Carl Joudrie
2 September 2005
A word about World Federalism.
While rank and file World Federalists allowed the seed of Foundation to be planted, its governing elites never allowed it to germinate, nor do they intend to. If they independently create a vehicle like Foundation, in response to it, be warned, they will not give you any rights that they cannot or will not take away from you. Always remember that Foundation is not something that can be given, it is something that you are going to have to take by the power of your democratic right. If Foundation is inadequate to the task at hand, whatever you deem it to be, redesign it, but never surrender electorate control of it.
What follows is a broad overview of some of the general ideas and principles of Foundation.
We are six billion people on a planet that can support one billion, and is now working at 125% of its physical capacity. Continental aquifers are drying up. Oceans and atmospheres are struggling, and ice caps and sheets are unstable. We are courting global famine on a scale we have not seen before, and we are rapidly destroying our fundamental capacity to physically recover from major environmental breakdowns which have already begun. We are being terribly foolish, and we are doing it to sustain states of government and ideologies that do not see these as urgent problems, and would not be prepared to act on them if they did. We are in a lot of trouble, and we need to start acting like we are.
The fight against terrorism as currently managed isn’t going to repair these problems, its going to make them worse. We have no more time to be ill prepared for environmental or biological breakdowns, to hunt and kill evil doers, or to pursue policies of growth dependent on fossil fuels. At this time in human history such actions are foolish to the extreme, and unnecessary. We need to make what are really very radical changes, very quickly. That these changes will upset status quo interests is undeniable, they are also unavoidable.
Politics, I am told, is the art of the possible. Democratic World Federalism is possible, and it can be made democratically available through Foundation. Foundation takes the decision to create World Foundation, out of the hands of governments and puts you, the citizen, in charge of just about every aspect of how that transition occurs, the timing of it, and the rights attained through it. Take what you need and no more. Give the rest to the states and we will end up with a workable Democratic World Federation.
Foundation will fundamentally change how nations govern, and why they govern. Today we live in a system where fascism and imperialism have woven themselves into the fabric of our national and international political systems. Benito Mussolini said that fascism should more correctly have been called “corporatism”, because it was a “merge” of corporate and government power. This “corporatism” demands growth that we can no longer sustain. The United Nations was designed by, and for these powerful national interests, in no small measure, to permit the continuation of imperialism as a system of international governance, albeit with new masters after World War II. Imperialism is a system of government that seeks to dominate the economic and political affairs of weaker nations, and to control raw materials and world markets by their conquest. This power governs us today, is the major cause of terrorism, and is responsible for policies which are physically destroying our world.
The bottom line is that World Federalism was co-opted, and Foundation suppressed, because World Federalism and Imperialism are incompatible systems of government; they cannot co-exist. World Federalism had to be neutralized to maintain the imperial system. So it was, and so it remains. Foundation can turn this around, and must, if we expect to defeat terrorism, or survive a very inhospitable physical environment with any democratic freedoms in tact.
It is very important that the design phase of Foundation and World Foundation begin as soon as possible. This should take about a year to complete depending on funding. What follows is a general description of Foundation as currently conceived.
Once that research is completed, wherever legally possible, Foundation will create national political parties. These parties will compete with their ideological parent parties for popular national support, based on the promise that upon election victory, all of the population of voting age would be invited to decide upon that nation’s entry into World Foundation, a new international institution to replace the United Nations, that will to some degree be publicly governed.World Foundation will be based on the following conditions.1. No nation will be allowed to enter into, or to exit from World Foundation, without the voted consent of all of the people of that nation.
2. Equal rights: By all of the people, I mean that in nations where women are denied the right to vote in national elections, they will be granted that right for the referendum on entry into World Foundation, and thereafter in all matters related to the operation of World Foundation that are to be ceded to public control. Women will control, by law, fifty per-cent of the representative seats in Foundation and World Foundation governments. This will be accomplished by the pairing of elected representatives. One man and one woman will occupy what is now one seat. Non Foundation national governments which successfully sue for entry into World Foundation, who have not traditionally allowed full women’s suffrage, will have ten years, no longer, to amend their national constitutions to allow for full and equal representation by women at the national level. They will also, as a pre condition of entry into World Foundation, set up educational facilities approved by World Foundation to facilitate and accelerate the mechanisms of gender equality, and will be up and running to the satisfaction of World Foundation, prior to full membership in World Foundation being granted, and before any benefits flow from that membership.
3. Rights of secession: As a general rule, World Foundation will be harder to get into than it will be to get out of. All conditions of World Foundation will have to be met and be operational as determined by World Foundation prior to a nation being granted full membership. This will include the establishment of what could be called an national escrow account, which may be drawn upon as a fund to enable that nation to leave World Foundation without undue financial burdens, so long as certain ’no harm’ agreements are signed prior to full membership being granted. This fund may also be used to reward nations for the rapid adoption of equal rights amendments.
4. Military: A study at Harvard University in 1959 looked at the problem of a global military or police force. That study recommended that no more that 3% of this force be from any one country. The general principle sounds reasonable and will form the basis of Foundation policy. The use of these forces will be subject to some form of democratic oversight, yet to be determined, except in clearly defined instances that require immediate defensive action.
5. All nuclear powered sea vessels of member nations will be decommissioned. Remaining or reduced naval forces will be re tasked to police over fishing and ocean pollution offences. This will be an armed and active oceans police force. We must not under any circumstance, allow our oceans and their fish stocks to become any more seriously damaged than they already are, either by over fishing, pollution, or the sinking of an atomic reactor by accident or design.
6. Fisheries: The World Wildlife Fund Canada has suggested a number of measures to protect global fish stocks. They are a good place to start, and will form the basis of Foundation and World Foundation fisheries policy.
7. Energy: The Kyoto protocol is nothing more than a global slow motion suicide pact; it will be rejected by Foundation. According to James Lovelock, at “somewhere between 400 and 600 parts per million of carbon dioxide, the earth passes a threshold beyond which global warming becomes irreversible, we are now at 380 parts per million and could reach 400 ppm within 7 years.” This threshold must not be exceeded, to that end; the oil business will be put out of business, as quickly as is technically and humanly possible.
Hydrogen is not going to replace oil. There is nothing wrong with Hydrogen per se, but there is something very wrong in an age of terrorism, with building 200 nuclear power plants to supply the electricity necessary to produce the Hydrogen. This also plays into the hands of those who want to sustain imperial systems of government. Whatever energy source is chosen, Foundation will not allow the means of its production to be controlled by any one nation or cartel of nations or industries.
Foundation will seek patents for nitinol or like powered engines, these patents to be held in public trust. Mass production facilities will be built by private enterprise or by Foundation governments, but they will be built. and the age of fossil fuels will come to an end as quickly as possible. This policy will be treated as an emergency global effort, of no less importance than would be preparations for war, and will broach no unnecessary delay by any interest. It will be the goal of Foundation to accomplish this transition in somewhere between two and five years, no more.
8. Information: Foundation will create what I will call Councils, designed around the idea that no democracy can properly function without good and complete information being publicly available, and elaborated on to the extent that quality decisions can be made by national electorates, singularly or collectively as necessary. These Councils will be publicly controlled centers of information gathering and distribution, and managers of World Foundation elections. This area of Foundation needs to be very well researched and designed so as to provide the highest quality of public discourse within and between nations. It might be possible or even necessary to consider a two language system for the world’s people and its legislatures. One common language, and your native language. This could be built into the educational systems of member countries prior to membership. I can imagine our institutions of higher learning playing a major role in their design, construction, and use.
9. Voting: Voting in this democracy, at the World Foundation level of government will be a requirement and obligation of every member citizen of every member country. This might also apply where national Foundation governments are in power.
10. Lobbying: Lobbying will be forbidden at Foundation and World Foundation levels of government.
11. Water: Water has been classed as a human need, not a human right, by the United Nations. Foundation will reclassify water as a human right, and will forbid the corporate ownership of it. The protection of this resource will become a publicly governed matter, nationally and internationally, as will other matters of resource protection that are basic to human survival.
12. Justice: One justice per member nation, or perhaps global regions. This choice might be determined by the sheer workload of this judiciary, as several matters of international law, in the context of World Foundation, may need to be determined in a relatively short period of time, by several different and perhaps specialized branches of this court. They might be chosen by the electorates of member nations from among the Supreme Court justices of that nation, as determined by the national government, or by the tradition of that nation and its vetting processes.
It will be the aim of Foundation and World Foundation to accomplish these goals with the minimum of disruption to national life and culture, but make no mistake, where the imperative of global physical health conflicts with national or cultural proclivities to warfare, or elite control over corporate or political affairs which hinder the rapid adoption of corrective measures, it is the health of the planet and its people, that will take precedence over all other interests.These ideas do not represent a complete list of concerns, nor of course are they adequate in their detail. There are many to be considered and I apologize for whatever omissions I have made. What is required now is the dedicated expertise of those competent and willing to examine in detail, every aspect of the political and social transformation outlined here. If you have something to contribute to this effort, in any way shape or form, please do.
Carl Joudrie
