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Good. This top-down world governance project needs to be abandoned. It's hegemony wrapped in a nice package of development aid (and military interventionism und

Good. This top-down world governance project needs to be abandoned. It's hegemony wrapped in a nice package of development aid (and military interventionism under the surface) >there is a gap at the global governance level. Who's in charge of that? Where do you address yourself, you know? What is it with the international elite, looking down at the world from their quaint old chateaus and cushy jobs, who believe all the worlds problems will be solved if someone could give them more money for their advice and add another layer of government/bureaucracy on top? Why is the ICRC pushing this agenda? Stop it, firstly stop the interventionism! Military and economic. Stop bombing the ME, stop acting holier than thou and imposing this narrow globalist set of ethics onto the world. Stop trying to grab power and pretend it has some altruistic component. It's causing chaos. These problems are not going to be solved by a world government. Quite contrary to the opinion expressed in the article that Brexit and Trump are symptoms of a problem, I consider them symptoms of a public trying to stop these crazy globalist agendas.

throwaway1974 10y ago
Some rant there not based on reality Unless you have been living on a different planet, US and Europe (The West) have pretty much withdrawn from the Middle East. The ones doing the bombing now in the middle east are Russia and various Muslim factions killing each other. The west has withdrawn from the quagmire and also is the one accommodating refugees for some reason, unlike the like of rich Arab countries like Saudi and UAE who share the same religion and cultures.
- 3princip 10y ago
  The west is still supporting and arming rebels in Syria.
  - throwaway1974 10y ago
    So is Saudi and Qatar and UAE, I do not see queues of refugees fleeing there despite sharing the same climate, religion and culture.
    - sevenless 10y ago
      There are, though. Turkey, Iran and Jordan's proportion of refugees is a very substantial % of their population. In the gulf states there are millions of Syrians and Palestinians, just called guest workers rather than refugees. In a lot of ways that's more humane, as they can work straight away. We, bizarrely, refuse refugees the right to work while complaining that they don't contribute.
      - hx87 10y ago
        That's because in most countries that take refugees, average people own no capital (except maybe housing, an illiquid and unproductive asset) and can only contribute labor for income, resulting in a situation where "jobs" are a scarce resource. Now, if ownership of capital were more widespread, refugee labor would be much more welcome.
        sevenless 10y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
        hx87 10y ago
        In the long term, yes, but the labor market is quite inelastic in the short term, and without a strong and robust safety net, short term effects dominate for most workers.
    - ilitirit 10y ago
      > I do not see queues of refugees fleeing there Hmmm... have you actually looked? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_Civil_War_in_Jordan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_Civil_W... This is doesn't even include Palestinian refugees. http://www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/jordan http://www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/jordan Same story in Lebanon and Turkey https://mgtvwspa.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/refugee-story-3.png https://mgtvwspa.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/refugee-story-3...
- pipio21 10y ago
  "US and Europe (The West) have pretty much withdrawn from the Middle East" https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/french-air-force-avenges-nice-massacre-kills-100-civilians-pictures/ https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/french-air-force-avenge... http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/led-air-strikes-kill-21-civilians-syria-160719045329897.html http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/led-air-strikes-kill-2... Is not that they are out of middle East, it is that they are occupied in Libya: https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-now-bombing-4-countries-as-war-on-isis-spreads-to-libya/219441/ https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-now-bombing-4-countries-as-...
- jcranmer 10y ago
  Western countries aren't accepting all that many refugees. Fear of refugees was certainly part of the reason the UK voted for Brexit; here in the US, I've seen an active political campaign attacking someone who touted supporting moving a mere 20,000 refugees from Syria. The countries that host the most refugees are such large, rich countries as Turkey, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon. Jordan recently closed its border with Syria to stop the flow of refugees (currently at 1.4 million Syrian refugees in a population of 9.5 million or so). Compare this to the refugees fleeing to the European Union, about the same number over all in a population of 510 million.
- gonvaled 10y ago
  The West has withdrawn, but not before wreaking havoc in the region, leaving complete chaos behind. Chaos that was predicted while the US was drumming up the wars in Afganistan and Irak.
  - nradov 10y ago
    Complete chaos had been the default state of that region for over 2000 years. Interventions and abrupt withdrawals by Western powers certainly haven't helped, but it's naive to think that they are the primary cause.
  - jcranmer 10y ago
    Do you think that Mohaamed Bouazizi would not have set himself on fire if the US hadn't invaded Afghanistan and Iraq?
  - throwaway1974 10y ago
    And if the west goes back in you be screaming "interference" damned if you do damned if you dont
- FussyZeus 10y ago
  To say "we're out now therefore it's not our fault" is ridiculous, pretty much every tinpot dictator/terrorist leader in those countries can be tied in one way or another back to the CIA or any of the three letter orgs from the US or Britain, just to name a couple, Saddam Hussien, Osama Bin Laden. We've been screwing with the Middle East for decades, before which it was a relatively progressive and pretty normal place, not perfect but arguably just a decade or so behind the US at the time. As it turns out, when your only filter for "people to support financially" is "do they hate the Russians" and you never look any further, you tend to get some not-great results.
JimmyAustin 10y ago
What you call a top-down world governance project, I call a expansion in international co-operation after the disaster that was the first 2 World Wars. That international cooperation has undoubtable made the world a safer place. It has seen the expansion of the middle class in BRIC. Between 1981 and 2005, poverty dropped from 84% to 18% in China, 80% to 42% in India, 17% to 8% in Brazil. Between 1990 and 2012 the average global life expectancy jumped by a full 6 years! Hell, if you lived in Liberia, it was 20 years! Compared to the chaos of the first half of the 20th century (not to mention parts of the second half), the world is absolutely peaceful and a better place for just about everyone.
- FussyZeus 10y ago
  To be totally fair though that peace owes a big part of itself to the MAD concept and the fact that all the strongest nations worldwide have enough firepower pointed at each other with itchy fingers on the triggers to annihilate the planet 5 times over. Not saying it's a bad thing, just saying that the hippies were wrong and we got a lot further by threatening each other than we ever did holding hands and singing songs.
  - viewer5 10y ago
    Did the major nations of the world ever hold hands and sing songs? Has that actually been done? I'm not super up on my world history, but I don't remember that ever being a thing.
    - ethbro 10y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Nations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Nations
- justavoice 10y ago
  sure the poverty rate dropped - it took time to train people to replace the millions that were killed by Mao and company!
- coldtea 10y ago
zorked 10y ago
Just because I have been seeing these a lot: where does this talk about the "globalist elites" come from? Is there an intellectual leader to this 'movement'?
- 3princip 10y ago
  Do you believe that this man, sitting in his Swiss chateau lamenting the lack of world government, is not part of the globalist elite?
- coldtea 10y ago
  >Is there an intellectual leader to this 'movement'? No, there are just people thinking for themselves.
  - zorked 10y ago
    Sure, with exactly the same paranoid rhetoric at exactly the same time. /s
    - coldtea 10y ago
      What exactly is "paranoid" about it? Elite just means "the small minority of people with big power/wealth". And "globalist elite" just means people in power in governments, multinationals, etc, that are in favour of an extension of their power and reach etc through global treaties, etc -- to the detriment of regional governments. That's par for the course for having power, and how the world has been running since forever. Except if you also think that 10 countries having 2/3rd of the world as slaves in their colonies up to merely 5-6 decades ago was also a "conspiracy theory" or "paranoid rhetoric". In which case I salute the historical ignorance and naivete.
sevenless 10y ago
> Good. This top-down world governance project needs to be abandoned. Alright. How do we deal with global warming? Shouldn't international laws and co-operation between nations, naturally develop into a global government?
- 3princip 10y ago
  Unless this world government is going to organize the biggest genocide in history (as the conspiracy goes), or implement (energy) austerity on a massive scale, I don't see what such an institution will do for climate change. All it will achieve is the greater concentration of power in the hands of even fewer people. The potential solutions that come to mind range from, on the pessimistic end, apocalyptic, to technological if we are to be optimistic. We'll either think our way out of the crisis with cleaner sources of energy, or nature will have it's way and our population will dwindle.
  - adrianN 10y ago
    An effective carbon tax that goes to finance alternative energy tech seems like a pretty good start that can only be implemented with global consensus.
    - 3princip 10y ago
      A tax that will be passed on to the consumer which will disproportionately affect the poor? It won't be people in Switzerland or Silicon Valley that will be materially affected by such a scheme. Taxes are not the solution to every problem.
      - d_e_solomon 10y ago
        Taxes can be structured to not impact the poor and/or additional aid can be structured to offset the impact - much like income tax, or luxury tax, or inheritance tax.
      - coldtea 10y ago

throwaway1974 10y ago

Some rant there not based on reality Unless you have been living on a different planet, US and Europe (The West) have pretty much withdrawn from the Middle East. The ones doing the bombing now in the middle east are Russia and various Muslim factions killing each other. The west has withdrawn from the quagmire and also is the one accommodating refugees for some reason, unlike the like of rich Arab countries like Saudi and UAE who share the same religion and cultures.

3princip 10y ago
The west is still supporting and arming rebels in Syria.
- throwaway1974 10y ago
  So is Saudi and Qatar and UAE, I do not see queues of refugees fleeing there despite sharing the same climate, religion and culture.
  - sevenless 10y ago
    There are, though. Turkey, Iran and Jordan's proportion of refugees is a very substantial % of their population. In the gulf states there are millions of Syrians and Palestinians, just called guest workers rather than refugees. In a lot of ways that's more humane, as they can work straight away. We, bizarrely, refuse refugees the right to work while complaining that they don't contribute.
    - hx87 10y ago
      That's because in most countries that take refugees, average people own no capital (except maybe housing, an illiquid and unproductive asset) and can only contribute labor for income, resulting in a situation where "jobs" are a scarce resource. Now, if ownership of capital were more widespread, refugee labor would be much more welcome.
      - sevenless 10y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
        hx87 10y ago
        In the long term, yes, but the labor market is quite inelastic in the short term, and without a strong and robust safety net, short term effects dominate for most workers.
  - ilitirit 10y ago
    > I do not see queues of refugees fleeing there Hmmm... have you actually looked? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_Civil_War_in_Jordan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_Civil_W... This is doesn't even include Palestinian refugees. http://www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/jordan http://www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/jordan Same story in Lebanon and Turkey https://mgtvwspa.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/refugee-story-3.png https://mgtvwspa.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/refugee-story-3...
pipio21 10y ago
"US and Europe (The West) have pretty much withdrawn from the Middle East" https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/french-air-force-avenges-nice-massacre-kills-100-civilians-pictures/ https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/french-air-force-avenge... http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/led-air-strikes-kill-21-civilians-syria-160719045329897.html http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/led-air-strikes-kill-2... Is not that they are out of middle East, it is that they are occupied in Libya: https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-now-bombing-4-countries-as-war-on-isis-spreads-to-libya/219441/ https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-now-bombing-4-countries-as-...
jcranmer 10y ago
Western countries aren't accepting all that many refugees. Fear of refugees was certainly part of the reason the UK voted for Brexit; here in the US, I've seen an active political campaign attacking someone who touted supporting moving a mere 20,000 refugees from Syria. The countries that host the most refugees are such large, rich countries as Turkey, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon. Jordan recently closed its border with Syria to stop the flow of refugees (currently at 1.4 million Syrian refugees in a population of 9.5 million or so). Compare this to the refugees fleeing to the European Union, about the same number over all in a population of 510 million.
gonvaled 10y ago
The West has withdrawn, but not before wreaking havoc in the region, leaving complete chaos behind. Chaos that was predicted while the US was drumming up the wars in Afganistan and Irak.
- nradov 10y ago
  Complete chaos had been the default state of that region for over 2000 years. Interventions and abrupt withdrawals by Western powers certainly haven't helped, but it's naive to think that they are the primary cause.
- jcranmer 10y ago
  Do you think that Mohaamed Bouazizi would not have set himself on fire if the US hadn't invaded Afghanistan and Iraq?
- throwaway1974 10y ago
  And if the west goes back in you be screaming "interference" damned if you do damned if you dont
FussyZeus 10y ago
To say "we're out now therefore it's not our fault" is ridiculous, pretty much every tinpot dictator/terrorist leader in those countries can be tied in one way or another back to the CIA or any of the three letter orgs from the US or Britain, just to name a couple, Saddam Hussien, Osama Bin Laden. We've been screwing with the Middle East for decades, before which it was a relatively progressive and pretty normal place, not perfect but arguably just a decade or so behind the US at the time. As it turns out, when your only filter for "people to support financially" is "do they hate the Russians" and you never look any further, you tend to get some not-great results.

JimmyAustin 10y ago

What you call a top-down world governance project, I call a expansion in international co-operation after the disaster that was the first 2 World Wars. That international cooperation has undoubtable made the world a safer place. It has seen the expansion of the middle class in BRIC. Between 1981 and 2005, poverty dropped from 84% to 18% in China, 80% to 42% in India, 17% to 8% in Brazil. Between 1990 and 2012 the average global life expectancy jumped by a full 6 years! Hell, if you lived in Liberia, it was 20 years! Compared to the chaos of the first half of the 20th century (not to mention parts of the second half), the world is absolutely peaceful and a better place for just about everyone.

FussyZeus 10y ago
To be totally fair though that peace owes a big part of itself to the MAD concept and the fact that all the strongest nations worldwide have enough firepower pointed at each other with itchy fingers on the triggers to annihilate the planet 5 times over. Not saying it's a bad thing, just saying that the hippies were wrong and we got a lot further by threatening each other than we ever did holding hands and singing songs.
- viewer5 10y ago
  Did the major nations of the world ever hold hands and sing songs? Has that actually been done? I'm not super up on my world history, but I don't remember that ever being a thing.
  - ethbro 10y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Nations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Nations
justavoice 10y ago
sure the poverty rate dropped - it took time to train people to replace the millions that were killed by Mao and company!
coldtea 10y ago

zorked 10y ago

Just because I have been seeing these a lot: where does this talk about the "globalist elites" come from? Is there an intellectual leader to this 'movement'?

3princip 10y ago
Do you believe that this man, sitting in his Swiss chateau lamenting the lack of world government, is not part of the globalist elite?
coldtea 10y ago
>Is there an intellectual leader to this 'movement'? No, there are just people thinking for themselves.
- zorked 10y ago
  Sure, with exactly the same paranoid rhetoric at exactly the same time. /s
  - coldtea 10y ago
    What exactly is "paranoid" about it? Elite just means "the small minority of people with big power/wealth". And "globalist elite" just means people in power in governments, multinationals, etc, that are in favour of an extension of their power and reach etc through global treaties, etc -- to the detriment of regional governments. That's par for the course for having power, and how the world has been running since forever. Except if you also think that 10 countries having 2/3rd of the world as slaves in their colonies up to merely 5-6 decades ago was also a "conspiracy theory" or "paranoid rhetoric". In which case I salute the historical ignorance and naivete.

sevenless 10y ago

> Good. This top-down world governance project needs to be abandoned. Alright. How do we deal with global warming? Shouldn't international laws and co-operation between nations, naturally develop into a global government?

3princip 10y ago
Unless this world government is going to organize the biggest genocide in history (as the conspiracy goes), or implement (energy) austerity on a massive scale, I don't see what such an institution will do for climate change. All it will achieve is the greater concentration of power in the hands of even fewer people. The potential solutions that come to mind range from, on the pessimistic end, apocalyptic, to technological if we are to be optimistic. We'll either think our way out of the crisis with cleaner sources of energy, or nature will have it's way and our population will dwindle.
- adrianN 10y ago
  An effective carbon tax that goes to finance alternative energy tech seems like a pretty good start that can only be implemented with global consensus.
  - 3princip 10y ago
    A tax that will be passed on to the consumer which will disproportionately affect the poor? It won't be people in Switzerland or Silicon Valley that will be materially affected by such a scheme. Taxes are not the solution to every problem.
    - d_e_solomon 10y ago
      Taxes can be structured to not impact the poor and/or additional aid can be structured to offset the impact - much like income tax, or luxury tax, or inheritance tax.
    - coldtea 10y ago