{"title":"The State of the World","authors":"J. Galtung","doi":"10.1071/ec11144","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"I first want to say a few words about the current G8 meeting, and then talk about major conflicts in the world. This will cover much of the world situation, a reflection on global capitalism, and the US Empire and its imminent demise and what will happen after that. The G8 meeting is actually an act of sabotage, and in my view a deliberate one. It sabotages and undermines the UN. In 1975, the meeting was established as a small forum for intimate meetings between 3 leaders from each participating country. However, from a purely economic agenda it has become much more, incorporating a lot of UN agenda items (security issues and global warming etc.) and thereby actually hijacking the subjects of global importance to about 8 countries only. Russia, which was invited under Yeltsin, is the black sheep in the community. Also, not inviting Chindia is a guarantee for sabotage, as is talking about Africa without having even one African representative present. The good news is that there were one hundred thousand demonstrators, and the bad news is that there were some violent idiots. If the nonviolent majority could practice the technique of twenty nonviolent encircling every violent one in a nonviolent way, incapacitating their capacity for violence, it would be an enormous feat. There is, however another piece of what I would call bad news; the one hundred thousand were without constructive, positive ideas. I've gone through the whole rigmarole of the slogans. Personally, I don't like the slogans against globalization; there is no way in the world to stop globalization because it is driven by things we all love: communication and transportation. We are not going to turn that backwards. A good slogan would be \"another globalization is possible\", spelling out that we can have a better globalization as opposed to the economically exploitative process we know. So, having said that, we have dark days in front of us. We have impending climate and economic disaster and on top of that a political military issue, the so-called Shield. There isn't hardly a person in the world who believes it is against Iran. It is a part of a policy started in 1996, counter-posing against each other, on the one hand NATO and AMPO (the US-JAPAN arrangement), and on the other hand the SCO countries, the biggest alliance in human history: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with 6 full members and three observers. The six members are China, Russia and four","PeriodicalId":44849,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Futures Studies","volume":"12 1","pages":"145-160"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6000,"publicationDate":"2007-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"140","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Futures Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1071/ec11144","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"REGIONAL & URBAN PLANNING","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 140
Abstract
I first want to say a few words about the current G8 meeting, and then talk about major conflicts in the world. This will cover much of the world situation, a reflection on global capitalism, and the US Empire and its imminent demise and what will happen after that. The G8 meeting is actually an act of sabotage, and in my view a deliberate one. It sabotages and undermines the UN. In 1975, the meeting was established as a small forum for intimate meetings between 3 leaders from each participating country. However, from a purely economic agenda it has become much more, incorporating a lot of UN agenda items (security issues and global warming etc.) and thereby actually hijacking the subjects of global importance to about 8 countries only. Russia, which was invited under Yeltsin, is the black sheep in the community. Also, not inviting Chindia is a guarantee for sabotage, as is talking about Africa without having even one African representative present. The good news is that there were one hundred thousand demonstrators, and the bad news is that there were some violent idiots. If the nonviolent majority could practice the technique of twenty nonviolent encircling every violent one in a nonviolent way, incapacitating their capacity for violence, it would be an enormous feat. There is, however another piece of what I would call bad news; the one hundred thousand were without constructive, positive ideas. I've gone through the whole rigmarole of the slogans. Personally, I don't like the slogans against globalization; there is no way in the world to stop globalization because it is driven by things we all love: communication and transportation. We are not going to turn that backwards. A good slogan would be "another globalization is possible", spelling out that we can have a better globalization as opposed to the economically exploitative process we know. So, having said that, we have dark days in front of us. We have impending climate and economic disaster and on top of that a political military issue, the so-called Shield. There isn't hardly a person in the world who believes it is against Iran. It is a part of a policy started in 1996, counter-posing against each other, on the one hand NATO and AMPO (the US-JAPAN arrangement), and on the other hand the SCO countries, the biggest alliance in human history: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with 6 full members and three observers. The six members are China, Russia and four
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Futures Studies is a globally-oriented, trans-disciplinary referred journal. Its mission is to develop high-quality, futures-oriented research and thinking based on the evolving knowledge base of Futures Studies. Articles accepted for publication are expected to show an in-depth understanding of the field"s dimensions, content, research perspectives and methods.