November 2009, Issue #21 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

Issue #21, November, 2009
(This issue and all previous issues are posted at www.RescuePlanForPlanetEarth.com)

Quotes of the month

The mandate from a successful global referendum on establishing a
world parliament would be the first legitimate expression of the
people’s world sovereignty to make world law. World law will be at a
higher level than what we know as international law, and what we are
really doing with the global referendum is embryonic world law.
Francisco Plancarte, President of the Mexican NGO Planetafilia and
member of the Inter-American Bar Association. (Washington D.C.)

Referendums are a substantial part of the transformation of a
delegative democracy into a participative one. Using them at the
global scale in order to democratize the international political order
constitutes an extraordinary way of appealing for a world democracy
through worldwide democratic tools. Fernando Iglesias, author of
Globalizar la Democracia: Por un Parlamento Mundial (Globalizing
Democracy: Appeal for a World Parliament)

I would be proud and honoured to be a part of the group advocating a
global referendum on democratic world government. Your proposal sounds
practical, and I hope with all my will that it becomes a reality. Kai
Nielsen, author of Globalization and Justice

Problems such as global warming and nuclear weapons make it clear that
the global community needs a functioning democratic government. We
need a global constitution, an elected global parliament that can make
global laws, a global judicial system that can determine which
individuals are guilty of breaking those laws and a global police
force and prison system that can apprehend and punish those individual
criminals rather than trying to punish whole nation-states. The global
referendum gives individuals the opportunity to register their views
on this important but generally-neglected issue. Ronald J. Glossop,
author of Confronting War: An Examination of Humanity’s Most Pressing
Problem

News in brief

Change in referendum ballot wording

After much deliberation, the Board of VWG has finally made a unanimous
decision about changing the wording of the ballot question. It used to
read:

“Do you support the creation of a directly-elected, representative and
democratic world government.”

The word that some people choked on was “government,” based in the
(understandable) fear that a government could become tyrannical or
oppressive in time. The new wording, while is says approximately the
same thing, avoids the word “government,” and reads:

“Do you support the creation of a directly-elected, representative and
democratic world parliament that is authorized to legislate on global
issues.”

When the first wording was used, it was repeatedly emphasized that any
government that wished to be called “democratic” had to include an
accountable parliament, and this was emphasized repeatedly in the book
that gave birth to our organization and the referendum initiative,
Rescue Plan for Planet Earth. But still, there were problems. So now
the “shoe is on the other foot,” so to speak. A parliament “authorized
to legislate on global issues” means it would pass laws in
supranational areas such as peace, justice, human rights and the
protection of the shared environment, to name only a few. And if
“world law” passed by this “legislature” is applied, and is effective
and respected, then what we really have is a world government, even if
we don’t say that in so many words. [Please note that “world law” is
not the same as international law. International law amounts (mostly)
to treaties, and is set up to govern relations between or among nation-
states. World law “reaches to individuals,” just like national,
provincial and municipal law.]

Putting these semantics aside, the early results of this basic change
have been rewarding. WATUN, the newly-formed World Alliance to
Transform the United Nations, endorsed the global referendum, and is
also committed to “encouraging each member organization (there are at
present 30 or so member-NGOs) and all other civil society
organizations to collect ballots however possible and as fast as
possible.” Needless to say, if they live up to their commitment, the
global referendum should now take off and “go viral” … which was the
plan all along, and which is what has to happen if the global
referendum is going to make a real difference. (NOTE: VWG president
Jim Stark participated in the October 25 meeting of the WATUN Council
in New York by way of telephone conferencing.)

Vote World Government Board member Bhawani Shanker Kusum, from Gram
Bharati Samiti, is ready to start balloting in his province in India
soon. His plan is to expand out from there, and he hopes to eventually
bring in 100,000 votes. Also, our Board member Francisco Plancarte
(who heads Planetafilia, based in Guadalajara) has established a site
www.GigaVote.org to collect votes for the global referendum in Mexico,
and perhaps all of South America. (For those who don’t know, WATUN has
been described in a journal as “the brainchild of Francisco
Plancarte,” and VWG is privileged that he has accepted to join our
Board.) We also heard from Deepak Vyas, the head of an Indian NGO
called The Global Trust, indicating that this organization would like
to work with us to achieve our shared goal of a democratic world
parliament.

And finally, we just got the support of Democracia Global—Movimiento
por la Unión Sudamericana y el Parlamento Mundial, an influential NGO
headed by Argentinian MP (Member of Parliament) Fernando Iglesias (who
is, incidentally, one of VWG’s authors - see
http://www.voteworldgovernment.org/authorscampaign.shtml). Our
heartfelt thanks to Fernando and his colleagues at Democracia Global.

The road ahead

Having resolved this longstanding issue of the ballot wording, we now
must review our website to make sure it is internally consistent with
the new wording. Also, we have to consider changing the name of our
organization from Vote World Government to Vote World Parliament, and
change the site address to www.voteworldparliament.org. VP Ted Stalets
has already purchased that domain name for our possible use, should we
decide to make that change. (Thanks Ted, and by the way, VWG
newsletter recipients might want to check out the site Ted maintains
at www.PlanetInPeril.org.) We also have to translate the site’s banner
and the new ballot wording into the other fifteen languages other than
English in which we operate. All in all, this represents a lot of work
and expense for an organization with no paid staff and no budget! Our
thanks to Bob French for financing the website work.

And finally, we need to get our supporting authors far more organized.
They are scholars, intellectuals and professors in addition to being
published authors, and most of them are not political animals or
practitioners. VWG president Jim Stark has written all 120 of our
authors to tell them about the ballot wording change … and to suggest
that they consider volunteering for a “steering committee” just for
the authors’ campaign. This committee can figure out how best to use
the significant clout that our authors will likely acquire as an
assembled group of distinguished world citizens with a common cause.

Summary

In short, after almost six years of hard work and poor results, VWG is
(finally) poised to “take off” and “go viral.” Please do your part to
make this happen. If nothing else, get a few friends or relatives to
vote ... today.

Welcome back, Brian

Brian Coughlan, a past member of our Board who does videos on world
governance (see front page of www.voteworldgovernment.org at bottom
right), was on a leave of absence for a few months. He is now back in
the saddle as VWG’s Liaison Officer. We welcome his return to “active
duty.”