March 2009, Issue #13 of The WorldVoter

[The WorldVoter]

Hello from Vote World Government.

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The WorldVoter
the newsletter of
Vote World Government
— democratic world government through a global referendum —
www.VoteWorldGovernment.org
Vote World Government President is Jim Stark; Vice President is Ted
Stalets
www.RescuePlanForPlanetEarth.com
This site, above, is for the new book Rescue Plan for Planet Earth
www.MayorsForWorldDemocracy.org
This site, above, is for the new effort to involve municipal
governments in this issue
www.WorldVoting.net
This site, above, is to connect national elections with the global
referendum

Issue #13, March, 2009
(This issue and all previous issues are posted at www.RescuePlanForPlanetEarth.com)

Quotes of the month

It is no longer sacrilegious to consider that democracy can be applied
even outside the state. Daniele Archibugi, in his new book, The Global
Commonwealth of Citizens: Toward Cosmopolitan Democracy

The United Nations is not living up to its expectations in curbing
conflicts among nations and we need a new charter…. No country should
possess veto power. H.E. Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, former president of
India

... the present world situation ... makes it necessary to have a
world constitution, a world parliament, and a world government....
Throughout her long history, India has always believed in the idea of
humanity as a single family. Bairam Jakhar, then-Speaker of the Lok
Sabha (the People’s House of India) in 1985

News in brief

New “sister” site launched

For the past few months, Brian and Ted have been working to establish
a sister website, wherein a connection is made between national
elections and the global referendum. A press release announcing its
“birth” was sent out March 10 to media contacts throughout the world.
The idea is that any interested person can express either “confidence”
or “no confidence” in the current administration of any country, and
when a country is having an election in the near future, people can
then vote on which party leader they would prefer if they were a
citizen of that country (Iran and India have elections soon and are
open for such unofficial votes by our visitors). Of course while
people are there expressing their preferences with regard to a
nation’s leadership, they will be invited to vote in the global
referendum on democratic world government. Check it out: www.WorldVoting.net.

UN ambassador sends a reply to our letter

Letters were posted February 11 to every ambassador at the UN,
informing them about our initiative and asking them to consider our
draft UN resolution. So far, we’ve received one response, and happily,
it was from a major democracy. The ambassador wrote to say that “…
your proposal is very interesting,” and that while it would “induce
many difficult domestic legal and practical questions … we have
forwarded your letter to the ministry of Foreign Affairs …” Not a bad
start! Our first “nibble,” one might say.

More translations of VWG site

Our thanks to Moshe & Ilana Siman-Tov, new supporters of VWG, who did
a translation of the short version of our site into Hebrew (not
operational yet, but it will be soon). And thanks also to Brian, Raj
and Ted for financing translations to Farsi, Urdu and Hindi. Our main
site (www.VoteWorldGovernment.org) is now accessible in 13 languages!

The Board, the executive committee and a new Advisory Board

We have two brand new members of the Board. The first is Josep Ortega,
an old hand at cosmopolitan matters from Andorra. The second is
Torbjorn Tannsjo, a professor from Stockholm, Sweden, and author of
the wonderful book, Global Democracy, The Case for a World
Government.

Life-long Rotarian Bob French has become the acting CEO for Vote World
Government. We must incorporate our organization (hopefully by
September, 2009), but in the interim, we need officers to take
responsibility for various things, and fortunately we have found some
great people. The executive committee now looks like this:

Jim Stark (Canada) – President
Ted Stalets (USA) – Vice President
Brian Coughlan (Sweden) – Liaison Officer
Bob French (Canada) – CEO
Earleen Devine (Canada) – Researcher/Administrator
Ad hoc members – Raj Chandola and Josep Ortega

We have added an Advisory Board of distinguished resource people who
are glad to help, but too busy for the daily grind and weekly Skype
meetings that occupy the executive. To see who’s there, go to
www.voteworldgovernment.org/who.shtml and scroll down.

Be an “animator” for the global referendum on DWG

My favourite fridge magnet says, “Those who say it can’t be done
should not interrupt those who are doing it.” If you want to be one of
the people “who are getting it done,” you are hereby invited to become
an “animator” for VWG. Let us know of your decision
(voteworld...@webruler.com) and we’ll send you the checklist of
doable tasks that will “gitter dun” (that’s slang for “get the job
done” or “get her done”).

Writing our former “yes” voters

The Board took a unanimous decision (as required by our Privacy
Policy) to contact past “yes” voters to ask them to help us speed
things up by getting their friends and family to vote. The problem is
that we are growing far too slowly to get there in time—meaning in
time to avoid both an environmental collapse and WWIII (we’re already
much too late to prevent a financial collapse, it would appear).

Stark reality

VWG president Jim Stark has been keeping a diary since October of
2006, and making entries (two to four per week) about the things going
on inside Vote World Government. It is now expected that in 2012 or
2013, an excerpted form of this diary will be published … that’s if
the project is succeeding (if it fails, no one would be interested in
reading it). This record is in keeping with the “total transparency”
concept, which is a very important aspect of the democratic world
government model that people are being asked to vote for or against in
the global referendum.

UK’s Gordon Brown on right track

In an article entitled “The special relationship is going global,”
Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown said “… we must agree to reform
the mandate and governance of global institutions to recognise the
changing shape of the world economy and the emergence of new players.”
We hope by “reform the mandate” that he meant a global mandate from
the human race at large, and we hope that by “new players” he meant to
include the will of the people who live on the planet, acting as one
as we vote in a global referendum for the establishment of a
democratic world government, finally. To read the entire article, go
to www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article5821821.ece

UN report on Internet use

A UN report states that Internet access, which was 11% in 2002, soared
to 23% in 2008. That means that Internet access is now secure for
almost one person in four on Earth (it’s probably 25% by now, because
it increased on average 2% per year from 2002 to 2008). This is very
good news for the online global referendum. Countries were ranked by
how advanced their information and communications technology (ICT) is.
Sweden was #1 and the U.S. #17. See full story at www.tgdaily.com/content/view/41586/113/.)