United Nations Extraterritorial Heritage Sites

Returning most major ancient artifacts to their countries of origin can be accomplished. With revenue sharing super museums with embassy type protection in international UN zones. 




The increasing wave of transnational requests to return invaluable pieces of history to their general geographic area opens up interesting opportunities for:

1) Novel tourist revenue sharing transnational mechanisms

2) Dramatically raising the power of UNESCO in its mission area of building global education and heritage preservation

3) General international cooperation in anthropology, archaeology, history, and architecture.

Imagine if most pieces of ancient Egyptian architecture and artifacts scattered in major (primarily Western) museums around the globe could be pulled into a sort of "mega" museum in Egypt. A truly immersive slice of an ancient world could thus be recreated with entire city blocks of a time long gone stuffed with artifacts. Considering the amount of region specific columns, building pieces, and statues that were looted from areas under former Ottoman, Chinese, Indian, etc control, entire Disney World type historical amusement tourist parks can be constructed. Rather than one giant entity like British Museum containing pieces of ancient Greece, India, or Egypt, it can contain all the most relevant pieces of historical Britain while super museums in Rome, Cairo, India, Athens can be fully stocked with their respective artifacts and expanded to contain much more.

Obvious major questions arise:

1) Why would countries ever part with artifacts that were acquired through either expensive archaeological efforts of their wealthy citizens, by conquest, or through superior geopolitical position?

2) Isn't it very dangerous to have all the eggs in one basket in terms of having all the biggest artifacts and pieces in one city in the case of man made or natural disaster?

3) On what grounds do we empower a specific nation state with custodial powers and allow it to potentially abuse the new monopoly on ancient physical history?

This is where UNESCO comes in. The World Heritage Convention currently provides for a reactive defense of cultural sites but UNESCO can flip that to become proactive creator of new heritage sites of sufficient transnational importance. Just as with proposals to make Jerusalem an international city, certain areas can become designated to become international heritage sites with extraterritorial protections of the entire 193 member body of the United Nations. In this manner, the host country, whether Italy, Greece, or Egypt can enjoy the full benefits of tourist traffic flying to its airports to get to the museum within its national borders while having the museum under long term control and protection of the international community. More mundane concerns of protecting the super museums from natural or man made catastrophe can be resolved with having the museums some ways away from major cities.

The powers holding on to these artifacts currently can be financially compensated with a proportional slice (based on amount of their contributed "sacrifice" of returning the loot) of the ticket sale revenue from the new international super museum complexes. Prominent countries holding the most amount of ancient history also happen to be on the UN security council. What was taken from areas such as the one under former Ottoman control can now be given back under an authoritative UN umbrella.

UN bureaucrats should always be on the look out on how to expand the powers of their organization. Focus on soft issue such as creation of new postmodern heritage sites allows precedent setting extraterritorial space building action that in the future can be utilized for more serious global projects involving energy, agriculture, and even industry. Creation of a giant Egyptian amusement park allows a foot in the door towards giving UN more teeth. Additionally, globe trotting professions like anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, etc can be provided with new streamlined travel and operational perks. An embryonic class of global citizenry does not necessarily need to wear helmets or always carry guns.

Collective Land Ownership: Journey and Implications Part 2

Gradual fading of nationalism into regionalism and globalism is a natural process that shouldn't be feared.

In part 1, there was some exploration of the meaning behind a claim that the environment belongs to all of us. It began to appear that people already do collectively claim indirect ownership over all the land within their specific national boundaries (nationalism has done a good job of ingraining that notion). Various conflicts throughout the 20th century have demonstrated that average citizens don't take international trespassing lightly.

This is beginning to change.

The political elites of powerful countries have long moved beyond viewing themselves as sovereign landowners and masters of just their territory. The scale perception of a jet flying, conference attending globalist politician is radically different from perception of a nationalist citizen. To globalists, the world is but one country in the process of being put together due to the necessity of large scale cooperation and prevention of a nuclear war. To put it another way, they think the world can enter into a more perfect union the way the 13 colonies did.

It seems absurd to many international elites to have the equivalent of a giant village hurtling through space where every house or block is strictly sovereign and militarized. Thus powerful landowners (members of state governments and their oligarch backers) routinely meet to enjoy drinks and to hammer out ways to have more joint collective ownership and management over the planetary surface.

The United Nations was a solid start to this project. Rather than making nation states share sovereignty under some umbrella body within a federal structure, it allowed the landowners to have the final say in all matters and remain sovereign. UN literally does not exist without its components. The slow progress of global integration in the past 50 years has been due to some major differences of opinion among largest landowners on the security council when it comes to what planetary managerial approach is best. Every plantation boss whether it be Chinese or American government desires to be the backbone of a future world government.

Gradually, the more educated people in the northern hemisphere began to partially follow the thought process of their political elites. This is most evident in their acceptance of E.U. confederate structure without a violent insurgency. At this very moment, French, Spaniards, Irish, etc are increasingly claiming psychological collective ownership of land within the borders of neighboring countries and allowing citizens of neighboring countries to do the same. It may be objected that they are prodded/dragged by their unaccountable internationalist masters in government but the same objection was brought up during the formation of United States, Germany, Italy, and many other states.

And it is true to a large degree. As the perceptive scale of elites expands beyond their city walls to include first nation states, then entire continents, and then the whole world, the people follow. The process is a mix of coercion from above and voluntary acceptance from below due to understanding and desire to solve large scale problems. There was very little input from average people when landed oligarchs founded the American republic. Constitutional Convention was not transparent and not open to social networking for debate. If it happened today there would be a furious outcry and accusations of smoking rooms and conspiracy. This is not to say that transparency and public input should not be allowed in the future. Regional and global integration is no joking matter to be at risk of group think.

Implication 2: Some sort of tighter planetary unification and collectivist global governance is inevitable.

The political end point (before the arrival of technological singularity) will likely be a planetary confederate structure between various continental and semi-continental unions. There are many reasons for this from providing security from nanotechnological terrorism to fulfilling the psychological desire of global elites to compete (but in a non-violent manner) while preserving some of their wealth and position in a world transitioning to post scarcity socioeconomics.

We are well on the way towards formation of South American Union, North American Union, Arab Union, etc. The heads of these unions will have a bigger claim to be represented on the UN security council in the years ahead compared to claims of Brazil, Japan, India, etc. It is to be noted that the UN general assembly is already split by regional blocks. Overlaps of trade blocs and regional organizations will just pick up pace barring some catastrophic event.

Considering the absolute humanitarian failure of Anglo-American globalist "free trade" project, there are understandably major reservations among nativists the world over when it comes to further planetary unification. This manifests in partially true conspiracy theories involving global banking cartels that use American imperial center of force for their own needs until they find another host body whether inside EU, Russia, or China.

The almost total transplantation of US economy onto Chinese soil seems so deliberate as to imply a half baked attempt at standardizing the world's citizens to a certain degree. Third worldification of the West and first worldification of the East is bringing enormous pain but to those with the eye for world governance may seem no different than New York getting poorer at expense of South Carolina. This unprecedented reshuffle of world wealth has largely run its course and can't really go further without creating a blatantly revolutionary situation (actual famine in parts of the West). We should now see people demand (and get) much needed protectionism on continental scale. China is showing that mercantilism definitely works.

Additionally, there are serious disagreements among globalists concerning which route is best to take. The severe decline of the English speaking world due to imperial transnational financial parasitism will discredit English speaking globalists and reduce the influence of their sympathizers among globalists of Germany, China, and Russia. That is, after the American economic crisis deepens substantially, Alan Greenspan equivalents in Beijing, Berlin, and Moscow will be displaced. Since Soviet route to planetary unification is also discredited, the future route is likely to take a creative rethinking of EU model with major helpful input from Asian/Russian elites.

The nativists the world over may truthfully note that regardless of what type of road to world government we take, the people in charge will find a way to profit from it. That is correct. It is also likely that many of the financial banking parasites who caused the current worldwide depression will find themselves in new positions of power as high powered civil servants in other global power centers.

The desire to bring back the guillotine (for people like Lloyd Blankfein) as revenge for massive historic Anglo-American financial exploitation is understandable but is very dangerous. The most likely event in the western hemisphere will be a packed transition. The way soviet elites had a deathbed conversion, former free market bigwigs will start changing their stripes (into technocrats, collectivists, social democrats, and socialists) when pitchforks appear on the horizon. Whether they pull it off remains to be seen but we can be sure that the power that they had in shaping the world of the future will pass on to top dogs in eastern hemisphere.

To conclude this part, there are many different conceptions of a New World Order that are being discussed. Some of these conceptions even maintain the sovereignty of major states like US, Russia, China, India within a more collectivist framework. It may be hard to believe but among the elites there are even factions (they tend to be "new money"/"new power") that want to genuinely improve the human herd and raise its welfare. Nihilism and hedonism has infected many top policy makers but not all. Now that the Internet is awakening thoughtful humans on the outside of power/wealth hierarchies, it'll increasingly become easier to connect with the "kind masters" to formulate a new type of globalization that is not a dirty word.

I'll discuss some alternative futuristic globalization models in part 3.

Credit Rating Agencies Are Financial Weapons

World needs new international credit rating mechanism since biggest credit agencies are US based and thus are pressured to distort their reporting on Western nations. 


Also a couple words on Warren Buffet's recent moves




Moody's consideration this week to upgrade the credit rating of Burlington Northern Santa Fe is a wonderful example of why the world needs an international UN supervised credit worthiness system. The reason why BNSF's ratings may go up is because of Warren Buffet's decision to fully invest into a vast railroad network covering 2/3 of United States (stretching from the key region of Texas to China's port middleman of California). As the world's second richest man and one popularly considered to be the best investor, Buffett's moves are always carefully watched and analyzed. Although calling BNSF acquisition a possible boost to Obama's policies is a bit of a stretch, the 79 year old billionaire's purchases usually resonate deeply in the investing world.

Since Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway is a key owner of Moody's,  one of his assets is about to rate up the value of another. That would be news if such conflict of interest wasn't so common as to be the norm. What has been less noticed and talked about is Buffett's recent gradual sale of his stocks in Moody's itself. The biggest shareholder in the world's biggest credit rating agency (Moody's has 40% of this market and thus the power to acquisitions cripple entire countries through rating them down and reducing capital investment flow) decided to quietly start decoupling himself from it.

Why?

The era of investigators investigating themselves is coming to an end. Moody's, Standard & Poor's, and Fitch Ratings together control majority of the world's rating market and are all based in United States. No surprise that United States continues to have the best triple A investment rating even though its macroeconomic situation and debt resemble something seen in the third world. USA's current and former satellite nations (although Germany is moving out of its satellite status now that its ever growing public debt is protected by Euro as reserve currency) benefit the most from this political protection. Japan has been famously running a public debt for years that is far above the 60% per GDP that is generally considered the safe limit in public discussion.

We're familiar how downgrades and upgrades by US credit rating agencies have been the matter of life and death for numerous countries in the past 50 years. The quality of life for endless millions of people around the world was dependent on the "expert" analysis of these corporations and the investment money it can bring. This applies to countries that aren't colonies or special friends. Moody's couldn't logically downgrade and weaken Cold War allies regardless of their macroeconomic fundamentals. Although Japan is in the same public debt company as Zimbabwe, nobody is screaming against investing in it. Naturally, the same US gov based restraint prevented the agencies from predicting the financial collapse of 2008.

Powerful countries like China cannot enter the English speaker dominated rating market since a Chinese credit agency would be in the same position when it comes to full analysis. The mere fact that people wouldn't believe a Chinese version of Moody's yet continue to listen to the big 3 in US as if it means anything (at least in regards to rating for countries as a whole) is another demonstration of the faith based nature of economics. An argument can be made that the Western world as a whole suffered decreased economic growth due to the politically motivated self restraint of the agencies whose job is to see what's worth investing in and loaning money to. Proper introspection couldn't be achieved.

It would be ludicrous for the agencies to rate each other's effectiveness or have a US government body do so. Even finding general real numbers behind any country's macroeconomic situation from IMF, World Bank, or CIA World Factbook is impossible since these organizations serve oligarchs and governments in the Western world. If IMF wasn't disproportionately influenced by US it would have prescribed the same bitter treatment to its master as it does for many countries in the world (such as fighting large scale corruption within key economic sectors). We continue to see the ridiculous spectacle of morbidly obese countries telling everybody else to get healthier (which they actually did if one looks at anemic GDP growth in the West compared to the rest of the world).

If capitalism is to remain in the years ahead then there needs to be a very robust international UN controlled credit rating agency. It has to be under UN supervision with transparency and input from all the nations and not just be an act of creation by G20 (recent switch of world's economic control from G9 to G20 just expands the ridiculous notion of a few rich nations deciding global economic policy instead of UN).

It remains to be seen whether Buffett has the intention of fully selling off his share in Moody's (and is just doing it gradually to not cause a stir) or if he still thinks there is utility in this insanely powerful organization. As for his investment into railroads leading to and from California ports bringing Chinese goods, we will soon see if that is a sign of faith in the growth of China or US. Buffet has often said that just like a great company, a great country can survive a period of mismanagement. It may very well be that he is old enough to actually have a bit of a nationalist sentiment but any investment he makes in GE or American infrastructure may be part of a bigger picture. His investment into production of electric cars in China certainly shows he thinks Chinese may beat us in this field (and this country has a lot of natural resources to transport by Warren owned rail to the ships departing for Chinese factories).