Millisphere, noun: A discrete region inhabited by roughly 1000th of the total world population.
This summer I ran into “Squirrel”, an “art-mover” who had once gone to New York to install tuku-tuku panels as part of the $US two billion plus upgrade of the United Nations building.
Originally built in the 1940s, with a $65 million interest-free loan from the United States government, the United Nations HQ has been a steady earner for the City of New York ever since. “The further you go away from the UN the cheaper the hotel rooms are,” Squirrel observed.
Depending on point of view the United Nations is either a global humanitarian organisation or a bloated New York based bureaucracy controlled by the world’s arms manufacturers. Ever since the American Civil War, New York arms dealers have prospered from just about any conflict going. New York physicist, Robert Oppenheimer, led the “Manhattan Project” which built the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In the nearby “Trump World Tower” is the “World Bar” where UN diplomats socialise and the Saudis own an entire floor there for their UN delegation. Newsman Walter Cronkite, at the time, led a protest against the building of the Trump Tower; claiming it would dwarf the UN building, block views and was aesthetically unappealing. Following advice from his mentor, Mafia lawyer Roy Cohn, Trump counter-sued and built his “slab of banality.”
After the US decided to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem the UN Security Council took the unprecedented step of censuring the US. “We will be taking names,” the US threatened, cut UN funding and closed the Palestinian’s office in Washington.
New York is 60% Christian, one in three New Yorkers are Catholic and one in five are Jewish, over half of whom live in Brooklyn. One third of all US Jews live in New York. During the 1970s Brezhnev/Nixon negotiated detente another wave of Russian Jewish immigrants arrived in Brooklyn, including mobsters released from Soviet prisons.
Since the days of Al Capone doing business with the Mob has been almost inescapable in New York. Lately the Cosa Nostra have been displaced by the Russian Mafia who have moved up from drugs and extortion into high level finance. New York’s Russian Mafia now import most of the Afghan heroin consumed in the United States.
New York is the world’s preeminent banking and finance city. Two of the previous three chairmen of the Federal Reserve have been from New York. The 2008 global financial crisis was caused by trillions of dollars of toxic derivatives going down a plughole somewhere in New York – where they were originally invented. The largest ponzi scam off all time netted New York investment adviser Bernard Madoff $US 65 billion.
New York is the most important source of funding for US presidential campaigns. The last US Democrat primary was between New York native Bernie Sanders and former New York senator Hillary Clinton, who was ultimately defeated by New York reality television star and property developer Donald Trump.
The art of “public relations” was invented in New York (to bring the US into WWI) and its broadcast networks, ABC, NBC, CBS & Fox, shape public opinion worldwide through both traditional and “new” media, promoting an ideology of vulgar conspicuous consumption and ultra-superficial patriotism. Facebook boss, Mark Zuckerberg, is from New York and Madison Ave taught the world how to drive the that consumption.
New York markets itself as “the most energy efficient efficient city in the US,” but generates 14 million tonnes of trash per year (more than any city in the world). Once dumped at sea now the Mob moves the trash to landfill in the surrounding states.
The millisphere of New York dominates the politics of the United States which in turn casts its shadow over rest of the world. New York intellectual property lawyers initiated the raid on Kim Dotcom’s mansion in Auckland. Billy the Kid, Timothy McVeigh and Harvey Weinstein were all from The Big Apple.
New York’s legendary “creativity and entrepreneurship” has its dark side. Rather than calling other countries “shit-holes” Donald Trump should look at his own backyard.