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https://theduran.com/why-this-article-was-rejected-by-all-of-the-paying-news-media

https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/why-this-article-was-rejected-by

Why this article was rejected by all of the paying news-media:

From Eric Zuesse

The following article, along with its opening “NOTE TO THE EDITOR,” was submitted as an exclusive to the 150 mainstream English-language news-media, the ones that are controlled by billionaires and so publish exclusives (i.e., pay their writers for they publish), and was rejected by them all; and the reason why it was, is self-evident from the article’s contents. It’s reasonable (and I had expected) that no billionaire would want such an article to see the light of day — publication to any large or influential audience. So, I now submit it to non-paying news-media, to make it public to as large an audience as possible, at sites other than The Duran, to which I directly post each one of my articles.  

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NOTE TO THE EDITOR:

To my knowledge, this is the only article ever done that tackles the three biggest, most fundamental, political problems: 1: to provide a realistic definition of “democracy” that reflects what the supporters of democracy are wanting to achieve by means of a democracy, and to provide a description of a realistic way by which a government can actually achieve that goal (democracy); 2: to provide a realistic method of achieving a world in which there is international peace, no wars between nations; and 3: to provide a realistic method of achieving climatic stability.

The first goal is democracy; the second goal is international peace; and the third goal is climatic stability. This article sets forth a unique analysis and proposal for achieving each of the three.

Consequently, I am seeking to publish it in a major news-medium — the type that has a large public audience, and that pays its writers for having exclusive publication rights.

I shall be open to any suggestions from an editor to improve it, if you find this article to be possibly worth publishing as an exclusive. However, I will not consider any suggestion to shorten the article, as it already is extremely short for its vast scope. On each of its three points, it is a summary, albeit a fully documented one (by means of its links). It contains a lot of information, much of which is known already by only a few people and will therefore be a surprise to most people (which is one of the reasons why it is copiously linked to its sources).

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The Radical Governmental Policy-Changes That Must Be Done, and Why

23 September 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (9,000 words.) (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

In 17 of the 24 nations that Morning Consult polls monthly on Approve-versus-Disapprove of their head-of-state, the latest report, on 9 September 2025, shows that more citizens Disapprove than Approve that person’s job-performance. Only seven countries’ leaders show more approvals than disapprovals. In the middle of the ranking (#s 12 and 13), #12 has 39% Approve versus 54% Disapprove, and #13 has 34% Approve versus 56% Disapprove.

This preponderance (71%), of (nations whose leaders have lower Appprove than Disapprove percentages, or a net) disapproval, has been typical; it’s been the norm shown in those rankings ever since Morning Consult started doing these surveys in 2023. For example, the earliest such survey to be archived, which was on 18 May 2023, covered 22 countries, and only 6 of the heads-of-state had higher numbers of Approves than of Disapproves. Each of the middle-ranking nations (#s 11 and 12) had 34% Approve versus 54% Disapprove. That ratio of more Disapproves than Approves was 73%.

This is one of the many international polls which indicate that, overwhelmingly, the public in most countries do not approve of their Government. If a democratic Government represents the majority of the country’s political views, then democracy is clearly the exception in most countries.

Here are (as-of 9 September 2025) the 17 (the 71% of) nations in the latest Morning Consult poll whose leaders had more Disapproves than Approves:

U.S. (Trump) 44% v. 49% = -5% net

Italy (Meloni) 40% v. 54% =  -14% net

Poland (Tusk) 38% v. 52% = -14% net

Brazil (da Sillva) 37% v. 57% = -20% net

Turkey (Erdogan) 31% v. 53% = -22% net

Sweden (Kristersson) 34% v. 56% = -22% net

Belgium (de Wever) 32% v. 55% = -23% net

Netherlands (Schoof) 29% v. 53% = -24% net

Austria (Stocker) 32% v. 56% = -24% net

Norway (Store) 30% v. 54% = -24% net

Spain (Sanchez) 34% v. 61% = -27% net

Japan (Ishiba) 26% v. 58% = -32% net

Germany (Merz) 30% v. 65% = -35% net

South Africa (Ramaphosa) 28% v. 64% = -36% net

UK (Starmer) 24% v. 67% = -43% net

France  (Macron) 15% v. 78% = -53% net

Czechia (Fiala) 17% v. 75% = -58% net

In the latest poll, the median (average among all of the 24) was -18.5% net (18.5% more people disapproved than approved of the head-of-state). In the earliest of their polls, the median or “average” nation (among all of the 22) had a net Disapproval that was -20%. And in all of these polls, the respondents weren’t comparing the leader versus any competing politician, but instead against what the respondent considered to be acceptable. In each of the Morning Consult polls, the average net Disapproval is around -20%, and that is highly unacceptable to be (to constitute) a democratic country.

Any of these countries that calls itself a “democracy” is probably lying. The way that a country gets to have leaders such as those is that the opposition Party (or coalition of Parties) had nominated a candidate whose policies were even more detested by the citizenry than the winner’s policies are. In other words: those are rigged ‘democracies’: “Good cop versus bad cop” routines, which give the public ONLY bad options to choose from. 

The present article will bring together and summarize the policy-changes that in my opinion must be done at all Governmental levels in order to improve the world (move it more toward authentic democracy), instead of harming it (as we humans — with our anti-democratic political systems — are doing).

Our Governments do a lousy job, on average; and, on average, the publics know it, though (since these nations are “democracies” only in name), the public can’t do anything to reverse their bad Governmental reality. The public don’t really rule ‘their’ country. It’s not theirs. They live there; they vote there; but they have no real say over how it’s governed. And all of the countries (such as in all of those that Morning Consult polls) CALL themselves “a democracy.” Yet, the average country’s Government, amongst all of them, has a rating by its citizenry that’s a net Disapproval of around -20%, which is clearly a dictatorship. That’s what these data clearly suggest.

At all levels, in national and local affairs, and in international affairs, there is increasing public concern about the failures of government, and the growing dangers of catastrophic results therefrom, such as increasing wars and possibility of a WW3, and uncontrolled global warming, as well as increasing public perceptions that one’s Government is (or else is descending into) a dictatorship. In many countries, the belief in global progress is becoming replaced by a fear of global decline into chaos and ultimately dictatorship. Nationally, and globally throughout the world, there is prevalent, in increasing numbers of nations, a belief that one’s Government is “on the wrong track.” How can the Government be a democracy if more of its citizens believe that it is “on the wrong track” than think it is “on the right track?” It cannot. Such a Government does not represent its people. Consequently, the very CONCEPT of “democracy” — how it ought to be defined (or RE-defined) — is rising to the fore. The questions now aren’t only practical, they are also theoretical; they are about fundamental assumptions, not merely about how those assumptions ‘ought’ to be applied. Because false assumptions ought NOT to be applied — they should instead be REPLACED.

This is a period in human history in which the stakes have become bigger than they have ever been before — authentically “existential” stakes, and not just for some nations, but for ALL nations (because of such dangers as nuclear war and global warming).

First here to be discussed will be the now enormous bodies of empirical (scientific) evidence that the existing political ‘science’ understanding of democracy (which is that a democracy requires public elections between competing political Parties — all of which are actually being effectively controlled behind the scenes by their mega-donors) does not, in fact, produce democracy (a Government whose policy-priorities are the same as the public’s policy-priorities are); and the change that I propose in order to ACHIEVE (authentic) democracy.

Second will be the description of how that proposed change-in-definition of “democracy” would be carried out. It would require (since it entails a redefinition of “democracy” to refer to a government that has the same policy-priorities that the public do) replacing public competitive elections and political Parties, by instead a lottery-based system in which the legislators (the group of public officials who write the laws) will be selected by a pure random lottery (no elections, and no competitions in deceiving voters such as is currently the norm), and the head-of-state or “Executive” will be selected from the legislators by a vote amongst themselves, and removals-from-office will be by a two-thirds vote of all of the legislators, following a procedure that is pre-approved by at least 50% of them, and which can be amended likewise by a procedure that is approved by at least 50% of them. Consequently, the currently existing system’s pre-selection of political Parties’ nominees by those Parties’ mega-donors (by means of their mega-donations) will be eliminated and replaced by randomly selected legislatures, and then the head-of-state being selected from among that body by its members. (NOTE: the problem that corrupts existing Governments and the ‘news’-media that stengraphically ‘report’ the ‘news’ — its lying officials’ allegations — from the standpoint of one of the billionaires-controlled political Parties, as-if they’re not all serving the billionaires, instead of the public, is eliminated by this random selection. That is why it is especially important. Currently, corruption determines whom the Parties’ nominees are, but it cannot be involved in a random-selection method. Furthermore: random-selection of the legislators eliminates the lying-contests that determine whom the winners in a multi-Party political system will be.)

Third will be my proposed Amendments to the U.N.’s Charter in order to bring it into line with the plan for the U.N. that Franklin Delano Roosevelt — the U.N.’s namer, inventor, and planner (between August 1941 and his death on 12 April 1945) — had been planning for the U.N.’s Charter. Unlike the intensely anti-imperialistic FDR, who had planned for the U.N. to outlaw and prohibit and replace any and all empires and to constitute a full-fledged global federal democratic republic of nations, a democratic world Government, which would be the sole source of international law, and the sole enforcer of international law, and sole possessor of all geostrategically important weapons in order to do so, and with a global supreme court that alone possesses the authority to adjudicate international disputes, FDR’s immediate successor, the pro-imperialist, pro U.S. global hegemony (U.S. global dictatorship), Harry Truman — the originator of neoconservatism or U.S.-global-hegemonism — trashed FDR’s plan, and produced the toothless Charter that the U.N. has. By so Amending the U.N.’s Charter, and instituting the enormous adjustments which will be required in order to outlaw and terminate the entire lone existing empire (or “hegemon”), the U.S. empire, and replace it by FDR’s U.N. instead of Truman’s U.N. (which now exists), World War Three can be averted. Otherwise not.

Fourth will be discussed WHY all existing proposed methods for controlling global warming have miserably failed (it’s that same governmental corruptness), and I will propose and defend a replacement of those methods: this replacement would outlaw the purchasing of any stock or bond — any investment securities — in fossil-fuel extraction companies, such as ExxonMobil and Peabody Coal: any such company at all. Their corporate-stock values will then promptly and permanently plunge, which will lead to greatly increased R&D for new cleaner energy technologies to replace the old ones.

Here are the details:

FIRST: We, the American people, need to regime-change our entire Government, which has been repeatedly found by scientific studies to be controlled by its billionaires — the Parties’ megadonors — not by its public (i.e., not by the voters, who are constantly lied-to and deceived by those Parties to vote for their candidates as “the lesser of two evils” ((in a ‘good cop’ versus ‘bad cop’ routine, which produces a trapped public — NO democracy)).

During the years ever since the billionaires-controlled military-industrial complex started taking over the U.S. Government on 25 July 1945 in order to extend their private corporate empires to control not only in America but over the entire world (now called “America's global hegemony”), the U.S. Constitution has ever-increasingly been systematically violated so that, for example, the Constitutional provision that the President cannot invade a foreign country unless both houses of Congress vote by a majority to declare war against that country, has consistently and always been violated after that date (i.e., after the end of WW2). All of America’s more-than-a-hundred foreign invasions since 1945 have been by the U.S. President acting alone, and so the U.S. Constitution (regarding this matter and many others) has increasingly become a mere piece of parchment whose meaning is controlled ultimately by the agents of America’s billionaires — NOT by the agenda and intentions of the Founders who collectively wrote it and each of its Amendments. In other words: the U.S. Constitution is now overridden whenever the billionaires want it to be overridden.

Corruption always comes from the top down, not from the bottom up; it comes from the super-rich (who profit from it), not from the public (who suffer it). However, the billionaires’ ‘news’-media don’t allow this fact to be reported to the public; and, so, the public are confused, and falsely assume that the solution to corruption is “less government, more free market” — as-if to eliminate governmental regulations and laws that protect the public from corporate abuses is the way to protect the public from corporate abuses. Wow! The logic there is so ridiculous, but the public have been brainwashed by billionaires and their agents, to think in this stupid way (It’s called “neoliberalism” or “libertarianism”.) It is simply amazing. People have absorbed that garbage even in the billionaires’ universities — but it’s more often simplified to the alleged “magic of the free market” (the cartoon version of the philosopher Adam Smith’s aristocracy-funded philosophy). There is no “magic” there, but just the magician’s hand and deceitful tricks, blown up so as to become “the invisible hand of God,” as being a ‘justification’ for the way things are: “Might [in religion, The Almighty] makes [determines] right,” so, just let things be. (Otherwise called “laissez faire.”) Let the corruptness continue. The corrupt want it that way, because they profit from it.

An authentic democracy is instead a government whose policy-priorities are the same as are the public’s policy-priorities. (That’s the empirical test of whether or not a Government IS a democracy.) Here is the way that this goal (and this redefinition of “democracy”) can be achieved (and why the billionaires — the super-rich — don’t want it, and have therefore pumped their ‘democracy’ instead):

SECOND: To execute (carry out) this agenda for an authentic democracy, the first necessity is to prove that our current, elections-based, system of government, FAILS to achieve democracy (as measured BY that test). 

On 14 February 2025, the AP headlined “Where US adults think the government is spending too much, according to AP-NORC polling”, and listed in rank-order according to the opposite (“spending too little”) the following 8 Government functions: 1. Social Security; 2. Medicare; 3. Education; 4. Assistance to the poor; 5. Medicaid; 6. Border security; 7. Federal law enforcement; 8. The Military. That’s right: the American public (and by an overwhelming margin) are THE LEAST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on the military, and the MOST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on Social Security, Medicare, Education, Assistance to the poor, and Medicaid (those latter five being the functions the Republican Party has always been the most vocal to call “waste, fraud, and abuse” and try to cut — but those 5 were the most-favored by the American public). Meanwhile, The Military, which actually receives 53% (and in the latest year far more than that) of the money that the Congress allocates each year and gets signed into law by the President, keeps getting, each year, over 50% of the annually appropriated federal funds. Furthermore, the U.S. Defense Department is the only Department of the federal Government so corrupt, so intensely corrupt, that it has never been audited. (Just think about that. Now, why would it be so?) ‘Defense’ contractors — the corporations that sell (mainly weapons) only or mainly to the U.S. Government and its colonies — have far outperformed the rest of the U.S. stock market ever since 1991.

Trump is increasing the military and border security, and decreasing education, assistance to the poor, Medicaid, federal law enforcement, and even Social Security and Medicare (the latter two by laying off many of the people who staff those bureaucracies). This Government’s policy-priorities are like the public’s turned upside-down — in other words: are the REVERSE of the public’s — and therefore the U.S. Government right now is a perfect example of a dictatorship. One might say that this is so in only the Executive branch, but it’s not necessarily true: As always when one political faction (regardless whether it it is one Party or a coalition of Parties) has control over both the Executive and the Legislative branches of the Government — as now is the case in the U.S. — these two branches (Executive and Legislative) function as one, and there then will even be a totalitarian dictatorship if they can get the Judicial branch or Supreme Court to call it “Constitutional.” Currently, the U.S. is slipping from a dictatorship towards a totalitarian dictatorship; but America has been a dictatorship ever since at least 1980. And that is a dictatorship by the super-rich. It is actually a bipartisan dictatorship, in which the two political Parties alternate in power but BOTH of them being controlled by only their respective megadonors. The first-ever billionaire U.S. President, who is Trump, is merely the worst-yet example of it. All of this started with the stupidest-ever U.S. President, Harry Truman (at least until Trump came along).

On 29 April 2025, Axios headlined “Exclusive: Most Americans see Trump as ‘dangerous dictator,’ poll says”, and reported the results of a PRRI “Survey of 5,025 U.S. adults conducted Feb. 28 to March 20, 2025” (and the survey itself can be seen here) which asked whether “President Trump is a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy?” and found that the breakdowns were:

Overall, 52% of Americans agree [answered “Yes”]. By party, 87% of Democrats and 17% of Republicans agree. Along racial and ethnic lines, 67% of Black people agree, compared to 45% of white people.

All Americans  52%

Party

Democrats 87%

Independents 56%

Republicans 17%

Race/ethnicity

Black 67%

Latino 63%

Asian American or

Pacific Islander 58%

White 45%

Furthermore, “The margin of sampling error is +/- 1.69 percentage points at the 95% confidence level, for results based on the entire sample.” That is extraordinarily good mathematical parameters, far better than for the average national opinion poll in the U.S.

Furthermore, the poll’s “APPENDIX A: Survey Methodology” exhibits that this poll met state-of-the-art standards in its sampling techniques, so that the poll’s findings are, from a scientific standpoint, extremely trustworthy as displaying U.S. public opinion.

In short, then, the NORC findings back in February showing that the reality is America’s being a dictatorship (by the super-rich), not a democracy, is displayed, as to its results, by the PPRI findings in April that the American public — by overwhelming margins except for by Republicans (who answered a mere 17% in the affirmative) — RECOGNIZE that they (we — I am an American) live under a dictatorship. (And the supreme test was, of course, that AP-NORC poll finding, that Americans’ policy-priorities were the U.S. Government’s policy-priorities turned upside-down.) 

So, the standard definition of democracy is a phony definition of “democracy” (though it’s the normal way that “democracy” is defined), because a democracy is instead a Government by representatives of each citizen equally, without regard for wealth, religon, ethnicity, or any other attribute — it is (and the term “democracy” can realistically be applied ONLY to) “Equal Justice Under Law” — and it CAN exist but never yet HAS existed (because of that false common definition for it — the definition according to which the term “democracy” IS applied to America). And another way of expressing this definition (“equal justice under law”) is that a democracy is a Government whose policy-priorities are the same as the public’s are. Therefore, all that we have had is aristocracies (and a few theocracies) — not yet any real and proven democracy. 

So, a “democracy” is a country whose Government’s policy-priorities are the same as are the public’s policy-priorities. It is NOT a country whose Government’s policy-priorities are the same as are the policy-priorities of only the richest .01% of the richest .01%, such as America actually is.

An authentic democracy would be based upon the following (here is the way to achieve it):

It would be replacing all public competitive elections (which inevitably will be corrupted) between competing politicians, by, instead, random assignment of members of the public, to the legislature; and, then, if that person is willing to serve as a legislator, be paid by the Government so to serve; and, then, voting BY those legislators, in the legislature. Those lottery-appointed legislators would then select from amongst themselves a head-of-state, the Government’s executive power, likewise paid by the Government. Randomly selected bar-certified lawyers would also be paid by the Government, to interview and select all judges; and all trials would be jury trials; and only pre-certified experts would be able to be paid by the court to testify on expert matters in trials. Certification of such experts would be based upon scores on purely multiple-choice specialized tests for evaluating a person’s competency in that field of expertise, so as to eliminate subjective factors and any influences by the rich (who normally select and sponsor ‘experts’). Any legislator or other Government-employee will be paid ONLY by the Government and annually audited, and any effort by any such person to derive income from any other source THAN the Government would be subject to trial and automatic firing from that Government-office if found guilty.

This would be a Governmental system that is designed so as to prevent corruption of the Government. Corruption comes almost always from the aristocracy, the super-rich, who own control over the large corporations, including the news-media and the think tanks and the most prestigious educational institutions, which they donate to and so the billionaires also fund the ‘experts’ that their ‘news’-media interview who likewise shape public opinions and thus public elections. The purpose would be to eliminate corruption from the Government. The common view, that the basic problem with elected Governmental officials is their incompetency instead of their corruptness, is disproven, in the relevant data. The 1979 movie about Washington politics, “The Seduction of Joe Tynan,” has been widely praised by Washington insiders for the realistic way in which it portrayed how the U.S. Senate is run and how corrupting (and opposite to serving the interests of the public as opposed to the megadonors’ interests) that sub-culture is. The corruption is part of competitive Party-politics, so that the best people who get there, don’t want to stay there. What’s needed, consequently, isn’t elected Government officials who are more competent (at deceiving voters, actually, in the present system), but instead Government officials whose policy-priorities are the same as those of the population that they represent. What holds a country together is its people, their human basic commonly shared interests; what drives a nation (and countries) apart is the richest .01% of the richest .01%, who achieved and maintain that economic status by constant competition and need to win. The competitive model for politics fails if the goal of politics is democracy. The competitive model is inconsistent with any enduring democracy. All of the empirical evidence confirms that this is so.

Furthermore, in this system, there would be no term-limits (such as, for example, would have required FDR — perhaps our greatest President — to quit in 1941), and so whenever a legislator chooses to quit or else becomes expelled by a two-thirds vote of his/her colleagues, and that person’s seat then becomes filled likewise by lottery, the collective legislature will tend to become and be long-termers, and so to be exceptionally well-acquainted with one-another, and — because there will be no Parties — legislative debates on issues will then be real debates (in which the legislators help and learn from each other) and NOT win-lose contests between power-craving professional politicians. It would be a legislature composed of normal people. It would be a very different kind of legislature.

This would be instituted by means of passing a new Amendment to the Constitution. That is the way to do this. If that is not done, then this will not be done, and there will then be no realistic hope for democracy to exist, and corruptness will thus continue to reign.

It would be the legislature for a democracy — a legisature that (UNLIKE existing ones) represents the public, by having the same (or approximately the same) policy-priorities that the public does. (If you want to know mathematically how and why this is true, click here.) Consequently (and also unlike existing legislatures), the specialists and experts that it would select and hire to advise it and assist it in drafting legislation, will NOT be selected to satisfy the billionaires (the mega-donors), but will instead be selected and hired to serve the public.

The ever-increasing privatization of the government (to benefit the billionaires, at the expense of the public) would, by this means, be reversed, in a way that would establish instead a government that is truly public, NOT controlled by the super-rich — by some aristocracy — but truly by and for the public. This would be done by means of a group (legislature) of individuals whose policy-priorities can reasonably be expected to closely approximate (or “represent”) the public’s policy-priorities. That’s to say: it’s a democracy. It’s a democracy because it’s selected in the way that (mathematically) will produce a democracy.

It would be an entirely different type of Government than we have. It would be a Government in which the laws don’t come from legislators who win and keep their seats by winning lying-contests against their political opponents so as to fool the most voters, but instead who are randomly selected and so face no such lying-competitions and can therefore keep their seats without fear of being out-lied by some political competitor, and can consequently work together with all of their legislative colleagues in order to actually do the jobs that the taxpayers hire them to do: to improve their country. Instead of being like a competitively and publicly elected legislature, in which each Member tends to feel superior to the people he/she represents (because they “chose” him/her), it will be a legislature with an “esprit de corps,” a collective spirit (something no mere competition can nurture), the spirit of the nation, like a longstanding and great symphony orchestra is distinguished by its sound, the sound of the best features of its nation’s or locality’s culture, made better over time, by their working together constantly to improve it. Also, because of the resultant political stability in such a nation, the treaties it makes with foreign Governments will not (like at present) routinely be short-lived and violated when “a new Administration” comes into power. Foreign nations will thus trust it far more. It will be a nation that is more secure, and internationally respected.

Moreover, in international relations, it will be more reliable and more attractive because it will be less subject to the sharp and sometimes even jerky veering between left and right that is so common in Governments that are selected by public elections between competing political Parties. Think of Germany when Hitler became elected into power. Think of America when Trump became elected into power. Think also of Brazil, when leftists became elected into power under Lula, and he then became imprisoned by rightists, and then the ultra-far-rightist Bolsonaro became elected into power, and then he was replaced by Lula again, and Bolsonaro was charged with having planned a coup and having plotted to kill the President-elect Lula. If you’re a business that is considering to contract with another business that happens to be located in such a politically unstable country — which might nullify what a prior (a different Party or coalition of Parties) Administration there had allowed or even encouraged — then how safe is it for you to contract with a company there? That instability is a result of Party-politics. Party-politics ENCOURAGES alternations between political extremes: Parties that take opposite positions (on whatever the billionaires-controlled Parties disagree about). All that remains the same there, is the Deep State — the billionaires who back EACH of the Parties. This way, the billionaires (the kingpins of corruption, whether for the right or for the left) do well, no matter how much the country suffers, and no matter which Party is in power. The only stabilizer in an elections-based ‘democracy’ is the corruptness — that’s the only thing which one can rely upon in such a country. There will be no political corruption, no public elections, and no competing political Parties, in a 100% lottery-based democracy, because it will provide no means by which the billionaires will be able to control the minds of the public so as to get billionaires-controlled political competitors elected by the (deceived) public to public offices.

For anyone who wonders whether the American example constitutes a reasonable case-example for representing the democracy-situation in other countries, the best evidence regarding that is the types of polls such as the ones cited earlier here from Morning Consult. Overwhelmingly, such polls show that Americans’ net Approval of their Government is typically in negative territory but near the international average for all countries, and better than most of its colonies (‘allies’) are. So, the situation in America seems to be normal for at least U.S.-empire countries (which are the ones that vociferously urge the overthrow and replacement of the Governments in independent countries, which they label as being “autocracies” and “adversaries” — the U.S. empire, including its NATO, demands the right to expand, and alleges that it represents the “democracies” against the “autocracies”).

THIRD: The present moment in world history is the transformation to replace the era that has extended from 1945 till now (2025), during which America is, and has been, intentionally growing its empire with the ultimate aim being to replace the U.N. as the authoritative source for establishing and validating international laws (replacing international laws by U.S.-created-and-enforced “international rules”), and so as for the U.S. Government to establish itself as instead being global dictator (and thereby ultimately replacing those international laws, by what it calls ambiguously “the international rules-based order,” those “rules” being whatever the U.S. Government will say that they are). 

U.S. President George W. Bush said to the world’s nations — and instructed America’s military that their task is to enforce — “You’re either with us or against us.” Every nation is either an ‘ally’, or an enemy. His immediate successor, Barack Obama, said to the world’s nations — and likewise instructed America’s military to enforce — “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation”: meaning that every other nation — including even each one of America’s ‘allies’ — is “dispensable.” Let’s think about that remarkable statement by Obama, for a moment. Even ‘allied’ nations are “dispensable,” according to that Nobel Peace-Prize-winning U.S. President. And that phrase was no fluke from him: he repeated the same statement on several occasions. In fact, he was happy to have originally gotten this idea from Robert Kagan, a leading Republican neoconservative and champion of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, who was flattered that Obama did. Furthermore, during Obama’s Presidency, an important member of his Administration was Kagan’s equally intensely neoconservative (ardently pro-U.S.-imperialist) wife, who had been V.P. Dick Cheney’s chief foreign-affairs advisor during G.W. Bush’s Presidency, Victoria Nuland, and she led Obama’s policy toward Ukraine and selected who would lead that country after its democratically elected President was overthrown by the United States in order ultimately to place American missiles there, around 300 miles away from The Kremlin. Practically all of America’s leaders (both Democratic and Republican) view America’s success as consisting of nothing less than every other nation’s failure — and that’s especially the failure (the conquest) of Russia, and of China. It’s the zero-sum world-view, that every game is win-lose, none is win-win: all is dog-eat-dog — ultimately, everyone is an enemy, and so must be conquered, in order for any person (or country) to succeed. That’s the perspective of America’s leaders, both Republican and Democrat: pure zero-sum — there is always only one winner; everyone else are “losers.” And they view “losers” with contempt, because “Might makes right,” so “losers” must be inferior to whomever the winner happens to be or become.

This attitude, of U.S. global supremacism, has controlled America’s Government ever since 25 July 1945, and led to the decision to use nuclear weapons on Japan (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) in the following month, and it will produce a world-ending nuclear war soon if that dictatorial U.S.-imperialistic global supremacism doesn’t soon become replaced by the American democratic and anti-imperialistic attitude that U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had formed even before America joined World War II in 1941: his conviction that the post-War world must be controlled instead by a democratic global federal Government of nations, which he labelled the “United Nations” (which was to be very unlike the one that his successor Harry Truman designed and which we have) and not by the United States Government, nor by any other merely national Government — no global dictatorship whatsoever — FDR was convinced that the termination and prevention of empires had to be the primary objective after WW II would be over (because both World Wars had resulted from imperialism). On 25 July 1945, Truman reversed FDR’s intention; and, at least up till now, the U.S. Government has remained Truman’s, not FDR’s.

That future era will be one in which there will be either what the U.S. Government is intending, which is an all-inclusive global U.S. international dictatorship over all other nations, or else it will be the global democracy of nations that FDR had envisioned and planned to become installed after WW II. Roosevelt tragically died on 12 April 1945, and was replaced by his V.P., Truman. The vision for a U.S. global dictatorship, which Truman (under the influence of his hero, General Eisenhower) supported and installed, is what has been developing ever since World War Two (WW II) ended. 

Truman started the present era by deciding, on 25 July 1945, to go for — and to establish entities and policies to attain — U.S. control over the entire planet. This explains the 45 U.S. coups, and 130+ U.S. invasions, since 1945, and the currently 900 foreign U.S. military bases around the world (in addition to the 749 that are within the U.S. and that can be examined here), and the expenditure by the U.S. of around 50% of the entire planet’s military costs. It’s heading now for ultimate show-downs against both Russia and China; and this brings us now to the transformative, the decisive, present moment in world history.

Although the U.S. Government routinely advocates for regime-change both in Russia and in China, the reality is (and long has been) that even Western polling within Russia and within China has almost consistently displayed vastly higher public-approval ratings of the country’s leaders there than America’s public have of our leaders here. Regime-change in America is likelier than regime-change in either Russia or China is. (Of course, U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media suppress, instead of publicize, this key reality; however, they cannot deny this reality, because the facts cannot be denied but can merely be hidden — as is done. And, then, publics in U.S.-and-allied countries vote on that deceived basis, and this becomes ‘democracy’ in “The West.”) The only way that the U.S. Government’s craving for regime-change in Russia and in China would be carried-out is therefore by means of a U.S. invasion and conquest of Russia and China, neither of which conquest would be accepted in either Russia or China, and which attempt by the U.S. Government would thus produce, instead, a nuclear destruction of the entire world. Truman’s dream (of an-all-encompassing U.S. global empire) is therefore unattainable. (It is also illegal — violative of the U.S. Constitution and of international laws, but this is making no difference to the individuals who control the U.S. Government: they don’t care about that — they are obsessed with achieving universal global hegemony.) 

The transformative present moment in history will thus either be a global-annihilationist nuclear war concluding Truman’s vision (since neither Russia nor China will accept becoming a colony — or ‘ally’ — of the U.S. empire), or else it will be the end of that since-1945-growing U.S. global dictatorship, and a consequently necessary transformation of the U.N., itself, into what had been FDR’s intention for the U.N., when he invented and named and planned for the U.N., which was to be (and which would then have been and would now be) as follows:

1. That it will define “international aggression” and will do so in a way that not only outlaws it but clearly prohibits what must be prohibited in order to prevent there being any WW III — any future World War. (To prevent any future World War was the reason why FDR came up with the idea of the U.N., back in August 1941 — even before America’s entrance into WW II.)

2. That it will have a monopoly control over all geostrategically significant weapons so that only the U.N. will be able to use them, and no nation will be able militarily to contest against the U.N.

3. That it will, as ANY government must, include all three essential branches that any government must include in order to BE a government: legislative, juridical, and executive powers; and that each one of those powers will be applicable ONLY to (and governing over) relations BETWEEN nations, and NOT to relations WITHIN any nation. This also means that ONLY “human rights” that the U.N.’s Security Council and General Assembly have ruled to exist and have embodied in international law may be enforced by agencies of the U.N., within a country, and that any such ‘rights’ that any nation(s) assert to exist but which have NOT become embodied into international law are to be treated as fraudulent to label as being international laws, and are aggressions against the U.N. itself, which must be dealt with accordingly, as constituting threats and crimes against international peace to be labelled as “human rights.” (Otherwise, without making that distinction, the U.N.’s sole and exclusive authority over international law will then disintegrate, because the concept of “Responsibility to Protect” — or “R2P” — within an individual nation is applicable to the U.N. only when and where the U.N. has specifically so legislated; and, otherwise than that, is entirely under the authority of only that given nation itself to legislate, and not, at all, of the U.N.: not within the U.N.’s purview. This is how a federal republic functions: by clearly distinguishing between federal and local responsibilities. No federation can even exist other than by this means.)

4. That every country in the world will belong to, be a member of, be represented in, have obligations to, and have rights in, this planet’s democratic federal republic of nations, and will contribute financially to its costs based not on a willingness to pay but on a formula which will be agreed-upon and set forth in the Charter of the U.N. (that democratic federal world Government’s Constitution), so that no nation will be buying special favors from paying more, nor suffer penalties from paying less, than what is there set forth. In other words: like virtually any Government, it must be tax-financed, and these taxes will fund all of its agencies.

That summarizes FDR’s view and goals for the U.N.

The U.N. that FDR’s immediate successor, Harry Truman, designed, included none of those four essential features of FDR’s intentions; and, so, is very little like what its inventor had intended it to be — and cannot even POSSIBLY serve the ultimate function that FDR had intended for the U.N., of prohibiting (outlawing) imperialism (which FDR knew had been the ultimate source of both World Wars). Here is how that is so:

1. The Truman-created U.N. did not define “international aggression” (the ultimate international-war crime) and didn’t even define “aggression” at all, until 11 June 2010, and did it then in a circular way, which used the term “aggression” in its ‘definition’ of aggression, and so it has been utterly useless except for propaganda-purposes (i.e., by aggressor-nations: imperialists — international-war criminals themselves — using “R2P” as an excuse for their aggressions). The Truman-created U.N., thus, lacking any clear definition of “aggression,” and consequently lacking likewise any clear definition of “defense” (and so, too, being unable to define clearly the most fundamental right, to “self-defense”) is trapped in an unavoidable web of hypocrisies, from which, aggressor-nations gain (by those confusions), while the U.N. gets the pain, and shares in any resultant blame. The most essential need of a functioning U.N., and of functioning international criminal law, is to define “aggression.” That need hasn’t yet been met, at all.

2. Truman refused even to consider that anything but the U.S. Government should possess nuclear or any other geostrategically important weapons — much less that the U.N. ought to control armaments of any type. (For a while, the mutual acceptance, by both the Soviet Union and the United States, of the “M.A.D.” or “Mutually Assured Destruction” meta-strategy for nuclear weapons — that they exist not in order to win a WW III, but to prevent one, prevailed on both sides, but, then, on 24 February 1990 the U.S. side tacitly and secretly abandoned that, and, after 2006, the U.S. side adopted the “Nuclear Primacy” meta-strategy, in which the U.S. is aiming to win a nuclear war against Russia. That movement toward a WW III would not even have been possible if the U.N. had had an FDR-ite Constitution; it is possible only because Truman designed the U.N., FDR didn’t.) 

3. Truman did not allow any enforcement to be included in the U.N.; so, the U.N. Charter included none, and didn’t even include any court-system for violations of international criminal laws. The International Criminal Court (ICC) wasn’t even set up until 1 July 2002, and it held its first hearing in 2006. Furthermore, unlike the U.N.’s own International Court of Justice, which was established by Article 93 in the U.N. Charter and which stated that “All Members of the United Nations are ipso facto parties to the Statute of the International Court of Justice,” the International Criminal Court was set up outside the U.N. and applies only to the Governments that have ratified it; so, international crimes don’t come under the U.N.’s compulsory jurisdiction. And international crimes by non-ratifiers of the ICC don’t come under any jurisdiction: it’s pure “Might makes right,” applying to them.

4. Truman’s U.N. included no compulsory financing, no taxation; and, so, the U.N. is especially beholden to its largest donors. It isn’t a Government. The U.N.’s Charter says nothing about how it’s to be funded. That has been ad-hoc, and entails both voluntary donations and a U.N.-applied complex formula for “assessed contributions”. The U.S., in order to dominate the U.N., is by far its biggest funder; and, at least as-of 2022, America’s contributions were around 30% assessed and 70% voluntary. Like virtually any charity, it’s controlled by its biggest donors. However, 20 U.S.-allied countries have chosen to pay even more per-capita than the U.S. itself does. Taxpayers in those U.S. ‘allies’ subsidize America’s dominance over the U.N. So, Truman’s U.N. is nothing like FDR’s U.N. would have been — nothing like it would have had to be in order for the U.N. to be able to do what he knew would need to be done after WW II, to end imperialism and thus prevent any WW III. Truman, in fact, privately despised his immediate predecessor, and replaced FDR’s entire Cabinet within just 2 years — and almost all of it within only his first year.

All of those Truman-induced shortcomings can be rectified by Amending the U.N. Charter. It has been amended on three occasions, but is difficult to do because it requires a unanimous vote by the five Permanent Members (PM5) of the Security Council. On each of those occasions, pressure from the General Assembly overcame the holdouts from the PM5. But nowadays, the non-PM5 General Assembly Members carry far bigger clout than before, because of the increased global antagonism toward the U.S. Government. The first Amendment to push for has to be to finally provide a practical definition of “aggression” and consequently of “defense against aggression.” The U.S., UK, and France still would all veto it, because aggression (military invasion, occupation without due consent, and regime-change by subversion, illegal — non-U.N.-imposed — sanctions, and/or foreign-imposed coups) is their stock-in-trade. However, each of the nations opposed to those (Russia, China, and all of the non U.S.-empire General Assembly Members) could then easily shame the U.S., UK, and France, into accepting that definition of “aggression.” (For the U.S. empire to openly block such a practical definition of the key term, “aggression” (applying not only to aggressive invasions but also to foreign-induced coups etc.) would alone be sufficient to weaken them enormously — prove them to be Hitler’s successors.)  Furthermore, even if not, the BRICS organization is evolving into a competitor of the U.N., and so increasingly the option to “jump ship” to leave the U.N. and join BRICS, could still force the U.S.-empire three holdouts (U.S., UK, and France) to cave and finally accept the end of their empire — the lone empire that has been threatening the entire world since at least 1991. 

FOURTH: You want to know how to stop global warming? Here is how:

Outlaw the purchasing of any stock or bond — any investment securities — in fossil-fuel extraction companies, such as ExxonMobil and Peabody Coal: any such company at all.

The legal markets are the ONLY markets for stocks and bonds. No ‘black market’ exists for any stock or bond, because 100% of the value of any stock or bond depends upon an investor’s ability to sell it to another investor: there exists no “use”-value for that “piece of paper,” other than the ability of other people to buy it from you. It’s not like buying-and-selling an outlawed narcotic, or a stolen artwork — things that DO have ACTUAL uses other than for them to become resold to another buyer. Investment securities have NO OTHER VALUE than their RESALE-value. And, if purchasing it is illegal, then selling it is impossible. Anyone who would purchase it in the expectation that a legal market for it will become restored, would be breaking the law; and, then, anyone who would consider buying it would be sharing that expectation, and the stock-certificate would remain valueless throughout that period. Meanwhile, on the corporation’s records, the stock would never have been transferred; and, so, anyone who had purchased it would have gotten nothing from it.

Fossil-fuels companies and the global warming that they’ve produced have been extremely profitable for billionaires, even though many of those people mouth and endorse policies (but only — as will be documented here — failed and failing ones) against global warming.

On 22 March 2023, OilPrice-dot-com bannered “Big Oil Is No Longer ‘Unbankable’”, and reported that because of the soaring prices for fossil-fuels that were resulting from Russia’s being threatened with sanctions that would punish companies that purchase those fossil-fuels, fossil-fuel-investments are soaring — as a result of the consequently plunging fossil-fuel supplies: “It’s an open secret within energy circles that the eventual death of oil and thermal coal won’t come from environmentalists or even directly from renewable energy, but rather when big banks decide to stop financing it, rendering it ‘unbankable’. And the U.S. oil and gas sector came dangerously close to meeting that fate after Wall Street banks started disavowing oil and gas lending at the height of the ESG (environmental, social, and governance) craze. … But the lure of those juicy oil and gas dollars amid an energy boom has been proving hard for Wall Street banks to resist, leading to many throwing their ESG pledges out of the window.” In other words: Investors are investing upon the basis of profit-expectations; that’s the way an investment-market works.

The public, themselves, are actually strongly opposed to global warming, but they are very confused about the matter, largely because the policies that are advocated (by billionaire-fronts) and that have been tried against global warming, don’t work. Billionaires (and their many agents) hide from the public the only policy that actually would work. (That, too, will be documented here.) The root-source of global warming is the billionaires who profit from it — NOT (as the agents of liberal billionaires pretend) the public who buy those products.

Indeed, the public’s opposition to global warming is clearly shown in an 8 February 2022 poll published by Politico, headlined “Poll: Citizens globally blast politicians’ lack of action to combat climate change”. It reports that globally, fewer than 20% answer No (including both straight-out “No” and “No, probably not”) to “Should fossil fuel companies be held responsible for the impacts their products have on the environment?” Depending on the individual country, from 61% to 90% answer Yes (including both “Yes definitely” and “Yes probably”) to that question — they strongly do want corporations to be held accountable for their impacts on the environment. (The lowest “Yes” are in both Japan and Germany 65%, and in U.S. 68%; the highest “Yes” is in Russia 90%.) 

Though they do strongly want “accountability,” they (as will be documented here) don’t know how it can be imposed in a way that will actually have any realistic possibility of reducing the problem. Furthermore, the controlling owners of the fossil-fuel corporations and governments actually don’t want the public to know what would be successful policies on this matter — the answer to that problem is actually hidden from the public.

On 15 February 2022, CNBC headlined “Banks haven’t quit coal. Study says commercial lenders have channeled $1.5 trillion to the industry since 2019”. This is true though coal has been and still is the main driver of climate-change. That new global investment in coal wouldn’t have happened if the buyers of those stocks and bonds had thought that they’d be unable to sell them in the future at even higher prices. (Especially if they couldn’t sell them at ANY price.) 

Global warming has been, and is, enormously profitable to the very richest people. The value of those investments must now turn to zero, and only such a law as is being described here can do that. Also on 22 February 2022, Reuters bannered “Up in flames: Gas flaring soars in Mexico, derailing its climate change pledges as it seeks to boost oil output”. That’s driven really by the billionaires, who control not only the corporations but their own governments, which ‘regulate’ those corporations.

The IMF says that “To limit the increase in global temperature to 2 degrees Celsius — the more conservative of the goals agreed to by governments at the 2015 climate change talks in Paris — more than two-thirds of current known reserves, let alone those yet to be discovered (see Table 1), must remain in the ground (IEA 2012).” Obviously, then, what the oil and gas and coal companies are doing by continuing exploration is utterly idiotic from an economic standpoint — it’s adding yet more to what already are called “unburnable reserves.” Thus, waiting yet longer for a technological breakthrough, such as fossil-fuels corporations have always promised will happen but nobody has ever actually delivered (and such as is exemplified here), is doomed, because if and when such a real breakthrough would occur, we’d already be too late and the uncontrollably spiraling and accelerating mutual feedback-loops would already have made the challenge vastly more difficult to overcome than it is today. We’d simply be racing, then, to catch up with — and to get ahead of — an even faster rise in global temperatures than now exists. Consequently, something sudden, sharp, and decisive, is needed immediately, and it can happen only by a fundamental change becoming instituted in our laws, not in our technology. The solution, if it comes, will come from government, and not even possibly come from industry. For governments to wait, and to hope for a “technological breakthrough,” is simply for our planet to die. It’s to doom this planet. It’s to abandon the government’s  obligation to the future.

Shell CEO Says Governments, Not Firms, Are Failing on Climate Change

On 14 October 2019, Reuters headlined “Exclusive: No choice but to invest in oil, Shell CEO says” and reported:

Ben van Beurden expressed concern that some investors could ditch Shell, acknowledging that shares in the company were trading at a discount partly due to “societal risk”.

“I am afraid of that, to be honest,” he said.

“But I don’t think they will flee for the justified concern of stranded assets ... (It is) the continued pressure on our sector, in some cases to the point of demonisation, that scares asset managers.”

“It is not at a scale that the alarm bells are ringing, but it is an unhealthy trend.”

Van Beurden put the onus for achieving a transformation to low-carbon economies on governments.

He didn’t suggest any specific policies which governments should take, but he did say “that not enough progress had been made to reach the Paris climate goal of limiting global warming to ‘well below’ 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.”

On 13 November 2019, the International Energy Agency reported that “the momentum behind clean energy is insufficient to offset the effects of an expanding global economy and growing population,” and “The world urgently needs to put a laser-like focus on bringing down global emissions. This calls for a grand coalition encompassing governments, investors, companies and everyone else who is committed to tackling climate change.” Obviously, we are all heading the world straight to catastrophe. Drastic action is needed, and it must happen now — not in some indefinite future.

Making such a change — outlawing the purchase of stock in, and prohibiting loans to, fossil-fuel extractors — would impact enormously the stock-prices of all fossil fuels corporations throughout the world, even if it’s done only in this country. It would quickly force all of the fossil-fuel extractors to eliminate their exploration teams and to increase their dividend payouts, just in order to be able to be “the last man standing” when they do all go out of business — which then would occur fairly soon. Also: it would cause non-fossil-energy stock-prices to soar, and this influx of cash into renewable-energy investing would cause their R&D also to soar, which would reduce costs of the energy that clean-energy firms supply. It would transform the world, fairly quickly, and very systematically.

The concept of “bridge fuels,” such as methane as being a substitute for petroleum, is a propaganda device by the fossil-fuels industry and its agents, in order to slow the decline of those industries. For example, on 16 November 2019, Oil Price Dot Com headlined “Why Banning Fossil Fuel Investment Is A Huge Mistake”, and Cyril Widdershoven, a long-time writer for and consultant to fossil-fuel corporations, argued against an effort by the European Investment Bank to “put more pressure on all parties to phase out gas, oil and coal projects.” Widdershoven’s argument is that “experts seem to agree that the best way to target lower CO2 emissions in the EU is to substitute oil and coal power generation in Eastern Europe with natural gas.” He says, “Even in the most optimistic projections, renewable energy options, such as wind or solar, are not going to be able to counter the need for power generation capacity. If the EIB blocks a soft energy transition via natural gas, the Paris Agreement will almost certainly fail.” 

The unstated “experts” that Widdershoven cited are, like himself, hirees of the fossil-fuels industries. Furthermore, this go-slow approach is already recognized by the IMF and IEA to be doomed to fail at avoiding global burnout.

Furthermore, government-support has largely been responsible for the success of fossil-fuel corporations (especially now for natural gas).

But in fact, the only thing that has an even worse carbon footrint than coal is liquefied natural gas (LNG), the sales of which are now soaring partly because of the propagandists for replacing oil with natural gas as a “bridge fuel.” And even using pipelined (non-LNG) natural gas generates more global warming than burning oil does. If natural gas is a “bridge fuel,” it is a bridge to hell. But it’s very profitable for billionaires.

Some environmental organizations recommend instead improving labelling laws and informing consumers on how they can cut their energy-usages (such as here), but even if that works, such changes, in consumers’ behaviors, are no more effective against climate-change than would be their using buckets to lower the ocean-level in order to prevent it from overflowing and flooding the land. What’s actually needed is instead a huge jolt to the system itself, immediately. 

Only systemic thinking can solve such a problem. Making such a change — outlawing the purchase of stock in, and prohibiting loans to, fossil-fuel extractors — would impact enormously the stock-prices of all fossil fuels corporations throughout the world, even if it’s done only in this country. No formal international agreement (such as the Paris Climate Agreement, which is already clearly failing) will be needed. This is an entirely different method, And (if it’s not already too late) it might succeed.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.