The dominants no longer respect any limits: ecological disaster, wars, genocides, unbridled finance, soaring inequalities, desertion of public authorities, attacks on Blue Helmets…
Humanity undergoes existential tests, which could potentially lead to its emancipation from dominant groups
Riccardo Petrella, Pressenza, 16 October 2024
The Persian Bridge of Friendship, 18 October 2024
Riccardo Petrella is the founder of the global civil society organization Agora of the Inhabitants of the Earth, which is promoting the idea of humanity being the subject of international relations
Where are you, humanity? The Israeli attacks on the Blue Helmets interposing between the territories occupied by Israel and Lebanon constitute the contemptuous denial, by military force, of the authority and the very existence of the UN, the major political-institutional organization of the international community.
This is the first time in the history of the UN. Unacceptable. The clear, strong, non-negotiable condemnation to be pronounced by the UN must not be delayed. It must be in the name of Humanity, and ensure that the unacceptable can no longer happen in the future. Because it is no longer “only” a failure to respect international law (UN, International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court, etc.) and, therefore, a violent denial of the existence of the international community. It is now the denial of humanity itself, flouted, trampled, sacrificed on the altar of the objectives of domination and plundering of the lives of peoples and nature, under the insane and perverse alibi of ensuring its own security.
The limits of the unacceptable have been swept away
The actions of the dogmatic fanatics at the head of the State of Israel are not the only forms of transgression of limits (some use the concept of “borders” to express the same idea) that mark the world in this third decade of the 21st century. Since the end of the 1980s, at first gently and then with increasing violence, the inhabitants of the Earth have been subjected to a deliberate will of the dominant social groups to no longer respect the limits established by the international community. Limits concern all areas. The community has resorted to them to protect living together, justice, the supremacy of collective universal rights, the common goods essential for life, the preservation and care of nature, the freedom and dignity of peoples, the spirit of planetary brotherhood.
Crossing planetary boundaries
Six of the nine “planetary boundaries” defining the safe space for life for the inhabitants of the Earth, according to the work of the international research group led by the Stockholm Resilience Center, have been crossed. The nine boundaries are:
- Climate change.
- Erosion of biodiversity.
- Changes in land use.
- Chemical pollution.
- Disruption of biogeochemical cycles.
- Ocean acidification.
- Atmospheric aerosols.
- Dilution of the ozone layer.
- Use of fresh water.
(The three boundaries not crossed to date are in bold)
Its authors say that it is not possible at this stage to measure the long-term consequences, but that we can analyze the ongoing processes whose power of destabilization and devastation is before our eyes. (1) This, while many governments are delaying, or even revising downwards, the rather modest constraints approved in 2015 with the Paris Agreement as part of the fight against climate change. In particular, the “famous” limit to the increase of 1.5-2.0 C° of the average temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere compared to that of the beginning of the industrial era.
The Claims of the Chemical Industry, AI Masters and Warlords
Thus, the European chemical industry, under the leadership of the German multinational BASF, the world’s leading chemical company, affirmed in the Antwerp Declaration in March 2024 (2), that it must be left free to choose the ways and means of its activities, arrogating to itself the freedom to continue to poison the earth, water, air and human beings.
As for them, the masters of artificial intelligence claim that “everything that is technologically possible” must be done in the name of freedom of research and progress. For example, one must be free to design and produce robot soldiers (moreover with public financial support). War drones – whose use few people dispute – are a bitter foretaste of what robot armies will be able to provoke.
Regarding weapons, the 10 nuclear states arrogantly rejected the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons approved on July 7, 2017 by the UN. They also continue to ignore its entry into force on January 22, 2021 as an integral part of international law after the ratification of more than 50 states in the world. As of January 16, 2024, 94 states have signed it and 73 have ratified it by national parliaments. It is unacceptable that 10 states, even if they are among the most powerful in the world, can prevent justice, security and peace from being promoted and respected for billions of living beings. This means that humanity, its existence, its future, are prisoners of a group of “national” oligarchies whose power is based on nuclear weapons. However, no one has yet demonstrated the usefulness of these weapons for the global common good or of the companies that produce and “proliferate” them. This also applies to chemical and bacteriological weapons, and then to the arms trade.
The case of the limits transgressed by global finance
The freedom to set its own rules has also been claimed by global private finance since the international financial crisis of 1971-73 and the oil shocks of 1977-78.
Finance has seized freedom by itself. It has also been granted to it by public authorities.
The monopolization of freedom by finance itself, without asking any authorization from the public authorities (who let it happen), was first carried out by the development of derivatives markets, real predators of the real economy. These markets have consecrated, on the one hand, the “legitimacy” of the sovereignty acquired by the Stock Exchanges, which have become powerful private companies and, on the other hand, the explosion of the power of private shareholder investment funds. The three main funds currently have a power of financial influence on the world economy exceeded only by two States, the United States and China. There are insurmountable limits to such acquisitions of economic sovereignty by private subjects. In a democratic system, sovereignty belongs to the people. The desertion of the State is unacceptable. The State cannot resign from its responsibilities and obligations linked to functions falling under public authority, which cannot be transferred/delegated to private subjects.
Finance has also broken another fundamental limit regarding the conception of nature by having the UN COP15-Biodiversity (Montreal, December 2022) approve the principle of considering/reducing any element of the natural world to natural capital – a financial asset. (3)
The concept of nature as a fundamental frame of reference for life, of which we humans are an integral part, we are the result of its developments and we consider ourselves one of the most striking expressions, cannot be thrown out. Reducing it to a category of the capitalist market economy – productive capital/financial asset – constitutes an intolerable outrage to the value of nature. Its value cannot be reduced to the value given by the market price. Such a reification of nature by finance results in an absurd mutation of the essence of nature and its immense value for life. In this regard, the Maori people in New Zealand have a civilization well advanced compared to the “Western” conception of life and the world, when they affirm with conviction and solemnity “The river is us”, they do so to defend the vital integrity of the river, Wanganui, against the predatory devastation caused by an economy that has reduced nature to a resource/productive/financial capital at the service of the growth of the economic interests of the most powerful. The Maori believe in the sacredness of life and consider water, especially the river, a sacred form of life. Western societies believe above all in the essentiality of money and consider that the essential role of nature, whether it is a molecule or a forest, is to allow humans to extract the maximum amount of money from it. An extreme form of this conception has asserted itself within the dominant American groups USA. For decades, they have been trying to impose the idea ” the world is ours“, in line with the declaration of the early 20th century (Monroe Doctrine) “America is ours“. The Maoris feel part of nature and inhabitants of the world. The dominant part of the American people consider themselves the owners of nature and claim to be the lords of the world.
The limits to this double vision of life must be defended and reinforced.
As regards the freedom granted to finance by public authorities, reference must be made, among other things, to the decision taken by the European Union in June 1998 when the European Central Bank was created. The governments of the Member States, with the support of all the national parliaments, granted the ECB the status of a separate legal organisation independent of any other European and national political institution. However, the ECB has always maintained that it does not set the value of capital, the interest rate to be paid so that economic actors have access to money, this capacity belonging to the market. The ECB intervenes only to possibly “correct” the market interest rate in order to guarantee greater monetary stability and support economic growth. The case of the ECB confirms that one of the sovereign functions of the State has been entrusted to the market, the political independence of the ECB being a solid instrument for promoting the political independence of the market in the monetary and financial field.
No limits to the appropriation of knowledge and its use
To conclude the non-exhaustive list of the limits to life that have been flouted and trampled, one last example. Supported by a large part of the scientific and technological world (including human, social and, above all, economic sciences), the world of business and finance has opposed any revision of the existing regulations, since 1980, concerning intellectual property rights (patents). Patent legislation authorizes the granting of an exclusive right of private property for profit for a period of 18 to 20 years (subject to extension) on new knowledge acquired in the field of living organisms, including cognitive elements and processes (info-communication). However, patents represent the transfer of public responsibility for regulating the power to process and use life to private subjects. A senseless transfer.
The crucial importance of patents for universal health rights and for a global health policy has been realized during the COVID-19 pandemic. Let us recall that 4 billion people in the world still have no basic health coverage. Well, the anti-Covid vaccines were, obviously – and remain – under the ownership of the large Western pharmaceutical industry groups. Some countries in the South (South Africa, India, etc.) have requested a temporary suspension of the application of intellectual property rules concerning vaccines to allow populations in the South to access vaccines for themselves. A suspension provided for, moreover, by articles 31-33 of the treaty constituting the WTO (World Trade Organization). (4)
The major Western global pharmaceutical companies, with the unconditional support of their states (led by the United States and the United Kingdom), have strongly and cynically rejected the temporary suspension. The poor populations of the South had to wait two years, the time it took for the populations of rich countries to be vaccinated, before they could access the purchase of vaccines. (5)
The liberation
The observation is painful, carrying worrying implications.
Citizens must stop believing in the theses and conceptions of the dominant and become aware that they must defend tooth and nail the rules and limits that aim to delimit the fields of the possible and their evolutions in order to safeguard and promote the rights of and to life of all, for all. Limits save and protect the life, freedom and dignity of living beings. (6)
Freedom without limits or according to the rules self-determined by the dominant is not freedom from injustice, from predation, from war. The freedom of the powerful oppresses and kills.
The above shows a major fact. Today the crucial issue concerns the existence and freedom of humanity and its future. I have the impression that we are moving from the era of the “national” liberation of colonized peoples, poorly or well achieved, to the era of the liberation of humanity against the global and planetary domination of the new world oligarchies, whose primary objective is to maintain their power and domination with the complicity of their States. It is urgent that citizens express their dissent and resistance in order to free humanity from the current system of oppression and injustice. (6)
Notes
(2) https://pour.press/lattack-de-l-industrie-politique-europeenne-au-plan-vert-de-lue/
(3) https://www.pressenza.com/fr/2023/02/cop15-biodiversite-et-financiarisation-de-la-nature/
(4) It should be noted that it is the WTO, a trade organization, an independent institution external to the UN system, dominated by the United States and its allies, which “governs” the key global rules on health and not the WHO (World Health Organization), a specialized organization of the UN!
(5) https://www.pressenza.com/fr/2021/09/la-trinite-de-linadmissible-lirresponsabilite-lincompetence-lincapacite-du-systeme-dominant/ and https://pour.press/que-faire-quand-les-societes-devientent-impuissantes-face-a-absurde/
(6) Proposals in this direction can be found in https://www.pressenza.com/en/2024/05/finance-and-water-let’s-stop-the-takeover-of-universal-rights-and-global-commons-by-the-predators-of-life/ . See also https://www.pressenza.com/en/2024/09/true-peace-demands-the-end-of-war-unmasking-the-illusion-of-power-and-profit/ . These articles were also published in POUR.presse (B)
Photo: (source: Pixabay, CC0)
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