Ted Stalets - Co-president of Vote World Parliament
This is a small website set up as an affirmative response to the Internet referendum on a democratic world parliament. There are basically two sections – a four-part article about the rationale for the Internet referendum by Jim Stark, founder and co-president of Vote World Parliament. To read just these articles, click the Yes Articles Only tab above.
To complement the articles is a three-part series of videos featuring former UN General Assembly President d’Escoto, where he offers his departing remarks about the institution he headed in its most recent term. To view the videos only, click Yes Videos Only from the RealNews series, above.
As a quick backgrounder on our world, terrorism, war, nuclear weapons, poverty, injustice, overpopulation and climate change are just a few of the global problems that we face. And it’s not just us humans that are at risk. The entire biosphere of planet earth is in danger. “Omnicide” is a relatively new term that refers to the eradication of life on our planet, and while it could be caused by an asteroid striking the Earth or the sun going supernova, it is most likely to be caused by the highest species in the food chain: humans.
To address the real danger of a human-caused omnicide, we need to develop an action plan, and do so quickly. Current efforts to create a more peaceful, just and sustainable world are not working. The UN is the only global political body we’ve got, and former UN General Assembly President, Fr. Miguel d’Escoto summed the situation up with this devastating statement: “The United Nations has failed …. I have come to the conclusion that the time has already passed for reforming or mending our organization [the UN].” What we need to do is reinvent it.” (See videos, below.) Please take a half hour or so and have a look at these 7 posts—4 short sub-articles and 3 videos. We would hope, on completion of this one-page website, that you will take action in your own way to help us establish a directly-elected, representative and democratic world parliament that can and must deal effectively with the very dangerous global problems that are simply not being dealt with today.
Part 1 of 4 by Jim Stark, President of Vote World Parliament
Jim Stark - Founder and co-president of Vote World Parliament
We need a democratic world parliament because we are smart enough to resolve our disputes through law rather than through the use of force, and because we are nice enough and civilized enough to not even want to beat up a person or a country that we may disagree with. There is no good reason why we can’t live as comfortably under world law as we do now under national, provincial (or “state”) and municipal law, and just as the formation of the nation ended wars among provinces and cities, a democratic world parliament will surely criminalize war and eventually end war between and among nations. Even terrorist groups should be less inclined to use force if there is a new global legal order where they can get a fair hearing for their grievances. While money isn’t everything, it is important. It will cost much less to institute “collective security” for the world than to maintain an armed force for each of the 194 sovereign nations, just as it costs much less to have a police force protecting all of us against all threats than it would be for each family to arm itself in case a neighbor from across the street may attack. The tax burden for security for your lifetime may well be cut in half by a democratic world parliament, and the actual security that can be delivered will be far greater through a democratic world parliament than it is in a current world of 194 national armies and 194 spy agencies.
Former General Assembly president, Miguel d’Escoto, says the most powerful states are to blame for the UN’s failure to address issues of war and poverty.
Part 2 of 4 by Jim Stark, President of Vote World Parliament
As far back as the 1960s, it was realized that all-out nuclear war could kill every person on the planet, and perhaps all life on Earth. We need to fully and permanently remove the threat of nuclear war or any war using weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from the list of possible futures, and that will require that we ban war altogether. Only a democratic world parliament has any realistic chance of doing all that.
There are many other supranational issues besides war, the most dangerous of which is climate change (or global warming). It is now clear that climate change is a serious threat to our very existence. Al Gore has called this a “true planetary emergency.” If we expect a patchwork of national initiatives to solve this problem, we are dreaming.
We know how to use technology to “corruption-proof” a government and make it totally transparent, so we won’t need to worry about the possibility of a “Hitler” gaining control of the democratic world parliament. If we are going to construct such an institution, common sense dictates that it must have verified integrity, using whatever technology it takes to accomplish an extremely high standard. It must be made impossible for military force to be used inappropriately at the global level.
Business needs stability to operate, and war is the opposite of stability, even if a few industries profit temporarily from war. A future where a company can operate smoothly and profitably for thousands of years is possible only if we construct a democratic world parliament.
There are enormous injustices in the world, and history surely teaches us that there is no peace without justice, no justice without law, and no law without government—in this case, world law and democratic world parliament.
Part 3 of 4 by Jim Stark, President of Vote World Parliament
“We benefit enormously from technology … but we also suffer from [its] consequences … it is now easier, takes fewer people, less skill [and] fewer resources to kill large numbers of people than at any time in … history,” said former American Senator George Mitchell (architect of the Mitchell Plan for peace in the Middle East) on CNN’s Newsnight, May 9, 2002. In the future, perhaps a twelve-year-old will be able to make purchases over the Internet and blow up an entire city. To even survive as a species, we must accept law as one of the necessities of life, and that must include world law (this is not the same as international law, since international law applies mostly to governments, and world law would also apply to individuals, just like the other three levels of law). No one today is foolish enough to suggest that we tear down all of our democratic municipal, provincial or national governments, even though they aren’t perfect. In twenty years, if a democratic world parliament is in place and doing its work routinely, nobody will even think to suggest that we might be better off without it.
We have in front of us the opportunity to become the “founders” of the world of law and justice that must exist if humanity is to survive and thrive in the years 2500 or 25,000 or 250,000. This may be the greatest opportunity you will ever have, the chance to carve a path across this last political frontier. The task of building a new and democratic world parliament is not that difficult, but it is big—which means we should start immediately and work hard.
Part 3 video from former UN General Assembly president Miguel d’Escoto : From Iraq war to imprisoned Cuban 5 , Americans need the courage to form a “new mindset”
Part 4 of 4 by Jim Stark, President of Vote World Parliament
If, say, 95% of all human adults voted in favor of the creation of a democratic world parliament, no one would dare to try to stop us from building what we had voted for. No political issue ever gets such high support, but there is a poll, done within 18 nations, that shows that a global referendum on constructing a democratic world parliament would pass very strongly. The numbers were 63% “yes,” 20% “no,” and 17% said they weren’t sure or gave no answer. So, let’s collect the two billion or more “yes” votes that it will take to comprise a “compelling” mandate for democratic world parliament (DWP).
If you are a democrat, then you know that democracy means governance with the consent of the governed. In other words, to get a democratic world parliament, we must first have a world referendum. The ideal way would be for the UN to pass a resolution calling for such a global referendum, but since that will likely prove difficult to accomplish, we can start by using the Internet, and a ballot now awaits your participation at www.voteworldparliament.org. (A draft UN resolution is also ready for the moment when one or more national governments decide that we really do need something better than the UN to resolve supranational problems and conflicts.)
In addition to the global referendum, we need to come to grips with the obvious need for a constitution for the world. We would like Canada to host a framing convention of all stakeholders—NGOs, scholars, governments, etc.—to prepare a draft. We anticipate the need for an Interim DWG or electoral commission to prepare for the first global general election, and to prepare for the presentation of the draft world constitution to the human race (likely through a second global referendum).
Vote World Parliament is the non-profit organization that is conducting the global referendum for the establishment of a democratic world parliament. To help out, you are asked to contribute money so that we can pay our bills and expand our outreach.
At this time, donations are accepted via paypal.com. Donations may be made using Mastercard, Visa, Discover, American Express, or E-check by clicking here.
Or you can send a check to: Vote World Parliament
Box 1102
Shawville, QC
Canada J0X 2Y0
