September 2009, Issue #19 of The WorldVoter

[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 #19, September, 2009
(This issue and all previous issues are posted at www.RescuePlanForPlanetEarth.com)

Quotes of the month

We will, I believe, come together in a global community. The members
of that enlightened community will recognize that we are made in the
image of our environment; i.e., that we are divine and that we have to
operate, not in a survival of the fittest manner, but in a way that
supports everyone and everything on this planet. Bruce Lipton, The
Biology of Belief

The continued reliance on purely national forms of democracy has
become radically insufficient in a global age. It is no longer a
question of whether democracy should define the contemporary world,
but of which type of democracy we should wish and indeed hope to have.
Patrick Hayden, Cosmopolitan Global Politics

The most important decisions have migrated away from institutions
under citizens’ control and towards international power centres free
from any form of democratic supervision. Globalisation thus brings
about the crisis of democracy. How long can democracy last in a world
where citizens are excluded from participating in decisions which
determine their destiny? Globalisation must be democratised before it
destroys democracy. Lucio Levi, Crisi dello Stato e governo del mondo
(Crisis of the state and world government)

History has given our generation an enormous responsibility and two
daunting tasks: If civilization is to survive, we must not only
stabilize global population, but also, even more importantly, we must
eliminate the institution of war. John Avery, “Against the Institution
of War” (article)

News in brief

WATUN founded

WATUN, the World Alliance to Transform the United Nations, held a
founding Congress in Mexico City on September 12, 2009, chaired by Rob
Wheeler. The founding WATUN session piggybacked onto the UN’s
Department of Public Information/Non-Government Organizations (DPI/
NGO) session which met in Mexico City September 9-11. According to the
newsletter of the Democratic World Federalists (Summer, 2009), “WATUN
is the brainchild of lawyer Francisco Plancarte” (see “Warm welcome
for two new VWG Board members” below for more about Francisco), of
Planetafilia Ferderacion Federale (or just “Planetafilia,” for short),
based in Guadalajara, Mexico. To see WATUN’s mission, go to www.TransformUN.org.

More than 1,300 people attended this gathering, and a WATUN “Council”
has been set up to carry on the work begun at the conference. WATUN is
currently composed of 29 member organizations—we do not have the full
list yet, but VWG is one of them, and we are represented on the
Council by new VWG Board member Francisco Plancarte. Next, a Council
of 18 representatives is expected to adopt a plan that includes eight
campaigns, including the global referendum on democratic world
government. The resolution on this matter (worked out earlier between
Rob Wheeler and VWG president Jim Stark) reads as follows:

GLOBAL REFERENDUM
ON
DEMOCRATIC WORLD GOVERNMENT

In order to transform the UN into an institution that represents the
genuine interests of humankind, we must surely use democratic means to
achieve our goal. Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights provides that “The will of the people shall be the basis of the
authority of government [and that] this will shall be expressed in
periodic and genuine elections which … shall be held by secret vote or
by equivalent free voting procedures.” A global referendum is feasible
today, using the Internet, and a world vote on democratic world
government is now underway at www.voteworldgovernment.org.

If the online voting goes “viral” and the ballot passes by a good
margin, that mandate would be accepted by many people as legally
binding under international law, and would be politically compelling
no matter what its legal status. In such an emerging situation, we
will surely be able to transfer ownership of the global referendum to
the UN. A global referendum on democratic world government is a very
powerful new idea, and it has already been supported by 119
cosmopolitan authors.

WATUN thus agrees to:

1) endorse the global referendum (as presented at www.voteworldgovernment.org);

2) encourage each member organization, and all other civil society
organizations, to collect ballots however possible and as fast as
possible, to be tabulated by Vote World Government (the NGO that
developed this initiative);

3) support the idea of moving the global referendum from an online
vote to a formal procedure by means of a resolution in the UN General
Assembly (a draft UN resolution for this has been prepared, and is
posted at www.voteworldgovernment.org/draftUNresolution.pdf).

Warm welcome for two new VWG Board members

Francisco Plancarte has been chosen by Planetafilia, a Mexican NGO, to
represent it on the VWG Board. With colleagues Jorge Luis Navarro and
Orozco Erandi Dias Cevallos, he is developing a system that they think
can cause the global referendum to “go viral” on the Internet … soon
(there is a Planetafilia program for this purpose, called “Gigavote”).
As a new VWG Board member, Francisco represented VWG at the founding
conference of WATUN, held in Mexico City, September 12, 2009, and his
photo and bio are posted at www.voteworldgovernment.org/who.shtml. As
a lawyer, he wrote a legal opinion on a new approach to revisiting the
UN Charter, based on Article 109 of the Charter, which is expected to
represent the core effort of WATUN. Welcome to VWG, Francisco.

Bhawani Shanker Kusum serves as Secretary and Executive Director of
Gram Bharati Samiti (“Society for Rural Development”), in India. He
was also elected as a “Country Coordinator” for Intersect Worldwide, a
network of 210 NGOs, and he has personal ties to 400+ other NGOs.
Along with the letter from our 119 authors, Bhawani will send all
these NGOs his own letter in an attempt to get all them to endorse the
global referendum, cast votes and encourage others to do likewise. He
was recently elected as NGO Observer for Asia Pacific in the Clean
Technology Fund Committee of the World Bank. His photo and bio are at
www.voteworldgovernment.org/who.shtml. Welcome to VWG, Bhawani.

VWG site now available in Portuguese

Kevin Paul Scholz, a young law student from Brazil, contacted VWG with
an offer to translate the short version of our site into Portuguese.
This opens up our referendum for participation from the citizens of
Brazil and Portugal, and it also completes the reach of Planetafilia,
who are seeking to involve all of Central and South America. Many
thanks, Kevin, and best wishes for your studies in law.

* * *

Civil society and the global referendum
Jim Stark

Some NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) have been “blunt” in their
rejection of our initiative for a global referendum on democratic
world government, saying that we are in too much of a hurry, or that
what we are trying to do can’t be done. Most have been non-committal
or silent … waiting to see if we can generate momentum without their
help. A few NGOs, however, have expressed enthusiasm for our plan and
committed themselves to helping out, and that may be all it takes to
get us “over the hump.” (“Civil society,” for those who do not know,
is a collective term meaning the NGOs that do the humanitarian work
that should be done, and done more reliably and sustainably, by a
democratic world government.)

Here is a passage from Daniele Archibugi’s wonderful book, The Global
Commonwealth of Citizens, that captures the situation (emphasis below
is mine).

… it must be emphasized that the establishment of the ICC
(International Criminal Court) is the only significant constitutional
reform introduced in the new international climate. The ICC was made
possible by the combined efforts of courageous jurists and political
leaders from developed and developing countries, but above all by the
pressure exerted by global public opinion through numerous NGOs.

Dr. Archibugi cites Marlies Glasius as a source of this analysis, and
her book is actually entitled The International Criminal Court: A
Global Civil Society Achievement. So, if we look for steps towards
democratic world government since the UN was formed, there is really
only one “significant” one, and more importantly, it was accomplished
“above all” by the pressure brought to bear on governments by
nongovernmental organizations.

Our strategy

Small wonder then that Vote World Government (VWG) decided that after
setting up the global referendum voting site and getting the book
published, we should ask NGOs to see if a global referendum might
bring about the second truly significant reform of the global
constitutional reality, the addition of a directly-elected,
accountable world parliament to help govern the world on global
issues. It has been a depressing experience to be turned down, ignored
or criticized by other NGOs, but finally, we have come across two
serious NGOs that have seen the great potential of the global
referendum initiative and decided to partner with VWG in this quest.
The NGOs are Planetafilia, based in Mexico and headed by Francisco
Plancarte, and Gram Bharati Samiti, based in India and headed by
Bhawani Kusum (he is also a Country Coordinator for Intersect
Worldwide, a network of NGOs). Both Francisco and Bhawani have
consented to join the VWG Board, and with their help, we may soon have
dozens, hundreds, or perhaps thousands of NGOs collecting votes for
the global referendum.

The prognosis

It would be even better if we could get religions, unions,
corporations, and others to put their shoulder to the wheel as well,
and that will come in time. For now, we welcome the two new players,
and we assess that the global referendum is poised to break out. We
are tentatively planning a media conference on December 10, 2009, at
which time our 100+ supporting authors (see www.voteworldgovernment.org/authorscampaign.shtml)
will call upon world citizens, NGOs, elected representatives at all
levels of government and others to get very seriously involved with
the effort to bring the global referendum to fruition. (December 10,
by the way, is designated Human Rights Day by the UN, and we claim a
human right to vote in a global referendum to mandate the creation of
a world parliament, and subsequently to vote in global elections for
representatives to the world parliament, based on Article 21 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, referred to above in this issue
of The WorldVoter.)

So, will it all happen as we hope? We think so, but that’s partly up
to you. We need many more volunteers and we need money to do our work.
Please … help out if you can.

* * *

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

* * *

Search for authors to collaborate

Dhanjoo Ghista, author of Socio-Economic Democracy and the World
Government: Collective Capitalism, Depovertization, Human Rights,
Template for Sustainable Peace (see: http://dhanjooghista.googlepages.com/)
would welcome hearing from anyone on our authors’ list who might be
interested in collaborating on a sequel to this book. Interested?
Email us at voteworld...@webruler.com and we will forward your
email on to him.