October 2009, Issue #20 of The WorldVoter

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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 #20, October, 2009
(This issue and all previous issues are posted at www.RescuePlanForPlanetEarth.com)

Quotes of the month


Rescue Plan for Planet Earth is a triumph. It belongs in a class with
Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense.” John Kintree, St. Louis Public Library

Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors. Jonas Salk

If given a choice between what we have now—a hodgepodge of
uncoordinated, contested, non-representative, under-resourced
international organizations and institutions of “global governance”—
and what we could have—a democratic world “government”—I am convinced
that the vast majority of humanity would choose the latter. The
problem has been that this choice has not been available … until now.
The global referendum on democratic world government offers a means
for humanity to make such a choice. James P. Muldoon Jr., The
Architecture of Global Governance: An Introduction to the Study of
International Organizations

If we cast our minds ahead into the future, and ponder our past
history, it becomes totally obvious that a civilized planet like ours
must have a democratic world government. Future generations will be
surprised that it took us so long. Guy Dauncey, Stormy Weather: 101
Solutions to Global Climate Change

We need to promote the democratization of globalization before
globalization destroys the foundations of national and international
democracy. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, former Secretary-General of the
United Nations.

News in brief

Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize

It’s hard to add anything new to the vast amount of reaction, both
positive and negative, to the announcement that U.S. President Barack
Obama has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. However, if he wants Middle
East peace and a world free of nuclear weapons, he is going to have to
look beyond traditional multilateralism and bite the real bullet, the
need for UN Charter reform and eventually the creation of a
supranational body—a democratic world government, to put a finer point
on it—that has the power to legislate solutions to intractable
problems. The negative reactions to this Nobel surprise mostly say,
“What has he done to deserve it, aside from not being George W. Bush?”
It needs to be said that the new president is at least saying the
right words, and that is a huge improvement over the USA of 2000 -
2008. While this award does focus mainly on Obama’s aspirations rather
than on his accomplishments, let us hope that at the end of his time
in office, the two are congruent.

WATUN preparing for first Council meeting in New York City

The new World Alliance for the Transformation of the United Nations
(WATUN) is now preparing for its first Council meeting in New York
City, scheduled for October 25. The Council is made up (so far) of 29
or so representatives from around the world, and more are expected to
be added soon. Vote World Government is a member-NGO of WATUN, and
wishes to do everything possible to assist in its growth and
effectiveness. Assuming that the resolution supporting the global
referendum on democratic world government is confirmed (see September
issue of The WorldVoter), we are even prepared to negotiate a transfer
of “ownership” of the referendum initiative to WATUN (our main people
would stay involved so as to preserve continuity and to help WATUN
however we can to make sure the referendum gets completed as soon as
possible). It would be difficult to let go of control after more than
five years of work building the project to its present state, but it
is the right thing to do, just as it is the right thing to do for all
nation-states to surrender the minimum amount of sovereignty necessary
to allow for the effective functioning of a real global authority,
which must legislate on global issues and make world law “stick” when
such pressure is needed. VWG president Jim Stark is expected to take
part in the October 25 meeting, although his participation is expected
to be by an electronic hook-up of some sort. The details are not yet
worked out, but as Shahriar Sharei (VP of Democratic World Federalists
in California, WATUN Executive Committee Member, Provisional WATUN WEB
Administrator) recently said in an email: “If we want to solve global
problems we must eventually handle this problem also.”

Kintree sets up new site

John Kintree, one of our long-time supporters (see review quote, top
of page), has set up a new website called Citizen of Planet Earth
(www.citizenofplanetearth.org/voters.php). It deals with our global
referendum on DWG as well as other issue-based referendums on a global
scale. His site is worth a look.

UN accused of “abandoning democracy”

“The firing of its No. 2 official in Afghanistan shows how far the
world body will go to cover up the fraudulent August election,” says
Nipa Banerjee, former head of Canada’s aid program in Kabul (2003-06).
Ms. Banerjee now teaches international development at the University
of Ottawa. Her article (Ottawa Citizen, October 4, 2009) can be found
at http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/op-ed/abandoned+democracy/2067117/story.html

Editorial, by Jim Stark

The best defence is not a good offence! It is law!

There is an 18th Century English proverb that goes: “The best defence
is a good offence.” The absurdity of this maxim becomes self-evident
when one tosses nuclear weapons into the mix, at which time the best
offence amounts to planetary suicide. And yet this maxim continues to
be used by all sorts of people who want to justify preparations for an
attack, or justify the attack itself, at which time it becomes a
“preemptive” attack, which means it isn’t really aggression, you see …
just a form of defence.

One of the main jobs of any democratic world government will be to
mediate and resolve conflicts before they become “hot.” Outlawing war
in world law is the obvious first step, but it is just the beginning.
Having done that, the DWG and the parties in dispute have to assume
that there is an effective non-violent solution, apply whatever
resources and time are required to find and negotiate that solution,
and then legislate it, backed up by a range of coercive measures
(starting with sanctions and hopefully never going as far as military
intervention) that would be applied to any partner, nation-state or
otherwise, that fails to respect or live up to the terms of the
legislated solution.

The “mental” aspect of this problem is not difficult to understand. As
I wrote in a 2001 article:

When it comes to armed violence, there are very few unapologetic
conquerors any more. In recent decades, every side of every conflict
justifies its mayhem as self-defence. In Vietnam, no one was a proud
aggressor. The North Vietnamese were simply defending themselves
against an American invasion, and South Vietnam was just defending
itself against an invasion by North Vietnam, and the Americans were
defending freedom and democracy against a world-wide Communist
conspiracy. In the current Iraq-Afghanistan conflict, the U.S. and its
allies see themselves as defending against a terrorist conspiracy. But
the “evil-doers,” as George W. Bush likes to call them, explain that
their attack was a mere retaliation (i.e., “defence”) against American
foreign policies, such as the economic sanctions applied to Iraq after
its invasion of Kuwait, which caused hundreds of thousands of innocent
civilians to die, many of them children, or the USA’s support of
Israel, a country which came into being when Jews militarily took most
of what had been Palestine away from the Palestinians and left them
without a country. To the Palestinians (and many other Arabs),
American foreign policy is a “terrorist conspiracy,” and while we in
the West reeled in horror at the wanton slaughter of September 11, the
“other side” does have the far larger body count, which they believe
proves their point, and justifies their aggressions. It doesn’t, of
course, but they believe that it does, and that’s what matters most
here. In the language of every school of strategic studies, “one man’s
terrorist is another man’s freedom-fighter.” It’s all a matter of
perspective—and quite confusing. In the final analysis, there is one
inescapable conclusion: human beings are not always particularly
rational, and when you combine irrationality with modern technology,
it should surprise no one that we have ended up, as a species, in very
serious trouble!

A young Muslim recently pled guilty to charges of conspiring to bomb
several places in Canada. We are very fortunate to have an explanation
of how he rationalized his intended actions. He went online, saw
images of Muslims being abused around the world, became increasingly
angry, and eventually decided that the best way he could serve Allah
was to kill a bunch of Canadians, whom he felt would do just fine as
his victims, as they sort of represented all non-Muslims, who were
defined in his mind as his oppressors, and as his “enemies.”

“The best defence is a good offence,” remember? To this man, what he
was planning was not particularly different from what brave citizens
did in the French “underground” when France was occupied by Nazis in
the early 1940s. No one would argue seriously against a person’s right
to defend himself or herself, so as soon as you can define yourself as
a real victim, or as a member of a victimized group, any aggression
you plan or execute is mere pushback, a legitimate response to grave
injustice, a “defence,” sort of. And the beat goes on.

I remember my parents telling my brother and me that fighting wasn’t
allowed, no matter what. By virtue of the fact that parents are
responsible for kids, they got to “lay down the law.” It seemed
unfair, but I now realize that they were right—as far as they went.
They didn’t go far enough, though. I think the end of that frequent
lecture should have been: “If you have complaints about each other
we’ll sit down as a family and hear them and find a solution other
than fist-fighting so we can all get back to normal family life.” As
kids, my siblings and I understood that our parents had the authority
to insist, and at some level, I think I remember realizing back then
that as a child, I had a lot to learn before I could be loosed on the
world as an autonomous adult, and it was a good thing to have parents
who would intervene as needed when things got wild. And best of all,
as long as I resisted the temptation to beat up my brother (or anyone
else), I was free to do as I pleased in almost every other respect.

A democratic world government will have to take exactly that stand if
we are to get past war and eliminate nuclear weapons and find a way to
accommodate each other’s beliefs. The best defence against violence is
not a good offence. It is law! And the best (arguably the only)
defence against war is world law, enforceable world law, to put a
finer point on it. For that to work, nothing short of a democratic
world government will do. And for all of that to happen, there must
first be a directly-elected world parliament with authority to act on
“global issues,” which means the surrender of a small amount of
sovereignty by all nation-states to a new and democratic worldwide
institution.

I can see no way around this formula, and that’s entirely okay. Even
George H.W. Bush saw the light when he said: “We have before us the
opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new
world order, a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle,
governs the conduct of nations.” Most unfortunately, and like my
parents, he also failed to finish that discourse. To do all that he
said was desirable and achievable, George H.W. Bush would have had to
add that other part about every nation surrendering a bit of its
sovereignty to a new world authority. And I have no doubt whatsoever
that he failed to go that far not because he was uninformed or didn’t
think it through; he failed to mention this critical aspect because in
the American culture, to do so would have been tantamount to treason.
If this odd brain cramp doesn’t (finally) get sorted out, and this
comprehensive course of action doesn’t get launched, there is likely
no future for humanity or the planet. Let us hope that Nobel Laureate
Barack Obama can see his way through this ancient and deadly dilemma.
He has the audacity to hope, and now we need him to have the audacity
to spell out reality and the audacity to do what it will take to get
us from here to there. A global referendum on democratic world
government is a necessary starting point, and if it passes strongly,
that mandate would serve as the foundation for a future without war
and without the existential threats posed by nuclear weapons, climate
change and the like.

* * *

Jim Stark is the president of Vote World Government, an NGO dedicated
to launching a global referendum on democratic world government
(www.voteworldgovernment.org or www.RescuePlanForPlanetEarth.com; 120
authors now support the global referendum—the list is at
www.voteworldgovernment.org/authorscampaign.shtml)