Forty-thousand people descended upon Seattle to protest the workings of the World Trade Organization. The assembly included environmentalists, labor unions, human-rights advocates, patriots, anarchists, revolutionaries and looters. The marchers in Seattle were strange bedfellows, providing further evidence that a mutual enemy can create a form of unity among folks who might otherwise despise each other.

Some say that the WTO is an innocuous organization, with no capability to do damage. They are wrong. Francis Fukuyama described its agenda in a recent Wall Street Journal article: "The WTO is the only international organization that stands any chance of evolving into an institution of global governance, setting rules not only for how countries will trade and invest with one another, but also for how they will deal with issues like labor standards and the environment."

Clinton apparently agrees. In his address to the WTO in Seattle, he advocated "core labor standards" as a "part of every trade agreement. And ultimately, I would favor a system in which sanctions would come for violating any provision of a trade agreement." If implemented, this idea would strengthen the WTO by empowering it to punish nations who violate its rules and standards. It is a step forward in a global strategy to first regulate inter-nation commerce, then, tax it--laying the financial foundation for eventually establishing an independent, international military power to enforce decisions.

As for the environment, in a speech to a group of religious leaders in 1991, Al Gore said, "God is not separate from the earth." In his book Earth in the Balance, Gore wrote, "We must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization."

We are in the hands of political leaders who relish the breakdown of national borders. They are managing a steady leakage of power from the U.S. to burgeoning world institutions--and they are up-front about it.

Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, Clinton's roommate at Oxford, wrote this in Time magazine, July 20, 1992: "All countries are basically social arrangements.… They are all artificial and temporary.…Within the next hundred years … nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority."

Richard N. Gardner, Clinton's ambassador to Spain, said this in 1974: "The 'house of world order' will have to be built from the bottom up.… An end run about national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault."

Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott believes the United States may not exist in its current form in the 21st Century--because nationhood throughout the world will become obsolete. Talbott has defined, shaped and executed the Clinton administration's foreign policy. He has served at the State Department since the first day of the Clinton presidency.

Just before joining the administration, Talbott wrote in Time magazine--in an essay titled "The Birth of the Global Nation"--that he is looking forward to government run by "one global authority." "Here is one optimist's reason for believing unity will prevail. Within the next hundred years … nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority," Talbott declared in the July 20, 1992 issue of Time.

"A phrase briefly fashionable in the mid-20th century—‘citizen of the world'--will have assumed real meaning by the end of the 21st." Talbott continued: "All countries are basically social arrangements, accommodations to changing circumstances. No matter how permanent and even sacred they may seem at any one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary."

In less than a year, the United Nations will convene a special Millennium Assembly as a global summit on the future of the world. This event will crown a decade of preparation to launch the new millennium on a new system of global governance. The blueprint was published by the Commission on Global Governance in 1995. Now, a Charter to achieve global governance has been developed for presentation at the Millennium Assembly next September.

It is called The Charter for Global Democracy. It has already been signed by influential leaders in 56 nations, and has the support of NGOs [non-governmental organizations] around the world. The document is, in reality, a Charter for the abolition of individual freedom.

The first of 12 principles calls for the consolidation of all international agencies under the direct authority of the United Nations. The second principle calls for regulation by the UN of all transnational corporations and financial institutions, requiring an "international code of conduct" concerning the environment and labor standards.

Principle number 3 demands an independent source of revenue for the UN, such as taxes on aircraft and shipping fuels, and licensing the use of the global commons. The "global commons" is defined to be "outer space, the atmosphere, non-territorial seas, and the related environment that supports human life."

Number 4 would eliminate the veto power and permanent member status on the Security Council. Number 5 would authorize a standing UN army. Number 6 would require UN registration of all arms and the reduction of all national armies "as part of a multilateral global security system" under the authority of the United Nations.

Principle number 7 would require individual and national compliance with all UN "Human Rights" treaties and declarations. Number 8 would activate the International Criminal Court and make the International Court of Justice compulsory for all nations.

Principle 9 calls for a new institution to establish economic and environmental security by ensuring "sustainable development." Number 10 calls for the establishment of an International Environmental Court.

Number 11 calls for a declaration that climate change is an essential global security interest that requires the creation of a "high-level action team" to allocate carbon emission based on equal per-capita rights. Principle number 12 calls for the cancellation of all debt owed by the poorest nations, global poverty reductions, and for "equitable sharing of global resources," as allocated by the United Nations.

Dozens of documents, all promoting some form of world government, have been circulating for most of this decade. All contain these same principles. The Millennium Assembly will receive these documents and meld them into the legal instruments required to modify the existing UN Charter. It will take a year or two for the legal documents to be prepared and adopted, and another year or two for ratification. The world is truly standing at the threshold of world government.

"It seems to many of us that if we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government patterned after our own government with a legislature, executive and judiciary, and police to enforce its international laws and keep the peace. To do that, of course, we Americans will have to [give up] some of our sovereignty.... It [will] take a lot of courage, a lot of faith in the new order.... ", said Walter Cronkite's Oct. 19 in a speech to the World Federalist Association (WFA).

The former CBS broadcaster made suggestions "for immediate action that would move us in a direction firmly in the American tradition of law and democracy." His suggestions are (among others): " Ratify the Treaty to Ban Land Mines, the Law of the Sea Treaty, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Most important, we should sign and ratify the Treaty for a Permanent International Criminal Court. That court will enable the world to hold individuals accountable for crimes against humanity."

Mr. Cronkite who gave the speech at the United Nations in New York City, where he accepted the WFA's Norman Cousins Global Governance Award, continued, "some of you may ask why the Senate is not ratifying these important treatiesand why the Congress is not paying our U.N. dues. Even as with the American rejection of the League of Nations, our failure to live up to our obligations to the United Nations is led by a handful of willful senators who choose to pursue their narrow, selfish political objectives at the cost of our nation's conscience."

"The only way we who believe in the vision of a democratic world federal government can effectively overcome this reactionary movement is to organize a strong educational counteroffensive stretching from the most publicly visible people in all fields to the humblest individuals in every community. That is the vision and the program of the World Federalist Association. "

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The dizzying pace of change in the 1990s has produced a new growth industry--globaphobia--born of widespread anxiety over seismic economic shifts across the world. Gone are the comfortable certainties of much postwar thinking.

The fall of the Berlin Wall [1989] marked not only the end of the Cold War but also the liberation of new forces, captured by the generic shorthand of "globalization." On the cusp of the 21st century, the market reigns supreme. National borders are increasingly porous. New technologies are bringing dramatic changes to the way we live.

Old industries and modes of thought are crumbling, leaving governments and societies grappling with the consequences. The end of the nation-state [a country whose citizens consider themselves of a single nationality because of common descent, language, history, or other cultural or physical attribute. For example: "The Arab world is really a lot of little worlds--nation-states, kingdoms, and sheikdoms."]? The end of history? The end of geography?

Technology is shrinking the planet. Satellite communications have seen the cost of a three-minute transatlantic phone call fall from $244.65 in 1930 to less than $4 today. The cost of computing power has fallen by 99 per cent since the '60s. In 1980, IBM predicted the world market for personal computers over the next 10 years would be 275,000 machines. By 1990, there were more than 60 million PC users. World trade has also expanded exponentially as nations open their markets. A study by Michele Roth, of the Global Policy Forum, found that 160 of the top 200 most influential institutions on the planet today are transnational corporations.

They have overtaken all but the wealthiest nation states. As the 1997 Asian financial meltdown demonstrated, governments can be powerless before the tidal wash of international capital. The Bank for International Settlements reported a flow of more than $100 billion into Asia in one year, and $100 billion outflow the next.

Canada's Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, voiced the growing sense of vulnerability among the political class. "Capitalism hasn't come up with all the answers. We cannot see prosperity disappear overnight because some boy in red suspenders in New York decides this is not a good currency."

"Globalization has its winners and losers," noted the 1997 United Nations Human Development Report. "With the expansion of trade and foreign investment, developing countries have seen the gaps … widen. Meanwhile, in many industrial countries, unemployment has soared to levels not seen since the 1930s, and income inequality to levels not seen since last century."

On the political left, dark visions have emerged of Bladerunner-style cities of the future where a rich, educated and "wired" elite lives behind fortress walls, sealed off from a dispossessed underclass; of giant, mainly American, corporations dictating to consumers a uniform diet of food, language and lifestyle.

General Motors has corporate sales bigger than the revenue of the Danish government. Toyota has a turnover greater than Norway's. The 10 biggest industrial multinationals (Mitsubishi, General Motors, Mitsui, Itochu, Ford, Sumitomo, Toyota, Exxon, Marubeni and Shell) each has revenue bases bigger than the tax take of the Australian Government.

Only the governments of the U.S., Japan, Germany, France, Britain and Italy carry more financial clout than the biggest multinationals. But even they may not be able to stare down the cumulative might of global financial markets. In 1992, speculator George Soros "broke" the Bank of England and forced a devaluation of the pound sterling.

As global business strengthens, the nation state is in retreat. Global trade and communications deplete the state's capacity to control what citizens buy, sell, read and think. The removal of trade barriers and the floating of currencies have reduced its influence over economic activity.

The postwar era has produced the most remarkable rise in living standards in history. Yet the number of the truly destitute exceeds 1.3 billion. For one-fifth of the world's population, mainly in Africa, living standards fell during the '80s. More than 1.5 billion people lack safe drinking water and more than a billion are illiterate.

"Is globalization only to benefit the powerful and the financiers, speculators, investors and traders?" asked Nelson Mandela. "Does it offer nothing to men, women and children who are ravaged by the violence of poverty?"