The 9/11 attack itself played out around the world, with planning meetings in Malaysia, operatives taking flight lessons in the United States, coordination by plot leaders based in Hamburg, and money transfers from Dubai - activities overseen by al-Qaeda's senior command from secure bases in Afghanistan.
'Contagion' should serve as a wake-up call not only about the germs, but perhaps more importantly about the frailty of governance, nationally and worldwide.
We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia; that's what's happening. Too many people there. They can't support themselves - and it's not an inhuman thing to say. It's the case. Until humanity manages to sort itself out and get a coordinated view about the planet it's going to get worse and worse.
What is interesting to me, as I travel, is that exactly the same agenda is being implemented in every country I travel to. Because people from different countries don't talk to each other and the international media are being used to bring about the changes desired by the global elite, nobody realizes this.
Perhaps the greatest challenge for the resolution of a systemic global bank is the possibility that public or private actors in different countries might take local actions that would cause the overall resolution to spin out of control.
Supposing we knew that up there is some alien civilization and it's sending radio signals our way we should not tell the public where that is. We could say that we've picked up a signal, but we should not tell them where for the simple reason that anybody could commandeer a radio telescope, set themselves up as some self appointed spokesperson of mankind and start beaming all sorts of crazy messages back to the aliens.
We're not short of movements proclaiming that a different world is possible, but unless we can coordinate them into an international movement, capitalism just laughs at all these little organisations.
What time is it in New York?" He shook his head. "An hour later than it is here. The earth simply has to revolve, Eve, however annoying it is for you." "It can revolve all it wants. I just don't see why people can't settle on the same time.
I think global coordination is tremendously important. I hope we can see this happening through the G20 and through coordination of regulatory regimes around the world. I guess those are the main features of this bill that are important.
With offices in 64 cities around the world, it is sometimes a challenge to ensure that I've got my finger on the pulse with every one, everywhere. Staying in touch means early rising for calls with China and Japan, and late calls with the U.S.
In 1967, the world health community launched a global effort to eradicate smallpox. It took a coordinated, worldwide effort, required the commitment of every government, and cost $130 million dollars. By 1977, smallpox had disappeared.
The time has come to develop integrated global policies.
In fact UN is more of a galaxy of organisations and agencies than one machine.
Eight minutes past the hour here in Belgium - and presumably eight minutes past the hour everywhere in the world.
Governments clash with each other over who should control the co-ordination of the Internet's infrastructure and critical resources.
The Internet requires evolved forms of governance that we haven't figured out as a planet. I'd love to help make that easier and make that possible.
Well firstly, that points certainly at the need for international standards on biometrics that would move in the same direction so that we can have the same technical requirements.
Some of the policy measures that are important are politically difficult if taken independent of actions by others in support of common goals. Joint actions are therefore needed, and establishing a G-11 with an effective role for the IMF provides the viable way forward.
Part of the reason we're all committed to coordinated stimulus is we want to stimulate the global economy. We're in a global economy, not just our national economies.p
I would like to implore all the governments of the world to come together to form a protocol to regulate virtual currency.
So long as confusion reigns, there will be no successful global Internet agenda, only contradiction.
A lot of coordinated approaches are required to make a global operation work.
Absent the net, we certainly couldn't have organized in 190 countries around the world. It's no substitution for face to face interaction - that's why we have "days of action" where people are in real contact with each other - but it's the cheap (and low-carbon) way to do an awful lot of the planning and organizing. And we can build, for $20k, a website as good as one Exxon can build for $20 million.
With enough money and international coordination, we can push incoming asteroids out of Earth's path. We might even be able to bring back extinct animals in the lab. The problem really isn't scientific - it's cultural. We aren't yet able to coordinate ourselves as a global civilization to do something simple like bring food to a famine-stricken region. We can actually use current satellite technologies to predict where famine will strike next, but we can't get food there - usually for political reasons.
Physicists and astronomers see their own implications in the world being round, but to me it means that only one-third of the world is asleep at any given time and the other two-thirds is up to something.
