Efforts To Obtain Sovereignty
The Maharishi and the Global Country of World Peace have approached small, impoverished nations about purchasing or leasing land to create a sovereign nation. In 2001, it was reported that the Transcendental Meditation Movement had been trying unsuccessfully for years to make such arrangements in Africa, Asia, and South America.
Starting in November 2000, the GCWP began making overtures to the President of Suriname regarding the lease of 3,500 acres (14 km2) of rural land to create a sovereign nation. It offered $1.3 billion over three years for a 200-year lease, plus "1 percent of the money the sovereign state's central bank puts into circulation", and the creation of 10,000 jobs.
The UNHCR reported that, in July 2001, the island nation of Tuvalu rejected, after serious consideration, a proposal from the movement to create a "Vatican like sovereign city-state" near the international airport in exchange for a payment of $2 million a year.
In 2002, the TM organization made an offer to the tiny Pacific island of Rota. The 33-square-mile (85 km2) island, 47 miles (76 km) north of Guam, is part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a protectorate of the United States. The people of Rota were offered the construction of great gardens, a peace university, and as much as a billion dollars worth of investments, if they agreed to grant Raja Nader Raam sovereignty over a 100-acre (0.40 km2) portion of the island, which would have required Rota to secede from the Commonwealth. Preferring to stay in the U.S.-affiliated Commonwealth, the islanders turned down the offer.
In Costa Rica, Emmanuel Schiffgens and other officials of the GCWP offered $250 a month to each family in the Talamanca reservation, 140 miles (230 km) south of the capital, San José, for the right to appoint a king. On June 23, 2002, a ceremony was held on the Talamanca reservation to appoint a TM-chosen Indian as the reservation's first king. The community balked and asked the Costa Rican government ordered the TM representatives to leave the country.
Read more about this topic: Global Country Of World Peace
Famous quotes containing the words efforts to, efforts, obtain and/or sovereignty:
“Every new stroke of civilization has cost the lives of countless brave men, who have fallen defeated by the “dragon,” in their efforts to win the apples of the Hesperides, or the fleece of gold. Fallen in their efforts to overcome the old, half sordid savagery of the lower stages of creation, and win the next stage.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“In all our efforts to provide “advantages” we have actually produced the busiest, most competitive, highly pressured and over-organized generation of youngsters in our history—and possibly the unhappiest. We seem hell-bent on eliminating much of childhood.”
—Eda Le Shan (b. 1922)
“Let there be nothing untried; for nothing happens by itself, but men obtain all things by trying.”
—Herodotus (c. 484–424 B.C.)
“What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
That beetles o’er his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason,
And draw you into madness?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)