Grassroots Global Democracy On-Line: Vote “Yes” for World Parliament Now

Almost a year after I first urged people to vote in the Global Referendum for Democratic World Government, humanity continues to blunder toward global collapse where worse case scenarios are fast becoming the most likely scenarios. Those who sound the warnings may as well be shouting into the hurricane for even more seem eager to ignore and deny the mountainside of complex troubles avalanching down upon us.

Those who are aware wonder what more can they do if anything. Many struggle alone or in small groups in the cause of their choices, large organizations have gone deep to stay alive but focus upon only one cause, with much of their energy diverted to fundraising, while the rest of us feel resigned, cynical perhaps, apathetic, demoralized, even depressed. I call this the “whatever syndrome,” as in when you tell someone that this time the sky really is falling or the wolves are actually killing and eating the sheep they just shrug their shoulders, mumble “Whatever,” and go back to doing whatever they happen to be doing. “Whatever,” right?

Folks, there IS something positive each one of us can do.

Vote “Yes!” for a Democratic World Parliament. And do it now. I voted “Yes.” Tell others to do it, too. Go to the website http://www.voteworldparliament.org and vote.

This is a grassroots, planetary movement. It is a worldwide internet-based voting via global referendum. You can find out more about it at its companion website http://www.rescueplanforplanetearth.com.

A recent book called Rescue Plan for Planet Earth: Democratic World Government through a Global Referendum advocates for the wisdom and practicality of building a unified planetary democracy. The author is Jim Stark of Canada. He lives in rural Quebec and served as a global anti-nuclear weapons activist during the Cold War.

His is a brilliant book. I have long struggled without success over what we can do to work with nation-state regimes, stateless nations, the UN and the Bretton Woods Three, or bypass all of them in some local-global grassroots initiative. Established institutions are inherently resistant to overtly surrendering power. Mr. Stark comes up with a brilliantly simple answer to a complex problem. The answer is to leverage telecommunications technology including the Internet as well as mail-in paper ballots from across Earth to launch, maintain, and sustain a Global Referendum for planetary democracy.

Jim Stark throws down a challenge for all of us, and it is a challenge any one of us capable adults can answer. Vote. Yes, vote. His Global Referendum is a way to involve all of us, even if we disagree with it.

Vote World Parliament is an NGO, a non-governmental organization, active in the pursuit and creation of transparent, democratic world government. While some people quibble over the wording of its ballot proposition as it currently exists, it is simple and direct. The ballot proposition asks:

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

That is it: “Yes” or “No.”

VWP works in alliance with WATUN, the World Alliance to Transform the United Nations as well as other global democracy NGOS and activists. Even though this grass-roots initiative seeks to bypass the UN, there are still sizable contingents who seek to radically reform what we already have.

Until recently VWP used to be called Vote World Government, short for Vote Democratic World Government. The name change, precipitated by coalition building with other pro-global democracy NGOs, stemmed largely in part from the unusually extreme fear and negativity wrapped around the term “world government.” The majority of Earth’s democracies maintain a parliamentary system, and while a world congress is clearly possible it was decided to go with the term “parliament.” Too many world citizens associated the term “world government” – even when preceded by the world “democratic” – with world dictatorship, far-rightwing conspiracy theories, and global empire. So many people, even if they laugh at the far-right wing conspiracy kooks, are still leery of the term “world government,” fear global tyranny, and view the term “One World Government” as scary and ominous.

The reality of the matter is that our alternative to Democratic World Government is planetwide collapse with all the horrors that entails or a worldwide empire. And we do have a world empire in the making right under our noses, the defacto Euro-American Global Empire dominated by the financial elite and their allies including the international bank cartels and the Corporatocracy. The emphasis of that neo-imperium is local-regional-national-global financial domination followed by economic domination followed by police and military domination with overt control of the political process, the most obvious process, being the last to achieve. The recent United States Supreme Court decision reinforcing the power of organizations including the principle of corporate personhood is a recent significant step in this direction.

At any rate, it was felt “world government” turned people off but “world parliament” proved enrolling. In addition getting an Earth Parliament or Congress established would be another crucial step in the creation of a true Democratic World Government. It is clear that such an enormous undertaking will take many steps even with the mountain coming down upon us.

I also take issue with assuming the best form of democratic government is going to be a European-style parliamentary form vs. the American three-way checks and balances system. I myself have not made up my mind which would be best for humanity. Both systems have their pros and cons. It would be best to leave that up to wisdom councils to sort out and a planetary constitutional convention followed by another referendum on that. I would imagine the best and brightest among us to evolve something even more evolved than what we have now. This is especially pertinent as we have experienced the paralysis and fragmentation inherent in parliamentary systems and the abuses and creeping “stealth” despotism that mar the American system. Jim Stark is upfront, of course, as favoring the Canadian system, which is indeed one of the better ones on Earth, as he is Canadian and thus more familiar with it. Nor is the fundamental issue of the people taking public control of the Money Power not addressed in these gatherings. Such an important economic and financial issue must be addressed. For now, however, let’s vote in this referendum! Let’s focus one step at a time and help build our Democratic World Parliament. We can move on from there.

These are all mere quibbles, however, quibbles. The greater priority is to get this referendum going worldwide. And that means starting locally.

Many will oppose us from all directions. There are those who desire world government alright, but are working hard to create a financial and political planetary dictatorship. There are racists, religious fundamentalists, nationalists, and those in the Corporatocracy and the military-industrial-intelligence complex who will oppose democratic world government as a threat to their power. There are the quasi-libertarian conspiracy theory kooks who recognize the above menaces as real, which they are, but collapse every move toward a democratic world federation as part of the One World Government conspiracy. These me-firsters make no distinction between the forces of what author/activist David Korten calls Global Empire and Earth Community. Instead these freedom-without-responsibility types denigrate concepts of universal human rights and universal social responsibility. There will be those who actually support the concept of Democratic World Government but may vote “No” because they don’t like parliaments. Come on, people!

There are also the capitalists who still cling to illusions of a free and unregulated marketplace and the communists who cling to the dictatorship of the proletariat as central state control who will oppose this. And there are the Anarchists who naively believe in no government or hierarchy at all but loose networks of individuals and neighborhoods cooperating together without competition and violence. I would imagine, however, that Jim Stark is right in his statistics-based assumption the majority of human beings would prefer a transparent, democracy world government of liberty, peace, health, and prosperity. And if the chance to vote in favor of such occurred most would vote “Yes.”

Let us set aside our differences to work together now. One step at a time, breathing as we go.

This Global Referendum to vote for a democratic world government is hands-down the best, most effective tool we have to leverage people and technology around the world in service of Earth and humanity. So go vote, and I encourage all of you to vote “Yes!”

Again, go here and vote: www.voteworldparliament.org and declare yourself for Democratic World Parliament that can legislate on global issues and help us meet our planetary challenges as one politically-united species. And join me in thanking Jim Stark and his team for such a great book, a brilliant concept, and a hands-on nuts-and-bolts approach to implement their vision. Jim Stark and all of you at Vote World Parliament, thank you.


William Dudley Bass
Friday, January 29, 2010

Sources:


Bass, William Dudley. “Vote Yes! For Democratic World Government,” At the Brink with William Dudley Bass. Seattle, WA: 2008. http://atthebrinkwithwilliamdudleybass.blogspot.com/2009/03/vote-yes-for-democratic-world.html

Stark, Jim. Rescue Plan for Planet Earth: Democratic World Government through a
Global Referendum. Toronto, Canada: The Key Publishing House, 2008.

Vote World Parliament, www.voteworldparliament.org

WATUN, http://transformun.org

© by William Dudley Bass

Faith vs. Data vs. What’s Really Important Here

A recent blog post by master blogger and bestselling author Seth Godin highlighted the tension between faith and data. First, allow me to distinguish between those two words.

I define “faith” as a belief in something without any evidence and often in the face of evidence to the contrary. Boiled down having faith is the desire to believe. And humans want to believe what they wish to be true.

Sometimes faith is a negative. Witness, for example, all the bloodshed committed and endured in the name of religions, notorious for demanding faith in many things for which there is no empirical evidence and with each religion claiming competing and opposing “truths” for faiths at odds with each other. Religious institutions demand faith from their followers.

And yet faith is what drives people to push on through great hardship and challenge to ultimately succeed. Faith inspires people to attempt and actually achieve amazing things often in the face of ridicule, harassment, even “proof” held up and waved in their faces to demonstrate their foolhardiness. People with such faith often seem to have the last laugh, though. And let us remember the many millions sacrificed, enslaved, tortured, murdered, injured, emotionally exploited, and financially manipulated in the name of religious faith. And, too, that faith propels people to rise above such horrors. Without faith people become resigned, cynical, and apathetic. They become embittered and give up or lash out.

“Data,” on the other hand, is evidence organized into information. All information is composed of data. Sometimes that data is clearly true and sometimes it’s clearly false and yet at other times it’s unclear, confusing, or at best anecdotal. As evidence, however, data and the information derived from it are held up as “proof.” Empirical evidence is evidence that is clearly, objectively, and quantifiably measured and holds up to scrutiny and testing especially via scientific, mathematical processes. In today’s Information Age, however, the sheer avalanche of data feels like too much to handle.

“Data crowds out faith,” blogs Mr. Godin. And yet, he says, without such data people won’t believe. Without anything to go on they won’t believe anything, or rather, they use that as an excuse not to believe something which challenges their current beliefs. Yet too much data overwhelms. Too much information becomes a flood that drowns out all listening. People want to run away from it. I’ve certainly been guilty of bringing forth a mountain of data to back up my arguments, and I’ve also been guilty of taking great leaps of faith without much data and sometimes even in spite of data.

The “real mission,” as Seth Godin sees it is “emotional connection.” That’s what’s really important here.

The bottom line is that people will believe whatever they want to believe regardless of what is put in front of them. It does not matter if the issue is sales and marketing, political and economic policy, historical controversies, religious doctrines, UFOs, ghosts, God, whatever. People may be influenced and manipulated in their belief structures, and ultimately they believe whatever they want. A successful belief is not based upon purported facts and figures or even faith. A successful belief is based upon the strength and power of the emotional connection between the person and the idea they choose to believe in enough to embrace. And when entire populations get caught up in that emotional connection to a belief critical mass occurs for good or evil. On of my history professors from Hampden-Sydney College used to say to us that “what people believed happened in history is often more important than what actually occurred.” Entire nations will make choices and take action based upon belief in various histories that later turn out to be false. It’s the emotional connection to any belief, even a false belief unsupported by the facts, that so drives a people into action.

Comments regarding President Barack Obama by Joe Klein in the recent issue of Time caught my eye. Obama, despite his charismatic oratory, is a cerebral “loner” away from the public pulpit. Klein noted that two other “arid” intellectuals who were elected president, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, were each ousted after one term and followed by “world-class emoters.” Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were famous for their folksy ability to reach out and connect with not just the masses but with those in private meetings. Both were able to reach out across party lines to hold the center together. The American people threw out a Democrat and a Republican who were arid loners despite their intelligence and voted in a Republican and a Democrat, respectively, who manifested and displayed empathy and high emotional intelligence. Both Reagan and Clinton were reelected.

The best salespeople are those who enroll others to believe in products and services enough to buy them. As my former father-in-law, a highly successful salesman and former fighter pilot, once told me, “People buy what people want.” When I pointed out that advertising uses psychology to manipulate people to consume what they think they want, he merely shrugged his shoulders and stated again that ultimately “people buy what people want.”

As critical as health care reform and addressing catastrophic climate change are, just to name two pressing problems, President Obama is faced with an enormous problem: many Americans intellectually understand these are important issues, but they don’t care. They really don’t care. They don’t have an emotional connection to those problems. In fact the way American voters see their public servants addressing those issues actually repels them. The mangling of health care reform by both Democrats and Republicans particularly dismays Americans.

Without emotional connection the deepest faith and the most impressive spreadsheet or encyclopedia or scientific research or PowerPoint presentation means nothing. The same can be said for socio-political movements and their champions as well as for companies and their sales reps.

Emotions have often been ridiculed. Without mastering how to relate to one’s fellow human beings, however, even the mightiest fall.



William Dudley Bass
Thursday, January 28, 2010

Sources:


Klein, Joe. “Now What? Hitting the Reset Button/Starting Over,” Time. Vol. 175, No. 4, February 1, 2010: 22-29. http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1955401,00.html

Godin, Seth. “Too much data leads to not enough belief,” Seth’s Blog. January 21, 2010. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/01/too-much-data-leads-to-not-enough-belief.html

© by William Dudley Bass

Corporate Power in a Planetary Democracy

Democracy lost on January 21, 2010. It is a significant loss in the on-going war (let’s cut to the chase here folks, this ain’t “tension” between factions within a national democracy; it’s a war for global domination between those favoring American democracy and the transnational corporate elite). The United States Supreme Court rule 5-4 in favor of Big Business and the financial elite. The Corporatocracy won another round in its efforts to not just influence but dominate the government of the most powerful nation-state on the planet. Little noticed in the outcry is that labor unions also achieved a victory, although unions have been in decline for decades now and are dwarfed by the financial elite.

This ruling gives more power to the principle known as “corporate personhood.” Corporations are created by human beings. They outlive people, often influence and dominate society at all levels from local neighborhoods to international, and are composed of people from numerous nation-states who are often not citizens of the countries in which corporate power is wielded. Corporate personhood is a fiction made real as the result of abuses by a California court in a 1880s dispute between local county and state governments versus the transcontinental railroad industry. The courts were sympathetic to the railroad barons and their corporations; a deliberate misreading of the records occurred after the Court reporter, a former railway executive, inserted his own pro-railroad comments into the record. This led to the U.S. Supreme Court upholding corporate personhood on behalf of the railroads in 1886. This success by Big Business, the Big Banks that loan money to and thus control Big Business, and their allies in Government achieved momentum over years and decades until the current Supreme Court again ruled in favor of corporate personhood.

The danger here is that organizations now have the same rights as the human beings who created them. Specifically, corporations (and labor unions, too, and indeed any organization) now have a legal right to free speech and this entails not just advertising and marketing on behalf of political candidates but donating money to various political parties and their candidates. Prodigious amounts of money. Human beings limit their personal financial structures for a reason. It was John D. Rockefeller, one of the iconic titans during the transition from “Big Business” to what we today call the Corporatocracy who said “Own nothing, control everything.” The wealthy as well as any middle class businessperson who can do so take advantage of laws favorable to the financial elite to shield their wealth as well as personal liability behind corporate structures.

Armed with such “rights” granted by the Supreme Court compounding a 19th Century error, corporations can now spend huge amounts of money to buy or buy off candidates for political office as well as elected officials. Candidates favored by the Corporacrats will have the financial support to make winning an election far more likely. Candidates not favored can be intimidated into line. Corporate control of the media further skewers the politics. Of course, we don’t even mention the potential in an otherwise developed nation for bribery, graft, kickbacks, and other forms of corruption here, corruption often associated with developing nations where transnational corporations often wield more power than governments. Nor have we considered corporate corruption of non-elected or appointed officials and other government employees. This will impact how other governments and businesses in other countries engage with the United States. Politicians, even those aspiring to “do good” and implement reforms will be reduced to dogs dancing for the biggest corporate hand-outs. The revolving doors between corporations, government, the military-industrial-intelligence complex, research institutes, big banks, and secret societies will spin easier and faster. And maybe even spin at a more relaxed pace.

My stand is this: Only humans have rights, not their organizations. No organization is to have the same rights as individual human beings. All governments, NGOs, corporations, unions, banks, clubs, even the marketplace operate at the discretion of people, not the other way around. Healthy businesses offer many wonderful services and help us generate wealth, but they have no business having the same constitutional rights originally reserved for their human creators.

It is clear, too, that more than ever democratic world government is required in the face of the complex challenges inundating our fragmented species. In fact, a global grass roots effort to by-pass both the failed United Nations and the emerging global empire and help establish a Democratic World Parliament is gaining momentum. Go to http://voteworldparliament.org/ and vote.

It is also clear that a constitutional, democratic, federal, planetary republic alone is not enough. Or rather, building such a government is not enough. We must have an integral, democratic capitalism that is sustainable, encourages entrepreneurship, and is socially and environmentally responsible. These are enormous challenges we face and face as a species, not merely any one nation-state.

For now, a perfect place to start, especially as an American voter is to go to and join http://www.movetoamend.org/ and support them. You can join Facebook and become a member of “Abolish Corporate Personhood Now.” If you are a citizen of any other country, you can do whatever you can to reduce control of your communities by transnational corporations and increase democracy in your governments and businesses. All can certainly vote for a Democratic World Parliament. In addition, large numbers of people working in and for corporations are basically good people. You know who you are. You have the power to help all of us change things, reclaim democracy, and help corporations focus on what they were originally designed to do: generate economic abundance and financial wealth.

Finally, I quote below from my own book in progress, We the People of Earth:

· “Corporations are legal business structures created by human beings. Corporations are not persons and do not and shall not have the same rights as individual human beings. Corporations exist by privilege and operate in the marketplace within the law. Human beings have the right to form corporations and other business entities. People have the right to work and a right to conduct business and generate money within the framework of law, they have the right to protect legally acquired assets with corporate structures, but their corporate creations themselves have no such rights. Any law in any nation-state including both international and local jurisdictions that grant corporations the same rights as human beings and granting corporations the status of personhood shall be abolished as we transition into a transparent, democratic planetary republic.”



William Dudley Bass
Tuesday, January 26, 2010

© by William Dudley Bass

Global Disaster Response to Haitian Earthquake a Prelude to Moves toward Unification?

The Indian Ocean and Asian earthquake and tsunami of December 2004, which claimed about 230,000 lives and probably more from the East African coast to the Indian subcontinent to Indonesia and Thailand, caused the entire planet to vibrate. It also elicited the first truly global response to a humanitarian disaster. We even saw two former American presidents of opposing political parties, George H. W. Bush the Republican and Bill Clinton the Democrat, working together and working together as friends to help lead the relief and reconstruction efforts. The May 2008 Typhoon Nargis disaster in Myanmar/Burma was a potential international aid response but was thwarted by the military junta in power. There were and have been other significant disasters, many that did elicit aid from different countries responding to a crisis in another, including famines, but nothing of the scale of the global response to the 2004 tsunami.

In Haiti in the wake of the devastating January 2010 earthquake we see it again and in a more evolved fashion. The response to the quake was immediate, far more immediate by the United States, for example, than it’s response to its own 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster. In fact strong aftershocks continue as I write. Our response to Haiti’s crisis is beyond international; it is global. Fellow human beings from around the planet have rallied to support their own in a small nation-state ravaged even before the giant quake by decades of poverty, dictatorship, coups and low-level civil wars, military occupation, economic exploitation, and environmental destruction. This planet-wide response is just beginning to be noticed as we are still in the thick of it all. Reasons for the rapid and global response range from the ease of new technology to U.S. President Obama’s charisma and decisiveness to geographical ease of access (as opposed to the difficulties of helping remote areas of conflict-addled Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and China in the 2005 Kashmir earthquake.)

The Haitian earthquake is catastrophic and heart wrenching. The outpouring of aid is almost as overwhelming in its generosity and scale. Of course, controversies abound. Concerns are expressed about the militarization of aid, the intervention of American armed forces, outside exploitation by transnational corporations to rebuild Haiti on their terms instead of Haitian ideals, how to address environmental ruin, how to address political, drug, and gang violence and endemic corruption, and on and on. There is also infighting between different organizations. These are legitimate concerns even as much good is being done right now by some of the organizations others are denouncing. For the most part relief efforts appear to be running as smoothly as possible considering the horrendous challenges amid collapsed infrastructure and mounting death, injury, and disease tolls. It seems horror unites us in a crisis.

Many of the political, military, economic, and environmental issues raised in the wake of the Haitian earthquake would be non-issues if we had an established, democratic world government with an integral democratic capitalist economic system. Instead of nation-states and big corporations and lawless gangs jostling for power and influence we would have one unified planetary government responding with unified institutions all under world law. We would have an integrated global response to such a calamity just as China or America respond internally to their own local or regional disasters. We would be able as a democratic world government to go into areas that would otherwise be torn by warfare between countries, tribes, and religious groups. And as a planet with unified economic and financial systems based upon principles of integral, democratic, sustainable capitalism that are social and environmental responsible we would minimize any corporate exploitation or local corruption.

In Haiti, too, we have the collapse of yet another so-called “independent” nation-state. As a unified, democratic, federal planetary republic where we build interdependence that is transparent and effective. Of course, we have a long ways to go to achieve those goals. And more disasters will strike and often strike without warning. The world-wide self-awareness of global unity that stems from first the Indian Ocean tsunami and now the Haitian earthquake are promising steps on the way to achieve democratic world government.


William Dudley Bass
January 21, 2010


© by William Dudley Bass