http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/thomas_barnett_draws_a_new_map_for_peace.html
I was more interested in where he was going with it than getting a laugh out of it. Too much laughing imo. Interesting video.
There is a longer 13 part video on YT. I couldn't be bothered to watch it now. This was good enough for now.
I like the part in which he says that the "Leviathan" force will NOT be subject to international law, preceded with "we do not wish to be an empire". Man! Whenever you see a bunch of white guys in an auditorium talking about world peace "on our terms" while reducing truly unconnectable systems of military and economic power to 3-4 PowerPoint slides.... Watch out! But then again, it goes well with the ADD crowd that now populates most of the buildings in Washington.
Truth of the matter is that we're already doing some of the stuff the guy talks about in Iraq. I mean, let's be realistic, Blackwater is the "Leviathan", and the US Armed Forces are taking care of the post-war stuff. Is it working? Nope. Do Iraquis want us out? Yup. Simple.
Apart from all of this, in order to rearrange the system of power in this country in Barnett's terms you need to change the Constitution. You need to change the
Carta Magna from "to protect the integrity of country's territory" to "to preserve world peace". Furthermore, this guys presumes our intentions are always good, which is not the case. I mean, it's not that "people will end up hating us", it's that we need to clarify whether we want to bring peace to the world so that everyone could live happily with nothing but good intentions. It's that people around the globe will look around, look at the past and say "fuck no, these guys ain't coming in here!", be it that the UN voted in or out. It's peace on our terms or else, which is flaaaaaaaaaaawed from the first word that came out of his mouth.
In conclusion, the presentation seems brilliant, at first anyway, but you quickly realise that what he so adamantly opposes (and he says it repeatedly): the "American Empire," is precisely what this "new" system will lead us to. Apart from this, I can see how the centers of economic power, the ones who presuppose money to human life, could twitch the system so that they could reap maximum economic gain while killing hundreds of thousands of people around the world, passively or actively, and destroying our image overseas.
Needless to say, Big Money has other plans... New system or not.
