XIX 21st November 2001
The setting down of tools for winter does not mean interruption of work on the farm but leads to new labours which are largely concerned with the requirements of the future. The team uses its experience gained during the year to carry out repairs and improvements to equipment, which this year included major repair to Schaeff, our German digging machine. The technology is well served in the Polish countryside by the existence of small workshops, even in outlying villages, with skilled mechanics and with sophisticated equipment, often imported second-hand from abroad. The retooling of main drum was done in such place, while detail servicing was by ourselves.
Other winter work this year concerned the usual trimming of the trees as well as building work. The trees requiring trimming, ready when leaves are gone, are mostly willows which are profuse in their branches. This is done by cutting back side branches and leaving five or seven centre ones, only slightly shortened; a system evolved by us, which gives them a sculptured effect more attractive than the usual bulbous shape. The building work consisted of constructing a large brick store for equipment next to the barn. Successful works accustom us to living in the hope of becoming the finest farm in the universe; we think less about disasters in Leszczyn, more about improving things for tomorrow, and rest satisfied in the midst of a rich late autumn.
We read the advocates of Pax-Americana, like Thomas Donnelly of the “Project for New American Century” who argue for expansion of the American empire of Democracy and Liberty, like a Roman or British Empire, with a dominating global presence. They say it has now become an unspoken basis of American strategy and that the practical question is not “whether we will or will not be a global hegemon, but what sort of hegemon weʼll be”. Whom are they planning to hegemonize: the British, the Germans, French, Russians or Japanese? Whilst Roman or British empires had a sophisticated culture which they were bringing, not least for selfish reasons, to backward corners of the earth - America, has not the standing vis-à-vis the cultures of Europe or elsewhere. Genghis Khan once hegemonized an area from Beijing to Vienna, using a distorted picture of Islam, for killing Muslims - whilst a distorted image of Democracy might serve to kill individual freedom.
In this assent to hegemony the United Nations has become a flunkeydom of United States, a tutelage in which it cannot fulfil its mission as a world helmsman or government. Placing it in New York with one of the victors was a grave error, committed in the excitement of victory, an error which the politicians did not commit after the First World War, when they founded the League of Nations, not in London or Paris, but in Geneva, a city of European traditions of tolerance, in a small neutral country, not under direct influence of a powerful nation.
Establishment of a multinational discipline was once already, at the time, not acceptable to America who decided to stay away. Now the Organisation is in the clutches of a super-power which having it there finds it easier to use it for its interests and when it canʼt, to abuse it without respite. They want to change it unilaterally: declaring that the present world order must not merely be changed but must be overthrown, and overturned, and they appoint for that purpose the most reactionary neo-cons, for whom there are no United Nations, but only one nation that counts: America. Americans have broken rules intended to protect the impartiality of the UN. While it is acceptable, even if not entirely fair, that the biggest nations have an extra pull, one faces the fact that they applied methods which are out of ordinary - including interference with arrival on their shores of representatives from nations considered unfriendly to them, listening and spying or intimidating them and withholding the funds due year after year as a blackmail.
They have now once again used their unilateral power to dictate requirements for a United Nations sponsored operation in Afghanistan. This is in spite of the fact that everyone from Kofi Annan, down seem to say that they have no chance of reconstructing of that country and that it could find itself, where it could not confront armed groups which would result as before in unstable coalition of warlords. Mr Bush insists that UN must have a role in Afghanistan in order not to be seen as imposing a government on that country or being blamed for every conceivable thing which might go wrong in the process, but to associate such acts with UN. There is of course little justice in connecting what happened in New York with the much suffering country of Afghanistan and we recognise the newspaperʼs slogan saying: “Operation blind Justice needs You to keep looking away.”
Therefore the first object for United Nations, if it is to survive, is to move from its present address, before it becomes entirely a department of the American State like the CIA. There are many locations in the world that could serve this purpose and some are more politically suitable than others, but arbitrary political influences will be reduced or nullified if UN becomes a free state of its own, like Luxembourg or Monaco. One location, of many available, could be on Mediterranean shore of Africa, not far from the site of ancient Carthage, offering a bow of respect to that underprivileged Continent. There is a point where the frontier between Tunisia and Libya touches the sea, at a small town of ZU?RA, where UN could possibly buy two strips, one from each one of the countries, of 50 kilometres wide facing the sea by 100 kilometres deep inland, to form an enclave to become its world stage. The two together would make a UN independent province of 100 kilometre square, boarding on the Mediterranean with own harbour and airport, becoming a principality, with own citizens, banks, police, post and administration; would give a base for democratic representatives of all nations, to guide the earthʼs future. If such independence cannot be achieved by the UN it would be better to wind it up - as its present location is like having the League situated in Berlin in 1935 - and make a new start with a new Institution, to fulfil world responsibilities in an equitable way.
One can speculate about the rules being brought up-to-date in which the re-location would help. There are great natural World Regions, which may be referred to as ʻAlteregionsʼ*, each acting as a unit of influence to protect its members and its interests and each wielding independent power of veto on a new Security Council, whose present form, all agree, is not representative of true power in the world. Perhaps ten alteregions may consist of: European Union; Russia; China; Oceania with Japan and Australia; India; Islamic block; Africa North and Africa South; United States as North America; and: South and Central America. Such ten alteregions of roughly equivalent rights to power may hold responsibility to initiate and provide a democratic basis for an eventual World Government. All in good time, but a Zuaran solution now would bring hope and good weather to world politics.
