Wahington Post had an article today about the new World Court, the International Criminal Court, which is now in full operation. Reading the headline, I thought to myself what a field day the conspiracy theorists must be having. I've been reading plenty of conspiracy theory materials about the impending New World Order. Besides the long and winding articles on dodgy websites, I've read a couple of well-published books including Pat Robertsons's aptly titled "New World Order" and A. Ralph Epperson's magnum opus "The Unseen Hand". The latter's title, I might add, is a brilliant take on Adam Smith's theory of the "Invisible Hand". According to the authors, the purpose of such an Order is the creation of a global dictatorship that prohibits any form of individual freedom. Frankly, I'm far from convinced that such a conspiracy exist. From their writings, it is clear that this is just another case of Americans, and most if not all of the conspiracy theorists are Americans, subscribing to the "American exceptionalism" idea. The so-called "agents" of the New World Order movement have all been American or are of particular concern only to America (e.g. the Rockefellers, Patriot Act, the Freemasons, Skull and Bones, gun control, et cetera). Granted, the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and the United Nations have been blamed as well, but mostly on the premise that all of those organisations are under the control of the American government. The evidences produced by these conspiracy theorists, albeit coming from reputable sources, have all been either overblown or simply circumstantial. The best example of how misguided they are in evaluating historical facts and figures is in their predictions of the Soviet Union, particularly circa 1970s-1980s. Among them are the unification of the United States and the Soviet Union, the creation of a United States of Europe that unifies Europes's political economic and social systems (very different from the European Union we see today) and the Soviet Union's unification with China followed by the fall of all Asian countries under Communist rule. All these were predicted to happen before 1990. This just goes to show that the case is still strong on the side of the "Accidental View of History" and predicting human and social behaviour is an otiose practice.
Today is the 50th anniversary of Holland-Malaysia diplomatic ties. I was suprised at Holland's Ambassador to Malaysia Lody Embrechts's notion that Malaysia's "good business relations" with Malaysia can be traced as far back as 100 years ago. Hmmm... did he forget about the Dutch East India Company which had an outpost in Malacca in the 17th Century? Or is it because he didn't want to mention the Company's methods of maintaining its monopoly over certain industries in the region which included, and I quote from the Wikipedia article, "violent suppression of the native population, not stopping short of extortion and mass murder"? Lest we forget? Or should we just let bygones be bygones? You decide.
Godspeed,
Fadli
If there ever was in the history of humanity an enemy who was truly universal, an enemy whose acts and moves trouble the entire world, threaten the entire world, attack the entire world in any way or another, that real and really universal enemy is precisely Yankee imperialism. - Fidel Castro
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