 law banning peaceful protest without government permission.
Following his arrest in June 2014, Abd El Fattah staged a partial hunger strike in prison, drinking only juice and other fluids. He was released on bail in 2014 having spent 115 days in prison. He was re-arrested at the resumption of his trial in October 2014 and sentenced four months later to five years in prison. He has three years still to serve. The United Nation’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in its opinion delivered in June 2016 found that he was arbitrarily detained as a result of his exercise of his right to freedom of opinion and his participation in a peaceful demonstration on 26 November 2013.
Meanwhile, the authorities have sought to bring new charges against him, in relation to comments made on social media and in interviews with the press, in what appears to be an attempt to extend his detention and to deter others from speaking out.
Abd El Fattah has been gradually denied access to books, pens, and paper since his imprisonment. In response to the severe restrictions on his right to read and receive information and correspondence, the Egyptian Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE), brought a case to the Administrative Court (No 20107/2017). They requested a stay of the authorities’ decision to forbid Abd El Fattah to receive magazines and periodicals relating to his profession; that he be allowed to receive two daily newspapers at his own expense; and to ensure that he regularly receives his personal correspondence. It also asked the authorities to provide reasons for withholding correspondence, books and printed material. The administrative court examined the first hearing of the case on 21 February. However, according to Abd El Fattah’s aunt, renowned Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif, his family was told on 27 February – at the main gate of Tora Complex B – that all books (apart from textbooks) were now generally banned for all prisoners in the Complex. Abd El Fattah’s family believes this was in response to a statement the family published on the two-year anniversary of his imprisonment on 23 February 2017, which referenced the lawsuit.
PEN believes that prisoners should be able to receive reading materials including books and newspapers. Books and newspapers are essential for the transmission of thought and enrichment of culture and education. Writers that PEN has campaigned on behalf of have written moving messages on the important role books play in detention.
PEN Centres have been actively campaigning on behalf of Abd El Fattah. Abd El Fattah is an Honorary Member of Austrian PEN. English PEN will be highlighting his case at the English PEN Modern Literature Festival where poet Mischa Foster Poole will perform a new piece in his honour.
PEN’s work on Egypt The climate for free expression in Egypt has deteriorated sharply in recent years. PEN passed a Resolution on Egypt at its 82nd World Congress and noted with concern the rise in the number of writers and journalists who have been detained or imprisoned solely for exercising their right to freedom of expression, association, and assembly, including during journalistic, artistic, or human rights work. For example, in January 2016, the poet Fatima Naoot was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment on charges of ‘contempt of Islam’ and ‘disturbing public peace’ for a comment made on Facebook criticising a traditional Islamic celebration. In November 2016, an appeals court reduced and suspended the three-year prison sentence to six months. Naoot is appealing the decision as the suspension does not mean she has been acquitted of the charges.
PEN has also campaigned on the case of journalist and novelist Ahmed Naji, who was sentenced to two years in prison in February 2016 for ‘violating public modesty’ in relation to the publication of excerpts from his 2014 novel Istikhdam al-Haya (The Use of Life). On 18 December 2016, a Court suspended Naji’s sentence pending his appeal, which has now been scheduled for 2 April 2017.
Internationally acclaimed poet Omar Hazek was banned from leaving Egypt in January 2016 to accept an Oxfam Novib/PEN Award for Freedom of Expression. In early February 2017, Hazek was detained alongside fellow activists and questioned for five hours, before being released.
PEN continues to call for the Egyptian authorities to protect the rights of all Egyptians to freely express their views, whether as citizens, journalists, or writers, as protected under the Egyptian Constitution and as per Egypt’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
For further information, please contact Lianna Merner, PEN International, Koops Mill Mews, 162-164 Abbey Street, London, SE1 2AN, UK, Tel.: +44 (0) 20 7405 0338, Email: lianna.merner@pen-international.org
PEN Internationalcontinues to call for the release of blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah, in light of the two-year anniversary of his imprisonment last week. He was sentenced to five years in prison on 23 February 2015 following a retrial, for contravening a repressive law which restricts peaceful demonstrations. PEN International believes he is imprisoned for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression and assembly and is calling for his immediate and unconditional release.
PEN is also concerned by recent reports that Abd El Fattah and other prisoners at Tora Prison Complex B (where Abd El Fattah is imprisoned) are not allowed to receive any books, apart from textbooks for study purposes. The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners states that recreational and cultural activities should be provided, and that prisoners should be allowed some contact with the outside world, including by receiving correspondence from family as well as having access to newspapers, periodicals or special institutional publications. PEN believes that books and newspapers are essential for the transmission of thought and enrichment of culture and education, and calls for the authorities to allow Alaa Abd El Fattah and all other prisoners in Tora Prison Complex B to receive books and other printed materials such as magazines and newspapers.
TAKE ACTION: Share on Facebook, Twitter and other social media
Send letters of appeal to the Egyptian authorities:
Protesting the continued imprisonment of Alaa Abd El Fattah;
Calling for the immediate and unconditional release of Alaa Abd El Fattah, and all others held solely for the peaceful exercise of their right to freedom of expression and assembly, in accordance with Egypt’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which it is a state party.
Urging the authorities to allow Alaa Abd El Fattah regular exercise and access to fresh air while in prison; Urging the authorities to allow Alaa Abd El Fattah and all other prisoners in Tora Prison Complex B to receive books and other printed materials such as magazines and periodicals, newspapers and any personal correspondence, in addition to text books for study purposes, in line with the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi,
Office of the President,
Al Ittihadia Palace,
Cairo, Arab Republic of Egypt,
Fax: +202 2 391 1441
Email: p.spokesman@op.gov.eg Moh_moussa@op.gov.eg
Salutation: Your Excellency
Twitter: @AlsisiOfficial
Minister of Justice Mohamed Hossam Abdel Rahim
Ministry of Justice,
Lazoghly Sq.,
Fax: +202 2 795 8103
Email: mjustice@moj.gov.eg
Salutation: Dear Minister
Please send your letters via the Embassy of the Egypt in your country. Addresses may be found here.
***Please send appeals immediately. Check with PEN International if sending appeals after 3 April 2017. ***
Please inform PEN of any action you take, and of any responses you receive.
Spread the word Please share details of Alaa Abd El Fattah’s case on social media. If you have a Twitter account, please consider tweeting your support with the hashtag #FreeAlaa
Send a message of support If you would like to send a message of support to Alaa and his family please contact lianna.merner@pen-international.org for more details.
Read and share Alaa’s work
Read Alaa’s extraordinary piece for the Guardian, written from Cairo’s Tora Prison in January 2016
Background Alaa Abd El Fattah was one of the very first bloggers in Arabic and was the first to aggregate blogs coming out of Egypt. He has always worked for freedom of expression whether in his writing or in his work designing open-source digital software. His popular blog — established with his wife, Manal—helped spark a community of bloggers in the Arab World committed to the promotion of free speech and human rights.
He was one of the first Egyptian netizens seeking to facilitate a movement for political change in the wake of the January 2011 uprising, and he started a nation-wide people’s initiative enabling citizen collaboration in the drafting of the Egyptian Constitution. He was later among the many activists and political activists to fall foul of the controversial November 2013 law banning peaceful protest without government permission.
Following his arrest in June 2014, Abd El Fattah staged a partial hunger strike in prison, drinking only juice and other fluids. He was released on bail in 2014 having spent 115 days in prison. He was re-arrested at the resumption of his trial in October 2014 and sentenced four months later to five years in prison. He has three years still to serve. The United Nation’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in its opinion delivered in June 2016 found that he was arbitrarily detained as a result of his exercise of his right to freedom of opinion and his participation in a peaceful demonstration on 26 November 2013.
Meanwhile, the authorities have sought to bring new charges against him, in relation to comments made on social media and in interviews with the press, in what appears to be an attempt to extend his detention and to deter others from speaking out.
Abd El Fattah has been gradually denied access to books, pens, and paper since his imprisonment. In response to the severe restrictions on his right to read and receive information and correspondence, the Egyptian Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE), brought a case to the Administrative Court (No 20107/2017). They requested a stay of the authorities’ decision to forbid Abd El Fattah to receive magazines and periodicals relating to his profession; that he be allowed to receive two daily newspapers at his own expense; and to ensure that he regularly receives his personal correspondence. It also asked the authorities to provide reasons for withholding correspondence, books and printed material. The administrative court examined the first hearing of the case on 21 February. However, according to Abd El Fattah’s aunt, renowned Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif, his family was told on 27 February – at the main gate of Tora Complex B – that all books (apart from textbooks) were now generally banned for all prisoners in the Complex. Abd El Fattah’s family believes this was in response to a statement the family published on the two-year anniversary of his imprisonment on 23 February 2017, which referenced the lawsuit.
PEN believes that prisoners should be able to receive reading materials including books and newspapers. Books and newspapers are essential for the transmission of thought and enrichment of culture and education. Writers that PEN has campaigned on behalf of have written moving messages on the important role books play in detention.
PEN Centres have been actively campaigning on behalf of Abd El Fattah. Abd El Fattah is an Honorary Member of Austrian PEN. English PEN will be highlighting his case at the English PEN Modern Literature Festival where poet Mischa Foster Poole will perform a new piece in his honour.
PEN’s work on Egypt The climate for free expression in Egypt has deteriorated sharply in recent years. PEN passed a Resolution on Egypt at its 82nd World Congress and noted with concern the rise in the number of writers and journalists who have been detained or imprisoned solely for exercising their right to freedom of expression, association, and assembly, including during journalistic, artistic, or human rights work. For example, in January 2016, the poet Fatima Naoot was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment on charges of ‘contempt of Islam’ and ‘disturbing public peace’ for a comment made on Facebook criticising a traditional Islamic celebration. In November 2016, an appeals court reduced and suspended the three-year prison sentence to six months. Naoot is appealing the decision as the suspension does not mean she has been acquitted of the charges.
PEN has also campaigned on the case of journalist and novelist Ahmed Naji, who was sentenced to two years in prison in February 2016 for ‘violating public modesty’ in relation to the publication of excerpts from his 2014 novel Istikhdam al-Haya (The Use of Life). On 18 December 2016, a Court suspended Naji’s sentence pending his appeal, which has now been scheduled for 2 April 2017.
Internationally acclaimed poet Omar Hazek was banned from leaving Egypt in January 2016 to accept an Oxfam Novib/PEN Award for Freedom of Expression. In early February 2017, Hazek was detained alongside fellow activists and questioned for five hours, before being released.
PEN continues to call for the Egyptian authorities to protect the rights of all Egyptians to freely express their views, whether as citizens, journalists, or writers, as protected under the Egyptian Constitution and as per Egypt’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
For further information, please contact Lianna Merner, PEN International, Koops Mill Mews, 162-164 Abbey Street, London, SE1 2AN, UK, Tel.: +44 (0) 20 7405 0338, Email: lianna.merner@pen-international.org
Idris Said Aba Arre has been held without known charges or trial, incommunicado, since his arrest in 2001.
Idris Said Aba Arre is a writer, a disabled veteran of the Eritrean war of Independence and a vocal critic of Eritrea’s mother-tongue education policy. He was arrested in October 2001 after denouncing the arrests of the G-15*, a group of politicians detained for publishing an open letter calling for democratic change in Eritrea. Months before his arrest he published his seminal work on mother-tongue education in which he criticised the government’s post-independence language policy. The article – Education in Mother-tongue: Between the Anvil of Popular Rejection and the Hammer of the Academic of the Ministry [of Education] – highlights the government’s tendency to use Tigrinya as the default official language – one of the nine language groups in the country – and the way in which it severely disadvantages members of other language groups.
The article also criticizes the government’s policy of shutting down some schools teaching in Arabic and replacing Arabic as the medium of instruction in others with mother tongue education, under the purported aim of establishing equality of all nine Eritrean languages – a decision taken by the government with little consultation of Eritrean citizens. Aba Arre warned that the policy would create a two-tier country with a literate and illiterate society, to the detriment of minority language speakers.
Since his arrest in 2001 he has been arbitrarily detained, incommunicado, in a secret location. PEN International believes that Aba Arre’s detention is politically motivated and is an attempt by the Eritrean government to stifle critical voices.
PEN International calls for the immediate release of Aba Arre and urges the Eritrean government to end violations of freedom of expression and the continuing practice of incommunicado detention of writers and journalists without trial.
Take Action
Please send appeals:
Protesting the detention of the writer Idris Said Aba Arre on politically motivated grounds and without known charges or trial since 2001;
Demanding that the fate of Idris Said Aba Arre is immediately clarified by the Eritrean authorities and calling for his immediate and unconditional release;
Calling on the government to allow all citizens to learn in the language of their choice;
Appeals to:
Minister of Justice
Hon. Minister of Justice Fawzia Hashim
P.O.Box 241
Asmara,
Eritrea
Fax: + 291 1 126422
President
His Excellency, Isaias Afewerki
Office of the President,P.O.Box 257,
Asmara,Eritrea
Fax: + 2911 125123
Publicity & social media
PEN members are encouraged to:
Publish articles and opinion pieces in your national or local press highlighting Idris Said Aba Arre’s case;
Organise public events, press conferences or demonstrations;
Share information about Idris Said Aba Arre and your campaigning for him via social media;
Suggested tweet: #Eritrea free writer Idris Said Aba Arre held for 15yrs w/o charge #IMLD2016 @pen_int (add link to action paper);
Suggested tweet: On #IMLD2016 take action for imprisoned writer Idris Said Aba Arre held for 15yrs w/o charge @pen_int #Eritrea (add link to action paper).
Background:
Born in 1953 in Semhar province, Aba Arre was known for his critical thinking, his public readings and his seminars on the history of the Eritrean independence struggle. After the liberation war of Eritrea came to an end in 1991, Aba Arre was reportedly assigned to the newly established Ministry of Foreign Affairs and alongside his duties regularly contributed to the government-run Arabic daily newspaper, Eritrea al-Haditha. Aba Arre also freelanced for the independent newspaper ጽጌናይ (Tsigenay), and published a collection of short stories in Arabic in 1992.
He was a vocal critic of the government’s post-independence language policy particularly the way in which it dealt with mother-tongue education. He argued that the policy disadvantaged non-Tigrinya speakers who would see their own language as a poor substitute for the country’s default official language – Tigrinya. In one of the last articles he wrote before his arrest, he stated that the government’s language policy was creating more inequality among the different linguistic groups in the country and was impacting negatively on the education of minority language speakers. You can read the full article here.
‘The strange thing about the matter is that every time the discontent and contempt resurface, the stubbornness of the ministry grows.’
The government reportedly blacklisted him for his writing and on 11 October 2001, Aba Arre was arrested at his home and has been held, incommunicado, without charge or trial ever since.
Since the government crackdown on dissent in September 2001,there has been no freedom of opinion or expression, no independent media, no registered political parties apart from the ruling People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) and no national elections in the country.
According to recent estimates, as many as 10,000 Eritreans have been detained for their criticism or opposition of the government since 2001 with at least 28 journalists still in detention. As many as nine journalists and nine politicians may have died in custody due to torture and other ill treatment, harsh conditions and lack of medical treatment.
PEN International calls on the Eritrean government to release all prisoners detained for exercising their right to freedom of expression, to respect international human rights standards relating to the treatment of prisoners, to re-establish an independent media and to provide complete transparency on the whereabouts, health and legal status of all detained journalists, writers and activists.
*G-15 group – 11 politicians arrested for writing an open letter calling for democratic change. All the signatories of the letter were members of the G-15, a group of senior officials from the ruling People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ).
For further details please contact Lianna Merner, PEN International, Koops Mil, 162-164 Abbey Street, London SE1 2AN | Tel: +44 (0) 207 405 0338 | Fax +44 (0) 207 405 0339 | email: Lianna.Merner @ pen-international.org
Idris Said Aba Arre has been held without known charges or trial, incommunicado, since his arrest in 2001.
Idris Said Aba Arre is a writer, a disabled veteran of the Eritrean war of Independence and a vocal critic of Eritrea’s mother-tongue education policy. He was arrested in October 2001 after denouncing the arrests of the G-15*, a group of politicians detained for publishing an open letter calling for democratic change in Eritrea. Months before his arrest he published his seminal work on mother-tongue education in which he criticised the government’s post-independence language policy. The article – Education in Mother-tongue: Between the Anvil of Popular Rejection and the Hammer of the Academic of the Ministry [of Education] – highlights the government’s tendency to use Tigrinya as the default official language – one of the nine language groups in the country – and the way in which it severely disadvantages members of other language groups.
The article also criticizes the government’s policy of shutting down some schools teaching in Arabic and replacing Arabic as the medium of instruction in others with mother tongue education, under the purported aim of establishing equality of all nine Eritrean languages – a decision taken by the government with little consultation of Eritrean citizens. Aba Arre warned that the policy would create a two-tier country with a literate and illiterate society, to the detriment of minority language speakers.
Since his arrest in 2001 he has been arbitrarily detained, incommunicado, in a secret location. PEN International believes that Aba Arre’s detention is politically motivated and is an attempt by the Eritrean government to stifle critical voices.
PEN International calls for the immediate release of Aba Arre and urges the Eritrean government to end violations of freedom of expression and the continuing practice of incommunicado detention of writers and journalists without trial.
Take Action
Please send appeals:
Protesting the detention of the writer Idris Said Aba Arre on politically motivated grounds and without known charges or trial since 2001;
Demanding that the fate of Idris Said Aba Arre is immediately clarified by the Eritrean authorities and calling for his immediate and unconditional release;
Calling on the government to allow all citizens to learn in the language of their choice;
Appeals to:
Minister of Justice
Hon. Minister of Justice Fawzia Hashim
P.O.Box 241
Asmara,
Eritrea
Fax: + 291 1 126422
President
His Excellency, Isaias Afewerki
Office of the President,P.O.Box 257,
Asmara,Eritrea
Fax: + 2911 125123
Publicity & social media
PEN members are encouraged to:
Publish articles and opinion pieces in your national or local press highlighting Idris Said Aba Arre’s case;
Organise public events, press conferences or demonstrations;
Share information about Idris Said Aba Arre and your campaigning for him via social media;
Suggested tweet: #Eritrea free writer Idris Said Aba Arre held for 15yrs w/o charge #IMLD2016 @pen_int (add link to action paper);
Suggested tweet: On #IMLD2016 take action for imprisoned writer Idris Said Aba Arre held for 15yrs w/o charge @pen_int #Eritrea (add link to action paper).
Background:
Born in 1953 in Semhar province, Aba Arre was known for his critical thinking, his public readings and his seminars on the history of the Eritrean independence struggle. After the liberation war of Eritrea came to an end in 1991, Aba Arre was reportedly assigned to the newly established Ministry of Foreign Affairs and alongside his duties regularly contributed to the government-run Arabic daily newspaper, Eritrea al-Haditha. Aba Arre also freelanced for the independent newspaper ጽጌናይ (Tsigenay), and published a collection of short stories in Arabic in 1992.
He was a vocal critic of the government’s post-independence language policy particularly the way in which it dealt with mother-tongue education. He argued that the policy disadvantaged non-Tigrinya speakers who would see their own language as a poor substitute for the country’s default official language – Tigrinya. In one of the last articles he wrote before his arrest, he stated that the government’s language policy was creating more inequality among the different linguistic groups in the country and was impacting negatively on the education of minority language speakers. You can read the full article here.
‘The strange thing about the matter is that every time the discontent and contempt resurface, the stubbornness of the ministry grows.’
The government reportedly blacklisted him for his writing and on 11 October 2001, Aba Arre was arrested at his home and has been held, incommunicado, without charge or trial ever since.
Since the government crackdown on dissent in September 2001,there has been no freedom of opinion or expression, no independent media, no registered political parties apart from the ruling People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) and no national elections in the country.
According to recent estimates, as many as 10,000 Eritreans have been detained for their criticism or opposition of the government since 2001 with at least 28 journalists still in detention. As many as nine journalists and nine politicians may have died in custody due to torture and other ill treatment, harsh conditions and lack of medical treatment.
PEN International calls on the Eritrean government to release all prisoners detained for exercising their right to freedom of expression, to respect international human rights standards relating to the treatment of prisoners, to re-establish an independent media and to provide complete transparency on the whereabouts, health and legal status of all detained journalists, writers and activists.
*G-15 group – 11 politicians arrested for writing an open letter calling for democratic change. All the signatories of the letter were members of the G-15, a group of senior officials from the ruling People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ).
For further details please contact Lianna Merner, PEN International, Koops Mil, 162-164 Abbey Street, London SE1 2AN | Tel: +44 (0) 207 405 0338 | Fax +44 (0) 207 405 0339 | email: Lianna.Merner @ pen-international.org
In the early hours of Monday morning, 5 December, on arrival at Minsk airport in Belarus, a four-person delegation, three from Norwegian PEN – publishers William Nygaard and Trygve Åslund, and the Centre’s Secretary General Carl Morten Iversen – as well as Danish PEN board member journalist Niels-Ivar Larsen, were denied visas and consequently barred from entering Belarus. The delegation had planned to visit members of PEN Belarus, the Belarusian Writers Union, the Belarusian Association of Journalists and local writers and publishers. The visit had been planned months in advance.
Upon arrival at at 1 am, the delegation applied for visitors’ visas for a two-day stay in Minsk. The group travelled as tourists as this is the only way that such a delegation can enter the country. The group had received a formal invitation from a local travel agency. The visa applications, as well as air transport and hotel bookings, were handled by a local Norwegian travel agent specializing in Eastern Europe. All the paperwork was correctly presented to the visa officer at the airport visa office.
“The officer’s initial reaction upon presentation of my application and passport, was that he wanted to talk to the person who was going to pick us up and drive us to Minsk“, says Iversen who had organized the trip. “I called him and they talked. Obviously, this was not enough and the officer then wanted to talk to representatives from the travel agency that invited us. I called an emergency number without result. I also called the Norwegian travel agent who tried to help, again with no result. I told the officer that nobody picked up the phone as it was the middle of the night – 3 am local time. His response was that we should have arrived on an earlier flight.
The atmosphere at the visa-office counter was building as two ladies arriving from Macedonia not connected with the delegation got into a heated argument with the officer. After they left, the officer seemingly started processing our visa applications. At one point he asked for the visa fee and we gave a total of 360 Euros for four visas. After about 20 minutes, a lady in uniform arrived, took our passports from the officer, told us to stay and wait and then disappeared. After a little while we were escorted down to luggage reception to get our luggage as the airport was closing. We were then escorted back to the visa office. An airport or border police official, it was not clear which, then escorted us to a transit area were we were told to wait, guarded by a female officer. Very little information was given, but we understood that we had to wait until the morning departure flights. We would then be sent back to Norway and Denmark. Our passports would be given back upon boarding of the return flights.
No further explanation was given. At one point, a female customs officer who spoke decent English arrived and explained that this was the decision of the “consul” and the decision could not be challenged. She also said that the Belarusian authorities had the right to deny entry, while still claiming the visa fee.
We were kept in a place with no access to food or water. At one point, one of the members of the delegation who has a heart condition, said he needed water to take his medicine. The female guard did not understand and thought he wanted a doctor. After a while, a female doctor arrived and wanted to examine him, something he denied – he only wanted water. The incident lead to a heated discussion between the doctor and our guard. Around 6 am local time, two seats were available on the morning flight to Frankfurt, and two of the delegation members left. Their passports were returned at the gate. The two remaining delegation members left on a return flight out of Minsk at 3.30 in the afternoon. Delegation member, William Nygaard told the Norwegian daily Aftenposten´s web-edition: “It is important for us to show the world what kind of regime that rules in Belarus – this is among the issues PEN is focusing on. Belarus is a UN-member and it is important that we react when they behave like this.”
PEN International protests the refusal by the Belarus authorities to allow PEN members to visit the country to meet with their Belarus colleagues, and demands an official explanation for the action.
‘There can be no freedom without peace, nor peace without freedom’
Today is International Day of Peace, officially recognised by the United Nations and identified as a global day of ceasefire.
Peace-building is at the heart of PEN International’s work celebrating literature and promoting freedom of expression. Connecting a global community of writers, PEN demonstrates how literature can overcome cultural, linguistic, ethnic, social, and political conflicts and provide a democratic forum for dialogue. ‘Now more than ever it is crucial to raise global awareness of the need for peace and constructive dialogue’, said Laura McVeigh, Executive Director of PEN International.
PEN’s Writers for Peace Committee pioneers this aspect of PEN’s work. Established in 1984 in response to the difficulties posed to cultural collaboration during the Cold War years, the Committee’s work to provide a platform for intercultural and literary dialogue is just as relevant today. Within the last week, at PEN’s annual congress, the Writers for Peace Committee called on ETA and the Spanish Government to build on the current ceasefire in the Basque region and secure lasting peace; it advocated for a nonviolent solution to on-going conflict in Kurdish regions of Turkey, Syria and Iraq; and the Committee joined PEN’s global membership to again urge the Chinese authorities to release Liu Xiaobo, 2010 Nobel Peace Laureate.
Edvard Kovak, Chair of the Writers for Peace Committee, commented: “On International Day of Peace, PEN remembers the Writers for Peace Committee’s founding principle, ‘There can be no freedom without peace, nor peace without freedom.'”
‘There can be no freedom without peace, nor peace without freedom’
Today is International Day of Peace, officially recognised by the United Nations and identified as a global day of ceasefire.
Peace-building is at the heart of PEN International’s work celebrating literature and promoting freedom of expression. Connecting a global community of writers, PEN demonstrates how literature can overcome cultural, linguistic, ethnic, social, and political conflicts and provide a democratic forum for dialogue. ‘Now more than ever it is crucial to raise global awareness of the need for peace and constructive dialogue’, said Laura McVeigh, Executive Director of PEN International.
PEN’s Writers for Peace Committee pioneers this aspect of PEN’s work. Established in 1984 in response to the difficulties posed to cultural collaboration during the Cold War years, the Committee’s work to provide a platform for intercultural and literary dialogue is just as relevant today. Within the last week, at PEN’s annual congress, the Writers for Peace Committee called on ETA and the Spanish Government to build on the current ceasefire in the Basque region and secure lasting peace; it advocated for a nonviolent solution to on-going conflict in Kurdish regions of Turkey, Syria and Iraq; and the Committee joined PEN’s global membership to again urge the Chinese authorities to release Liu Xiaobo, 2010 Nobel Peace Laureate.
Edvard Kovak, Chair of the Writers for Peace Committee, commented: “On International Day of Peace, PEN remembers the Writers for Peace Committee’s founding principle, ‘There can be no freedom without peace, nor peace without freedom.'”
77th PEN International Congress, September 13th, 2011
John Ralston Saul, International President, Opening Speech.
Thank you Serbian PEN! Thank you Vida and thank you to all of your members. You have organized a wonderful Congress. People who attend have no idea how much work is involved and how many hours are taken up that could have been used for writing. So, a very personal thank you from all of us who have come from other countries.
When we say, we members of PEN International, that we represent literature and freedom of expression, and that you can’t separate one from the other, it is a simple statement of fact. This is our 90th year. We are, we have always been, the only truly international literary organization. We have invented the idea and the implementation of freedom of expression campaigns.
Sometimes, the obvious has to be reiterated. There are some governments , some people in power – those that George Konrad, one of our former presidents, calls ‘professionals of power’ – who say: ‘Ah.. they’re only writers, only words’ . And it is true that we do not have tanks or banks or the capacity to bear a huge deficit or support a large bureaucracy. But if we are only writers, why is it that about 850 of our colleagues are in jail around the world? Why is it that writers are still killed with a terrifying regularity? We have that great power which is language and imagination – through poems and plays and novels and essays – a power that sets free the spirit of readers. It is with the words of imagination that people work.
Yesterday, I was asked – quite rightly – what difference does it make that writers from 89 PEN centres are gathered in Belgrade. It is the right question.
The first answer is that this Congress is a public expression of reconciliation. Of course, writers in the Balkans have never stopped talking to each other. But, this Congress is a formal evocation of the imagination of the Balkans.
Today, the leaders of 10 Balkan PEN centres sat together on a stage and created the Balkans PEN International Network. The founding members are Bosnian PEN, Bulgarian, Croatian, Kosovar, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Romanian, Serbian, Slovenian and Turkish. This is an historic event. It is a message to the world.
Second, the gathering of hundreds of writers from around the world matters because it is a force for imagination and transparency. Our charter is clear. We believe in unlimited freedom of expression. But we also believe that no matter how controversial or difficult our words are, the ultimate purpose is to bring people together. The great Serbian Canadian writer, David Albahari, has rightly written that “knowledge can never catch up with the power of ignorance”. This is true. But the imagination can catch up. Imagination can leap over ignorance. Let me give you an example: When a virtually unknown radio journalist is killed in Mexico – the most dangerous place in the world today to be a writer – they leave, in Ivo Andri?’s words, “a memory clearer and more lasting than that of so many other more important victims”.
This year our former President, Mario Vargas Llosa, won the Nobel Prize for literature. And the founding president of our Independent Chinese PEN Centre, Liu Xiaobo, won the Nobel Peace Prize. Two men of courage. Two masters of the imagination. One of whom remains unjustly in prison. And several of our centres were central to what is called the Arab Spring. In some cases they are now a key part of the rebuilding civil society in their country.
The core of what we do is this: imagination and the transparency that imagination creates, and the acceptance of complexity – all of this is above politics and below politics. It’s everything except politics. In a society without this democracy of the mind it becomes possible for lies to install themselves, as if they were language. And as Danilo Kiš put it, “when everyone lies, no one lies”.
We are in the business of open memories, memories that do not oppose people, one against the other. We represent an open idea of how people can live together.
This is the 77th Congress. The Congress in 1933 in Dubrovnik was organized by this Centre. It was a complex, but historic moment for PEN. We were faced by the rising forces of authoritarianism, even within our own centres. The divisions of European society had become the divisions of PEN. Our President, a great writer, H. G. Wells, but also an anti-Semite with confused public views, found himself caught in an atmosphere of impossible divisions. But, complex though it was, Wells and the delegates found their way through in order to stand with the imagination and transparency and therefore against authoritarianism.
In 1933 we found an ethical shape – long before governments took a stand. And at every PEN Congress since 1933, those ethical standards stand before us as the measure of what we do. I like to think that in leading with wisdom in Dubrovnik, Wells found his own way to a personal understanding of PEN’s ethics. It was a noble moment for him and for PEN.
There are always those who believe that writers can be dragged away from their independence in the public place. And I believe that the next few years will be difficult. There are many strong and negative forces at work. But the meaning of PEN is simple. Our central ethical force is the independence of our imagination and our creativity. And we know what this means because for 90 years we have defended that independence.
PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) is seriously concerned about the detention of Internet writers Ahmed Mansoor and Nasser Bin Gheith, who are facing charges for their dissident activities and writings. Mansoor has reportedly faced ill-treatment in prison, and there are serious concerns for his welfare. PEN International protests the detention of Ahmed Mansoor and Bin Gheith and calls for their immediate and unconditional release in accordance with Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which the UAE is a signatory. It also seeks assurances that the men are protected from ill-treatment, and given full access to any necessary medical care whilst detained.
According to PEN’s information, well known blogger and rights activist Ahmed Mansoor and internet writer and economic analyst Nasser Bin Gheith were arrested from their homes on 8 and 10 April 2011 respectively after signing a petition calling for democratic and economic reforms. They are among five activists to be facing charges of “insulting the head of the state”, “stirring sectarian strife”, and “destabilization” after they participated in the online pro-democracy forum Emirati Dialogue (Emirati Hiwar). Their trial started on 18 July 2011, and they pleaded not guilty to the charges at a closed hearing in Abu Dhabi. On 25 July 2011, the court adjourned the trial to 26 September 2011.
Mansoor is being held at Al-Wathba prison, in the city of Abu Dhabi, where he has reportedly been ill-treated and denied adequate health care by prison administration. He was initially held in solitary confinement and is now being held with convicted criminals, and is said to be at risk of attack.
Prior to his arrest, Mansoor had been reportedly harassed and threatened following an online smear campaign against him.
PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) is seriously concerned about the detention of Internet writers Ahmed Mansoor and Nasser Bin Gheith, who are facing charges for their dissident activities and writings. Mansoor has reportedly faced ill-treatment in prison, and there are serious concerns for his welfare. PEN International protests the detention of Ahmed Mansoor and Bin Gheith and calls for their immediate and unconditional release in accordance with Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which the UAE is a signatory. It also seeks assurances that the men are protected from ill-treatment, and given full access to any necessary medical care whilst detained.
According to PEN’s information, well known blogger and rights activist Ahmed Mansoor and internet writer and economic analyst Nasser Bin Gheith were arrested from their homes on 8 and 10 April 2011 respectively after signing a petition calling for democratic and economic reforms. They are among five activists to be facing charges of “insulting the head of the state”, “stirring sectarian strife”, and “destabilization” after they participated in the online pro-democracy forum Emirati Dialogue (Emirati Hiwar). Their trial started on 18 July 2011, and they pleaded not guilty to the charges at a closed hearing in Abu Dhabi. On 25 July 2011, the court adjourned the trial to 26 September 2011.
Mansoor is being held at Al-Wathba prison, in the city of Abu Dhabi, where he has reportedly been ill-treated and denied adequate health care by prison administration. He was initially held in solitary confinement and is now being held with convicted criminals, and is said to be at risk of attack.
Prior to his arrest, Mansoor had been reportedly harassed and threatened following an online smear campaign against him.
PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) is seriously concerned about the detention of Internet writers Ahmed Mansoor and Nasser Bin Gheith, who are facing charges for their dissident activities and writings. Mansoor has reportedly faced ill-treatment in prison, and there are serious concerns for his welfare. PEN International protests the detention of Ahmed Mansoor and Bin Gheith and calls for their immediate and unconditional release in accordance with Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which the UAE is a signatory. It also seeks assurances that the men are protected from ill-treatment, and given full access to any necessary medical care whilst detained.
According to PEN’s information, well known blogger and rights activist Ahmed Mansoor and internet writer and economic analyst Nasser Bin Gheith were arrested from their homes on 8 and 10 April 2011 respectively after signing a petition calling for democratic and economic reforms. They are among five activists to be facing charges of “insulting the head of the state”, “stirring sectarian strife”, and “destabilization” after they participated in the online pro-democracy forum Emirati Dialogue (Emirati Hiwar). Their trial started on 18 July 2011, and they pleaded not guilty to the charges at a closed hearing in Abu Dhabi. On 25 July 2011, the court adjourned the trial to 26 September 2011.
Mansoor is being held at Al-Wathba prison, in the city of Abu Dhabi, where he has reportedly been ill-treated and denied adequate health care by prison administration. He was initially held in solitary confinement and is now being held with convicted criminals, and is said to be at risk of attack.
Prior to his arrest, Mansoor had been reportedly harassed and threatened following an online smear campaign against him.
As PEN members from around the world gather to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Independent Chinese PEN Center (ICPC) today in Hong Kong, a number of writers residing inside China have been harassed and prevented from meeting with their colleagues both in Beijing and Hong Kong, in what ICPC, PEN American Center, and PEN International call “an increasingly alarming situation for writers and activists in China.” At least 40 writers are in prison in China, including four ICPC members.
This is the first time ICPC members and supporters will gather since the awarding of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, ICPC’s founding member and former and honorary president. However, a number of writers have been prevented from traveling to Hong Kong by mainland Chinese authorities, in a week marked by threats, harassment, and indignities.
Between July 18 and 22, a delegation from PEN American Center and PEN International visited Beijing to meet with a wide range of writers, journalists, and activists. On July 20, however, only three of 14 writers invited to a Freedom of Expression Roundtable at the U.S. Embassy, hosted by Charge d’Affaires Robert Wang, were actually able to attend. Many of the other invitees, including Liu Di (“Stainless Steel Mouse”) and Wang Jinbo, were visited the day before by the guobao, the internal security police of the People’s Republic of China, and told not to attend–a warning confirmed in writing to the embassy by at least four of the invitees.
The following day, several writers were stopped from meeting with the PEN delegation, and at least six writers have been prevented from attending the 10th anniversary celebrations in Hong Kong. The delegation also was unable to make contact with imprisoned Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo’s wife, Liu Xia, under illegal house arrest since October 2010, and was prevented from meeting with her lawyers.
“As foreigners, we were able to make a journey that our ICPC colleagues cannot make,” said Marian Botsford Fraser, Chair of the Writers in Prison Committee of PEN International. “This insidious, flagrant interference of Chinese authorities into the lives of law-abiding citizens is degrading and shameful, in a country that has enshrined freedom of expression in its Constitution.”
The three writers able to come to the roundtable, ICPC Board Member Jiang Qisheng, ICPC honorary member and formerly imprisoned writer He Depu, and ICPC’s 2009 Lin Zhao Memorial Award recipient, Beijing-based Tibetan writer Woeser, spoke frankly about the ongoing deterioration of rights, including the torture of imprisoned colleagues, and expressed concerns for the Uyghur, Mongolian, and Tibetan minority groups. In other meetings, writers, journalists, and booksellers revealed that even those who are not activists experience constant electronic surveillance and monitoring of their movements.
“To anyone visiting China, it is obvious the country is experiencing great successes,” said Larry Siems, director of the Freedom to Write and International programs at American PEN Center, who organized the Beijing visit. “It’s also clear there are considerable anxieties and stresses. Unfortunately, all of the writers we spoke with expressed frustration that they were restrained from fully exploring these realities. So much time and talent is being wasted trying to rein in voices that China and the world need to hear.”
ICPC, a PEN center with 270 members, more than half of whom reside in mainland China, has never been permitted to publicly hold its annual meeting there, and every year since 2007, a number of ICPC members and other writers have been prevented from traveling to Hong Kong, even to receive awards. Today, at least six writers are known to have been prevented from joining their colleagues in Hong Kong, including Professor Cui Weiping, recipient of the 2011 ICPC Lin Zhao Memorial Award.
“Since ICPC’s founding in 2001, we were only able to have our awards ceremony twice in Beijing, in 2004 and 2005 when Liu Xiaobo was our president,” sai
d Tienchi Martin Liao, president of ICPC. “Our literary activities are forbidden in China and our members are suffering under enormous pressure. In honor of Liu Xiaobo, ICPC will award its inaugural Liu Xiaobo Courage to Write Award this year. Unfortunately, today we must put three empty chairs on the stage again, because this year’s two awardees, Chinese writer Liu Xianbin and Bumese poet Zarganar are both in prison, and Cui Weiping has not been permitted to cross the border.”
Liao continued, “It is time for the Chinese government to respect the constitutional right to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly of its citizens, and we call on the authorities to allow PEN to hold its meetings in mainland China, and to lift its restrictions on many of PEN members in China and abroad to cross the China’s borders to meet our colleagues and families. We are writers and our instrument is nothing but our pen. With our pen, we are determined to protect our basic rights of freedom of expression.”
“The PEN community today applauds the courage and dedication of the Independent Chinese PEN Center,” said Hori Takeaki, international secretary of PEN International. “We will continue to support your fearless pursuit of the right of the Chinese people to freedom of expression, and their right to read and write in their own languages.”
The PEN American Center/PEN International delegation to Beijing was composed of the following: Hannah Pakula, chair of PEN American Center’s Freedom to Write Committee; Marian Botsford Fraser, chair of the Writers in Prison Committee of PEN International; Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, vice president of PEN International and PEN American Center board member, Steven Isenberg, executive director of PEN American Center, and Larry Siems, director of PEN American Center’s Freedom to Write and International programs.
PEN American Center and the Independent Chinese PEN Center are among the 145 centers of PEN International, the world’s oldest human rights organization and the oldest international literary organization. PEN is following the cases of at least 40 writers imprisoned in China, including four ICPC members (Liu Xiaobo, Yang Tongyan, Shi Tao, and Zhu Yufu), and many more who are subjected to intense surveillance, illegal house arrest, detention without charge, and enforced silence when released.