WORLD CITIZEN BLOG and UPDATES
The Thief and the Guru: A 2021 New Year's Tale
By David Gallup
Garry Davis, the founder of the World Citizenship Movement, had two gurus who helped him understand what it means to be a world citizen. I was in my mid-20s when I started working with Garry at the World Service Authority. Garry, who was in his 70s, became my guru and shared his lifetime of worldly wisdom.
Garry once said to me, "One guru is worth a hundred thieves."
I said, "What do you mean? Why would you compare a guru to a thief?"
He repeated, "One guru is worth a hundred thieves." Garry continued, "One person of heart is worth a hundred people of head. One thief is worth a hundred people of heart. And, one guru is worth a hundred thieves."
My eyes were wide, and I had a confused look on my face. Garry told the following tale:
"One person of heart - that is a person of action, someone who acts from emotion - is worth a hundred people of head because a person of head is stuck in their thoughts. The person of head may have great thoughts, but unless they are willing to act on those thoughts, nothing will change.
Now the problem with the person of heart is that they may not have thought through their actions, so their actions will have little impact. This is what brings us to the thief.
One thief is worth a hundred people of heart because the thief, if they are a successful thief, will have taken painstaking efforts to plan their theft. Because they are a thief, they are willing to go through with it even though they might get caught. So the thief has put the head and the heart together.
But the thief is in the perceptual world, bound by space and time. The thief is in the here and now - the material, relative world. The thief is selfish.
Now, this brings us to the guru. Why is one guru worth a hundred thieves? Because the guru puts the head and the heart together in an ethical framework for understanding the world around them.
The guru is in the conceptual world, the world of values. The guru is a teacher. The guru gives to others and is for others. The guru is selfless. The guru is free and has no Karma to deal with. The guru has found the truth and is one with truth. The guru sees the world as one and views everything holistically.
One guru is worth a hundred thieves because the guru not only thinks about the morality and helpfulness of their actions before they take them, but they also act selflessly to help those around them."
Why is "The Thief and the Guru" an important New Year's tale? Given the extraordinarily challenging year that humanity endured in 2020, it is a reminder for us to think and act like a guru as we begin a new year. It is a reminder to let our thoughts and emotions work together to create purposeful action.
Acting like a guru in this way is challenging because of the values that the nation-state system has instilled in us. We have been taught to think exclusively about and encouraged to love our individual nations as if national citizenship is the pinnacle of our identity. The guru teaches us the ethical power of world citizenship, guiding our hearts and minds toward world unity.
Voice, one of humanity's most powerful tools, literally and metaphorically connects our hearts and heads. Through our voice, we can share our thoughts and feelings about what kind of world we want. Through our voice we can advance world citizenship to help us to achieve world peace. May we each be inspired to think, feel and speak like the guru in 2021.
_________________________________________________________ Read my upcoming blog in February to learn about Garry's experience with two gurus.
Building Global Unity through Tolerance and Universal Rights
December 10, 2020
By David Gallup
Today marks the 72nd anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Two related documents also celebrate significant anniversaries this year: the 25th anniversary of the Declaration of the Principles on Tolerance and the 75th anniversary of the United Nations Charter. Both Declarations and the Charter provide a framework for building unity in a diverse world.
The impetus for creating the Declaration on Tolerance was, as the Declaration's Preamble states, "the current rise in acts of intolerance, violence, terrorism, xenophobia, aggressive nationalism, racism, anti-Semitism, exclusion, marginalization and discrimination." These acts dramatically impact the rights of vulnerable groups and threaten the development of peace and democracy in the world.
The Preamble to the United Nations Charter implores us "to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours."
On the anniversary of both Declarations and the Charter, we celebrate the strides we have made to practice tolerance; at the same time, we recognize that much work remains to be done to advance tolerance and respect for universal rights.
What does it mean to engage tolerance in society?
Tolerance involves active learning about and respecting the ways that our fellow humans live their lives. Tolerance means learning other languages, cultures, beliefs, identities, and practices as well as ecological principles. Article 1 of the Declaration on Tolerance provides a comprehensive definition of tolerance: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000151830
Tolerance doesn't mean complete acceptance of others' words, behaviors, or actions. As the Declaration on Tolerance states, tolerance doesn't require "concession, condescension or indulgence . . . social injustice or the abandonment or weakening of one's convictions." We need not sit idly by and tolerate others' intolerance.
Tolerance involves ethical engagement in the world that we all share, affirming our responsibilities to everyone as fellow citizens and to the Earth as our home. Tolerance means having a holistic awareness of the mutual benefit to implementing our universal rights.
How do we achieve tolerance in society?
Education is vital to achieving tolerance. Article 26(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms the connection between education, tolerance, and human rights: "Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups."
Additionally, equal access to information, sustainable development, ethical governance, and just laws can advance both tolerance and universal rights.
What is the connection between tolerance and universal rights?
Universal rights and tolerance are interdependent: one cannot exist without the other.
To create awareness of the connection between tolerance and universal rights, we must speak up, speak out, and take action. We must pay attention to the needs of our fellow humans and to the needs of our planet. Working together, we can save the Earth from climate destruction and save humanity from inequality, injustice, and violence -- which occur when tolerance and human rights are ignored.
If we want a just world, we must ensure that tolerance and universal rights prevail.
How does tolerance relate to a peaceful and governed world?
Like the Declaration on Tolerance, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not binding treaty law that requires governments to respect the Declarations' mandates. This lack of legal engagement internationally is why we must consider developing enforceable world law as the basis for a world community that respects and protects diversity. The creation of global, participatory institutions of law, such as a World Parliament and a World Court of Human and Environmental Rights, will help us to achieve tolerance and respect for universal rights.
As we deal with inequality and injustice, world health, structural violence, and climate destruction, tolerance is a mode of participation that all citizens of the world can embrace. Living a world-citizen way of life means not only respecting universal rights, but also considering how we will interact peacefully, ethically, and sustainably with our fellow humans, with all other life on Earth, and with the Earth itself.
For our continued existence on our home planet and for a potential interstellar existence, we must realize what it means to be world citizens who exercise tolerance in all aspects of our lives.
Pandemic of Racism
By David Gallup
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."-- Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
How many lives have been extinguished by the pandemic of racism?
Like a biological virus, racism is spread from person to person by what people teach and say to their family members and friends. It is spread by ignorance and nurtured by hatred and indifference.
Unlike a biological virus, racism immediately affects everyone who is targeted and leaves indelible lifelong wounds.
Racism does not only become lethal in the hands of those who inhabit the halls of power and privilege; racism resides throughout society. The world has been built on inequality, xenophobia, and oppression. Racism has been institutionalized and systematized. The system of exclusive nation-states has further exacerbated structural violence and cycles of discrimination. The foundations that humans have used to construct our world are unequal and unstable. The world that is our home is failing much of its inhabitants. The entire house will fall if we do not return to the drawing board to design and build an inclusive and just foundation.
What is the antidote to racism?
If we want to have a world that works for everyone, we need to teach children from infancy not only the principles but also the practices of inclusion, empathy, listening, sharing, respect, equality, and justice. These lessons must not end when youth ends; adults must continually educate themselves and be cognizant of how their words and actions impact those around them.
Stopping racism requires a holistic approach. Racism must be recognized and eliminated from every aspect of society. Stopping racism requires us to question how we are running our world. Is our competitive economic and political system that pits human against human, group against group, ethical? How we govern ourselves, or neglect to govern our world, inordinately affects people due to their race and ethnicity.
The hyper-nationalistic and corporate control of human and natural resources embeds racism in the wheels of production, consumption, and day-to-day existence. We are taught to see our fellow humans as "others" against whom we must compete, and oftentimes fight, for supremacy. Rarely are we taught, let alone encouraged to practice, how to be allies of one another, rather than competitors.
A holistic approach to stopping racism takes into account the health of humanity and the earth. It will ensure that our rights and duties are universally respected. And it will seek equality and justice in all aspects of human-to-human interaction, as well as human-to-earth interaction.
- Education must be just.
- Societal opportunities and outcomes must be just.
- Economics must be just.
- Politics must be just.
- Governmental representation must be just.
- Laws, their enforcement, and their adjudication must be just.
The laws that we create help determine how we will interact with one another. Racism and discrimination are outlawed in many national and international codes of conduct. For example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Persons (UNDRIP) affirm the principles of equality and justice.
The Preamble and Articles 1, 2 and 26 of the UDHR affirm everyone's equality and right to be free from racism. Article 2 specifically states, "Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status."
The Preamble and Articles 8 and 46 of the UNDRIP reiterate the antidiscrimination principles of the UDHR. The Preamble states "that all doctrines, policies and practices based on or advocating superiority of peoples or individuals on the basis of national origin or racial, religious, ethnic or cultural differences are racist, scientifically false, legally invalid, morally condemnable and socially unjust." Article 8(2)(e) specifically states, "States shall provide effective mechanisms for prevention of, and redress for: Any form of propaganda designed to promote or incite racial or ethnic discrimination."
The problem is not the lack of laws against racism, it is how and whether those laws are implemented. When the institutions of society and government do not fairly represent everyone in the community, then the laws will not be implemented fairly, or at all. Laws, in the end, will never be enough to stop racism. We need to protest for change, listen and be allies for change, learn and educate for change, vote for change, and run for office for change.
We need to run on a platform of building an ethical and inclusive social and governmental system for the whole world. This means creating a just system and an equitable justice system, one that does not treat some people as lesser, and others as better, or above the law.
To have a peaceful, free and sustainable world, it must be a just world. As citizens of the world, we are all directly responsible for rooting out injustice anywhere and for seeking justice for everyone, everywhere.
Black lives matter.
Scarcity or Abundance?
By David Gallup
The COVID-19 virus is not the first pandemic to seriously impact humanity, nor will it be the last. This global crisis and existential threat provides an opportunity for humans as a species to determine how we will interact with one another and the earth from now on. We can choose a coordinated, interdependent, and holistic approach, or we can continue haltingly and in vain to deal with global issues selfishly in an ungoverned world.
Beyond a Nationalistic Strategy
A virus that impacts everyone necessitates a world citizen-focused response.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is the UN agency attempting to coordinate efforts of national governments in their response to the pandemic. While structures like the WHO encourage local governments to heed their policy recommendations, they have no power to enforce their suggested courses of action. National governments may arbitrarily refuse to follow those guidelines within their self-imposed borders. National governments do what is in their self-interest or that of their leaders' economic and political priorities. Human-made borders, we have realized, do very little to contain a virus in a free world.
In its proposed 2020-2021 budget, the WHO will receive almost five billion dollars from UN Member-States. This is a miniscule amount of money compared to the two trillion dollars that national governments spend preparing for and waging wars every year. Not only is the WHO underfunded, but also national health institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health are severely underfunded in comparison to the life-saving work that they are doing.
It's not a question of whether the world has the resources and funds to support the health and well-being of all humans and the earth; it is a question of priorities.
National leaders frequently appeal to the security concerns of citizens in expanding military budgets, while ignoring the impact that poor health and environmental degradation has on these same citizens. They argue about scarcity -- limited funds and resources should be directed at national military defense, rather than health care, sustainable development, and ecological conservation.
To the detriment of all, national self-defense supersedes defense of people and planet.
Scare City
In times of crisis, individuals begin to act in panic mode. They become self-absorbed, thinking only about self-preservation. This is understandable because fear and protection of oneself and one's family are strong motivators of behavior.
Perceived scarcities have created real Scare Cities -- people living in states of fear. The individual behaves like a mini nation-state setting up borders, raising their self-interest above all other concerns, and fending off those they perceive as a threat. This selfish mentality has presented itself in the hoarding of toilet paper, sanitizers, and, most importantly medical supplies that first responders, health care workers, and hospitals desperately need.
To help everyone through this crisis, local governments should establish a voucher system to assist those who have no salary or income. And there should be total loan forgiveness on necessities like groceries, medical supplies, housing, and education. Governments could easily provide digital or physical vouchers to everyone each month to pay for necessities. It just means that we need to change priorities from using money to wage wars and build walls, to using money to pay for livingry -- tools that support and enhance all life.
Abundance
Resources are abundant in the world. We can feed, clothe, house, educate, and provide for every human being on the planet, but only if we choose to use and share resources sustainably to help people and protect the earth.
Instead of building weapons like war planes and nuclear bombs, funds and resources must be redirected to advancing both earth and human health as well as environmental and human rights. Currently, less than half of the world's population has universal health coverage. Global institutions devoted to the rule of law, such as a World Court of Human and Environmental Rights and a World Peace Force, should replace the wastefulness of vast national armies. Think how much humanity could do to ensure healthcare and safe infrastructures for everyone on the planet with the two trillion dollars that national governments spend annually on waging wars.
Our failure to implement global approaches to global crises will inevitably lead to higher death tolls from wars, pandemics, and climate change. How many deaths will occur if we fail to implement a coordinated global system?
Moreover, the human response to this crisis must not be about saving any one economy; it must be about saving individual lives, humanity and the earth as a whole. Human and earth survival are interconnected. We must develop a human and earth consciousness, as well as a governing system that matches this holistic awareness, in order to prevent humanity's extinction.
What we do now will determine our fate. How seriously will we take our responsibility as world citizens toward each other and the earth? This is a test of our humanity.
Davis and Goliath
The Right to Know our Rights
and the Right to Have our Rights Respected:
71st Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
By David Gallup
As we celebrate the 71st anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on December 10th, let's consider how awareness and implementation of our human rights can have a dramatic impact on world peace, justice and sustainability.
According to the UDHR Preamble, attainment of our rights depends upon the people of the world raising awareness of and enforcing human rights principles. The framers of the Declaration considered that recognition and observance of our rights will follow from 1) human rights education -- a common understanding of our rights and 2) human rights law -- embedding our rights in the rule of law locally, regionally and globally.
1) Human Rights Education
Upon the promulgation of the Declaration in 1948, the United Nations General Assembly called on the public "to cause it [the Declaration] to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions." The Assembly further proclaimed that "every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms..."
Furthermore, Article 26 of the Declaration not only affirms that "everyone has the right to education," but also that "education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms." According to the drafters of the Declaration, a portion of everyone's education should be devoted to learning about our universal rights.
In 2011, the UN adopted an additional declaration, the Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training to acknowledge the "fundamental importance of human rights education and training in contributing to the promotion, protection and effective realization of all human rights." This Declaration seeks
- to promote education about the principles that form the basis of our rights,
- to advance mechanisms that protect our rights,
- to support respect for the rights of learners and educators, and
- to empower people to exercise their own rights and uphold the rights of others.
Human rights education has been and continues to be a significant objective in United Nations' strategy for realizing human rights. Article 1 of the Education Declaration states,
- Everyone has the right to know, seek and receive information about all human rights and fundamental freedoms and should have access to human rights education and training.
- Human rights education and training is essential for the promotion of universal respect for and observance of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, in accordance with the principles of the universality, indivisibility and interdependence of human rights.
- The effective enjoyment of all human rights, in particular the right to education and access to information, enables access to human rights education and training.
The UN continues to highlight education in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. One of the seventeen goals focuses on education and specifically refers to human rights. Goal 4.7 states, "By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture's contribution to sustainable development."
Education matters: if we do not know our rights, we cannot claim them. If we cannot claim our rights, we cannot exercise them. If we cannot exercise our rights, we cannot achieve a peaceful, just, and sustainable world.
Although education is key to achieving our rights, how effective has our global human rights education been? The majority of the world's children, more than 90 percent, attend primary school; yet, few have been educated about human rights. Some students learn about the Declaration in high school social studies or history classes. But only 38% of the world's population has any education past the age of 15. If children have not learned about the UDHR by the time they are in secondary school, then they may never learn about it. Therefore, global human rights education must start in primary schools.
Education fulfills the first half of the mission of securing "universal respect, effective recognition and observance" of our rights. Human Rights Law fulfills the second half.
2) Human Rights Law
To achieve universal observance of our rights, the UDHR urges us to incorporate and enforce human rights principles in our laws from local to global.
Human rights do in appear our laws, from the highest level laws to local civic codes. Jus cogens (peremptory norms of international law), the UN Charter (Articles 55 and 56), the UDHR, the two International Covenants, regional human rights conventions, and topical human rights treaties reaffirm our innate and unalienable rights. A majority of national constitutions mention some rights or freedoms of the people. And every constitution affirms that the authority of government derives from the will of the people.
Realization of our universal rights requires more than education and the law. Although many laws reaffirm human rights principles, we cannot reliably depend upon governments alone to uphold the law. We, the people, must stand up for our own rights and for the rights of others, who are disempowered and oppressed. And we must stand up for the rights of the earth that far too long have been ignored.
We need to assert our rights through judicial action (through the courts), through legislative action (through our parliaments and referenda), through political action (through the power of our vote and participation in government), through economic pressure and nonviolent action (through civil society and public protests), and through institutional progress (through global mechanisms such as a World Court of Human Rights, a World Environmental Court, and a World Parliament).
Our humanity and the earth already unite us. By recognizing our status as world citizens, we can begin to work together to achieve universal awareness and realization of our rights. On this 71st anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, let's take action for the Universal Implementation of Human Rights.
WORLD CITIZEN CLUBS
By David Gallup
"Being a part of a World Citizen Club helps students have a better understanding of the different issues our world faces today. They have a chance to come up with different solutions and ideas and learn from one another."
As the school year begins, the World Service Authority (WSA), along with its co-sponsor Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS), is launching World Citizen Clubs on college, university, and high school campuses around the world. The WSA and CGS are nonprofit organizations that promote world citizenship, universal human rights, and global structures of law for a peaceful, just and sustainable world.
What is the World Citizen Club Program?
WSA and CGS encourage students to advance the mission of world peace through world citizenship and world law. The World Citizen Club Program, a grassroots movement, engages teens and young adults in world citizenship education and activism, inspiring students to become world peacemakers.
Individual World Citizen Clubs will endeavor to
1. Advocate and Educate
2. Build Community
3. Support awareness of and respect for universal rights and world citizenship
Students in World Citizen Clubs will engage in educational, service, and social events and projects that promote world citizenship, world peace, and human rights. Clubs will provide students with the opportunity to take local action on global issues.
How to Create a World Citizen Club
Creating a World Citizen Club on campus is a simple process. Students speak with their friends and classmates to find potential club members. They find a faculty advisor, draft a club constitution, register their club with World Service Authority, and promote the club at the beginning of each semester during club and student activities fairs. Once the club is launched, students schedule periodic meetings, events and projects to engage club participants and the wider school community in world citizenship activities.
Examples of Club Events and Projects
Benefits for Students
For More Information
Visit the Club's website: www.worldcitizenclub.org. Students, faculty and staff will find tools and materials to create a World Citizen Club on their campus. The website includes guides and information such as a 5-page Club Start-Up Guide, which explains the benefits of the club, how to create a club, and suggested events, projects and programs. Sample club constitutions, terms of behavior, brochures, and promotional flyers are also available at the website.
Contact Us
We look forward to hearing from students who are interested in starting clubs on their campuses. Please email us at info@worldcitizenclub.org.
Peace Starts with You -- Insist on Peace!
By David Gallup
Garry Davis said that world peace begins with each of us putting the earth first: "Because it is your world! You are the 'center' of it. It revolves around you! You were born to it. And willy-nilly, you are already in it; in fact on it! And like it or not, you are therefore responsible for it ... for the good and the bad. What is required is our individual commitment to one world and humanity first, and ourselves and our particular country second."
In a recent tweet, spiritual leader the Dalai Lama said that world peace starts with the individual finding personal peace: "The creation of a more peaceful and happier society has to begin from the level of the individual, and from there it can expand to one's family, to one's neighborhood, to one's community, and so on."
When we recognize that the individual is a microcosm of humanity and that peace is a life-long process, the individual can seek both individual peace and world peace simultaneously. World peace depends upon the intertwining of the one and the many seeking peace.
Finding Inner Peace and Outer Peace
When we learn and build inner peace for ourselves as individuals, we can expand our knowledge and skills to help others learn and build outer peace.
If we see people in need, people suffering, people facing oppression and violence, we must find a way to help them. It could be speaking up or speaking out, lending a hand, checking in, sending clothing, making a donation, offering a shoulder to cry on, sharing food, providing free medical or other support, offering a safe haven, etc. In other words, we should act towards one another non-violently.
The term "non-violence" defines an action or state of being by using the opposite of how we should act as part of the term. Because people should focus on what we need to do to achieve peace, rather than what we shouldn't do, it is important to use a positive term to describe how we can effect change in our world, both as individuals and collectively. Encouraging people to "act peacefully" is no longer enough to achieve dramatic change in how humans interact. We must now compassionately insist upon peace in our own lives and in our collective interactions. I suggest we use the stronger term "peace insistence" instead of "acting peacefully" or "non-violence."
Peace insistence* is more than a commitment to acting non-violently. It is a question of ensuring that your interactions, your behavior, and that of others be conducted peacefully, that you consciously and consistently choose peace over aggression, and that you begin by finding peace in your own heart and mind.
The underlying elements of peace insistence are love, empathy, healing, and moving together and toward one another. Individual peace and world peace require us to move beyond non-violent action to peace insistence.
Peace Insistence through World Citizenship
If individuals do not have inner peace, it is difficult for them to participate in endeavors to build external peace in their surroundings, let alone build a loving, accepting, just, free, sustainable, and peaceful community.
Institutions reflect the values and ethics of those who create them. If individuals have suffered violence, exclusion, discrimination, harassment, poverty, oppression, etc., then the institutions they make will likely consciously or subconsciously have those experiences weaved into the fabric of the organizational structures, policies, politics, and milieu.
The current system of national division encourages killing, greed, and environmental degradation by exalting profit and competition over societal health, demanding incessant economic growth that favors the few over the many, and maintaining power dynamics with inherent structural violence.
The national-focused framework for human interaction values war and preparing for war over peace and building peace. Just one quarter of the trillion dollars that national governments spend on maintaining and "defending" fictional borders, would be enough for local communities to successfully deal with abuse, human trafficking, power dynamics, gender and different-identity othering, illiteracy, homelessness, corruption, global warming, toxic environment, and the lack of conflict analysis and resolution/non-violent communication skills.
At this point, humans have created too many complex problems threatening the earth and humanity's survival. These problems can only be handled with complex, indigenous and unified processes. Humans do not have to agree on everything in order to agree that we would rather have a world than have none.
Causes of violence and conflict are rooted both in local and international frameworks, in our individual lives and in the wider society. We cannot apply processes of peace to resolve the root causes of violence with either/or approaches: local peace requires world peace; world peace requires local peace; and all peace requires individual peace.
By developing peace insistence skills and an understanding of our common identity as world citizens, individuals and institutions can be of value to each other in the process of dealing with root causes of negative conflict and violence.
World citizenship is about acceptance of "the other" as if the other is related to us -- as if the other is us but just separated by a different physical body, different experiences, and different education. World citizenship can help us create a "we and we" (or simply "we") mentality (rather than an "us versus them" mentality). World citizenship can help us to meet people where they are, to listen and become aware of distinct voices and values, and to appreciate those distinctions even if the temptation is to automatically reject those distinctions.
Peace activist Azeezah Kanji says that we need to establish a "paraversal" community, meaning that uni-versal may not take into account all voices and values. "Universal" might drown out or dilute our individuality. We need a community that incorporates as well as transcends all diverse voices. We need an intersectional and parasectional community.
World citizenship brings people together to share their unique voices in developing solutions to global problems. Coming together as world citizens is not only about averting future crises; it is also about mitigating the crises we already face and perhaps finding a new sustainable path. Social, economic, political, ecological, local, and global peace require us to use all the tools we have and that we can imagine. World citizenship is about imagining, creating, and educating about a world system that can work for all.
Peace Insistence through Education
World citizenship engages change within and outside of individuals and institutions, within local spaces and within the world space. Change toward peaceful coexistence is dependent upon individuals as well as the institutions they develop having a world citizenship education and mentality.
How we educate youth and offer continuing education to adults will dramatically impact whether we will be successful in creating an ethical local and world community. Education is fundamental to all change, growth, and opening our minds to alternative perspectives. By sharing world citizenship ideas, people will become aware of the world and people beyond themselves, their family, friends, and local community.
Everyone already is a world citizen by birth and in fact, but putting into action world citizenship as an ethical framework or system for human interaction requires education and training, just like conflict resolution and collaborative development do. World citizenship is about opening people's minds to the world as one web of life, providing the tools to help foster empathy and conflict resolutions skills internally and externally, at all levels of human interaction and within the individual human. Being a world citizen is about recognizing our link to, and having empathy for, our fellow humans and the earth. That means that we must nurture skills of living indigenously with all other beings and with our parent earth.
World citizenship and world governmental structures are meant to help us learn about and work together on issues that are more efficiently and effectively handled at the world level -- issues that impact the entire earth and all of its inhabitants. Local governments will still govern locally and indigenously.
The tool of world citizen government provides a process of positive interaction of, by, and for the individuals of the world. As a world citizen, you do not give up any lower level allegiance or commitment. You do not give up your individuality. You affirm a commitment to yourself, to other individuals, to humanity, and to the earth -- a commitment to learning how to live together sustainably, a commitment to insist on peace.
Each of us has the right, the power and the duty to commit to peace insistence.
_____________________________
*My definition of Peace Insistence: The individual and the community consciously and consistently engage the tools, skills, strategies and tactics of loving, empathetic self-perception and interaction through non-violent methods, harmonious engagement, sharing, learning and teaching peace, and rights-affirming activism. The process requires affirming to yourself and to those around you that you will choose to think and act peaceably, that you will seek out education to learn the skills of peaceful interaction, and that you will seek self-healing and offer support to everyone in the healing process.
Peace insistence may also contain elements of non-violent action, civil resistance, civil disobedience, non-cooperation, renunciation, withdrawal, civil and political disruption, legal advocacy, mediation, arbitration, non-conformity, individual and group intervention, economic boycott, strike, divestment, positive investment, protest, momentum-building, strategic organizing, long term planning, collaborative development, artistic, musical, scientific, mathematic, ethical, and comedic expression, indigenous creativity, training in peaceful communication, individual and group therapy, and the hundreds of other actions, processes and initiatives that maintain peaceful relationships as an ultimate goal. (See Gene Sharp's list of "198 Methods of Nonviolent Action.")
Simultaneous 70th Anniversaries: Universal Declaration of Human Rights and World Citizenship Movement
By David Gallup
Two moments in recent history have helped us to realize that there is one humanity and one earth:
The first moment was when the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. These bombs confirmed that humans have the power to eradicate humanity and destroy the entire world.
The second moment was when a rocket was propelled into near earth orbit in 1946, with an attached motion picture camera. The camera captured photographs of the earth as one unified whole.
These two moments provided competing visions, one view of the earth as a fractured planet and another view of the earth as one world. Representing two ends of an ethical spectrum, they forced humanity to choose between a world of destruction and a world of inspiration. Both moments ultimately led to the development of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and world citizenship.
Moments such as these helped to inspire Eleanor Roosevelt and Rene Cassin (drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) to establish universal principles to guide humanity, principles that would be applicable to everyone, everywhere. The Declaration was a legal response to the violence and chaos of World War II. The drafters intended to establish a code of conduct for humanity in order to prevent a third world war.
These moments also inspired World War II veteran Garry Davis, as he describes in his memoir My Country is the World, to "willfully withdraw from the co-partnership of citizen and national state and declare himself a world citizen." Garry was ashamed of his own direct participation as a bomber pilot 29,000 feet above the earth dropping bombs on his fellow humans.
1948 was the year that Garry Davis gave up his exclusive allegiance to a country and also the year that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was promulgated. Specifically, this December 10th marks the 70th anniversary of the unanimous adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, now viewed by many legal scholars as customary international law. This year also marks the 70th anniversary of Garry Davis's renunciation of national citizenship in favor of world citizenship, which has been followed by almost 2 million people world-wide who have also claimed world citizenship status.
What can we learn from this joint celebration of the Declaration of Human Rights and Garry's declaration of human unity?
At the heart of the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and at the heart of Garry Davis's claim of world citizenship is the idea that humanity, human rights, and the earth itself, deserve a universal legal status, a universal identity, and a universal governing system. The UDHR drafters and Garry Davis responded to World War II by universalizing rights and by universalizing citizenship.
The UDHR was revolutionary. It created a human rights dialogue, so that people could engage in discussion of our universal freedoms and responsibilities.
Garry Davis's renunciation of national citizenship also was a revolutionary act. He constructed a level citizenship that did not involve violence, war, or oppression to establish a world government.
In 1948, the framers of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights envisioned the Declaration as a tool to teach everyone about our rights. They wanted the global public to demand that governments "secure universal and effective recognition and observance" of our rights, as the Preamble of the UDHR states. They wanted to create "a social and international order" in which everyone could share the world peacefully and in which everyone's rights and needs would be fully met. They envisioned every day as a human rights day.
Both the drafters of the UDHR and Garry Davis knew that if the rights of all human beings were to be upheld, those rights would have to be codified -- written down for all to see, all to learn, and all to implement. As the UDHR's Preamble states, if humans are "not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, then human rights should be protected by the rule of law."
In the halls of the UN, however, the squabbling of the nation-states continued throughout the autumn of 1948. The Russian government and several Soviet Bloc countries were threatening to vote against the Declaration.
If you saw the documentary "The World is My Country" about Garry Davis, you learned that he was instrumental in the unanimous signing of the Declaration. By December of 1948, Garry was world renowned for camping out on the steps of the United Nations when it was holding its General Assembly sessions at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, and for interrupting a session to demand the creation of a world parliament and world government. (His interruption occurred on November 19, 1948.)
On December 9th, 1948, the night before the UN general assembly vote on the Declaration, Garry Davis spoke before a crowd of 20,000 war-weary Europeans at the Velodrome d'Hiver Stadium in Paris. Calling for world government, Garry said, "We can no longer permit ourselves to be led by statesmen who use us as pawns in the game of national interests. We wish to be led by those who represent us directly: we, the individuals of the human community."
This rousing speech made headlines throughout Europe and impacted the representatives of the states considering whether to accept or reject the Declaration. The next day, instead of voting against the UDHR, 8 countries abstained. This meant that 48 countries unanimously accepted the UDHR. Now every member-state of the United Nations, when becoming members, must agree to abide by the Declaration.
It takes moments--like Garry Davis's bold acts of civil resistance--to build momentum.
What does the UDHR and world citizenship tell us as about humanity's roadmap to a peaceful world? Where do we go from here?
It's time to rise up! We need a spark -- like the character Katniss Everdeen -- in the novel The Hunger Games. Or like actual heroes Mahatma Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and Garry Davis. We need to know that we can each be the spark of world peace, and we need to teach others how to find their spark.
Just as Garry Davis created a movement in 1948 that inspired a global public searching for hope, unity and peace, we need to do the same.
As global warming, perpetual wars, and neo-nationalism threaten the existence of our rights and our human identity, NOW is the time to organize a new world citizenship movement for global change! We need a movement that engages both incremental change through law and institutions, as well as moments of mass resistance.
We need to stage an uprising devised of political theater and activism. We need to interrupt the UN and nation-state system once again. Through coordinated disruption, sacrifice and escalation, we need to show that our world model resolves and transcends the anomalies of the nation-state paradigm. We need to unite universal rights and world citizenship into a movement that people will flock to.
Here are two concrete examples of how the World Service Authority (WSA) is igniting this movement, one through incremental change and one through immediate action:
For incremental change, the World Service Authority, along with partner organization Citizens for Global Solutions, is establishing World Citizen Clubs on high school and university campuses. We are using the theory of change and building momentum simultaneously by educating the minds and inspiring the hearts of youth around the world. World Citizen Clubs will get young adults to start thinking and acting as world citizens, claiming this status for themselves and providing an example for others. Engaging youth will help us to create the moments that lead to momentum in the world citizenship movement.
For immediate action, representatives of WSA's World Citizen Center of Ojai have traveled to Tijuana to stand in support of people fleeing persecution in the Americas and around the world. Along with American Friends Service Committee, we are exposing the inhumanity of militarization and borders that separate humans from humans, perpetuating the divisions that lead to violence and war. We are shining a light on the injustices that refugees, stateless and undocumented people -- millions of our fellow humans -- face on a day-to-day basis.
This 70th anniversary of the UDHR and of modern world citizenship teaches us that we can imagine change, we can organize change, and we can be the change. We can be successful in igniting the world citizenship movement by coordinating our theory of change efforts with momentum from mass non-violent action.
By coordinating the principles of the UDHR and world citizenship, we can advance institutions and identity based on unity, rather than separation -- based on our common needs, rather than our cultural differences. Respect for human rights and recognition of world citizenship strengthens us socially, economically, politically, legally, psychologically, and environmentally.
The strength that we gain through world citizenship and the universalization of human rights will not supplant the nation-state system or threaten local identity. The way to protect the local is to acknowledge the global. By achieving peace at the world level, we can ensure that local culture is preserved rather than destroyed by violence.
After World War II, the drafters of the UDHR and Garry Davis were compelled to imagine a world in which all human beings could live together in harmony. To take that image of peace and portray it in the world writ large, they had to make and be the change that they wanted to see. The drafters had to affirm the universality of our rights and Garry had to affirm the universality of our human identity.
Like the creators of the Declaration of Human Rights and Garry Davis, we must be the drafters and actors of own destiny. We must be the change we want to see in the world!
70th Anniversary of the World Citizen Movement
By David Gallup
On May 25, 1948, Garry Davis stepped out of the US Embassy in Paris after taking the Oath of Renunciation of citizenship. No longer a citizen of one exclusive nation, Garry claimed his status as a citizen of the world.
Why would Garry Davis, a Broadway actor and comedian who just wanted to make people laugh, give up his US citizenship in favor of world citizenship? To answer that question, I will need to take you back to the early 1940s.
As a child and teenager, Garry loved acting. To Garry, the script of a play was like his prayer book and the theatre was like his temple, his mosque, his synagogue, his church, his place of worship. The audience was like his parishioners. He wanted to make the audience happy, and in their laughter, he felt their love.
Garry's dream of a life in theatre and movies came crashing down when he heard the news that his brother Bud had been killed in Salerno on his battleship. Garry's sadness turned to anger and then to revenge. He became a bomber pilot set on destroying Hitler's war factories.
But thousands of feet up in his B-17 airplane, as he was dropping bombs on villages, he knew he was killing women, men and children. His revenge turned to remorse. He would rather have been entertaining these people, making them laugh, rather than killing them.
When he came back from the war, he was disillusioned with the nation-state system that made him kill his fellow humans. He was shell-shocked. He suffered from post-traumatic stress from what he witnessed and from the acts of violence he committed.
He wanted out of the war game. He had heard of a young man who had gone to Europe to rebuild the churches that were destroyed during the war. And he read a book called Anatomy of Peace, by Emery Reves, a book that explained how humans could transcend the problem of war by coming together at the world level. So he decided to go to Paris, legally renounce his US citizenship, and begin to rebuild the world he had helped to destroy.
In his memoir, My Country is the World, he explains why he would give up his citizenship, an act that at that time was considered highly controversial and unpatriotic. He writes, "Homo sapiens, man calls himself. Sapiens: knowing, the perception of truth. But one of the tragedies of our times is that modern man, as man of ages past, doesn't know himself. He has lost confidence in his own innate capacity. He restricts himself. And only then does he yearn to be free."
He continues, "Man's deadliest, self-imposed, restrictive device is nationalism. You and I may be fellow humans, but we are not fellow nationalists. I am a fellow who willfully withdrew from the co-partnership of citizen and national state and declared himself a world citizen. I have for my trouble, hung my hat in 34 prisons and two ships' brigs. If spending time in the jails of the world, however, would further the understanding of one world and one humankind, I would gladly forfeit my freedom again this very day."
Garry saw the world holistically. He viewed the whole world as his home, as his house of worship. He wanted us to see the world, itself, as holy, as a sanctuary for our imagination. He loved to quote Albert Einstein who said that imagination is more important than intelligence.
Garry wanted us to imagine and then create a world that would work for everyone. When he renounced his national citizenship, he became stateless, persona non grata, with no country and nowhere to go. He needed to create an identity and status for himself to ensure that his rights would be respected. This is when he decided to declare himself to be a world citizen, with universal rights that should be universally respected, no matter where he found himself on earth.
Garry Davis devoted his entire adult life to promoting an awareness of this view of the world. Of the world as one. Of the idea that we are all world citizens with rights and duties to each other and the earth.
To create a just, sustainable, equitable, and peaceful world, it's no longer enough to consider ourselves exclusively as citizens of one nation or another. We must all claim our status as world citizens!
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You may register officially, legally and politically as a world citizen through the World Service Authority at www.worldservice.org/reg.html. You do not give up any lower level allegiance by claiming a higher allegiance to humanity and the earth.
Happy Re-Newal Year:
The Human Right to Time
By David Gallup
The New Year provides an opportunity to reflect on time, which is a universal right. How time is celebrated and marked varies worldwide yet impacts all world citizens.
Although many celebrate January 1st as the start of the new year, Chinese celebrate the new year in late January or February, Iranians celebrate in late March, Hindus celebrate in March or April, Buddhists celebrate in April, Jews celebrate in September, Wiccans celebrate at the end of October, and Muslims celebrate based on shifts in the lunar calendar.
When people celebrate the New Year depends upon the calendar in use, which has varied over time, culture, religion and government. Some of the almost 100 different calendars include the Egyptian, Solar, Lunar, Yin-Yang, Mayan, Aztec, Hellenic, Roman, Julian, Celtic, Runic, and Gregorian. So January 1st and all other New Year's celebrations are a human construct, a method of distinguishing how our lives fluctuate in comparison to one another in the space-time continuum.
Why do we choose to celebrate a new year, to put a border on part of our lives with a beginning and an end? Perhaps because we are alive for an infinitesimal amount of time, we want to mark milestones of our survival. We want to recognize the impact we world citizens have had on each other and the world around us. We want to comprehend the preciousness of time and how far humanity has progressed.
The universe moves at its own pace whether or not humans notice how long it takes for the earth to orbit the sun. Though the universe does what it will, we humans want a feeling of control. We celebrate the passage of time, the arrival of a new day, a new year, and the appreciation of what has gone and what is to come to have a sense of agency over how time passes. Self-imposed limits, such as marking of time, provide an appearance of structure, stability and security in an otherwise unpredictable world.
This recognition of time's passing -- the desire to track it, mark it, measure it -- and the feeling of being bound by it is characteristically human, though not only human.
Like humans, our animal cohabitants of the earth also instinctually perceive time. They feel its impact through their visual, olfactory, auditory, gustatory, and tactile senses as well as through balance, motion, and magnetism. Elephants, chimpanzees, dolphins, and magpies recognize moments in time, such as "mourning" the loss of one of their tribe. Even plants and bacteria can sense time through changes in light and internal biochemical processes. An appreciation of the concept of time, and how it is used, is important for all beings, and in particular, humans as world citizens attempting to live together peacefully.
Human's arrangement of time helps us to organize how we behave and interact with each other and the world around us. Our memory captures snippets of time, allowing us to repeat helpful events and actions and to avoid harmful ones. Storytelling, writing and photography, distinctly human capabilities, extend our memory, allowing us to travel through time. We can visit the past, describe the present, or imagine the future. As travelers-through-time, we can evolve as individuals, as humanity, and as part of the universe. We are certainly time keepers. When we recognize our rights and duties as world citizens, we can also be time givers.
Do we become older and wiser over time? Does time give us second and third chances? Does time give perspective?
The only time we can really change is now, how we use time in the perpetual present. Every day provides an opportunity for living anew. Every day is a moment to make each other happy and to treat each other and the earth with respect.
Although time itself has no frontiers, we humans create borders of time to add order to our lives together. To maintain that order, however, as world citizens we know that we do not need to separate one human from another by physical borders. In fact, we all share time, and time is free, in the sense that time is available without humans having to expend any energy to create it. We do need to spend energy in how we choose to use our time. This is where human-made borders, divvying up the earth, favors some humans over others. Thus many people are deprived of their right to time.
How does our control of time empower some of us, and the lack of control subjugate others of us?
If you are living at a subsistence level, all you can do is spend your time working or looking for your next meal. Although we each have a duty to use some of our time to help others and to improve our communities, we also have the right to invest time in personal improvement and in enjoyment and wonder of being alive.
This right to time is affirmed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR):
Article 24 of the UDHR affirms the right to leisure -- meaning that we do not always need to use our time exercising our "right to work." Article 24 states, "Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay."
Article 27(1) of the UDHR provides another outlet for how we may use time. It states, "Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits."
Article 30 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities also affirms the right to "participation in cultural life, recreation, leisure and sport."
These affirmations of our right to leisure, to uncontrolled time, are another way of stating that work should not be the ultimate goal of how we "spend" our time. We say "spend" because time, along with being a human right, is also a commodity that has value -- value that can be given, taken, shared, wasted, saved, lost, and gained.
We must cherish time. We must appreciate that we have a right to time. We must reaffirm our commitment to equality of opportunity and equality of outcome with regard to time; it is a duty of everyone to respect how each of us can use the time we have.
Just like having a minimum basic income, we need to have a minimum basic time allotment to spend on ourselves, not working or laboring.
Humans have great intellect. As time passes, we as a species must use our intellect to evolve how we use our time to achieve a sustainable, just and peaceful world. We can create a virtuous cycle of ever-expanding human wisdom and planetary improvement. In addition to promoting time rights and duties to each other, we must also ensure that we use some of our time to protect the earth, or our time will be nil. The time is now to recognize that we must implement a new era of human and earth harmony, together as world citizens.
Happy New Year! Happy New Now! Happy New World!
69th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Unifying Human and Environmental Rights
By David Gallup
Why should we think beyond our humanness to a worldly, earth perspective? Does the earth have a right to exist independently from humans? Do animals, plants and even inanimate objects have rights? How should humans interact with the earth and ecosystem, not as "owners" of the earth, but as caretakers of the planet?
As we celebrate the 69th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 2017, let us take a moment to appreciate the bounty that the earth provides for humanity. It is a time to reflect, not only upon human rights, but also upon the rights of the earth itself. It is time to reflect upon how our human rights are dependent upon environmental rights. And it is time to reflect upon humanity's duty to protect the earth.
Global warming, ozone depletion, rising sea levels, soil erosion, habitat destruction, species extinction, drug, pesticide, plastic and petroleum toxins in groundwater, pollutants in the air, landfills and oceans, deforestation, etc. These human created problems impact all life on the planet and pose a threat to all beings' existence. We must consider how our human actions are violating that most fundamental right -- the right to exist. Although the focus of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) pertains specifically to human rights, several Articles in the Declaration can be construed to provide a basic legal framework for considering environmental rights and duties as part of our human rights and duties.
The Human Focus of the UDHR
In 1948, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed, humans were not fully aware of how our use of the earth and its resources could negatively impact the world. The link between human rights and environmental rights was not yet established. The UDHR focuses specifically on human rights, and only indirectly on environmental rights, for several reasons:
1. The UDHR was created immediately after World War II when the rights of millions of people were violently, and for many lethally, violated. The UDHR was a reaction to the war, to develop laws of peace as an adjunct to the laws of war, with the expectation that once human rights are fully respected, humans would be less inclined to behave aggressively toward one another.
2. The framers of the UDHR wanted to focus on human interactions -- how we treat each other -- in order to build a peaceful world.
3. The conceptualization of other third or fourth generation rights (such as environmental rights) had not yet come into mainstream thought. The earth had for so long been looked upon as human property to exploit solely for human advancement.
4. The scientific studies that reveal how treatment of the environment can impact our ability to claim and exercise our rights had not yet been conducted.
Even though the framers of the UDHR do not directly mention environmental rights, these rights can be deduced from Declaration.
The UDHR and Environmental Rights
We can extrapolate rights related to the earth from five articles of the UDHR: Articles 3, 25, 28, 29 and 30.
Article 3 of the UDHR affirms the rights to live, to freedom and to security: "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person." We now know that if the earth dies, we humans die with it. To affirm our life, liberty and security, we have the duty to act towards nature sustainably and indigenously.
Article 25(1) of the UDHR affirms the rights to health and to fulfill basic needs: "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control." To advance the standard of living for humanity, we must respect the web of life that supports our health and well-being. To have abundant food and to fulfill our basic needs, we must nourish the land and maintain clean air and water. While considering standards of living, we must also be mindful of how the priority of continuous economic growth, and its concomitant resource usage, negatively impacts the environment. The earth is facing greater and greater strain from human activities that exacerbate natural phenomenon such as hurricanes, wildfires, and seismic activity. When we are not mindful and respectful of nature's infrastructure, nature will wreak havoc on our human infrastructure.
Article 28 of the UDHR affirms the goal of living in a world of order rather than entropy: "Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized." What does a social and international order look like, that allows us to fully realize our rights? That order will come from a holistic world system that equally values both human and environmental rights. That order will come from advocating for the earth. We humans must speak up for the earth, using our "reason and conscience" (as Article 1 states) to voice and implement what the earth needs in order to heal and flourish. That order will come from the awareness of both our rights and duties as world citizens to each other and to the earth.
Article 29 of the UDHR affirms that we humans have duties to each other and the world around us: "(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible. (2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society. (3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations." We must expand the notion of duty to the community to mean duty to the earth as a whole, rather than only to the human community. We must secure the recognition of rights of others with the consideration that "others" includes the environment. We must exercise our rights only to the extent that this exercise does not damage the earth.
Article 30 of the UDHR affirms that humans cannot engage in any activity or perform any act that destroys our rights: "Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein." In this final Article of the Declaration, we find our ultimate human duty to the planet. Destruction of the environment eventually destroys our rights. More than any other human activity, war violates human rights and despoils the environment. Our human rights, and ultimately world peace, are dependent upon healthy, sustainable natural and human environments.
Moving Beyond the UDHR
As our understanding of humanity's link to the earth has evolved, activists and lawmakers have established environmental laws in an attempt to regulate human interaction with the environment. More than 80 declarations, treaties and multilateral conventions have been ratified over the past 75 years in an effort to protect various aspects of the environment. Several of the most well-known, though not yet well-implemented, include the 1972 Stockholm Declaration on the right to a healthy environment, the 1992 Rio Declaration on the protection of the integrity of the earth's ecosystem, the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to reduce greenhouse gases, the subsequent 1997 Kyoto Protocol and 2015 Paris Agreement, and the 1998 Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters. In 2015, 193 countries adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals, of which 8 directly pertain to the environment. National governments have given themselves until 2030 to try to achieve these goals.
As environmental activists have seen nation-state treaties come and go with big fanfare but little positive change, other attempts to declare the rights of the environment have come to the fore. In 2010, at the "World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth," a Universal Declaration of Rights of Mother Earth proclaimed the rights of the earth and all beings and the duties of humans to the earth. Hundreds of thousands of individuals have signed a petition in support of this rights of nature declaration. Activists plan to present more than a million signatures of support to the United Nations on the 70th anniversary of the UDHR next year with the expectation that the UN will adopt the Declaration. As with many declarations and treaties, relying upon the UN or individual nations to enforce their provisions has had limited success.
Despite the plethora of laws and scientific guidelines for humans to follow to be good stewards of the earth, national governments and corporations have blocked progress toward an ecologically sustainable world. It is not necessarily a question of making new laws, which national and corporate leaders will likely ignore; rather, it is a question of enforcing the laws already on the books, engaging the public in protecting the environment, and summoning a united political will. We need to work with one human voice to govern how we treat the earth and all its inhabitants.
Universal Human Rights Require Universal Environmental Rights
Human rights, peace, and environmental activists must work together to achieve universal awareness and respect for all rights. In the future, we may adopt a Universal Declaration of Universal Rights and Duties, a compendium encompassing all human, environmental and other rights and responsibilities. For now, though, uniting as world citizens to implement universal human rights side by side with universal environmental rights is the key to survival of humanity and the earth.
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"I speak an open and disinterested language, dictated by no passion but that of humanity... Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world..."
--Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man
Why Do We Call Ourselves World Citizens?
By David Gallup
157 years after Thomas Paine wrote The Rights of Man, and after dropping bombs on cities as an air force pilot in WWII, Garry Davis voluntarily gave up his national citizenship and claimed world citizenship. In his autobiography, My Country is the World, he wrote, "Man's deadliest, self-imposed, restrictive device is nationalism. You and I may be fellow humans, but we are not fellow nationalists. I am a fellow who willfully withdrew from the co-partnership of citizen and national state and declared himself a world citizen."
Why did Garry Davis call himself a "world citizen"?
Garry Davis, like Thomas Paine, called himself a "citizen of the world" or "world citizen" because he saw the earth and humanity linked together as one unit, not just as a biosphere or ecosystem in which we are passive onlookers. He saw a human and political governing system sustainably integrated into the environment. He saw the possibility of humans working together to achieve a greater goal, to be more than the sum of individual parts.
He realized that if we humans were to move beyond aggression and war, then we would need to recognize that we are already one human family. We would need to claim a higher citizenship, a higher allegiance to each other and to the earth.
Citizenship is the expression of our rights and duties within a particular communal framework. World citizenship is the recognition that our communal framework is the world as a whole, that we carry our rights and duties with us wherever we are and that the world we share already unites us.
Why should we call ourselves "world citizens" rather than "global citizens"?
The term "global citizen" is a misnomer. The word "global" derives from "globe," meaning ball or sphere. "Global" is an adjective describing a location or place. A global citizen is an individual who happens to live on the earth.
"World citizen," two nouns together, describes an action. A "world citizen" is who you are, what you do, and to what you pledge your allegiance. The word "world" derives from Old English and Dutch, meaning the "age of man." "World" pertains to the life of humans, human existence, humanity, society, civilization, human institutions and the web of interactions among humans and with the environment.
As both a noun and an adjective, "world" is a system. The word "world" describes both the place where humans are and what, together, humans have done with and can make from our surroundings. The "world" is an interconnected system of our actions, reactions, and abilities to transform our relationships with one another and the earth. The word "world" focuses on the human aspect -- the structures and institutions -- of our existence.
You wouldn't say "citizen of the globe." That is not a system. That is a description of where someone finds themselves on a spherical shape or geographic mapping. "Citizen of the world," however, does engage the idea of people working together for a common goal. So, to be a world citizen means that you consider rights and duties of everyone individually and of all of us together towards each other and the planet. It's not just a location. It's not just a description. It is a political statement.
World citizenship is an idea put into action; it is ideals made real. World citizenship embraces action to develop an ethical framework for fulfilling our rights and duties. We have to conceive of the world framework that we want.
This conception of a functional world system requires principle, ideology, strategy and tactics of world citizenship. For a world citizen, the principle is one human family; the ideology is universal rights and duties; the strategy is education of universal principles, rights and duties; and the tactics are the symbols and tools that we engage to promote comprehension of our need to be committed to our planetary and human status, to the rights and duties that we have in the world that we create for each other.
Why is this distinction between "global" and "world" important?
Unlike the term "global," the term "world" constitutes the ethics, structures and institutions of the humenvironmental system that we can choose to create and develop sustainably.
We must claim world citizenship status. National governments cannot prevent us from doing so. They can only restrict horizontal citizenship -- from one nationality to another. They cannot restrict vertical citizenship that transcends the nation.
If you have a "right to a nationality," you also have a right NOT to have a nationality. You have a right to claim a higher allegiance to humanity and the earth. Or you can consider the idea of "nationality" to take a broader perspective of identity, meaning world citizenship status -- meaning the world is our country.
We are citizens of everywhere and everywhen -- wherever and whenever you find yourself in all times and situations. We are each a citizen of everywhere (the whole world). And we are each a citizen everywhere. In other words, wherever you are, wherever you find yourself, you are already a citizen -- with rights and duties, no matter whether you were born in that specific place or not. Having a "state" identity is irrelevant to our innate and unalienable rights that we carry with us wherever we go. The problem with the nation-state, as a challenge to a functioning world system, is that it attempts to exclude; it places "others" outside of its own framework of local law.
As world citizens, we rely on world law, such as Article 6 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law." We have rights and duties inherent to being a world citizen, which must be respected everywhere and for everyone.
We use "world citizen" and not "global citizen" because we need world law -- law for a world system to help us govern ourselves peacefully and sustainably. Global law only pertains to the environment, an ecological framework. World law relates to humans, to our human world, to the myriad of interactions that we have with each other as well as with the planet.
Once the framework of world citizenship is secure, we can unite at an even higher level. With a sustainable system in place in this world, we can then become citizens of the universe.
Why do we claim and must we claim world citizenship?
In a future blog, I will discuss the idea of world citizenship as an organizing principle for a successful, sustainable humanity -- why we do claim and must claim world citizenship.
Nation-state Hypocrisy and the Nuclear Threat
By David Gallup
How can nuclear weapons states, like the United States of America, legitimately demand that other states, like North Korea, cease their research and production of nuclear weapons, when they themselves continue to maintain and upgrade their own arsenals?
Developing, producing and maintaining nuclear weapons are war crimes and crimes against the peace that could lead to the ultimate crime against humanity, omnicide -- the elimination of humanity and the extinction of most life on the planet.
Nuclear weapons development, production and maintenance violate both humanitarian law and human rights law. See the appendix below regarding how nuclear weapons violate the laws of war and the laws of peace.
Despite the international law against nuclear weapons and war, nation-states with nuclear weapons do not want to divest themselves of their nuclear arsenals. The nation-states' highest court, the International Court of Justice, ruled in 1996 that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is illegal, with the exception of use for self-defense -- a loophole that allows governments to maintain the nuclear option. North Korea could claim that its nuclear testing and arms development is for its own protection. What country doesn't invoke self-defense, national security, or national sovereignty as a basis for its aggression?
Humanity finds itself in this quandary because of the nation-state principle of national sovereignty.
We must now turn to a new principle of sovereignty, if we are to transcend the control of nuclear weapons countries who make the false case that their best interests are aligned with the best interests of humanity and the earth.
The Supreme Leader of North Korea thinks he can win a nuclear war. So does the Commander-in-Chief of the United States. These national "leaders" are not rational actors. But neither are the other nuclear weapons heads of state.
These heads of state have no legitimate intention to dismantle all nuclear weaponry, nor to stop aggression generally. National governments want these tools of destruction at their disposal, even arguing that their existence prevents their use. What sane leader would start a nuclear war knowing that global annihilation could occur? Mutually assured destruction does not prevent national leaders from acting irrationally.
Nuclear weapons and nuclear war are not the only nuclear concern. Continued use of nuclear energy is poisoning the planet. The uranium and plutonium used by nuclear power plants has already led to environmental degradation in Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. Enriched plutonium from power plants continues to be made into nuclear weapons. Whether this material is in the hands of national governments, insurgents, or terrorists, its existence threatens our survival.
Outlawing nuclear war, nuclear weapons and nuclear power will begin to remove the threat. To solidify humanity's future, we need to create global institutions of law and engender a global pride in being citizens of the world. We need to establish a consciousness of humanity and the earth as precious, to be protected.
Before the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, under the "old world order" rulers or governments had no compunction about waging war for unabashed self-interest. They considered it an acceptable tool of state-craft. After World War I, the League of Nations and the Kellogg-Briand Pact attempted to make war illegal. In particular after World War II, under the "new world order," governments became reluctant to wage wars of conquest, couching most wars as defensive protection rather than for offensive gain. (See The Internationalists by Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro.)
The UN Charter attempted to establish the conditions in which member-states may use armed force, in particular for self-defense and common defense. Article 2(4) of the Charter states, "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations." Because the Charter maintains national sovereignty as sacrosanct, however, warfare within a state (non-international) remains unchecked.
Both the old world order and the new world order are disorder. Continued lack of unity of the human race under one citizenship perpetuates chaos and is the breeding ground of war. A legitimate world order will arise with a global rule of law that world citizens create through democratic, non-hierarchical and participatory world institutions of law.
Sanity in governance requires higher level sovereignty with human and whole earth thinking. Sanity requires human government -- world citizens' government. A future for humanity requires sanity, sincerity, and human-level sovereignty.
As sane and rational actors, we need to engage our idealism to deal with the realistic threat of nuclear weapons. We need realism to be tempered by idealism. We need to become real-dealists. Only if we implement our idealistic goals of a governed, and nuclear-free, world, will we be able to realistically survive as a species. It's in our best interest to move beyond our self-interest. We must transcend the paradigm of nationalism to create a world that works for everyone. World citizenship can lead us to achieve an honest, holistic, and worldly consciousness.
One immediate step that each of us as world citizens can take is to sign the petition supporting the ratification of the "Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons." To sign the petition online, click here and to sign a handwritten petition, click here.
I have already signed the petition. Will you?
Appendix:
The threat or use of nuclear weapons violates the principles of international humanitarian law.
War crime:
The Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Principles, and the Statute of the International Criminal Court maintain the premise that war is supposed to be limited, affect civilians minimally, and be winnable in a short time frame. Fallout from a nuclear war cannot be limited. Many people, not just military combatants, will die. No one can win a nuclear war.
Crime against the peace:
The threat of using nuclear weapons not only destabilizes the regions where the threat is focused, but also the progression of humanity towards the global rule of law and the consequent peaceful world. Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) confirms that any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law; yet heads of state dangle the nuclear option like a plaything.
Crime against humanity:
Even a limited nuclear incident could cause immediate, dramatic devastation and long-term habitability concerns for the entire earth. Nuclear war would be genocide of humanity.
According to customary international law and international treaty law, national governments must not commit acts that violate human rights.
Article 30 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states, "Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein."
Article 5 (1) of the ICCPR states, "Nothing in the present Covenant may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms recognized herein or at their limitation to a greater extent than is provided for in the present Covenant."
Continued development of nuclear weapons violates our human rights, in particular our right to live and our right to a world order that allows for the full and free exercise of all our innate and unalienable rights.
Right to live:
Article 3 of the UDHR states, "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person."
Article 6 of the ICCPR states, "Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life."
World order:
Article 28 of the UDHR states, "Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized."
The preamble of the ICCPR states, "The States Parties to the present Covenant, Considering that, in accordance with the principles proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations, recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world; Recognizing that these rights derive from the inherent dignity of the human person; Recognizing that, in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ideal of free human beings enjoying civil and political freedom and freedom from fear and want can only be achieved if conditions are created whereby everyone may enjoy his civil and political rights, as well as his economic, social and cultural rights; Considering the obligation of States under the Charter of the United Nations to promote universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and freedoms" agree to uphold human rights.
Should Human Rights Be Decentralized?
By Noemie Broussoux-Coutard*, Guest Blogger
Activists assert the universality of human rights to demand that governments respect everyone's rights and duties universally. Embodied by treaties, covenants and declarations, human rights enforcement appears to provide an antidote to ongoing violence and inequality in the world. Has the demand for respect of universal human rights principles led to greater respect of our rights?
In her book, Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law Into Local Justice, Sally Engle Merry, Professor of Anthropology, Law and Society, analyzes the current flaws in international human rights law creation and dissemination, and attempts to respond to these flaws by proposing that international law and human rights development should return to local community engagement. Education and promotion of human rights standards, she maintains, should be in accordance with the culture of the local area.
Merry highlights the knowledge gap between the drafters of international law and the communities who are directly impacted by these laws. Localities are often excluded from crucial conversations and preparatory work during the drafting of human rights laws, as well as from what those laws will do and how they will be implemented. Merry posits that the lack of awareness of the law-making process creates an unwillingness to abide by the laws, as well as a perpetuation of human rights violations all over the globe.
Because law drafting tends to be an elitist process, lawmakers sometimes fail to acknowledge the concepts of culture and local identity, and how those concepts relate to human rights. Local culture, to a significant amount of communities, represents the essence of their existence. Merry states that cultural considerations in human rights often are either overlooked by international standards, or used as a shield against laws, but instead should serve as a peaceful tool to benefit all parties. She writes, "Even as anthropologists and others have repudiated the idea of culture as a consensual, interconnected system of beliefs and values, the idea has taken on a new life on the public sphere." Merry proceeds by explaining that culture can be used as a method of educating all parties: the international actors, by teaching them the intricate diversity of each community and how it ultimately relates to human rights, and the localities, by teaching them the essentiality of having human rights laws by giving local examples of human rights violations, stemming injustice in their communities.
Merry argues that the solution lies in the "vernacularization" of human rights, by bridging the gap between participants at the international and the local levels, utilizing resources such as NGOs and other activist groups who can translate and understand both parties in this dilemma. This solution is particularly useful in implementing crucial laws that are generally misunderstood by populations with little to no access to the human rights education. This misunderstanding is due in large part to the law-makers of the privileged world who take part in what Merry calls the "transnational culture of modernity."
This term describes the general grouping of people who, by the simple fact that they all live in modern, organized states with high regards towards individual rights and protection from the state, fail to consider the differences between their world, and communities whose cultures largely differ from these standards. The people in this transnational culture of modernity are often the very people who compose human rights codes and promote human rights on a global scale. Through the assistance of NGOs and activists to bridge the gap of understanding between global standards and local cultures, various disadvantaged communities have come to understand how their governments are mistreating and oppressing them. They have begun to claim their rights utilizing the resources that international human rights treaties provide.
To achieve greater awareness and respect for human rights everywhere, we need to deal with how globalization of human rights has excluded many underprivileged communities from participating in the development of legal standards and legal processes. We need to provide human rights education to local communities, explaining how human rights law and human rights violations directly impact those communities. We also need to educate everyone involved in drafting and implementing international human rights laws that those laws will achieve greater recognition and support when local communities have a voice in the process.
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*Noemie Broussoux-Coutard participated in the Summer 2017 Session of the World Law Internship Program in World Service Authority's Legal Department.
Happy New Year 2017!
- heritage food potluck dinners
- world trivia nights
- cultural celebrations
- global music and dance performances
- speakers on human rights, international law, and peace issues
- refugee assistance through food drives and advocacy campaigns
- film and documentary screenings
- network with experts in the international community
- interact with students from other parts of the world
- engage academic learning outside the classroom
- acquire multicultural competencies, a top priority for employers
- make a difference in their communities and the world
- To read this New Year's blog, please click here.
68th Anniversary of the UDHR
By David Gallup
As the number of refugees, stateless and displaced persons has increased to the highest percentage on record, the world's failure to deal with this plight has come to the forefront of national and global politics. Besides the 22 million refugees, 41 million internally displaced within their "home" country, and 3 million asylum seekers, more than 10 million people are considered "stateless." Almost 1 in 100 people in the world are displaced from their homes.
As we consider our universal rights on this 68th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10th, we should consider how more than 75 million of us do not receive universal respect for our rights.
On September 19th of this year, governments, UN agencies, NGOs, business leaders, and representatives of refugees and migrants met to draft another declaration, one that pertains to large movements of refugees and migrants who face serious human rights violations. This new political statement is called "The New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants" (UN Resolution A/RES/71/1 and GA/11820).
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and national governments have realized that the present framework and international legal protections* for dealing with refugees, stateless and displaced persons cannot handle the strain of massive displacement or resolve its underlying causes. Yet this new Declaration and a potential "Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration" that is planned for 2018 will neither alter the current framework nor improve legal protections. The New York Declaration and Compact are just a wish list, not rising to the level of enforceable law.
This new Declaration and the future Compact have three main failures:
1) Neither the Declaration nor the potential Compact can be considered binding law that national governments would be obliged to follow. "Principles, commitments and understandings among Member States regarding international migration" are not treaties or conventions. Although the New York Declaration suggests some potential "Durable Solutions" to assist refugees, stateless and displaced, these solutions rely on national governments through "international cooperation" to agree and then take action to implement them. Governments that have signed current international laws frequently violate them, discriminating against refugees and stateless persons, or forsaking them such as those stuck in Aleppo, Syria.
2) The Declaration and Compact do not call for a change in the legal definition of refugee to meet the circumstances of displaced people today. The basis for determination of "refugee" status needs to be overhauled. The definition of refugee needs to be expanded beyond persecution due to race, religion, nationality, political opinion against a government, and social group. Anyone facing environmental devastation, economic oppression, perpetual war, and structural violence, among other newly-recognized factors of persecution, should be considered as having a legal basis for asylum or refugee status.
3) The Declaration and future Compact refer to the causes of the plight of refugees but do not develop a system that deals with the root causes of displacement and refugee flows. The New York Declaration mentions the term "root cause(s)" six times, such as, "We are determined to address the root causes of large movements of refugees and migrants, including through increased efforts aimed at early prevention of crisis situations based on preventive diplomacy." It is unlikely that the negotiations among UN member-states in 2017 and the migration conference in 2018 will devise a comprehensive plan and supra-national system to deal with the causes of displacement. National governments generally ignore that it is in their best interest to be concerned about others outside their so-called borders.
We don't want a compact to which national governments can give lip service but take no action. Even if all the talk about displacement leads to a new convention or compact, until we unite as one human family under one human law, governments will continue to be able to ignore and mistreat others coming to their shores to seek a new life, safety, freedom and peace.
Like the inadequate New York Declaration and Compact, the UNHCR's "I Belong" campaign cannot effectively deal with "statelessness" -- with the millions of persons who do not have national citizenship despite their birth or parents' status in a particular country. The UNHCR's campaign seeks to eliminate statelessness in the next ten years by ensuring that the right to a nationality is respected by all national governments.
The UNHCR assumes that if everyone has a nationality, then everyone's rights will be respected, and that displaced persons who have a nationality will not suffer discrimination. The concern should not be to make sure that everyone has a nationality; it should be to make sure that everyone's rights and duties are respected. Everyone should have a valid citizenship status no matter who they are or where they find themselves on planet earth. Such a status is world citizenship.
For example, if a country finds itself completely under water due to climate change, it will not matter whether a person has that country's nationality because they will be displaced. Those people will be forced to find another place to live, and it might be difficult to find other countries that will agree to let them in and not discriminate against them. Other countries' governments may feel no obligation to assist those people without a country. Their nationality will not ensure that their rights and duties are met. Rights and duties must be linked to the individual, not to a nationality. Only a holistic citizenship can ensure that everyone's rights and duties are upheld. And that citizenship is world citizenship.
Countries could also renege on their agreement, meaning that an entire group of people could overnight be stripped of their nationality and consequently their citizenship rights.
As world citizens, in one united world, everyone could travel everywhere just as many people are able to do within a country. There are still regulations to follow, such as obtaining a new identification card to show local affiliation, to register to vote, etc. Natural limits by capacity of transportation methods and of local infrastructures, etc. will prevent the floodgates of too many people coming to one place over another.
We want a system to support world citizenship as a valid citizenship, in addition to any other status that one may carry. If "statelessness is inhumane" (according to the UNHCR's Open Letter to End Statelessness), having a nationality does not make one "humane." The nation-state still separates humans from one another. World citizenship affirms our link, each one of us, to humanity.
On this 68th anniversary of the Universal Declaration, let's work toward a world in which everyone's rights and duties are met, not because of where we are born or who our parents are, but solely because we are human. Let's each declare that "I Belong" to humanity and the earth as World Citizens.
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*Footnote:
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Conventions on refugees and stateless persons provide a modicum of protections to refugees, displaced and stateless persons, under current international law.
Articles 14 and 15 of the Universal Declaration provide a partial framework to deal with displacement of people and statelessness. Article 14, Section 1 states, "Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution." Article 15 states, "Everyone has a rights to a nationality" and "No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality."
With regard to displacement not caused by governmental treatment (such as environmental degradation), Articles 3 and 13 affirm the rights to secure one's safety and to find another place to live. Article 3 states, "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person." Article 13 states, "Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State" and "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."
The 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness provide the treaty law framework for who is considered a refugee or stateless person, establish "a minimum set of rights" for people with these statuses, and attempt to reduce the likelihood that someone would be without a citizenship. Three-quarters of all governments have legally agreed to be bound by the Refugee Convention and Protocol. About one-half have agreed to the Stateless Convention, and only about one-third of all governments have agreed to the Reduction of Statelessness Convention.
How do we stop war?
By David Gallup
War is state-sponsored terrorism. Or if not "terrorism," then legally condoned killing. War-time killing is not considered to be a crime of "murder" because states claim a power (currently considered legal) to wage war. Under humanitarian law, war is meant to be used for self-defense. More often than not, however, governments initiate internal and international wars as a tool of aggression -- to maintain power and control over people, land, resources and ideology.
Is humanitarian law meant to stop war?
Why do national governments allow the carnage and barbarism to continue in Syria and elsewhere? Because international humanitarian law (the "Laws of War") allows tanks, war planes, battleships, and missiles to be built, and to be bought and sold as if they are fruits and vegetables in the produce section of a grocery.
Humanitarian law starts with the premise that war can be controlled and have a useful purpose. Humanitarian law posits that killing in war is okay as long as the killing distinguishes between civilians and combatants, the killing is limited in scope and time, and the war is winnable. The nation-state system's attempt to apply rules to war, rather than outlawing war entirely, is morally bankrupt, especially in the nuclear age.
Nation-states want to maintain their exclusive identity, usually at the expense of others outside their putative borders. Because they must then protect those borders, they will not give up their power -- at least under the current international law system -- to build weapons for themselves and to sell weapons to their allies or to various governments for strategic advantage.
Has there ever been any international law attempt to stop war?
The 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact ("General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy") attempted to outlaw wars of aggression between nations. Sixty-two of the seventy-three independent nations at the time had signed the treaty. However, the treaty did not address the issue of nations engaging in warfare as a measure of self-defense.
The treaty failed because it did not limit the tools of warfare, and it did not create an enforcement mechanism to ensure that all disputes would be resolved peacefully. The nations continued to expand their weapons arsenals, and they did not cede power to an external governing authority to handle disputes. A treaty between equally sovereign states, such as the Kellogg-Briand Pact, does not prevent those states from choosing to wage wars, rather than go to court, as a final resolution to conflict. The governments did not establish common world law.
Can existing international law or current treaties prevent war?
UN Charter:
The purpose of the United Nations as outlined in Article 1 of the Charter is to "maintain international peace and security," to prevent and remove threats to peace by peaceful means, affirm equal rights and self-determination, and to achieve international cooperation to solve international problems.
The problem with the UN Charter is that it encourages countries to interact peacefully but cannot require them to do so. The first President of the UN General Assembly, Dr. Herbert Evatt, elaborated, "The United Nations was not set up to make peace," he wrote in a letter to Garry Davis in 1948, "but only to maintain it once it was made by the Great Powers..."
Furthermore, the Charter upholds the "sovereign quality" of each of its members, barring intervention in "domestic" matters. Because we have separated ourselves into exclusive nations, we do not act as a unified whole to resolve conflict.
UDHR:
Articles 28 and 30 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) affirm that a war-free world requires the protection of fundamental rights. Article 28 states that a "social and international order," i.e., peaceful human interactions, is necessary for the rights in the Declaration to be realized. Article 30 states that no state, group or individual has a right to participate in any activity (e.g., aggression) "aimed at the destruction of any of the rights" affirmed by the Declaration.
The problem with the UDHR is that its customary law status means that governments have not agreed unequivocally to be bound by it. The will to enforce it has been ineffective. Even with the ICCPR and the ICESCR, which are binding treaties, governments are still able to violate rights with impunity -- the breeding ground for war.
Geneva Conventions:
The 1949 Geneva Conventions and subsequent Protocols were created to limit the barbarity of war by restricting conflict to military combatants, protecting the injured and prisoners of war, ensuring the safe passage of medical and aid workers, and prohibiting torture, rape and other war tactics that impose severe suffering. As previously mentioned, these laws do not attempt to eliminate war, only to reduce its impact on certain combatants and upon the civilian population.
Nuremberg Principles:
The principles recognized in the 1950 Charter and Judgment of the Nuremberg Tribunal affirm that individuals can be held responsible under international law for war crimes, crimes against the peace and crimes against humanity even if acting upon orders of a superior. These principles have become the basis for ad hoc tribunals for the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Lebanon, Cambodia, East Timor and for the permanent war crimes tribunal that now exists as the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Although these principles attempt to hold individuals accountable, because of political stalemates and an unwillingness to pierce the veil of national sovereignty, individuals and governments are able to continue the war game. More than 200 armed conflicts have been waged around the world since 1950.
Can international courts intervene to stop war?
Why do we have international courts if not to help us to resolve our differences peacefully, with and by law?
In 2010, Garry Davis submitted a petition to the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the threat and use of nuclear weapons, because a nuclear war would be the actual war to end all wars, the ultimate crime against humanity.
Although the petition was received, the court neither acknowledged the petition nor rejected it. They simply ignored it. The ICC is beholden for its existence to the very states that perpetuate war and maintain the threat of nuclear weapons. Because the ICC depends upon acceptance by states and upon the states' financial support, the ICC does not have autonomy.
If the court had rejected Davis's petition, then they would be violating the principle of their own existence to adjudicate crimes against humanity of which nuclear war is the utmost crime. If they had accepted the petition and adjudged the case, then they would have had to reject the use of nuclear weapons in all circumstances. The ICC was unwilling to set a new precedent because, in 1996, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) established that nations could use nuclear weapons for self-defense.
It seems that the ICJ and the ICC can only attempt to adjudicate conflicts between states or crimes of war after the fact, once a dispute or aggression has started and oftentimes after it has ended. As courts, unlike a parliament or congress, they cannot make law. They have no independent Marshal's Service to arrest suspects, having to rely upon the nations to conduct this policing.
Existing international law and tribunals have only been mildly successful in limiting the impact of wars; they have not been successful in preventing or outlawing war.
So, how do we stop war?
Because nations have waged war with increasing frequency over the past hundred years, it seems impossible to stop war. Governments can easily wage wars because the production, sale, distribution, and use of weapons is legal.
We now need to outlaw weaponization. We need to make the production of weapons not only illegal, but unprofitable. We need to prevent governments and corporations from profiting off of death and destruction. We need to make it economically, socially, and politically untenable. Politics and government must be ethicized.
World laws against war would establish financial and criminal penalties against individuals, companies and governments that make weapons. This would require not simply an embargo on arms, but a halt to the production of all new weapons and the dismantling of current weapons. We can repurpose the weapons manufacturing industry to provide tools of construction, instead of tools of destruction -- to provide machines and products that help people live safer, healthier, happier and more productively. We can recalibrate the global economy to produce goods, services and infrastructures that help, not hurt, people. Countries should be exporting life, not death.
The principle, ideology, strategy and tactics of governments must be humanized and earth-ized.
So if governments won't or can't outlaw war, itself, what about outlawing the tools that make mass aggression possible?
We have compliance programs to stop terrorist funding. Why don't we have compliance programs to stop the sale of guns, tanks, warplanes, bombs, etc.? Why don't we illegalize the manufacture, sale, transfer and use of all forms of weaponry -- conventional, bio, chemical, psychological and cyber?
Cut off access to weaponry, cut off its supply, and governments no longer have the capacity to engage in warfare.
Aggression among people who carry a knife or a bat or a broom may still occur. But that kind of aggression would be much easier to stop with a peace or police force than aggression that involves using weapons of mass killing and destruction. Machine guns, tanks and bombs can only kill; they have no benevolent purpose. Although we can cut up our dinner salad with a knife, we cannot prepare our dinner with a nuclear bomb.
Where do we go from here?
The national governments themselves cause the atrocities of war. Under existing international law, national government leaders can continue to prepare for and wage wars, especially internal conflicts. The veil of national sovereignty and the weakness of international enforcement allow them to act aggressively.
National governments could outlaw war and its preparations in their national constitutions, like Japan (in Article 9) and Costa Rica (in Article 12) have done. In those two countries, governmental leaders cannot weaponize the state and commandeer armed forces. It's unlikely, however, that many other nations, and certainly not the permanent members of the United Nations "Security Council," would voluntarily reject war as a tool of national policy.
Nations cannot or will not stop war. As Garry Davis once shouted from the public balcony at the United Nations, "If the nation-states won't stop war, then they should step aside and let us, the people, create the institutions that will." War becomes perpetual only if we choose it as the principal mode of interaction during conflict.
We the people must create new governmental institutions beyond the nation.
If we want to have an effective compliance program to prevent the sale, transfer and use of arms, some independent body or institution outside the nation-states is going to have to take charge. In other words, we need a system in place that will maintain the restrictions of illegality on the war preparation process.
A World Congress would create common world law that outlaws violent force everywhere as well as the sale, distribution and use of weapons. Aggression of war and violent conflict must be made illegal. Just like shooting someone or fighting with someone in a local setting can be considered assault and battery or murder, fighting or using weapons between groups of people in different places around the world must also be considered illegal. So no matter one's location or whether one is wearing a uniform, killing would be outlawed. Killing anywhere would be considered murder everywhere.
A World Court of Human Rights (WCHR) would adjudicate violations of the law, with a World Marshals Service to apprehend violators. A WCHR will shed light on violations by governments that oppress the many and maintain benefits for only a select few, affirming that governments must be transparent and act in service to the people. A WCHR will provide a legal and peaceful forum for victims to air their grievances and to obtain justice against the sponsors of war. Everyone should be able to sue for the violence they have faced.
Even if lawmakers and courts establish the illegality of war, how will we protect ourselves from rogue actors?
This is what a volunteer peace or police force is for. A World Peace/Police Guards Force would implement and enforce the law -- acting as roving ombudspeople to prevent conflicts and intervene in conflicts before they become violent. World Peace Guards would provide mediation and collaborative strategies and processes.
War is the biggest waster of human and natural resources.
People in the green movement must unite with people in the peace and collaborative development movements to stop war and its preparations for the sake of humanity and the earth. We need to work together to dismantle the structural violence that has been built into the nation-state system.
We need to alleviate the economic, political, technological, and social factors of humiliation -- the underlying inequalities and oppression -- that cause people to seek vengeance against and to hate, oppress, and control others.
As citizens of one world, we must fulfill human and environmental needs, rights and duties. We need to eliminate the anarchy, the lack of unified law, between nation-states that is the breeding ground of war. World peace, as well as human and environmental sustainability, will depend upon the advancement of common world law.
Displacedland
By David Gallup
More than 65 million people have become refugees (15 million), stateless (10 million), or forcibly displaced (40 Million) due to armed conflict, persecution and natural disasters.
This population figure is larger than that of more than 210 countries and dependent territories. In other words, only 20 countries in the world have a population larger than 65 million people. As the UN High Commissioner for Refugees explains, "one out of every 113 people on the earth" are displaced from their homes and "24 people are forced to flee each minute." The majority of refugees are fleeing from Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Myanmar, Eritrea, and Columbia. These figures do not even account for the day-to-day oppression that millions, if not billions, face but who are unable or reluctant to leave to find a safe haven.
What if all of the displaced people of the world came together, like the Refugee Team who participated in the Olympics, to create their own country?
"Displaced People's Country" or Displacedland would be an economic powerhouse with a gross domestic product similar to Indonesia, Switzerland or Turkey. Its diversity in cultures, languages, ethnicities, religions, etc. would ensure that acceptance of difference would be the norm.
From the arduous journey that the population faced to achieve their freedom from persecution and from their appreciation of their new-found liberties, the Displacedlanders would use their ingenuity, enthusiasm, and persistence to create a thriving and vibrant society.
Their desire for political, economic, environmental and social justice would be embedded in the legal fabric of the community. Displacedland would engender respect for each other as fellow citizens of struggle, respect for the land that they could call their own, and respect for the rule of law over the rule of the dictator. Initially, pride in their displacement would unite them. Later, recognition of their common humanity, would seal that bond.
Sounds like a great place to live!
But why should these fellow humans have to create their own new country to have their rights and basic needs upheld? Why are millions stuck in refugee camps with inadequate food, housing, healthcare, education and opportunity?
To have the kind of world in which the rights reaffirmed in various declarations and treaties such as the UDHR, the ICCPR and the ICESCR are fully met, we should all be able to claim, and then exercise, our rights no matter where we happen to live on the planet. Human rights and duties are not bound by territory; they are not dependent upon the nation-state in which one happens to be born.
If everyone had citizenship everywhere, statelessness would no longer exist and only natural disasters would forcibly displace people. With world citizenship, if we do not like where we live, if we do not like the politics or the rulers, then we could live somewhere else.
Instead of creating a separate country for all displaced people, world citizenship, as a valid and legal citizenship beyond any other status that someone may carry, would ensure that everyone has at least one citizenship which, in its inclusiveness, upholds our concomitant rights and duties.
Affirming world citizenship as an official, legal and political status is one of the main functions of the World Service Authority. Requiring all governments to respect world citizenship status legally is the next step -- a step that will support millions of displaced persons, by ensuring that governments will fulfill their obligations to respect refugees, stateless and displaced persons' innate and unalienable rights. To promote respect for this highest citizenship status, global institutions of law must be established. WSA's project to develop a World Court of Human Rights is one such institution.
World citizenship, as the highest level of allegiance, empowers us to focus on equality, justice, unity, friendship, sustainability, and harmony with each other and the earth.
Humans need not search for refuge in Displacedland. The entire earth is a sanctuary of peace -- when we respect each other, our rights and duties, as world citizens.
TEXit: A Nation-State Hypothetical
By David Gallup
What if the citizens of the state of Texas decide to leave the United States?
What if they have a referendum on whether to exit the Union, to once again become an independent Republic of Texas?
Forty-nine other states could easily maintain the Union, along with England as a quasi 50th state, or the District of Columbia finally taking up the mantle. Would Texas's departure be a boon to the citizens of Texas? Would it imperil the US Union?
Texas has enough human, oil, and land resources that it could go it alone. There would be many countries who would be delighted to work with an independent Texas and would quickly form treaty relationships.
What would this mean for the people living in Texas?
They would then need a Texas Passport and potentially a visa to travel to neighboring New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas or Louisiana. To work in the remaining 49 states, Texans would need to apply for a work authorization. Restrictions on the movement of personal property and import/export taxes would begin to burden them. Families would be separated by borders that for almost two centuries were only lines on a map. Now Texas would have to build a wall and post Texasland Security Officers every few miles to prevent "illegal" immigration.
Could Texas depart legally?
The United States Constitution requires that "No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance or Confederation..." (Article I, Section 10, Clause 1). One of the main considerations about whether a state is sovereign is its ability to establish treaties and relationships with other countries. Because the majority of powers of the government are vested in the Federal government (Congress, President and Courts), states are prevented from contracting with "foreign" governments.
Article IV of the US Constitution establishes admission into the United States by a new state with consent of the Congress, but does not deal with state secession. The remainder of the Constitution is silent on secession, neither denying nor confirming a right to secede.
In the US Supreme Court, the right of secession was rejected in Texas v. White in 1869. Chief Justice Chase considered the United States an inseparable union (a federation rather than a confederation). He wrote, "The Union was solemnly declared to be perpetual...The Constitution was ordained 'to form a more perfect Union.' It is difficult to convey the idea of indissoluble unity more clearly...When Texas became one of the United States, [it] entered into an indissoluble relation...More than a compact, it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final."
Subsequent case law has upheld the precedent of this landmark case. Justice Chase concluded that there was no place for reconsideration "except through revolution, or through the consent of the States." Chase admitted that that the people of a state still retained the power to revolt. Although unlikely, the people could also peacefully approach the governments of the other states in the union or the federal government to request a legal withdrawal from the union. Neither of these options can be considered a legal right to secede -- as revolution is outside of the law and consent is a political decision of the remaining states.
Under national law, Texas cannot legally secede.
Under international law, however, Texans could potentially claim a right to secede. Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the US has ratified, states, "All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development." International law doctrine has affirmed secession as a basis for achieving the right to self-determination in cases of colonialism, subjugation, exploitation or lack of meaningful exercise of self-determination internally within a country.
Could Texas depart illegally?
Would this be considered an insurrection? Would the federal government exert its armed forces to stop Texas? Could this lead to another civil war?
Texans mounting an armed insurrection would undoubtedly be met by swift action by the FBI, the US Army and other federal government forces.
Texans could make a peaceful declaration of independence and find other governments to back them up. Countries such as Kosovo, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Crimea, formerly part of other nation-states, have all declared their independence in the last few years. They found backing by Russia or by rulings of the United Nations' International Court of Justice.
TEXit versus Brexit?
The difference between Texas trying to leave the US Union and Great Britain choosing to leave the European Union is that the EU was created by a treaty signed by its members, a treaty that, in Article 50, allows for "member-states" to withdraw. Because US states, such as Texas, are prohibited from independently entering into relations with nation-states, they lack one of the main qualifications under international law to be considered sovereign. The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States affirms that an independent sovereign state is one that can enter into "foreign relations" as well as has a permanent population, a defined territory and a functioning government.
Furthermore, the EU has no constitution to bind the European states together into a new indissoluble entity, meaning that it is a confederation of sovereign states (an international organization), rather than a united political body.
On a social level, a small majority of British currently maintain a stronger feeling of belonging to their island country than to a feeling of "being European." This feeling of "being British" will not prevent Northern Ireland from reuniting with Ireland, or Scotland and Wales declaring their independence from England.
Only slightly more than 50% of the British voted to leave the European Union. And if the vote were taken again in a few years, it is quite likely that a vote to return to the Union would occur. At this point, Britain knows that the USA will come to its aid if it were threatened by war; so one of the main reasons for establishing the EU -- to prevent another war in Western Europe -- did not sway British voters.
Britain's exit from Europe and a hypothetical Texas exiting from the United States of America raise many concerns about identity and citizenship that the murky waters of nationalism obfuscate.
Will Great Britain's departure from the European Union precipitate the EU's demise?
What does this mean for European Citizenship? For the rights to travel, live and work freely throughout the region?
What does Britain's exit mean for the processes of nationalism and cosmopolitanism?
What is the purpose of a federation? Is it only to prevent war among its members? Or is it more than that? Can a federation provide a sense of belonging, a larger identity?
What does having a higher level allegiance beyond the state mean for identity and human interaction?
Even if Texas were to leave the Union, just as Britain has "left" the EU, it cannot leave earth. World Citizenship, the union of humans as humans, shall not perish from the earth.
__________________Thank you to Raman Maroz, Associate General Counsel and legal intern in World Service Authority's Legal Department, for conducting legal research for this TEXit blog.
I Interview Time
By David Gallup
In the style of Garry Davis' blogs in which he "interviewed" water, space and sleep, for this New Year's blog, I interview time.
Me: Hey, Time, wait up! Slow down! (running out of breath)
Time: Sorry, no can do. There's no time like the present. (keeping a steady pace)
Me: I guess I have to catch up.
Time: You're already here!
Me: Where?
Time: Now!
Me: Oh. (dumbfounded)
Time: I'm all around you and everyone else. We're all in the same actuality. (smiling and looking beyond the horizon)
Me: I never thought about you that way. Could I talk to the past?
Time: No, that's prologue.
Me: How about the future?
Time: You are what you make of it.
Me: Stop using trite expressions!
Time: Sorry, I think that's what you humans most easily understand.
Me: What's so important about the present, anyway?
Time: That is all you've got. The here and now. This is what most humans forget. You're always thinking about the future, how you will make your life better, or succeed over others. Or, you lament the past -- what you could have done differently, how you failed.
It's as if you purposefully close your eyes to sleep through what's happening in the space-time around you. Awareness is now. Ignorance is holding on to past regrets and obsessing over future resolutions.
Now's the me (Time, of course!) that you had better focus on, if you want to have more of me later. The ways that you humans interact, tells me that you are running out of me! I am of the essence -- for you to imagine and build the world that works for everyone.
Don't be armchair activists, saying that you are for world peace and global justice in some utopian future, and hoping that others will act on your dreams. Claim your world peacemaker status right now. You make peace, you create the tools to help each other live together harmoniously, but only if you choose this path below your feet, recognizing the one earth on which you are currently standing.
Me: I'm getting it. Now is where we are and what we must keep our mind focused on. We're all in the now. We share it. We share responsibility for it, for you. We're our own historians in every action that we take or every refusal to act that we allow.
Time: You're catching on, in the nick of me!
Me: We need to focus on each other, on our earthly home to make it work now, not in some distant future, not based upon some nostalgic past, not watching the clock, but by being and doing. I am a Nowist. We all are. We don't need any time to realize that.
Time: Carpe diem! Time to go!
Me: Are you going?
Time: Aren't you listening to me? I'm not going anywhere. But you get going! There's none of me to waste.
Me: Thank you for all that timely advice. And, see ya later!
Time: No . . . Now! (exasperated)
______________________________
According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the earth's Doomsday Clock is hovering at 3 minutes to midnight. This figurative late hour is the scientists' way of explaining that in a 24 hour clock of earthly existence, humans are living on borrowed time. Global warming, oceans rising, violence, uncontrolled technology, and potential nuclear devastation have imperiled our chances of survival, leaving us with only a final few minutes before the end of time. The last time that humanity was this close to extinction was in 1952 when the United States and the Soviet Union created and tested the first hydrogen bombs.
According to the physicists and other scientists who compose the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin, "Despite some modestly positive developments in the climate change arena, current efforts are entirely insufficient to prevent a catastrophic warming of Earth. Meanwhile, the United States and Russia have embarked on massive programs to modernize their nuclear triads -- thereby undermining existing nuclear weapons treaties. The clock ticks now at just three minutes to midnight because international leaders are failing to perform their most important duty -- ensuring and preserving the health and vitality of human civilization."
The fact that these scientists address their statement to "Leaders and Citizens of the World" confirms their understanding of the importance of world citizenship as it relates to the preservation of human civilization.
When scientists around the world warn us of global warming and the threat of nuclear winter, we should listen to them and not to those politicians who ignore the facts, figures, mathematics and the undeniable rules of the natural world.
The atomic scientists conclude that "The probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon."
Time would tell us that action needs to be taken, not just "very soon," but now. Tick tock.
67th Anniversary of the UDHR:
Countering the Tide of Violence through Human Rights
By David Gallup
"Disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of humankind."
Although this statement appears in the Preamble of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), it could easily apply to the current plight of the people in Syria, the terrorist acts of heavily armed fundamentalists against civilian populations, the drug cartel wars, and other ongoing acts of violence.
As we approach the anniversary of the UDHR on 10 December 2015, are we any closer to the promise of a universal respect for human rights than we were 67 years ago? Was World War II the height of human violence, or has violence, in all its forms, continued unabated?(1) What effect has the UDHR and implementation of human rights in other declarations and treaties had on violence?
Violence in All Its Forms
Adherence to the human rights enumerated in the UDHR and various treaties has reduced large-scale armed conflict. Yet violence continues. The international conflicts in Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, and Syria seem to be reigniting the Cold War. Civil war and internal conflicts in Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo and among religious and ethnic groups in Afghanistan and Iraq threaten regional stability. And supranational terrorist violence has overtaken state upon state violence as a threat to global stability. The threat of violence by nuclear devices still looms large. It is actually more alarming now because the iron fist of control over nuclear weapons and material and nuclear power plants has diminished.
Because the media focuses on large-scale international and regional aggression, violent acts of armed militias, insurgents, local gangs, street crime, gun violence, and mental, physical, and economic abuse tend to be downplayed. Even as traditional warfare wanes, this day-to-day violence takes a great toll on many people's lives, yet national governments have not prioritized dealing with these human rights violations in their political agendas.
Underlying Causes of Violence
What is causing all of this violence despite the enumeration of human rights in the Declaration and international treaties such as the Covenants on Civil, Political, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights?
Although inter-state wars may have reduced(2), the root causes of violence remain due to the disparity in social, political and economic conditions that nation-states perpetuate. Because of advances in technology, the ability to wage violence has been democratized. Now anyone with a cell phone and a social media account can find recruits for their violent cause. The rise in individual violence has coincided with the ease of communication and technological tools that transcend borders.
The nation-state system perpetuates aggression, entrenching structural violence, by separating us into competing groups. We compete for resources and advantages over one another rather than work together and share knowledge. When we cannot fulfill our rights and needs, this leads to humiliation and deprivation which then leads to violence.
In the past hundred years, humans have made great strides in the access to and administration of justice around the world. Properly functioning legal systems allow for individual participation in the government and for redress when the government fails to respect our rights. In places where people have no say in their government or face daily oppression and fear, the likelihood of violent actions dramatically increases.(3)
We must remember that all forms of violence are illegal under local, national and international law. Violence by citizens against citizens, by "civilians" against "civilians," and by "combatants" against "civilians" are prohibited by local criminal laws, by national statutes, and by international humanitarian laws, such as the Geneva Conventions.
Dealing with the Root Causes of Violence
How can respect for human rights reduce violence? What engenders peace?
We need to deal with the root causes of violence(4) by affirming human rights for everyone, everywhere.
We need to understand that exploitation can be eliminated by establishing rules of engagement in corporations, governments, commerce and economics with equality and fair labor practices.
We need to understand that in an interdependent world, attempting to achieve dominance will only harm all of us in the long run. We need to understand how to use land, resources and the power to control both in indigenous and sustainable ways. If one region of the world is doing poorly, then it will affect another region.
We need to understand that we have alternatives to revenge. People will less feel the need to take violent action when there are legal forms of redress available to everyone locally, regionally and globally.
We need to understand that our ideology impacts our way of life. We need to move toward an earth and human-centered understanding.
The UDHR and the Stemming of Violence
What does the UDHR say about violence? Can law counter violence?
Article 3 of the UDHR states, "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person." All of our other rights depend upon us being alive, free and safe.
Building capacity in legal institutions, the access to justice, and participation in government, sharing economic prosperity through equality of opportunity and outcome in standards of living, and educating about world citizenship and cultural awareness can reduce and prevent violence in all communities, local and global. Although the Internet and technology have democratized violence, they have also democratized peace, providing individuals and communities with the power to create livingry(5), instead of weaponry.
As we celebrate this anniversary of the Declaration, let us reconsider the importance of fully implementing the UDHR to deal with sources of violence. The Declaration's Preamble confirms that "it is essential, if (humans are) not be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law." Aggression and war should no longer be tools of human interaction, even as "a last resort." Violence must no longer be considered useful or even tolerable. To reduce or eliminate violence as ongoing and acceptable choice, global institutions of law creation, adjudication and implementation are required. We need a fully-functioning World Court of Human Rights and regional human rights systems. We need a World Police Force that can intervene everywhere in the world regardless of human-made borders.
Article 28 of the UDHR confirms that "Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized." That social and international order requires global institutions of law, which will provide systems and procedures to deal with violence in all its forms and at every level of human interaction.
The final Article of the Declaration (Article 30), confirms that no "State, group or person (has) any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms" enumerated in the Declaration. We have a legal obligation to interact peacefully with everyone else, to recognize that violence only destroys our rights and freedoms.
To achieve a non-violent world, we must consider our self-perception through the lens of world citizenship and outward action through the process of world law and government.
__________________________________________________________________
(1) Violence due to war and organized crime has reduced according to Human Security Research Group. http://www.hsrgroup.org/docs/Publications/HSR2013/HSR_2013_Press_Release.pdf
Statistics about violence, however, do not account for everyday unreported violence nor do they adequately account for non-lethal violence.
(2) Gleditsch, K. S. and Pickering, S. (2014), Wars are becoming less frequent: a response to Harrison and Wolf. The Economic History Review, 67: 214-230.
(3) "Access to justice supports sustainable peace by affording the population a more attractive alternative to violence in resolving personal and political disputes." http://www.usip.org/guiding-principles-stabilization-and-reconstruction-the-web-version/7-rule-law/access-justice
(4) According to Harvard Psychology Professor Steven Pinker, the four main root causes of violence are exploitation, dominance, revenge, and ideology. http://edge.org/conversation/mc2011-history-violence-pinker
(5) "Humanity's Critical Path: From Weaponry to Livingry" by R. Buckminster Fuller, http://www.designsciencelab.com/resources/HumanitysPath_BF.pdf
Questioning Ourselves
By David Gallup
"The most important question that faces each one of us in the world today is 'who are you?'"
For sixty-five years, Garry Davis asked this question directly or indirectly of everyone he spoke with. Whether he was speaking before the war-weary crowds of thousands after WWII, to border guards in his travels, to a fellow prisoner while detained, on college campuses while running for president, to NGOs and civil society at world summits, or to the audience of his radio show, Davis focused on this question and demanded that those listening to his words consider why this question is so important.
It is a question about opening people's minds to how we are each a part of something larger, greater than our individual selves. It leads to a question about how we can accomplish more when we unite, then when we divide ourselves. And it leads to a question about whether to respect a social contract under law or to succumb to the fear and self-interest of war.
Sadly it has taken the war in Syria to begin to have a dramatic effect on more stable countries, for the question of who you are, of who we all are, to come to the forefront of discussion about national policies that impact human rights.
Earlier during the past five years, much of the world watched idly as millions of people fled Syria, as well as Iraq and Afghanistan, to neighboring countries. Hundreds of thousands more continue to flee, many of whom would rather face an arduous and dangerous trip to arrive in Europe rather that remain displaced in Syria and elsewhere as war and militant extremism rages on.
Journalists have documented the travels of many frightened people risking their lives to find a new home where violence does not impact their day-to-day lives. These people have found that they have power in numbers -- that when hundreds, indeed, thousands of individuals approach the fences, armed frontier guards, and police barricades, those obstacles cannot handle the pressure of the throngs of people coming through. Footage from CNN reporter Arwa Damon attests to this power: http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/10/europe/refugee-crisis-questions-no-answers/
We have hoped to provide World Passports to thousands of individuals at once -- to the stateless or refugees from war and oppression -- to help them travel to a safe haven. A large group of individuals could literally "storm" frontiers together and overwhelm border police and guards (who will be unable to stop them from exercising their fundamental right to travel), thereby effectively erasing putative borders.
In the last few weeks, the World Service Authority donated more than 100 passports to Ogoni refugees in Benin who have been suffering in deplorable refugee camp conditions for more than 20 years. This is in addition to the approximately 1,000 passports that we have sent to individuals in these camps in the past three years. Some of these people have made it to South Africa; many remain in the camps. These refugees wonder, "How can I get out of this camp?" and "Where will I go?"
For CNN journalist Damon, the two questions that she repeatedly hears from those fleeing are: "How can they let this happen?" and "And why won't they help?"
As internal and international conflicts flare up, as energy creation and pollution hasten climate change and adversely impact the environment, and as nations fabricate and use nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, the "they" in those questions will invariably become "we."
What is our identity if we are forced to leave our home behind? Who must take us in? Where will we go if we have made everywhere unsafe and unlivable? Who will protect and assist us? How can we ignore the plight of other humans? What is our responsibility to our fellow human beings?
These are questions that we must ask ourselves now if we want to have a sustainable world that works for all.
The first and most important question to ask yourself is, "Who are you?" The earth and life-affirming answer is: "I am a world citizen and I am a part of humanity and the earth."
Refugees at the Channel Tunnel:
Another Anomaly of the Nation-State Paradigm
By David Gallup
Close to four thousand refugees and immigrants, from Africa, the Middle East and Asia, have attempted to cross into England from France in the past few days. Nearly forty-thousand people have tried to cross through the "Chunnel" since January 2015. In their attempt to achieve a safer, better life, several people have been injured or died, being hit by cars and trucks in the tunnel. Thousands more remain outside the tunnel in make-shift camps, hoping to find a permanent safe haven in England.
The Chunnel is both a symbol and physical proof of a united Europe. But, it is also a glaring example of how the nation-state system has failed humanity by maintaining a disunited earth.
Unlike a wall or fence, the Chunnel was designed to bring people together, to share in each other's communities and cultures. Yet it has become another means to restrict and discriminate against downtrodden people based on economic status and "national" origin.
Why do refugees, stateless persons and immigrants risk their lives trying to find a safe haven, a new home?
Their lives are already at risk if they stay in poorly-developed, impoverished, and war-ridden countries. Faced with persecution, lack of safe drinking water and food, ethnic strife, armed militias, civil wars, and corrupt leaders, the only choice for many is to flee. Currently, there are more than 50 million refugees and internally displaced persons, whose daily survival is jeopardized. At least 10 million people are "stateless." Although international treaties affirm the rights of refugees and stateless persons, many governments ignore them, detain them, or deport them back to their birth countries despite the principle of non-refoulement (returning victims of persecution to their country of origin or to other countries where they might suffer persecution).
The international community cannot handle the dramatic flow of refugees throughout the world today. People wallow in refugee camps, imprisoned, unable to work or go to school, because governments refuse to help people simply because they were born in another part of the world.
We need to help people wherever they are. Basic needs of food, clothing, shelter and education are not only requirements of human existence, they are fundamental human rights. Almost all national governments have agreed to respect these rights. They give lip-service to these rights, yet violate them every day.
According to the French Interior Minister, cited online today in a CNN report by Holly Yan and Margot Haddad, "We need to work on this problem in its origin," said Bernard Cazeneuve. "We need to work on this from the migrants' countries of origin and follow their path which leads to the European territory." This national official understands that people will continue to seek a safer life elsewhere, if their life is threatened where they are.
When people have food, shelter, education, work, equality, justice and freedom where they reside, they generally are happy to stay there. If people can go about their day without fear, oppression, humiliation, or aggression, then they have no reason to leave where their family, friends, language and culture are.
We need to create a world in which people have no need to run for their lives, to flee to what they think will be a safer, better life, to hide in fear without documentation and unable to exercise their rights as human beings. The entire world must become a safe haven for all of humanity.
This means exposing and eliminating the fictional borders that separate us. This means outlawing aggression. This means fulfilling basic and higher level needs so that people can live to their full potential. This means helping one another -- helping people where they are so that they will not feel compelled to leave for any reason other than educational and cultural enlightenment. This means recognizing our status as world citizens.
2015 New Year's Message
By David Gallup
World Service Authority celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2014. As we move into the new year, we reflect on WSA's accomplishments and on current and new projects.
The WSA was founded on January 1, 1954 to act as the administrative branch of the World Citizen Government, a government of, by and for the people of the world. It was created out of necessity by Garry Davis who had renounced his national citizenship after World War II. As a "stateless" human being, Davis needed a government to help him affirm his rights and responsibilities as part of humanity and to the earth. He was not alone. Millions of refugees after WWII had no government that they could count on to recognize their rights. Today, the UN's refugee agency confirms that the world is facing the worst refugee crises since WWII with more than 50 million refugees internally and externally displaced around the world.
Then and now, the WSA has been providing documentation services to individuals, without national recourse, who are considered persona non grata due simply to not possessing any identification documents or to loss of national citizenship. The WSA has issued close to one million World Passports and millions of ID cards, birth certificates, asylum cards, etc. The WSA has provided documents for free to many refugees and stateless persons confined to refugee camps because they lack travel or ID documents.
In addition to its documentation service, the WSA established a World Judicial Commission and later a Legal Department to provide legal advocacy and education in human rights and world law. For the past 25 years, the Legal Department has drafted thousands of advocacy letters, affidavits of support, legal briefs, and intergovernmental petitions to help those who have been persecuted, faced governmental harassment, and been arbitrarily detained.
To further the educational component of its mission, the WSA's Human Rights Awareness Project has provided hundreds of thousands of copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in multiple languages to individuals, schools, secular and religious organizations, non-profits, NGOs and intergovernmental organizations. Everyone who requests information from the WSA and those who are issued documents from the organization receive a copy of the Declaration.
In addition to the services mentioned above, the following projects of the WSA respond to the urgent needs of the global public in an ever-increasingly globalized world. Please join one of our projects.
Current Projects:
World Court of Human Rights Development Project: educating about, promoting and implementing the draft Statute of the World Court of Human Rights. Establishing a fully-functioning human rights tribunal at the global level and subsidiary regional tribunals in which individuals would have personal jurisdiction at the global level to prosecute claims of human rights violations that they have suffered.
World Refugee Fund: fundraising to offer free legal advocacy and documentation to refugees and stateless persons.
World Citizen Legal Fund: establishing a global network of lawyers who will represent world citizens suffering from various human rights violations (not only refugees or stateless persons). Implement an urgent action network to intervene in individuals' cases where local justice systems are failing. Seek funding to defray costs of representing individuals and groups around the world in their human rights claims.
World Government House: the publishing branch of the World Service Authority. Publishes and produces books, newsletters, periodicals, reports, brochures, pamphlets, videos, DVDs, etc.
World Media Association: promoting the right to freedom of expression to the global public and within the media. Providing protection for the media to exercise this right.
World Citizen Social Media, Tele-seminars, and Videoconferencing: providing to the global public educational information by telephone, Internet, and video about world citizenship, human rights, and WSA activities. The WSA's YouTube channel, Facebook page, Twitter account, and World Citizen Blog provide updates on global events with a world citizen viewpoint.
World Speakers Bureau: providing speakers for various global events and venues who can discuss the concept and legal status of world citizenship and world law.
World Citizen Referendum: on-line referendum in which the global public can vote on crucial issues that affect humanity and the earth. Thousands of votes have been cast since the referendum went on the Internet in 1997. Located at https://worldservice.org/wref.html
World Citizen Forum: forum to discuss the concept and legal status of world citizenship, world law and world government. The WSA created the online World Citizen Forum in 1999 at YahooGroups. Now more than 5,000 individuals participate in this daily online forum. Information about the group and how to subscribe is located at https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/WorldCitizen/info
ICC Petition: Garry Davis filed a petition in 2010 before the International Criminal Court against the nuclear weapons heads of state for their stockpiling, manufacturing and threat to use nuclear weapons as a crime against humanity. So far, the Court's registrar has not indicated how it will consider the petition.
World Citizen Action Day: May 25th annually. A yearly action day to focus global attention on how each of us can participate in recognizing the importance of human rights, world citizenship, world law, and world government in the process of world peace. Celebrated on the day that Garry Davis gave up his national citizenship in favor of world citizenship.
World Citizen Day: July 27th annually. A yearly celebration to promote understanding of the life and legacy of World Citizen Garry Davis, celebrated on his birthday. Affirms our individual right to declare our world citizenship status and our link to humanity and the earth.
World Birth Card Project: providing birth registration identification cards to undocumented children and adults around the world. Because of the lack of birth registration procedures in many countries, children cannot go to school and be given inoculations, and adults cannot exercise their right to work, vote, health care, social security, etc.
WSA Document Enhancement Project: focusing on increasing the recognition of WSA documents as well as on improving their appearance, utility, and ease of issuance.
Mundialization: a grassroots program that strengthens the understanding of world citizenship around the globe. It is a process of formally declaring one's city a "world city," recognizing its connection and responsibility to the rest of the world, that we all share the same basic problems, and pledging that its citizens will take actions that reflect that recognition. To date, nearly 1,000 cities, states, schools and other organizations have officially mundialized.
Programs In Formation:
World Law Institute: teaching human rights and world constitutional law to the general public and providing global legal perspectives and opinions on legal and judicial issues around the world. The Institute will develop World Citizen and World Law Curricula for pre-school, primary, secondary and university-level schools regarding human rights, world citizenship, and world law. It will promote and implement a "Model World Parliament" program. It will develop multi-lingual educational software to reach larger audiences. A subsidiary initiative of the Institute, the Space Law Project will provide education about evolving laws to maintain peaceful uses of space and prohibit military uses by nation-states. As another subsidiary initiative, experts in the fields of human rights, world law and world citizenship will provide human rights consulting through seminars and training sessions to activists, organizational leaders and the general public, offering tools and techniques for acting globally.
World Citizen Museum: establishing an online (virtual/digital) museum and a physical (actual) museum to chronicle the world citizenship movement for future generations. Collecting, preserving and promoting the artifacts that relate to world citizenship, world peace, human rights, human unity. Digitizing the written, photographic, audio, and visual archive of World Citizen Garry Davis.
World Guards Project: establishing a world peace force (like Gandhi's satyagraha movement) which proactively would intervene in disputes to prevent conflict from rising to a violent level both locally and globally. Roving ombudspersons and mediators would use non-violent peace and conflict resolution tools and strategies to settle disputes.
World Syntegrity® Project: empowering individuals to govern themselves and devise a global flexible constitutional process for humans to govern the world in a participatory way. Groups meet around the world to answer the question, "How can we as sovereign world citizens govern our world?" Almost 30 group meetings throughout the world have already taken place.
World Citizen Party, World Candidates Commission, World Elections Commission, World Parliament Commission: educating about, promoting and implementing a system to call for candidates to participate in a global elections. The Commissions will guide the development of the structures and institutions of world law and fully-functioning world government.
World Government Postal Service: facilitating mail services to regions of the world where the Universal Postal Union is not functioning or where governments have halted mail from one country to another due to ethnic, national or other discrimination.
Future Programs:
World Citizen Radio and Television Broadcasting: will offer timely commentary on global events with a world citizenship perspective.
World Citizen Clubs: will provide educational, networking and social opportunities for students to discuss, learn about and promote world citizenship ideals.
World Energy and Water Grid: will link human use of electrical energy and fresh water throughout the world in order to make distribution and use more equitable and to prevent violent conflict over energy and water usage.
World Sustainable Development Organization: will monitor local and regional development procedures and set and implement standards for human and environmental sustainability.
World Mutual Abundance Bank: will establish a valid global monetary and compensation system. Two monetary units have been created: the World Kilowatt Bill, which has already been printed in limited quantities, and the Mondo, suggested by Garry Davis in his 1984 book World Government, Ready or Not!
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World Service Authority and the World Citizen Government offer an alternative model to the nation-state, as a system to organize human interaction. Through its various projects and programs, the WSA is developing the global institutions of law that will help us all to live together peacefully.
We encourage all world citizens in this New Year to resolve to participate in this process.
Pick a project that interests you, and let us know how you can lend a hand -- info@worldservice.org
The 66th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
By David Gallup
The UDHR and the WCHROn this 66th anniversary of the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), we have a milestone in the progression of human rights to celebrate -- the first phase of the creation of a World Court of Human Rights is nearly complete.
The Design Team of the World Court of Human Rights (WCHR) Development Project held face-to-face and online meetings over the last year to draft an up-to-date Statute for this Court that will provide a venue for victims of human rights violations to seek redress. The WCHR Design Team is composed of lawyers, jurists, academics, practitioners and non-profit organizations. We are seeking additional input from the global public who is encouraged to view and comment on the Statute at (http://www.worldcourtofhumanrights.net -- click here). Individuals and organizations interested in providing legal, technical, and financial support can contact the WCHR Design Team by emailing info@worldservice.org.
Phase One of the Court's development involved drafting the Statute and raising initial awareness among the legal and judicial communities. To complete this task, the WCHR Development Project Team Leader, sponsored by the World Service Authority, is currently attending the 15th Annual Conference of Chief Justices of the World in Lucknow, India.
This Team Leader will provide to each Justice in attendance a pocket-sized booklet of the World Court of Human Rights Statute as well as a professionally-prepared survey to gauge the Justices' thought process about the Statute and the Court. We will request that the Chief Justices of the highest courts around the world draft a resolution in support of the establishment of this new Court. We will also recruit Justices to participate in the later phases of the Court's development, such as promoting the importance of the Court to domestic populaces and potentially serving as Justices on the Court.
After the Conference, the Design Team will move into Phase Two, the fundraising and promotional stage. During this Phase, the Design Team, along with business and legal consultants, will conduct feasibility studies and sensitivity analyses, create focus groups of judges and justices, fine tune the vision of the Court, determine the services and support that the Court will provide, gather data and draft budgets, and produce a prospectus and other documentation that clarify the Court's significance.
The establishment of the World Court of Human Rights is significant because it will be the first adjudicative body that will take the fulfillment of the universal rights affirmed in the UDHR as its underlying judicial principle.
Although there is an International Court of Justice, that body only handles disputes between nation-states. The International Criminal Court only handles criminal matters pertaining to war crimes, crimes against the peace, and crimes against humanity. The WCHR, however, will focus on providing individuals and groups, who are suffering from human rights abuses, a forum to have their grievances heard and remediated.
Because respect for universal human rights requires a system of justice that transcends the nations, the drafters of the UDHR contemplated the need for global legal procedures. The UDHR's Preamble declares "that human rights should be protected by the rule of law" and that "every individual and organ of society shall strive ... to promote respect for these rights and freedoms ... by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance."
Both the UDHR and the WCHR proclaim that adherence to the rule of law is the foundation of freedom, peace, and justice for humanity. The UDHR and WCHR share other paramount goals. First, human rights are the underlying ideology of both the Declaration and the Court. Next the UDHR and the Court declare a commitment to respect human rights unequivocally, ensuring that our rights will be maintained by the rule of law which includes adjudication of wrongs. Third, the UDHR, as customary international law, and the Court, as a global tribunal, both describe and consider the universality and applicability of rights to everyone, everywhere. The WCHR will create respect for law and rights at the global level.
The WCHR will be the Supreme Court of, by and for the people of the world. Now that's something to celebrate!
Ebola Diagnosis: Inadequacy of the Nation-State
By David Gallup
Disease knows no borders.
In an ungoverned world, Ebola and other viruses can potentially wipe out a large part of the human species. National governments cannot handle an epidemic, let alone a pandemic, because they take a parochial, short-term view of events outside their claimed frontiers. Countries respond to crises elsewhere in the world only when it is in their local interest, applying a "national security" or "public order" approach rather than what is in the best interest of humanity.
Many nation-states do not have the scientific or economic capacity to control the spread of disease within their borders. They cannot handle health crises on their own. The World Health Organization has been successful in controlling and eradicating some diseases such as polio. United Nations member-states, however, consistently prevent this UN agency and other health organizations, such as the Centers for Disease Control, from intervening in the affairs of each country through underfunding, understaffing, and domestic control over health matters. A Washington Post front page article confirms that there has been "no coordinated global response" to the Ebola crisis (Oct. 5, A9). A global government approach provides the needed remedy to heal the divisions that prevent us from having an effective global public health system.
The division and discrimination that national governments perpetuate lead to violations of the right to adequate health care. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) affirms, "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including, food, clothing, housing and medical care..." The ability to exercise the right to health care, according to the UDHR, is dependent upon whether a society provides sufficient economic conditions and social services to the population. People living in poverty with minimal education and limited medical resources cannot exercise this right.
The nationalistic approach to health care also dramatically impacts the right to travel (Article 13 of the UDHR). People living in countries where the disease is out of control can be discriminated against and refused travel visas even if they do not live near the outbreak and have had no contact with the infected. Those who have the virus might need to leave their country to get proper medical care, but other countries may refuse to let them in. Also, other countries often refuse to provide technical and financial assistance to the disease-ravaged country -- assistance that could help those infected locally in the short term, and could safeguard everyone globally in the long term.
People need to receive help no matter where they live. Helping all humans, regardless of their nationality, is the only way to protect humanity as a whole and each of us individually.
Nationalism is a disease run rampant. It prevents us from achieving a sustainable, healthy and peaceful world. Albert Einstein said, "Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind."
If we humans cannot devise a system to govern our interactions, whether in global health or politics, then we are doomed to destroy each other and the earth. It is a matter of priorities. When we fund the next stealth bomber, arm insurgents, prepare for and wage wars, no funding remains to build hospitals and to strengthen the economic, social and health infrastructure.
Disease is universal.
Science is universal.
Rights are universal.
Helping our fellow humans throughout the world is not universal -- but it should be.
A Dangerous Fiction
by David Gallup
Recent events in Crimea demonstrate the dangerous fiction of the nation-state, that one day a part of the planet "belongs" to one country and, on the next day, as troops and weapons are brandished, to another. Virtually overnight Crimea passed from Ukraine to Russia.
Whether it was the instability of the Ukrainian government, the flexing of Russian military might, or a Crimean desire to align with Russia that precipitated a change in political allegiance, the biological status of the people inhabiting that land did not change. They remain human beings which means their highest citizenship did not change either, that of world citizenship.
When people unite at the national level, no matter what country they identify with, the resulting separation and exclusivity can easily lead to violent conflict. A "we" versus "they" dichotomy reigns. Is it possible to maintain our tribal or nationally patriotic distinctions while simultaneously maintaining the exclusive power to destroy each other and the planet? There's nothing wrong with maintaining our lower level allegiances as long as we recognize our highest level allegiance to each other, to humanity.
Nationalism, when the power and tools to wage war are outlawed, does not inevitably lead to armed conflict. On its positive side, nationalism may affirm the unique cultural, linguistic, religious, socio-economic, historical and institutional differences that make our world interesting. A few nation-states have even legally affirmed their desire for peaceful human interaction such as Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution and Article 12 of the Costa Rican Constitution which outlaw war and dissolve the national military.
As communities around the world continue to divide themselves into smaller and smaller units, the necessity to unify at a higher level in order to affirm our universal human rights and to implement a global legal framework becomes greater and greater.
With a common allegiance to global democratic institutions, to protecting humanity as a whole, and to safeguarding the earth, world citizenship links us all together for the good of the one and the many.
In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, physicist Joseph Rotblat said, "We need to convey the message that safeguarding our common property, humankind, will require developing in each of us a new loyalty: a loyalty to mankind. It calls for the nurturing of a feeling of belonging to the human race. We have to become world citizens."
Along with Rotblat, Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, in their joint statement, appealed to human beings as human beings, "Remember your humanity, and forget the rest."
Affirm your humanity by registering as a World Citizen.
New Year's 2014 Message:
by David Gallup
"As a Citizen of World Government, I affirm my awareness of my inherent responsibilities and rights as a legitimate member of the total world community of all men, women, and children, and will endeavor to fulfill and practice these whenever and wherever the opportunity presents itself."
--from the World Citizen Affirmation World Citizenship means not only recognizing our universal rights, but also recognizing our universal responsibilities to each other and to the earth.
World citizens endeavor to make our communities and our world a better place to live. We call upon all world citizens to self-organize for the benefit of each other and the earth. We can take action to enhance our own lives and those of everyone around us. This process is about creating an independent and self-reliant knowledge-based system of world citizen interaction. Each of us has special knowledge and skills that we can share.
At WSA's World Citizen Yahoo Group (http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/worldcitizen/info -- click here), at its Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/World-Service-Authority/149086282356 -- click here) or through other social media, world citizens can reach out to each other to lend a hand.
Fulfilling our responsibilities may mean writing a letter on behalf of another person who has been refugeed by war. It may mean contacting a government ministry to expose a violation of someone's right to residence or work. It may mean providing clothing or shelter to someone in need whether in your neighborhood or around the world.
Using social media or in person, we can provide assistance to each other outside of the national monetary system. By minimizing the use of national payment systems, we can chip away at the flow of money and taxes that go to waging wars.
We can barter and exchange ideas, skills, services, and knowledge. For example, a carpenter could help a teacher with some home repairs, and the teacher could teach the carpenter a new language. Or we can share or give away items that can still be used by others. We can help each other with assistance that we need whether it is architectural, linguistic, scientific, mathematical, legal, artistic, mechanical, technological, etc.
The World Citizen Credo affirms that "As a global person, a World Citizen relates directly to humankind and to all fellow humans spontaneously, generously and openly. Mutual trust is basic to his/her lifestyle." By sharing skills and knowledge, we relate to each other "generously and openly," and we establish trust by working together.
As we start this new year, let us make our world better for everyone by reaching out to our fellow humans and organizing as world citizens. Let us each ask, "How can I help you as your neighbor and fellow world citizen?"
65th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
HUMAN RIGHTS DAY, EVERY DAY
by David Gallup
President, World Service Authority
Every December 10th since 1948, we have celebrated the unanimously signed Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) as a momentous occasion in humanity's evolution. This is our yearly reminder to make every day a human rights day, to advance social, economic and environmental justice.
For nearly 60 years, the administrative branch of the World Government of World Citizens, the World Service Authority (WSA), has been providing human rights assistance to individuals around the world through legal advocacy, educational services, and documentation. The daily work of WSA's Documentation and Legal Departments has been indispensable to many people made stateless, refugeed, or undocumented due to war or national governmental persecution.
The WSA is tasked with implementing our human rights fully and engaging others in this process. Making everyone aware of their rights, providing tools to help people claim their rights, and seeing that our rights are respected are WSA's principal missions.
The day-to-day advocacy work, educational programs, and document issuance of the WSA both affirm and implement the rights listed in the Declaration:
( Click here to view the Declaration )- that everyone is born free and equal in dignity and rights (Article 1)(the World Birth Certificate)
- that everyone has rights and freedoms without distinction or discrimination of any kind (Article 2) (the World Birth Certificate, the World Citizen Card and Certificate, the World Planetary Vision Commission, the World Women's Commission, the World Stateless Persons Commission)
- the right to life, liberty and the security of the person (Article 3)(the World Disarmament Commission, the Sovereign Order of World Guards, the World Environment Commission, the World Energy Commission and the World Space Commission)
- that no one shall be enslaved or tortured (Articles 4 and 5)(the World Judicial Commission and the World Court of Human Rights)
- the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law (Article 6)(the World ID Card and World Passport)
- that all are equal before the law and are entitled without discrimination to equal protection of the law (Article 7)(the World Court of Human Rights and the World Judicial Commission)
- that everyone has the right to an effective remedy, no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile, everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing if charged with a crime, the right to be presumed innocent, and the right to privacy (Articles 8, 9, 10, 11, 12) (the principle of World Habeas Corpus, the World Court of Human Rights and the World Judicial Commission)
- the right to freedom of movement and residence, and to leave any country (Article 13)(the World Passport, the International Exit Visa and the International Residence Permit)
- the right to seek and enjoy asylum from persecution (Article 14)(the World Political Asylum Card and the World Stateless Persons Commission)
- the right to change your political allegiance (Article 15)(the World Citizen Card and Certificate)
- the right to marry (Article 16)(the World Marriage Certificate)
- the right to own property (Article 17)(all WSA documents belong to the individuals to whom they are issued)
- the right to freedom of thought and conscience (Article 18)(the World Media Association, the World Planetary Vision Commission, world citizenship, universal values)
- the right to freedom of expression (Article 19)(the World Media Association Press Card and the World Communications Commission)
- the right to assembly and association (Article 20)(the World Citizen Card and Certificate, the World Citizen Group at http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/worldcitizen/info)
- the right to take part in government and the will of the people as the basis of the authority of government (Article 21)(the World Syntegrity Project, the World Referendum, the World Parliament, the World Election Commission, the World Citizen Government)
- the right to social security, the right to work, and the right to leisure (Articles 22, 23, and 24)(the World Economics Commission and the World Sports Commission)
- the right to a standard of living adequate for one's health and well-being (Article 25)(the World Health Commission and the World Traditional Medicine Commission)
- the right to education (Article 26)(the World Education Commission and the World Youth Education Commission)
- the right to freely participate in the cultural life of the world community (Article 27)(the World Cultural Commission and the World Music and Arts Commission)
- that everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms of the Declaration will be fully realized (Article 28) (the World Cybernetics Commission, the World Design Science Commission, the World Syntegrity Project, the World Mundialization Commission, the World Planetary Vision Commission, the World Citizen Government)
- that everyone has duties to the world community and that our rights are only limited for the purpose of recognizing and respecting the rights and freedoms of others (Article 29) (the World Citizen Card and Certificate and the Sovereign Order of World Guards)
- that our rights are sacrosanct, inviolable (Article 30)(the World Citizen Government)
On this 65th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration, recall that no one will claim your rights for you. You must claim them. But in order to claim your rights, first you must know them. Every year, the WSA provides thousands of free copies of the Declaration in multiple languages to individuals around the world through its Human Rights Awareness Project. (Donations are accepted for bulk orders of the Declaration. Please see the WSA Catalog under "Basic Documents.")
(Click here to view the Catalog)Join us in this endeavor to ensure that human rights are universally respected for everyone, everywhere, everyday.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTSIn 1948, the framers of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights did not envision it as a mere wish list of human aspirations. The devastation, despair and despicable acts of World War II were still fresh in their memories when they were drafting the Declaration. They wanted to create "a social and international order" in which everyone could share the world peacefully and in which everyone's rights and needs would be fully met. They envisioned every day as a human rights day.
Garry Davis, World War II veteran, world citizen and human rights activist, was, behind the scenes, instrumental in the unanimous signing of the Declaration. By December of 1948, Garry was world famous for camping out on the steps of the United Nations when it was holding its General Assembly sessions at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris and for interrupting a Session to call for a World Government and World Parliament.
In the halls of the UN, however, the squabbling of the nation-states continued. The Russians and several Soviet Bloc countries were threatening to vote against the Declaration. The night before the vote, at the Velodrome d'Hiver before 20,000 people, Garry Davis called for World Government. He said, "We can no longer permit ourselves to be lead by statesmen who use us as pawns in the game of national interests. We wish to be led by those who represent us directly: we, the individuals of the human community."
This rousing speech made headlines throughout Europe and impacted the representatives of the states considering whether to accept or reject the Declaration. The next day, instead of voting against the UDHR, 8 countries abstained. This meant that 48 countries unanimously accepted the UDHR. Now every member-state of the United Nations, when becoming members, must agree at least in principle to abide by the Declaration.
Because the Declaration is "customary international law," however, it garners less respect than treaty law which all UN member-states are bound to uphold. And even treaty law is easily flouted by wealthy or powerful countries that either can afford to or find it in their best interest to disobey their agreements because they know there will be no repercussion. National governments can violate our rights with impunity. Whether through large scale violations such as war, or the daily indignities that jeopardize our basic freedoms, the nation-states perpetuate a system that intentionally and arbitrarily violates universal rights. Despite their international law obligations, the nation-states, themselves, are the prime violators of our rights. Because human rights are inclusive and universal, the exclusive nation-states cannot and do not effectively fulfill their obligation to uphold human rights for everyone everywhere.
In 1993, I attended an event at a Washington D.C. law school celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A renowned law professor and human rights expert stated that the Declaration was simply that -- a declaration of what humans would strive for but never would achieve. From the audience, I raised my hand and boldly asserted, "The Universal Declaration is customary international law and all governments are obliged to respect it." He heartily laughed, waived his hand dismissively at me and said, "The Declaration will never be customary law."
In 2008, I attended another celebration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the same law school. This time, however, a panel of 5 expert law professors and human rights activists confirmed that, yes, many articles in the Declaration were now considered to be obligatory under customary international law. In only 15 years, much of what we strived for in recognition of the Declaration's legal status, we have achieved.
Join World Service Authority in making every day a human rights day, so we can continue this process of achieving universal justice. Make your voice heard by registering as a world citizen!
(World Citizen registration page)
A New Kind of Court
by Garry Davis
"Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law."
Article 6, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Unlike all preceding courts throughout human history based on local or national units, a "world court of human rights" must by definition be grounded on fundamental human rights already proclaimed and recognized universally. This is a juridical breakthrough unprecedented within the concept of nation-states from which all so-called international courts such as the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court and even the European Court of Human Rights -- though this court could be identified as a "half-way house" -- have derived to a world court grounded in the sovereignty of humanity itself.
The questions then suppose: From where does such a court arise and how can it be organized?
Given the potential destructive power of the present nation-state system, in short, absolute and "pointing" at humanity per se, global judicial procedures as exemplified by the Nuremberg trial and Principles -- without sanction, incidentally, of any constitutional reference -- must relate dynamically and juridical from humanity's primal and innate sovereignty in order to adjudicate its very fundamental safety, well-being and happiness.
Such an essential structure represents a primal shift in juridical thinking such as already indicated by the renowned Dr. Luis Kutner, author of World Habeas Corpus.[1]
Indeed, the very Universal Declaration of Human Rights itself, deriving irrationally and incongruously from the powerless United Nations[2], proclaims such a breakthrough -- both juridically, viz article 6 to 11, and socially, economically and politically, the last being mandated by both articles 21(3) and 28.
In short, a world court of human rights worth the name cannot derive from the nation-state dysfunctional system itself -- as aptly proven daily by the impotency of both the socalled International Court of Justice[3] and the ICC to adjudicate humanity's safety, etc. -- but must arise directly from the world citizen constituency itself as indeed the eminent consult-jurist Luis Kutner has advocated in his epic book, World Habeas Corpus. Myriad other jurists' notables such as Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court Wm. J. Brennan, Jr. have confirmed "Faith in fundamental human rights, and the dignity of the human person, is the inspiration and the guiding spirit of the movement for a world rule of law."
The Global Mandate
If "everyone" has the right "everywhere" to "recognition" before the law, as affirmed by Article 6, UDHR, such law must be global. So both the law and the person to whom it applies are global or citizens of the world community. A court of world law therefore adjudicates world law for world citizens. But, as sovereignty begins with the human being, a court of world law depends on world law relative to the conduct, rights and duties of humans who have asserted their world citizenship publicly. Otherwise such a court would have no advocates to service in legal jurisprudence. In short, the court's "constituency" precedes its existence just as citizens on any level of social life precede the government thereof.[4]
A "world court of human rights" therefore is the result of the recognition of a constituted group of humans having declared themselves "citizens of the world." In essence each so-called declared world citizen is a de facto world court of human rights-in-microcosm. The question, "Where is the real government" is likewise answered, "Within the affirmation of each citizen therefore." This in turn is the essence of sovereignty: the individual human exercising freedom of association within a social environment. The formal institution of a WCHR, therefore, is the result of the already-constituted constituency of humans having declared each one, a "citizen of the world" publicly.
Crimes Against Humanity
The Nuremberg Principles defined "crimes against humanity" as indictable under Principle VI.
"a. Crimes against humanity: Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime."
Humanity itself, however, was not defined although described as a plaintiff for the first time in juridical jurisprudence. Neither was nuclear war described as the most self-evident "crime against humanity."
A World Court of Human Rights' primary ruling must per se indict world war as the ultimate crime against humanity itself. But war is not a cause but an effect. As Emery Reves wrote in The Anatomy of Peace[5], "Throughout the entire history of all known civilization, only one method has ever succeeded in creating a social order within which each man had security from murder, larceny, cheating and other crimes, and had freedom to think, to speak and to worship. That method is law."
The ultimate "crime against humanity" therefore, is world anarchy.
As nuclear war is the ultimate crime whereby humanity itself will be annihilated, a World Court of Human Rights' acting on humanity's behalf and defense, first juridical duty is to outlaw war itself by injunction.
What is the constituency of the WCHR?
The above reasoning leads to a startling and undeniable assertion: Just as every national citizen by definition is a potential advocate of the national legal system from birth, so a world citizen is likewise a "global advocate" of humanity's legitimacy, read "sovereignty," identified per se by such as the UDHR and, as of 1974, by the founding of the World Court of Human Rights.[6] Indeed, the very claim by a given nation-state that a human born within its artificial and arbitrary borders is ipso facto bound legally to that arbitrary legalism, confirms the verity of the civic reality of a member of the human species born within the confines of the planet itself.
Numerous jurists worldwide have advocated world peace through enforceable law such as have been gathering at the City Montessori School in Lucknow[7] since 2001.
As the already 60-year-old World Service Authority issues relevant documents pertaining to specific articles of the UDHR such as World Birth Certificates, World ID Cards, World Passports and World Marriage Certificates, it will issue to all registered World Citizens a World Court of Human Rights Advocacy Card attesting to that human's affiliation of world legitimacy vis-a-vis the WCHR. In short, the individual World Citizen IS the legal personification of world law to which, incidentally, each and every member of the United Nations has affiliated vis-a-vis the UDHR.
Formation of the World Court of Human Rights
The actual formation and "sitting" of the court will follow inevitability and necessarily the rapid evolution of the "world citizen's legal advocacy" formation, potentially in the millions of already registered world citizens. This powerful and undeniable linkage of a world citizens with a logical juridical body designed to protect him/her vis-a-vis human rights violations can happen literally overnight given the communication facilities such as the internet, adequate funding, popular support worldwide, etc. The world citizen constituency will be assessed a modest sum to pay for the issuance of the WCHR's "World Legal Advocacy Card" as well as enjoined to donate to the "WORLD COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS FUND" already registered with the Merchant's Bank, South Burlington.
A campaign is already underway to enjoin progressive philanthropists to donate to this vital, historic cause. In addition, a festival is planned to take place on December 10, 2013 at Griffith Park, Los Angeles, California to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the declaration of the UDHR with music and entertainment of leading personalities, information booths for world citizen registration, issuance of the "World Legal Advocacy Card," free UDHRs, books on world law, world citizenship, world travel, etc. (See www.universalhumanrightsfestival.org).
Moreover, the creation of its own web site � already registered as www.worldcourtofhumanrights.net will hasten the evolution of the actual sitting court as preliminarily outlined by Luis Kutner (See www.worldservice.org/wsalstat.html.)
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[1] Oceana Publications, Inc, 1962: "Existence of World Man is founded on a fundamental identification of reason with law and that all his grievances, be they imaginary or real, shall have a forum of due process of law."
[2] Rendered impotent from its inception due to its Security Council dictatorial system by which any change can be vetoed by the original 5 "victors" of WWII.
[3] 1996: In a split decision the International Court of Justice ruled that "There is in neither customary nor conventional international law any comprehensive and universal prohibition of the threat or use of nuclear weapons as such. But the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law; However, in view of the current state of international law, and of the elements of fact at its disposal, the Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defense, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake."
[4] Ref. Declaration of Independence
[5]George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1946
[6] Dr. Luis Kutner's Acceptance Speech as the Chief Justice of the World Court of Human Rights:
June 12, 1974, Sausheim, H.R., France
I am indeed honored by this appointment which I accept in all humility.
The international community has come to realize that human rights are not an issue to be left solely to the national jurisdiction of individual states. These rights obviously need protection at a higher level within the framework of international law.
If the principle aim of society is to protect individuals in the enjoyment of what Blackstone termed "absolute rights," then it follows that the aim of human laws should serve to promote and guard these rights.
As the World Coordinator rightly pointed out, this morning's trial dramatically exposed the dilemma faced by the sovereign state. While advocating human rights and even proclaiming them as a "common standard of achievement," as does the Preamble to the Universal Declaration of human Rights, it prosecutes blindly* -- as the spokesman for the French Government so vividly revealed* -- a stateless person who, to provide a legitimate framework for his own rights, was obliged to found his own government. I wholly support this action as a logical corollary of 'the U.N.'s proclamation of' the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
If we accept the legitimacy of individual choice in political matters-which is, after all, the essence of democracy -- then the legitimacy of a world government chosen by millions of ordinary citizens cannot be in doubt. What began as a declaration of intent on December 10, 1948 has been slowly evolving into a global compact, a set of rules that proscribe and prescribe the behavior of governments toward their citizens.
There exists today a codified body of international human rights laws that include conventions and covenants on genocide, civil and political, economic and social rights, refugees' ancl women's rights and racial discrimination. The international community is currently working on instruments to prevent torture, to protect the rights of children and to assure the freedom of religion. While these instruments are not self-enforcing, they do provide means for holding governments accountable. They lead inevitably to this assembly today.
We are the citizens concerned, We are the ultimate arbiters of human rights as they are innate and inalienable. Our action today in founding a new court to which the single world citizen can appeal falls within the historical evolution of law itself as an evolving institution. After all, the standards and norms enumerated and outlined in international human rights instruments have not been imposed on any of the nations that are party to then. They are, instead, obligations that governments, having assumed freely and voluntarily, cannot afford to abrogate or disregard under any pretext.
The World Court of Human Rights, while not operating under any written world constitution, nonetheless can embody a "world bill of rights" which defines guarantees relating to deprivation of life, inhumane treatment, slavery and forced labor, personal liberty, determination of rights, including procedural safeguards in criminal cases, freedom of conscience, expression, peaceable assembly and movement, freedom from discrimination and prohibition against compulsory acquisition of property without adequate compensation. Indeed the very enunciation and acceptance of these basic human rights implies due process to insure their implementation and punishment to their violators.
Such was the premise of the Nuremberg Court. No written world constitution sanctioned the Nuremberg Principles, Yet they were effectively used by the Allies to charge, convict and condemn those accused of the international crimes of war planning, war-making and genocide. tion replaces constitutional guarantees of personal liberty. The citizenry then is made to live in a perpetual state of emergency, When that happens, the state becomes an end in itself, a mere summation of the individuals within it.
Before this assembly, I pledge my best and most devoted endeavors as Chief Justice of the World Court of Human Rights in the service of the oppressed, the persecuted and the downtrodden. It has been said that the guarantees of personal liberty and impartial justice are the first causalities of a so-called national emergency. Civil courts are too often replaced by military tribunals and the writ of habeas corpus is usually suspended. Inevitablv the despicabie use of preventive detention replaces the constitutional guarantees of personal liberty. The citizenry then is made to live in a perpetual state of emergency. When that happens, the state becomes an end in itself, a mere summation of the individuals within it.
The World Government of World Citizens that you here represent, is the only effective counter-balance to national citizenry becoming national servitude due to suppression of civil liberties in the name of national security and public order. Now the newly declared World Court of Human Rights will take its place as a needful addition to provide a legal refuge, a global asylum, as it were, to our fellow citizens everywhere. I profoundly believe this day's work has the blessings of the Almighty. Thank you.
[7] Largest high school in the world with 44,000 students under the direction of Jagdish Gandhi, all students indoctrinated immediately upon entrance as "World Citizens."
The AGE OF THE SOVEREIGNTY OF HUMANITY IS UPON US
Garry Davis
JANUARY 1, 2013
The definition of "humanity" is 1. "All human beings collectively; the human race; humankind."[1]
As "sovereignty" is defined as "supreme," "preeminence," "indisputable sovereign power," humanity as such enjoys sine qua non such attributes.
Sovereignty therefore has passed historically and legally from the nation-state to Humanity.
The very Universal Declaration of Human Rights in its first article verifies and mandates each and every human as a fundamental unit of humanity in toto:
"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."
Moreover, the UDHR's Preamble affirms that "whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world..."
Sages and prophets, scientists[2] and artists of all fields[3] have from time immemorial prophesied that Humanity one day would enter the Age of Enlightenment, the Age of Wisdom and the Age of Unity. Moreover, from the Decalogue through the 1215 Magna Carta, the 1776 Declaration of Independence, the 1789 Declaration de l'Homme et du Citoyen, the 1789 U.S. Bill of Rights, the 1914 Atlantic Charter, the 1945 Nuremberg Principles, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1953 Ellsworth Declaration (of World Government), and the 1974 Statute of the World Court of Human Rights, humanity has arrived, not without giant trials and tribulation, at the birth of the Age of Sovereign legitimacy and legitimate planetary citizenship.
In addition, having entered the Nuclear Age in 1945, when destructive power has risen from relative to absolute, moreover becoming genocidal, humanity itself became potentially a global target of the nation-state war system, carried over from the largely agricultural 18th and 19th centuries.
In brief, if humanity dies, so does the human race including all so-called fictional nation-states.
Therefore humanity per se has entered the prophetic Age of Legitimate Sovereignty.
Moreover, "Crimes against humanity" cited in the Nuremberg Principles, for the first time in judicial history, posited humanity as a reality and potential defendant.[4]
Thus, under total threat of attack and possible elimination by the anarchic nation-state system,[5] Humanity, as an existent fact, has achieved, as of 1945, a de facto and per se legitimate sovereign status vis-a-vis the war-dominated nation-state world.
In strictly legal terms, as of 1945, threatened by the obsolete national dysfunctional war system, humanity became a potential "plaintiff" beginning with the Nuremberg Trials following World War II, requiring legal defense. The nuclear "gun," in verifiable and judicial fact, was and is pointing directly at it: a "global felony."
In short, if humanity can be wiped out via nuclear weaponry, it is therefore obliged to defend itself legally as a potential victim.[6]
Thus, for the first time in juridical history, an indictment of "Crimes Against Humanity" entered international jurisprudence. A world court of human rights adjudicating world law is already mandated in the UDHR beginning with articles 6 to 9.
In turn, as humanity by definition is composed of all humans, each human claiming, as an inalienable right, the addition of world citizenship, becomes, and is legitimately, also a micro-global plaintiff vis-a-vis the national war system under the sovereign protection of world law.
Humans in society on whatever level become citizens and citizens form governments.
Or else inalienable rights of political choice are meaningless.
For it is only to protect these that individuals establish a social and political order, carefully defined and always at the consent of the governed.[7]
The aware individual, therefore, faced with a worldly disorder, has first to declare and affirm his or her dynamic political identification with his/her human community.
Also, in declaring ourselves citizens of the world community in which we currently live, we are affirming that essentially we are our own governors.
The individual affirmation and registration of world citizenship therefore is the first step toward realization of human rights for all, the realistic path to world peace. Because it is world humans legally bonding with fellow humans for their individual and collective survival, well-being and happiness.
In essence, we are certifying our innate and inalienable sovereignty as humans in charge of our own destiny.
This is the essence of the democratic principle and precisely where true sovereignty exists, is maintained and prevails for one and all.
The process is in full progress and has been since January 1, 1949.[8]
The benefits accruing to a sovereign humanity almost defy the boldest imagination.
Released from the strangling entanglements of internal planetary war, a giant leap forward in civic and economic benefits for a world citizenry would automatically ensue. Such items are already mandated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights agreed upon by every member of the impotent and defective United Nations. Protection of Earth's environment itself would be the primary and immediate task.
The greatest advancement, however, would be on the spiritual or consciousness level, already announced by such enlightened humans as Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, Lao-Tse, Vyasa, Diogenes, Socrates, Theilhard de Chardin, Plato, Thoreau, T. Paine, Gandhi, Einstein, H. G. Wells, Schweitzer, Buckminster Fuller, Martin Luther King, Jr., Emery Reves, and on and on, when the metaphysical development of our species would take a giant leap into realms only imagined today.
Finally, in the cosmic sense, Humanity is but a speck of matter in a timeless universe.
And yet, IT IS HERE AND NOW and WE ARE IT!
That is why we must survive and endure.
*********************************[1] Random House Collegiate Dictionary
[2] Einstein: "A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move to higher levels."
[3] Charlie Chaplin: "Charlot" for instance
[4] (c) Crimes against humanity: Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.
[5] The 18th, 19th centuries witnessed the increasing dominance of the nation-state system in a largely agricultural world, pre-technological, pre-electronics, pre-nuclear and pre-space.
[6] Luis Kutner was one of the first to recognize the absolute need for the principle of habeas corpus to be raised to the global level since arbitrary detention, first achieved under the Magna Carta in 1215, was being violated throughout the nation-state system due to the anarchic condition prevailing between all nations by definition.
[7] Example: Ninth Amendment of the US Constitution.
[8] The founding of the International Registry of World Citizens in Paris, by the author and subsequently updated by the World Service Authority (administrative agency of the World Government of World Citizens), in 1954.
World Citizen Garry Davis Declares Obama/Romney "Foreign Policy" Debate "Double-barreled Deception: National and Global"
Washington, DC Sunday, October 28, 2012
"The cause of America is in great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances have, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all lovers of mankind are affected, and in the event of which, their affections are interested. The laying a country desolate with fire and sword, declaring war against the natural rights of all mankind, and extirpating the defenders thereof from the face of the earth, is the concern of every man in whom nature hath given the power of feeling; of which class, regardless of party censure, is the author."
--Tom Paine Listening to President Obama and Governor Romney last Sunday in their 3rd debate deceptively dubbed "Foreign Policy," this activist world citizen, wondered how these two humans competing only for an 18th century national presidency, could be so oblivious of we, the world's people's needs and wants, even though one of them would be immediately obliged to address these politically from that now age-encrusted, largely irrelevant "branch" office when elected.
Recalling Norman Cousins' pertinent question, "Who speaks for Man?", in the name of his fellow world citizens, we charge the two debaters with unconscionable and deadly deception. To start with "national deception, " moderator Bob Schieffer's final question: "What is the original purpose and mission of the United States of America? " received from neither debater a direct response why the US was formed in the first place.
Answer in brief: "E pluribus unum"--"From many, one." The primal civic code of all just human communities. Three million new state citizens along the eastern seaboard of the American continent in 1776 who had booted King George off their collective backs became a single, frontierless human community and with already-affirmed human rights in their various state constitutions. This perennial geo-dialectical formula, however, originated not from the actual construction of the United States of America in 1789, but from the first paragraph of the 1776 Declaration of Independence, 13 years BEFORE the Founders put together the united political body. Paine and a few others -- Madison, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton -- considered the new fictional nation a mere stopgap political instrument to deal with a "local" situation when England's, France's and Spain's man-a-war's were anchored several miles away in the neutral Atlantic ready to knock off the new states one-by one, while Patrick Henry noted from the start that the U.S. Constitution itself "squints toward monarchy" by delegating dictatorial powers to the president when acting as the "Commander-in-Chief." More to the point of "America's mission on the planet," neither Obama nor Romney referred to these "inalienable rights" spelled out in the Declaration of Independence which defined not only America's mission but the entire human race's: "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness," -- and protected by government "with the consent of the governed" representing humanity itself! This fundamental civic formula is, was and always will be the "mission" of the United States of America: a community ruled by law . . . not disrupted and brutalized by anarchy as in these latter-days.
Later on in this history, confirming this initial global mission such notables as the Hon. Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States, added that "No more important common interest exists than our shared interest in a world ruled by law." Thousands of other US citizens including Emerson, Thoreau, Walt Whitman, H.G. Wells, Judge Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King Jr., Carl Sagan, R. Buckminster Fuller, E. B. White, Philip Toynbee, Emery Reves, Judge Earl Warren, Lyndon Johnson, Dwight Eisenhower, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy throughout the USA's turbulent 233 years, have echoed passionately the same essential requirement for global peace: the rule of world law. But neither candidate vying for this now 18th century and largely irrelevant office of US president in humanity's 21st century with instant communication, genocidal nuclear war, rapidly growing environmental disasters, global religions fighting to worship the same deity, considered "Foreign" as actually pertaining to extra-terrestrial species. As if to make the point, the Space Station above all our heads made one earthly rotation during the entire time of the debate. Indeed the 96% of humanity residing "outside" the 2 and 1/2 centuries-year-old, now politically fossilized USA, having originated in a largely agricultural world now bypassed by 4 global revolutions: technical, electronic, nuclear and space, were totally neglected in the debaters programs. Who indeed does Obama and Romney think we really are if not members of the same species? Didn't they know that former prez John F. Kennedy had urged "We must create world-wide law and law enforcement as we outlaw worldwide war and weapons. "? Or that Einstein insisted that "Only world law can assure progress towards a civilized peaceful community."? And that "Henceforth, every nation's foreign policy must be judged at every point by one consideration: does it lead us to a world of law and order or does it lead us back to anarchy and death"?
That was the first major "deception" -- that neither candidate either knew the United States' real mission from the get-go or indeed even replied to Schieffer's fundamental question in response. President Obama and Governor Romney, supposed inheritors of the Founders initial political sagesse, both blatantly and in full defiance of history, contradicted or worse, ignored their American progenitors.
The second and more immediate global deception to the world public was concerning their overt "mission" as president desirous of representing "the American people." In short, to single out this 4.7% of the human race as their "only" responsibility for protection. Thus "National security" was the be-all and end-all for both candidates despite the global war potential. The self-evident fact that WWIII would be totally destructive, including the US citizenry, was missing from both Obama's and Romney's responses. Obama was adamant: "My responsibility as president is to protect the American citizens' Period."
Given the total war capability now available as of August 5, 1945, the US citizenry obviously cannot be protected by war which has become global as of 1914. Secondly, with nuclear weaponry available to the 9 nations "on the table" -- not to mention so-called terrorist groups -- with international anarchy dominating the space between them, (though the USA outdoes them all with 8000 nuclear warheads), "protection from war" by threatening war is the most insidious and blatant deception a public official could inflict on a given public. (Obama's mention, for instance, when accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, both passionate advocates of world government, as being the two men he admired most, was a dramatic example of the duplicity of the office, not to mention being blatantly offensive to both their memories and to we who respected them in their total dedication to world peace and ultimate sacrifice as victims of violence. Moreover, in the President's address to the General Assembly of the United Nations on September 25th, Obama asserted blandly in that strictly diplomatic environment that, "I am convinced that ultimately government of the people, by the people and for the people is more likely to bring about the stability, prosperity, and individual opportunity that serve as a basis for peace in our world." And that "True democracy demands that citizens cannot be thrown in jail because of what they believe, and businesses can be opened without paying a bribe. It depends on the freedom of citizens to speak their minds and assemble without fear; on the rule of law and due process that guarantees the rights of all people." Hear, hear! But then followed the National Defense Authorization Act, signed by the same President Obama on December 31st, 2011 while the slaughter of civilians by drones, the increasing cyberwars, the revolts of oppressed citizens throughout the Middle East, the gross inequality of economic status, between rich and poor, in short, the increasing obsolescence of the nation-state system is overwhelmingly apparent in this turbulent 21st century world. As Alvin Toffler points out in The Third Wave, "All the political parties of the industrial world, all our congresses, parliaments, and supreme soviets, our presidencies and prime ministerships, our courts, and our regulatory agencies, and our layer upon geographical layer of governmental bureaucracy -- in short, all the tools we use to make and enforce collective decisions -- are obsolete and about to be transformed. A third wave civilization cannot operate with a second wave political structure. "
Finally, nowhere in the debate did either Obama or Romney refer to the Nuremberg Principles and the ICC Statute proscribing "enemies of humanity" as an indictable crime; nor the International Conventions mandated by the United Nation; the UN's Charter Preamble "...to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law..."; Article 2(3) "All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered..."; the myriad United Nations resolutions against the use of nuclear weapons; and above all, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed by the US as all member-states of the UN, which, in article 28 provides that "Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized"; nor did either acknowledge the thousands of human rights and juridical organizations and even high schools -- such as the Montessori School of Lucknow, India, whose 44,000 students add world citizenship as well as claim to speak for the 2.4 billion students throughout the world community -- all advocating the rule of world law. The only true "mission" of the United States president -- indeed of every conscientious holder of political office worldwide -- is to guarantee the protection of humanity itself of which the US public is but 4.7 percent. The deception, national and global, therefore of both candidates revealed startling the deadly irrelevance of a national presidential election in a world become one in which we, its citizens are sovereign and of one kind: human.
Bottom line: Our human hearts beat in cosmic rhythm; blood courses in the veins of all creatures; sleep beckons each and all at night; and finally, love and consciousness permeate all our being.
Final notice to President Obama and Governor Romney as well as all national officials throughout the community: The World Government of World Citizens is, in principle and practice, since September 4, 1953, that legitimate protector of humanity, acknowledged willfully and actively by each and every registered world citizen.
No deception there.
Garry Davis
Founder/President
World Government Of World Citizens
Washington, DC
Warren/Bill's "Giving Pledge" & the World Citizen's "Receiving Pledge"
Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and their billionaire buddies are trying to give away most of their money. No kidding. In letters to Buffett from the converted philanthropists (now numbering 73), [1] after all the years of struggle, enriching and distributing bits and pieces here and yon, it finally not only dawned on them they couldn't take it with them anyway when they cashed out of the Here and Now but that the world could go BANG! even before they reached the Pearly Gates...Besides, given that the majority of humanity is -- what was that number again: 99%? -- "disadvantaged", this 1% with their out-of-sight loot cannot but feel somewhat embarrassed if not humiliated to be counted in such a minuscule minority of humankind. So now they are professing publicly for all to know how happy they would be, thanks to Warren and Bill, to meet their Maker dead broke or near enough (as if He/She cared).[2]
In brief, the Nos. 1 and 2 (and spouses, no doubt) of this loaded hierarchy -- excepting Carlos Helu of Mexico who tops both by an astounding $18 billion -- considered it was high time what with all the irritating, public "Occupying" souls everywhere you looked.
Buffett/Gates calls it "The Giving Pledge."[3]
Their real problem, however, isn't the millions of deprived of the world but that the world's people en masse are in danger of totally disappearing in a nuclear cloud, them (and their foundations) included. (See Ted Turner's "problems" that concern him the most in the appendix of "quotes" from their letters to Buffett)
(Note: Warren, Bill, and all your flush if restless crowd: We proposed in 2007 a more relevant survival program[4]. I dubbed it "The Receiving Pledge" kind of) But nobody blinked so far To those of us who are already broke, or slowly getting there, yet who have worthy humanitarian projects en route requiring serious funding, if there is new hope it is yet mixed with frustration. How to revive our own "Receiving Pledge" for this vaunted membership sheathed in layers of highly-salaried defenders?
We appreciate that giving billions away is hard, if highly rewarding work. First of all, how do you actually do it? Well, you don't. Your Foundation does except for drips and dabs. That spreads the work. It also complicates it. The staff takes the first bite. Then the board of directors. Next the lawyers, investment counselors and accountants. After that, the web masters, Facebook & Twitter coordinators and finally the public relations and media team. Finally, who or what is worthy enough to justify your largesse? OK, universities are a safe and obvious choice. Besides, you get a building, stadium or scholarship grants named after your demise. The U's are always seeking a handout especially from their own alumni. Then there are the never-ending religious supplicants, another safe choice, from the faithful. (with relevant quotes from the scriptures). Now the difficult part: who or what else do you donate to? I mean, most everyone else wants a handout, some more desperately than others. Choices, choices. And what kind of organization or individual can actually handle that much do-re-mi?
Well, for one, we world citizens could use a mite, say, a mere billion...for a start. What for? You see, we are intensely interested in surviving on the planet. (Many of you profess the same in your letters to Warren). And to do that we need a global code of conduct called "laws." World laws, to be blunt, to outlaw war which we consider the ultimate crime, not to mention insanity. And for that, we desperately need our own world court to defend our human rights, since our very lives are now threatened by the entire warring nation-state system.[5] We're talking here about World War III, the FINIS. It will kill us humans whatever our fictional nationality, religion, cultural linkages, or indeed, wealth or indigence.
After all, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights acknowledges that "Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law." But where is and what is the law for "everyone"? Sounds like world law to this writer (who in a former national life was a B-17 bomber pilot in WWII[6]). But law must be adjudicated. And, having been hauled into 31 national courts (and jails) since 1948 following my claim of world citizenship after becoming "stateless", I myself became "World Litigant No. 1" but with no world court to plead my case.[7]
Yes Siree, that billion bucks, (euros, yen, pesos, pounds, riyals, wons or whatever) would be a big start to staking our own World Court of Human Rights to the world map just for we humans, NOT nation-states. After all, it's our planet not the fictional nation-state and though we share it with millions of other species, we call ourselves "sovereign" which, in my Thesaurus, means "supreme." Indeed there is already uniform and enthusiastic agreement re the vital need for a world human rights court among all jurists of whatever ilk for a world community where war is still insanely considered a legitimate option despite its now genocidal character as of August 5, 1945. And there are already thousands of out-of-work judges for hire to exercise their legal expertise on such a court. Where is Judge C.G. Weeramantry when you need him? And, incidentally, what's Sandra Day O'Connor doing now for heaven's sake? Or Judge Goldstone? Indeed, the world-renowned City Montessori school in Lucknow has been having yearly meetings since 2001 of national Supreme Court judges conferring on and enthusiastically supporting the subject of "international law." Then the International Association of Women Jurists, 4000 members are devoted to justice for women (and men) sanctioned by human rights and world law yet has no court to adjudicate horrendous violations of womankind all over the world.
But Judges have to be paid, and operate in a court in a heated building with clerks and running water (maybe next to the ICC in The Hague or on an island in the Mediterranean) and a cluster of regional courts chaired with associate justices, etc., etc. A billion would do for a start but just think what a bargain if that court (ours) OUTLAWED WAR. (the Statute of which already does just that!)[8]
The nations' global military budget for 2011 was $2,157,172,000,000! That's 2 trillion, etc. And that doesn't count the environmental damage to the planet which is incalculable. A world without war would be a world of abundance. A metamorphic change in human affairs. A paradigm shift in human evolution. A blessing to all the kids of the planet who wonder now whether we adults are not stark raving mad to even contemplate genocidal war and why did we bring them into the world anyway if only to blow them up?
So, nothing to lose, I downloaded the letters the "Giving Pledge" members were obliged to write to Buffett explaining their reasons for wanting to participate, an extraordinarily revealing read. As I perused from letter to letter the intimate thoughts of these fellow humans, I realized to my astonishment (and some chagrin) that here were real concerned people, (like you and me) and many were couples. Indeed many were concerned about the state of the world. Take Joyce and Bill Cummings for instance who wrote that 1) "The lessons of the Holocaust are too vital to be forgotten or denied"; 2) "Genocides are still occurring around the world"; and 3) "We cannot simply sit quietly and let them happen." Frankly, after reading that, my mind raced to find out what they intended to do about stopping the "Biggest-Holocaust-in-the-Making via The Bomb." Alas, though they continued that "Convinced that real change can come from the next generation of world citizens, we created the interfaith 'Cummings/Hillel Program for Holocaust and Genocide Education' at Tufts University." (Emphasis added) In short, let's leave it to the next generation to make world peace cause we, the living, don't know how to do it. (Note to Bill and Joyce Cummings: There may not be a "next generations of world citizens" if this generation of world citizens, you and your progeny, are blown away by WWIII).
The Cummings couple, however, did seem to recognize that peace and justice were corollaries since one of their subsidiaries, formed in 2010, is an Institute for World Justice, LLC "which we hope will play a role in reducing genocide, as well as all the societal problems that lead to it..."[9] (Emphasis added). No further mention, however, in the web site of the Institute of the practice of "world justice" and its framework or adjudication process: "the maintenance or administration of what is just according to law."[10]
The letter concluded: "...we welcome the support and partnership of others who share our belief that genocide should be a matter of great concern and responsibility for all people." We heartily agree Richard and Joyce. Please make your check out to the "World Court of Human Rights Fund"[11] and forward to World Government House, POB 9390, South Burlington, VT 05407. Thank you in anticipation.[12]
Not to single out this concerned couple, I read every letter underlining passages relevant to our global project of world peace through adjudicated law. (Appended)
Thus for the rest of the "Giving Pledgees" (including, of course, Warren and Bill) we, world citizens, can employ your largesse beneficially as well for humanity's benefit. Because the sooner the WCHR takes shape and begins adjudicating the inalienable rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" along with the other inalienable rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the happier you all will feel and maybe even thank us for our initiative in unburdening you from a modicum of your earthly gains so that you can depart peacefully in good conscience before meeting face-to-face, as it were, with YOU-KNOW-WHO.
Appendix:
PAUL G. ALLEN
As our philanthropy continues in the years ahead, we will look for new opportunities to make a difference in the lives of future generations.
JOHN & LAURA ARNOLD We view our wealth...not as an end in itself, but as an instrument to effect positive and transformative change. We are blessed to embark on this critical endeavor at a relatively early stage in our lives and with a great sense of urgency.
ELI AND EDYTHE BROAD
Those who have been blessed with extraordinary wealth have an opportunity, some would say a responsibility�we consider it a privilege to give back to their communities, be they local, national or global...We view our grants as investments, and we expect a return.
STEVE CRANE
...what really drove us was the mission of building a new medium that could empower individuals...we seek to inspire individuals to realize their potential to create change�We want to use all the tools available to us, to have the greatest impact, and to achieve the greatest good....We share the view that those to whom much is given, much is expected...we also want to reaffirm our ongoing commitment to encouraging a citizen-centered approach to philanthropy...
LEON A. COPERMAN
...Andrew Carnegie said "He who dies rich, dies disgraced."...Sir Winston Churchill observed that "We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give."...it is written in the Talmud that "a man's net worth is measured not by what he earns but rather what he gives away."
BARBARA DALIO
When we earned more money, we experienced relief and then the diminishing benefits of having more money...We experienced directly what the studies on happiness show�that once the basis are covered there is no correlation between how much money one has and how happy one is...We had planned to give most of our money to those it will most help anyway.
JOHN PAULK DEJORIA
Living is giving. I won't deprive my family of knowing how good it feels to help those in need with some of the basics we already have...food, shelter, care and a future.I plan to help the world now and in the future...with half (if not more) of what I have been blessed with today.
LARRY ELLISON
I have already given hundreds of millions of dollars to medical research and education, and I will give billions more over time....I have done this giving quietly...So why am I going public now? Warren Buffett personally asked me to write this letter because he said it would be 'setting an example' and 'influencing others' to give.
CHARLES F. FEENY
I cannot think of a more personally rewarding and appropriate use of wealth than to give while one is living -- to personally devote oneself to meaningful efforts to improve the human condition....The challenges, even set backs, I have experienced in my decades of personal engagement in philanthropy pale in comparison to the impact and deep personal satisfaction we have realized.
SUE ANN HAMM
We have always felt a strong obligation to lead by example. Through our giving pledge, we hope to encourage others to commit their time and resources to worthy causes that will enable other people with ambition and tenacity to achieve their goals.
MISS LYDA HILL
I wish to make the world a better place...At my death my entire estate and my foundation will be distributed to charities I have designated....Science is the solution to most of the world�s challenges, be they food shortage, energy, medicine or pollution. These matters have become my life's interests...the (Hockaday) women who will solve many of these problems. I thought it would be fun to set the bar high.
MARK ZUCKERBERG
People wait until late in their careers to give back. But why wait when there is so much to be done? With a generation of younger folks who have thrived on the success of their companies, there is a big opportunity for many of us to give back earlier in our lifetimes and see the impact of our philanthropic efforts.
TOM & CINDY SECUNDA
We're honored to be in such great company and we pledge to do our small part to make the world a better place for our children and grandchildren.
CARL C. ICAHN
...those who have benefited the most from our economic system have a responsibility to give back to society in a meaningful way.
GEORGE B. KAISE
I suppose I arrived at my charitable commitment largely through guilt....I am entranced by Warren's and Bill's visionary appeal to those who have accumulated unconscionable resources, to dedicate at least half of them back to purposes more useful than dynastic perpetuation....If enough acolytes follow Bill's and Warren's example, then maybe we will more closely approach the idea of equal opportunity throughout the United States and the world
NANCY KINDER
...when we set up our personal foundation and committed to give 95% of our wealth to charitable causes whether during our lifetimes or at our deaths, we never dreamed that there would be such a gathering of like-minded individuals who firmly believe in the favorable impact of giving on the world.
KENNETH G. LANGONE
...your graceful letter...conveys a spiritual purpose that has long been close to our hearts...It is inspiring how such a simple idea puts faith into action for the community as a whole.
LORRY I. LOKEY
I began to realize the importance of money consists of buying what is worth the price...Throughout the world without an exception, education is the determinant of a person's intelligence level and possible success. And success is not making a million a month or a year. It's earning enough to live comfortably and being able to finance children's education...As we went into the 21st century, I began quipping that I want to die broke...The larger the estate, the more important it is to revitalize the soil.
GEORGE LUCAS
Storytellers are teachers and communicators who speak a universal language...Good storytelling is based on truths and insights, and a good storyteller is ultimately a teacher...We are the facilitators...This level of engagement dates back to the beginning of human life...There have to be universal standards...We need to build new foundations, fostering independent thought and a desire to keep learning...We need to promote critical thinking...prepare our children for the real world...working together and building character...as a means to a greater end.
DAVID & BARBARA GREEN
...God gifted me with a mind for understanding business, and that gift would allow me to carry out His work through contributions to great missions throughout the world...
TED FORSTMANN
...you save one life and you save the world.
THOMAS S. MONAGHAN
I came into the world penniless and as a Catholic Christian, I know I cannot take any of it with me...I knew that all these things would pass away and that the only think that really mattered was the state of my soul...I now began to look for how I could really be effective, really make a difference in what truly mattered; in people's eternal lives...I realized that to have a more global impact, I would need to focus on Catholic higher education...
DUSTIN MOSKOVITZ
(Helped create Facebook) Today, I view that reward not as personal wealth, but as a tool with which I hope to bring even more benefit to the world...We will donate and invest with both urgency and mindfulness arriving to foster a safer, healthier and more economically empowered global community.
PIERRE & PAM OMIDYAR (Ebay)
Our view is fairly simple...There's no need to hold onto it when it can be put to use today, to help solve some of the world/s intractable problems...Our common challenge is not necessarily about dollar's raise, it's about discovering the most efficient and effective use of our resources and leaving a legacy of hope for those to come.
RONALD O. PERELMAN
I have always been interested in giving to projects that may not get done otherwise. If the research wasn't productive, I would have spent money to no avail, but if the idea worked, the potential was enormous -- it was a risk I was willing to take...I can think of no greater example as to why giving now and seeing the benefits first hand can be the single most rewarding thing any of us can do.
DAVID M. RUBENSTEIN
...I recognize that to have any significant impact on an organization or a cause, one must concentrate resources, and make transformative gifts -- and to be involved in making certain those gifts transform in a positive way. And I am heading in that direction...Everyone can and should give, and everyone can and should feel that their gifts may make the world a little bit better place...My hope, again, is that individuals of all levels of resources will also increase their giving, and feel they are helping their countries and humanity by doing so...so as to bring whatever benefits come from giving to the world a bit sooner.
HERBERT & MARION SANDLER
When you think about it, no other approach seems to make sense. Passing down fortunes from generation to generation can do irreparable harm. In addition, there is no way to spend a fortune. How many residences, automobiles, airplanes and other luxury items can one acquire and use?...The Buffett/Gates initiative is likely to be a major "game changer." Believe it or not, the psychic income -- the highs if you will -- associated with giving money away thoughtfully and effectively has even been more gratifying than running a successful business.
LYNN SCHUSTERMAN
...I also pledge to continue working to encourage others, including emerging philanthropists of all ages and all capacities, to join us in seeking to repair the world; the further we broaden our reach, the more we will benefit from a diversity of people, perspectives and approaches we strive to tackle problems of common concern.
SANFORD & JOAN WEILL
In the years we have left, we want to continue to try and do whatever small part we can to leave the world a little better that we found it. That return on investment would be unquantifiable and something we would cherish the most...We are firm believers that shrouds don't have pockets.
TED TURNER
My experiences with organizations like the Better World Society opened my eyes to the power of assembling a team of international leaders to address global issues...it was time for me to get out in front of the parade...After the billion dollar pledge, I challenged my fellow billionaires to do more.I've discovered that the more people you meet, the more you learn, and the more you learn, the more you want to help, and the more you help, the better you feel...These days I'm putting my resources and energies toward tackling the worlds more important issues...The three problems that concern me the most are the threat of nuclear annihilation, climate change and the continuing growth of the world's population..."Ted, it could be that these problems can/t be solved, but what can men of good conscience do but keep trying until the very end." (Cousteau to Turner)...at the time of my death, virtually all of my wealth will have gone to charity...I'm particularly thankful for my father's advice to set goals so high that they can't possibly be reached during a lifetime and to give help where help is needed most. That inspiration keeps me energized and eager to help keep working hard every day on giving back and making the world a better place for generations to come.
=============================================
[1] There are 1210 billionaires worldwide according to Forbes, Inc
[2] "He who dies rich, dies disgraced." (Andrew Carnegie)
[3] http://givingpledge.org/
[4] See View From My Space, Memo To The World's Billionaires, March 15, 2007 "I tell you what. Let's start a World Citizens' Billionaire's Club and you can all become members. The membership fee will be a paltry $50 million. That'll give it a starting net worth of $473,000,000. Then we'll start a bank, a world bank, and use the fees as capital, minus expenses and overhead, to print and issue world money against national currencies. (A Bucky Fuller idea, incidentally, who wrote that money was only 'crystallized energy' and proposed 'kilowatt dollars' as the world currency*). After all, national currencies are 'floating' out there between nations anarchically with no real solid base like goods and services...Then there's wars to get rid of. Who can afford them anymore?....And besides, If WWIII starts, your billions won't be worth the paper they're printed on..."
[5] "Peace is order based on law. There is no other imaginable definition." (Emery Reves, The Anatomy of Peace, 1946
[6] And before that an actor on Broadway who went to high school in a Rolls-Royce.
[7] See https://worldservice.org/cat.html?s=4#books
[8] See https://worldservice.org/wsalstat.html
[9] Another reason for a court on the world level which adjudicates violations of human rights including arbitrary detention only protected by the habeas corpus principle.
[10] Webster's College Dictionary, 1991
[11] Peoples United Bank, Account #097802533335,
[12] See www.worldservice.org/cat.html?s=4#books
IS IT POSSIBLE TO GIVE UP NATIONAL CITIZENSHIP?
Can you Become a Citizen of the World... Legally?
Garry Davis
"We are living in a geocentric world of nation-states. We look upon economic, social and political problems as 'national' problems. No matter in which country we live, the centre of our political universe is our own nation." -- The Anatomy of Peace, Emery Reves
People write to me at the World Service Authority from time to time asking if it is possible for them to legally and officially withdraw from the nation-state system and raise their allegiance to the global level. In other words, can they legally give up US citizenship and declare themselves World Citizens?
The answer is yes...But why? Before I answer that question, let me tell you that in 1948 I renounced United States Citizenship -- to prove that it is possible to exist in a new space, legally, above and beyond the nations that divide us, i.e., a world space! Well I've proved it. For 64 years I've been a citizen of no nation, only the world! Legally![1]
How did I do it? Following my stint as a B-17 bomber pilot in WWII, first I read the U.S. Nationality Act of 1940, an update of an act of 1868 when the United States was receiving tens of thousands of immigrants from Europe streaming into the US to take advantage of Lincoln's Homestead Act: Stake out 111 acres of land in the wild West, build your own log cabin, till the soil for 5 years, (don�t kill anyone except maybe some indigenous natives who might resent your presence on their ancestral land), and lo and behold, you could become a bona fide US citizen. However, due to the hallowed principle of reciprocity in law, a natural-born United States citizen could legally renounce his or her nationality but to do so represented a certain number of problems, the first three being, how, when and where?[2]
Now when we are asked this primordial questions, we have a totally different take on the answer.
"Why renounce your national citizenship," we ask, "when it no longer exists legitimately?" We receive blank, bewildered stares. "Or put it this way," we continue, "Shortly after the turn of the century around the time of the airplane's debut but certainly after Hiroshima at the start of the nuclear age when wars became omni and genocidal, the United States 'renounced' you as viable citizens. It became a garrison state, a mockery of "We, the people..."
Example: The oath of allegiance now incoming migrants must take today to become US citizens: "I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God." "The reference to God," we note, "as the sanctifier for this modern garrison state exposes the shameless mockery of 'e pluribus unum,' the underlying basis of the USA's founding two centuries prior. The code now is, 'From many, blind obedience to one'!"[3]
"Or look at it another way even more basic," we continue "Take a human birth. Did you choose your own place of birth? Can you be born into a political fiction? I mean, birth is a biological not a political fact. After all, you come out of your mother's womb into the world itself, a human being, member of humankind, not in a fictional state which claims you, body and soul. And since the technological, then electronic breakthroughs at the turn of the 19th century--with so-called world wars starting in 1914--followed by the "Nuclear Age" and then space travel, wasn't the 18th, 19th century divided system of nation-states rendered increasingly obsolete not to mention totally dysfunctional and now mortal?"[4]
Our fellow human questioner, his (her) eyes wide with bewilderment and anguish, remonstrates, "Yes but they're in bloody power over us what with the national laws, police and damn armies."
"Yes, we know all that," we reply. "But the word 'power' brings up the idea of sovereignty. And most people don't really know what that means. We haven't yet figured out what really happened in that Philly hall in the summer of 1797 when those 55 citizens of their brand-new 13 states bordering the Atlantic Ocean, exercised sovereignty (or political choice) by artificially creating out of sheer imagination a new level of government.[5]
"Are you suggesting, Garry, that United States citizenship is a fiction and not real?" we are asked in astonishment.
"Let me give you a simple example of reality versus fiction," we respond. "When driving a car anywhere in the world you come to a crossing and the traffic light is red, what do you do?"
"I stop of course." is the instant reply.
"And why do you stop?" we ask.
"Because when it's red, that means stop. Green means go. Everyone knows that."
"Does everyone throughout the world stop at the red light at a road crossing?"
"They do if they have a brain in their head."
"Ah, you've just 'renounced' your United State citizenship," we reply, "by stating that 'everyone' knows that when a traffic light turns red, that means "Stop", therefore, not only a local "law," or a United States or even inter-national "law," but a universal traffic reality! In other words, a code of conduct for us human drivers. And no matter where you are in the world when you come to a traffic crossing and the light is red, you stop. and go when it turns green. But the traffic light itself is a "fiction". For instance, did you ever consider that principle behind that everyday global event?
"What do you mean, the principle? It's just commonsense."
"And there you've hit on another 'renunciation' of nationality: 'commonsense.' And does not everyone at that crossing exhibit the same knowledge of commonsense?" we ask.
"Of course."
"Then haven't you defined a universal law based on commonsense or even justice since the traffic light is regulated for every driver who comes to that crossing and for the community of drivers taken together?"
A glimmer of light begins to shine in my friend's eyes. "I'm beginning to see what you're getting at," (s)he says. "The one and the many principle."
"Bingo! E pluribus unum on a world scale![6] Just like a symphony orchestra or a flock of birds. Or humankind. Now let's go back to that meeting in Philly," we continue. "When the so-called Founders carved out a tiny part of the coastal area in the North American continent-part of the world territory actually-in which around 3 millions of their fellow humans resided, and circumscribed it with millions of 'traffic lights' called 'frontiers,' (continually expanding) weren't they denying the self-evident universality, both of their own humanity and that of everyone else's humanity?"
"Yes, but at that time the British, French and Spanish man'a'wars were still out in the Atlantic ready to knock off the states one by one if they didn't unite," s(he) replies.
"The fictional 'states' yes, but not the people, and because of this fundamental difference, the founders were obliged to make a crucial and fatal compromise in the legal text they were preparing to impress on the 3 millions inhabitants now living no longer in mere colonies."
"I'm listening," s(he) returns nervously no doubt wondering where all this led.
"Now a major dilemma had arisen: Who was going to represent the new fictional nation they were creating vis-a-vis the nations poised in the Atlantic and the rest of the world of similarly fictional nations, large and small? Well, they figured it had to be the president when he was acting as the 'Commander-in-Chief' of the army and navy in time of war. But then, who would be representing the citizen's rights? In short, which was 'sovereign,' the people or the nation? Remember, there was no bill of rights in the original Constitution they wrote. In time of war between nations, only the nation was considered 'sovereign.' And as the army and navies of the world operate in the anarchic space between nations, the national citizens were left without civic representation but on the contrary became mere subjects to the imperial state in which, as the prime executive, the president would be a virtual dictator. The people, in brief, in time of war would at his singular command. But the nation-state, by definition, is a war state. The rational? "National Security."[7] Now, are you beginning to understand why and when the United States 'renounced' the entire citizenry...right at the very beginning of its founding. Now today, when wars between nations have become global and genocidal since 1945, you want 'out' when you were always 'out' right from the start since in a world of anarchy, the fictional nation-state is in a continual state of war...with the people."
"Wow!, s(he) replies. "That's quite a revelation!"
"But happily, there's an antidote, not only rational but the only road to a world without war. James Madison proposed when drafting the famous Bill of Rights between 1787 and '89 that there had to be included a legal remedy for the people when the president put his Commander-in-Chief war hat on. And it bears directly on your question of renouncing your United State citizenship because in effect it recognizes your already inalienable right to claim your own sovereign humanity."
"So what is it exactly," s(he) asks eagerly.
"It's the Ninth Amendment in the Bill of Rights, the most revolutionary right ever included in any national constitution.[8]"
"And why is that?"
"Because it refers to that right we already discussed when stopping and going at the traffic light at the entire discretion of the driver of each and every car in the whole world community. In other words: world law at the command of each national citizen!"[9]
"Amazing! World law! Part of the US Constitution? How do you figure that?"
"Ah, because of Madison's genius The Ninth Amendment doesn't spell out any particular rights. But what it does reveal is that the eight rights he did spell out are not all there are BUT all the other human rights -- and here is the universality built in to the US Constitution -- are 'retained by the people.' That simply means they are inalienable which in turn means universal. So, you see, the United States of America 'renounced' or rather, recognized you right from the start as a sovereign human being! But, and here's the catch: Since inalienable rights belong to the people, YOU MUST CLAIM THEM YOURSELF AS THE SOVEREIGN IN QUESTION. AND THESE ARE BRIEFLY, 'LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS' AS PRESCRIBED IN THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.[10]
"And in political terms that simply means claiming world citizenship as the Founders claimed national citizenship in the 18th century to embody those inalienable rights. And, almost miraculously, that claim is the beginning of a higher level of government.[11] So rather than renounce that now invalid and deadly national allegiance caught historically in an anarchic political world,, simply exercise your inalienable sovereign power by claiming the higher one relevant to fundamental and inalienable human rights.
"That's 'world government!' And that's what law-making is all about!"[12]
"Where do I sign up?"
"At www.worldservice.org"
Postscript: "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government..." Article 21(3), Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
**************************
[1] "...a reverence for our great Creator, principles of humanity, and the dictates of conscience, must convince all those who reflect on the subject that government was instituted to promote the welfare of mankind and ought to be administered for the attainment of that end." Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, 1775; "Every man... possesses the right of self-government. Individuals exercise it by their single will." Thomas Jefferson, 1790
[2] My latest book, World Citizen Garry Davis goes to Court, (World Government House, 2011) (www.worldgovernmenthouse.com) goes into these questions in detail
[3] "Any method of maintaining international peace today must eventually fail if it is not grounded on Justice under Law and the protection of the Individual under due process of law." World Habeas Corpus, Luis Kutner, 1968, p. 73
[4] [12] "Our so-called 'contemporary' political systems are copied from models invented before the advent of the factory system...They were designed in an intellectual world that is almost unimaginable -- a world that was pre-Marx, pre-Darwin, pre-Freud and pre-Einstein." The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler, Bantam Edition, p. 414
[5] Tom Paine, who sparked the revolution with his essay "Commonsense," wasn't taken in by the subterfuge noting that "Independence is my happiness and I view things as they are without regard to place or person; my country is the world; my religion is to do good and all men are my brothers."
[6] "Government can be safely acknowledged a temporal blessing because, in terms of the power it wields, there is nothing inherent in it. Government is not an end in itself but a means to an end. Its authority is the free and revocable grant of the men who have promised conditionally to submit to it. Its organs, however ancient and august, are instruments that free men have built and free men can alter or even abolish." Earl Warren, Chief Justice, Supreme Court.
[7] When the so-called "enemy" is "terrorism" the war becomes total virtually incriminating the human race itself as exclusive national citizens.
[8] The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. --The Ninth Amendment
[9] "The inalienable human right of the United States citizen to add world citizenship -- as the founding fathers added United States citizenship to that of their state allegiances -- is incontestable and indeed the highest act of patriotism. For only in that planetary social and political level can the lesser members be protected and nurtured. The US Constitution itself, in the Ninth Amendment, provides for the rational extension of civic rights and responsibilities to the highest level as foreseen implicitly by the original founders." (From Dear World, A Global Odyssey, World Government House, 2000)
[10] "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness..."
[11]"I no longer find it compatible with my inner convictions . . . by remaining solely loyal to one of these sovereign nation-states. I must extend the little sovereignty I possess, as a member of the world community, to the whole community, and to the international vacuum of its government . . . I should like to consider myself a citizen of the world." (Original renunciation of US nationality May 25, 1948)
[12]"As nations are torn apart and restructured, as instabilities and threats of war erupt, we shall be called upon to invent wholly new political forms or 'containers' to bring a semblance of order to the world -- a world in which the nation-state has become, for many purposes, a dangerous anachronism." Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave
Sovereignty & Humankind - New Year's Statement
Friday, December 30, 2011
The nation-state system, imported from former pre-industrial/electronic centuries, has become dysfunctional due to a condition of anarchy between each and all states which is the breeding-ground of war.
World wars, therefore, began in 1914. The so-called Nuclear Age, however, exploded on our human psyches and hearts with the bombing of Hiroshima changing the dimension of war from relative to absolute, i.e. genocidal. Therefore "sovereignty" in today's instant communicative world pertains to humankind itself. This in turn involves each and every human on planet earth, not to mention most other creatures co-inhabiting the planet.
The Ninth Amendment to the US Constitution refers to "unenumerated rights retained by the people."*
James Madison added it after providing the first eight rights.
If rights are "retained by the people," they are "inalienable." i.e. sovereign human rights and universal.
Madison's foresight in adding the 9th Amendment was to provide an antidote to the US president's power when acting as the "commander-in-chief" in time of war by virtue of article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution: "The President shall be Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States..."
The US president -- as all heads of state -- thereby has become a legal dictator as Commander-in Chief "in time of war." All lower level officials in the government thereby become involuntarily complicit and obedient to his command in the name of "national security."
Thus, having declared a war on "terrorism" in 2001 which is a condition and not an enemy, the United States today is not only a virtual garrison state but an indictable "enemy of humanity."
The only document defining sovereign human rights is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations December 10, 1948 as a "Common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations..." Article 21(3) provides that "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government..."
In conjunction, Article 6 of the UDHR, provides that "Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law." Ipso facto, the law before which "everyone" has the right to recognition must be world law.
All humans, as "sovereign citizens," therefore are already world citizens.
The World Government of World Citizens (see www.worldservice.org) has founded the "World Court of Human Rights" on June 12, 1974. (See www.worldservice.org/wsalstat.html).
The evolution and statute of this court is described in the author's book: World Citizen Garry Davis goes to Court." (See Catalogue, sites above and below).
Conclusion: The essence of "sovereignty" is political choice. As we humans are all "planetary citizens," our claim to sovereignty is not only legitimate but essential for survival itself.
World Citizen Garry Davis
*"The enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
**www.worldgovernmenthouse.com
Oh, It's Human Rights Day Again!
December 10, 2011
Some scattered thoughts:
Ask a hundred people in any street in the United States or in France, England, Egypt, India or in fact anywhere on the planet if they can quote any of the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed 63 years ago today as a "common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations..." by the General Assembly of the United Nations sequestered at the Palais de Chaillot, Place Trocadero, Paris.
I'll wager that not one has a clue. I've asked thousands. The general ignorance about a document which is THE VERY FOUNDATION OF PEACE, COMMON WELFARE AND FREEDOM IN THE WORLD is not only startling but frightening. Why? Because if you don't know your human rights, YOU CAN'T CLAIM THEM.
"Occupiers" take note: THE UDHR IS YOUR GLOBAL PROGRAM OF ACTION AS WELL AS YOUR GLOBAL MANDATE TO TAKE OVER!
Your worldwide protests against the so-called "1%", however, fall on deaf ears. Why? Because you haven't claimed what you are FOR. So long as you acknowledge them as the "winners" of the economic pile, you are admitting you are already the losers. Don't you know yet that you are HERE AND NOW the SOVEREIGN PEOPLE OF THE WORLD? That's what the UDHR opens with: "Whereas recognition of the inherent DIGNITY and of the equal and INALIENABLE RIGHTS of all members of the HUMAN FAMILY is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world�.:" That you, members of the human family. (emphais added). And it gets better as you read on: "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government...." (art 21[3])
I know, I know, the schools don't teach it; the parents never heard of it; the politicians, God forbid, never mention it, the writers and pundits � smug in their ivory intellectual towers � mention if, if at all, as pie-in-the-sky never to be brought down to the crowded alleyways of the struggling, depressed common peasant herds who are unconditioned to think of themselves as bona fide members of the entire human race and even if they did, what to DO about it?
Before you can DO anything, you have to BE someone! Claim your inalienable global citizenship NOW!
My last blog was pointed directly at you millions of courageous "occupiers" in your tents and crowded street mobs using "mike checks" and pointing you tent poles at the complacent "1%" in their penthouse suites smugly overlooking the cities with their drinks in hand ignoring the noise from the crowded streets. I advised you to "VERTICALIZE" your movement, or more precisely, yourselves from your horizontal, therefore, supine position on the planetary soil. In short, STAND UP AND CLAIM YOUR REAL PLACE IN THE WORLD! Article 6 of the UDHR states that "Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. EVERYONE!!!!! No exceptions. Male or female, Jew, Christian, Moslem, Buddhist, black, white, yellow or red, or whatever.
But, wait a mo, what law? Where is the law which covers EVERYONE? Where is the court adjudicating such a law? Gotta be a world court, that's for sure. The Preamble of the UDHR even states that "...as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law." Should be? Why not "shall be"? But more to the point, human rights must be protected by the rule of law�but that means WORLD LAW, brothers and sisters. Yes, world law But�I don't hear any of you shouting for world law in your "mike checks." I hear a lot of shouts for "justice" and "democracy" along with the beefing about "injustice" and "monopoly." "You never change things by fighting the existing reality," wrote Buckminster Fuller. " To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." A World Court of Human Rights was founded in 1974. Professor Luis Kutner became its "Chief Justice." We declared it de juris on July 27, our 90th birthday. Check out https://worldservice.org/cat.html?s=4#books Thanks for your attention.
Garry Davis
Founder/President
World Government Of World Citizens
Washington, DC
Message to all "Occupyers":
"Verticalize," then "Syntegrate"!
By Garry Davis
"As nations are torn apart and restructured, as instabilities and threats of war erupt, we shall be called upon to invent wholly new political forms or 'containers' to bring a semblance of order to the world -- a world in which the nation-state has become, for many purposes, a dangerous anachronism."
--Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave When I placed my hand on the Gideon Bible in the US Embassy in Paris May 25, 1948 and took the Oath of Renunciation of US nationality, I became a legitimate "occupier" of planet Earth!
The words I then recited were simple but prophetic reaching back thousands of years to the ancient Greeks, Stoics and Raja Rishis of South India:
"I hereby swear that I desire to make a formal renunciation of my American nationality, and pursuant thereto hereby absolutely and entirely renounce my nationality to the United States and all rights and privileges thereunto and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to the United States of America."
When I dropped my hand, I had legally freed myself from the 19th century Age of Nationalism...and war itself...at least in this lifetime.
But it wasn't enough. Though I was in my own stateless "space," the national myth no longer binding me, I was still a full-bodied member of the human race and eager to fulfill that sacred and challenging destiny wherever it would lead me.
That same day, therefore I issued a press statement, carried by AP, Reuters, INS and other wire services, that "I should like to consider myself a citizen of the world."
In short, I had "verticalized" myself to the global level. Who, indeed, could deny me that sovereign right? Moreover, I became a "world citizenship government-in-microcosm." "Every man possesses the right of self-government. Individuals exercise it by their single will." (Thomas Jefferson, 1776) "My country is the world." (Tom Paine, 1776)
No longer "in" a nation, when I walked out of the US Embassy "territory," and onto the Champs Elysee, I started my personal "occupying" of "world territory"!
I was happy and felt free as a bird in full flight!
But the French government immediately roared: "Out! Or our national gendarmes will put you 'inside.' Permanently!"
Out, but where? Out to sea? Up in a balloon? The moon? Que faire?
As my final date for departure arrived, I was surprisingly if contradictorily "saved" by the United Nations which "verticalized" in the middle of Paris: Place de Trocadero, the Palais de Chaillot where its General Assembly was to hold its session. In brief, France had ceded a tiny piece of alleged French territory to the UN...for three months! The absurd charade was on! With pack on back, on the morning of September 11th, I "left" France taking the Metro to Place Trocadero and, "entering" the UN's "international territory," claimed to be its "first citizen."
In short, I "occupied" it as a human being!
A New Age for citizenship was born! We had a "proper home!" Seven thousands journalists were in Paris awaiting the opening sessions. I became the "story" of the day...and even that year.
That first sojourn on the UN "territory," however, lasted only 7 days. French gendarmes in collusion with the UN�s Secretary-General staff, "invaded" the territory, bundled me and my tent into a police car (familiar?) and transported me "back" to France. Illegally! (Or perhaps "allegally"). But 7 days were enough. The issue was joined: world citizenship inclusivity versus national exclusivity.
I became world famous.
But if I, still "stateless," could claim to be and function as a world citizen on world territory, why not everybody else? Indeed, as I wrote in my last blog, we, humanity, are already THERE! Rather, HERE!
The letters started trickling in, but soon became a torrent. Three years after WWII with Europe still in ruins and Hiroshima fresh in everyone's minds, the "cold war" starting between the USA and the USSR, the refugee world proliferating, many recognized world citizenship as the "way out" of the war game entirely. And it is! Even the UN proclaimed it on its final day in Paris.
On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly unanimously voted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a "common standard of achievement for all people and all nations."
As legitimate members of the world's "people," we World Citizens eagerly grabbed it and ran.
Over 750,000 fellow humans joined me by registering at the International Registry of World Citizens I founded on January 1, 1949. "World territory" was filling up!
Then on July 10, 1949, a giant leap forward occurred and is the real lief motif of this blog: The city of Cahors in Southern France passed a resolution signed by the mayor declaring it a "world city." Thus began the "Mundialization" movement which has since spread to over 900 cities throughout the world. (See, www.worldservice.org/mund.html).
From that day when Cahors "mundialized," every citizen in a "mundialized" city "verticalized" to world territory!
Lastly, on September 4, 1953, from the City Hall of Ellsworth, Maine, after numerous jail visits thanks to my stateless status, on the advice of top civic rights lawyers, and with the mandate of the UDHR, based on our claimed global sovereignty, I declared the World Government of World Citizens. ("The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government." Art. 21[3], UDHR).[1]
Fast forward to 1986. On August 22, 1986, I filed with the DC Municipal Office my "world citizen" candidacy for mayor of the capitol of the United States!
Mayors, I thought then and now, (2011), legally responsible for their citizens welfare and safety, are the veritable key to a world of order and wellbeing, NOT the now totally dysfunctional nation-state system. Luis Kutner, the passionate advocate of World Habeas Corpus[2], wrote that,
"The time-clock of World-Man is now ever-set at one half-hour from annihilation. Man, who has achieved the ever-expanding greatness of physical science, of ultimate outer space Satellite control, of intercontinental missiles, can annihilate total World-Man in minutes...Since total man is a unified being, with an international dimension, a basic unifying principle is necessary to unify the freedom and liberty of man."
My candidacy for mayor was formally accepted by the DC government despite the fact that in 1977 I had been classified an "excludable alien" by the US Immigration Department and succeeding courts clear up to the Supreme. (See www.worldservice.org/petition.html).
My platform in brief was "World peace through world law" claiming that Washington, like Moscow, was targeted by nuclear bombs and could only be protected by the world government.
I received 585 votes.
My rationale was simple: Most people lived in cities throughout the world. That's why we're called "citizens." Cities are real; nations are fictions. Cities have become the prime targets since WWII. Think Hiroshima, Nagasaki, London, Coventry, Tokyo, Berlin, Jerusalem, etc. Cities are now targeted...everywhere. That's where we, or most of us, live. Nations don't "die." They have no blood, no heart, no being. They are man-made creations usurping part of the planet's territory. But cities "die," or are destroyed in national wars.
You can't live "in" a nation. Because a nation is a passive fiction of pure imagination whereas a city is dynamic with ancient codes of communal living based upon the "one and the many" social philosophy. One could even describe national citizenship given today's instant communication and space research as not only oxymoronic and transient but mortal. After all, World War II was the first war where cities gained the deadly status of "targets" on war's "front lines."
I know. From the pilot's seat of a B-17, at age 23 I bombed some of them myself. (The victims, incidentally, were civilians, man, women, children, not Nazi soldiers.)
And that brings me to mayors of cities, God bless 'em...elected by the citizens...responsible to the citizens...no matter where on the planet.
On November 2, 1985, for instance, the World Conference of Black Mayors[3] passed a Resolution stating in part that "...it is unconscionable that spending of the arms race consumes more of the world's resources, while human needs go unmet; and...the increasing militarization of the world and the threat of an arms race in space is unacceptable...and the cost of the arms race has endangered the economic and social resources from domestic needs such as housing, jobs, public transportation, health care, human welfare, and education..."
Talk about 99% vis-a-vis 1%!
And on Saturday, June 18, 2011, the United States Conference of Mayors gathered in Washington and passed a resolution calling for the "speedy end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
All mayors talk the same human language: water supplies, traffic problems, street and electrical maintenance, recycling waste, local administration and on and on. Today over 900 cities throughout the world have "mundialized," that is, declared themselves "worldly" like Cahors. Makes perfect sense. When you can fly around the globe in two days and the Space Station does it in 1 and 1/2 hours, We, humanity, "left" the nation-state system over 200 years ago when the horse was the fastest way to get around. Are we crazy to continue the war game when, as the good and wise mayors are now complaining, it is killing our cities (not to mention our world) with us in them?
The message is clear:
MAYORS OF THE WORLD ARE ALREADY UNITED! AND HAVE BEEN CLAIMING IT!
In brief, they are ALREADY de facto World Citizens.
Read what the City Council of Burlington, VT claimed on June 20, 1992 after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in my last blog: "Occupy...Earth?"
Brave, relevant and inspiring words, but what is missing? Like all good resolutions, it is static, not dynamic. Nothing happens. Where's the "beef?" How do the good citizens of Burlington or Shanghai or Berlin or Rio de Janeiro "declare their citizenship responsibilities BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES OF OUR CITY, STATE AND NATION? " And to what should they declare it to? The UN? Sorry, neither cities nor citizens allowed. (I found that out personally). Only nation-states...eternally talking. There's got to be something "out there" to ACCEPT that global responsibilities.
Here then is the simple yet revolutionary answer: Citizenship and government are corollaries! There was no recognition formerly of the overall world government to sanction the citizens' good will pledge... "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government..." provides art. 21(3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The authors of the UDHR unfortunately didn't use the present tense. They assigned peacemaking as a "shall be..." not as "is."
But to the mayors of all the cities of the world, and to their citizens gathering today in town squares and parks, the World Government of World Citizens NOW IS! How do I know? Because, following the sanction of the UDHR declared by the entire body of nations in the UN, I myself declared it on September 4, 1953 from the City Hall of Ellsworth, Maine! (See www.worldservice.org/ells.html).
If the mayors of our cities recognize their avowed responsibilities to represent their citizens' wellbeing, given the "global village" they actually live in this century, they must REGISTER THEIR GLOBAL ALLEGIANCE TO THE ONLY DECLARED AND OPERATING WORLD GOVERNMENT EXTANT.
Moreover the over 900 cities already declared "global" are thereby inhabited by literally millions of already declared "world citizens" as have the citizens of Burlington, Vermont.
The wait is over. Our human future is at stake. We are at that historic juncture where it is all or none in terms of survival. THE BOMB is ticking away! It is pointed at US the real "occupiers" of world territory. The species itself is in danger of annihilation...and by its own hand. The "shift" in consciousness is taking place NOW.
Citizens of the World, we are already the human occupiers of planet Earth!
Claim it before it is too late!
Only then can we passengers communicate to one and all via the internet and all the myriad technical marvels finally eradicating space and time between humans the "operating manual" for Spaceship Earth.
And that's known as "Syntegration."
***************************
[1] See www.worldservice.org/ells.html
[2] Oceana Publications, Inc., 1962
[3] Founded by Johnny Ford, Mayor of Tuskegee in 1972
OCCUPY...EARTH?
By Garry Davis
It's our world; when do we get our turn in running it?
Last Saturday, as I walked out of "World Government House" where I live and work in South Burlington, and climbed into my Accord to join the local Vermont group at the Burlington City Hall park supporting the now global "Occupy Wall Street" movement, I wondered what would be appropriate for me, a world citizen since 1948, to contribute in a meaningful way. Following Amy Goodman's daily "Democracy Now!" reports of the same happenings in cities around the United States and the world, I was struck by the lack of positive programs brought forth by speakers and signs. Everyone knows what we are against, but what are we for?
But even more basic, who are we...together?
In my briefcase were copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, applications for registrations of world citizens, my World Government Passport and a dwindling supply of "I am a World Citizen" buttons, as giveaways, always gratefully accepted by young and old alike. Was it enough? What key element was missing? Then I had a flash of inspiration. Cities! We were all gathering in cities around the world! That's it! I remembered that almost two decades ago the Burlington City Council unanimously adopted the Resolution declaring itself a WORLD CITY! Eureka!
Jumping out of the car, I reentered World Government House, ran upstairs to my office and IMac, hit the "Q" button and typed: "World City Burlington." Up flashed the Resolution of June 20, 1992 adopted by the City Council of Burlington declaring it a "World City" following the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. I quickly printed up a bunch of copies and drove down to city hall for the rally. A few dozen people had gathered milling about some with signs "We are the 99%!" and "Down with Capitalism!" I went to the speaker area and said I had a short but relevant announcement to make. Given the no mike system, I simply announced to the crowd that the City of Burlington 19 years ago had already taken a major step required, if we, the people were to take back our planet from corporate control. I then read the opening paragraphs of the Resolution:
"WHEREAS the City of Burlington, Vermont, recognizes the greatly increased interdependence of the people of the world in this age of pollution, deforestation, natural resources depletion, overpopulation, and hunger; and WHEREAS, we seek to free humanity from the scourge of war, and to use the world's resources of energy, and knowledge for the benefit of the people; and WHEREAS, we realize that the common interests of the world's people can only be advanced through cooperative effort on a global scale, as exemplified by the recent Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro; and WHEREAS, we affirm that we can best serve our city, state and nation when we also think and act as world citizens:
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE CITY COUNCIL: That the City of Burlington hereby recognizes its status as a
World City
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the citizens of Burlington recognize their sovereign right to declare that their citizenship responsibilities extend beyond the boundaries of our city, state, and nation; and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the citizens of Burlington are urged to pledge their efforts to the establishment of world peace, economic justice, and ecological security based on just world law..."
Burlington was not the first "World City," -- that honor goes to Cahors in central France on July 7, 1949. Since that historic moment, more than 1000 cities and towns have declared themselves World Cities including Boston, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Toronto, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo, Nivelles, and Konigswinter. See list at https://worldservice.org/mundcity.html. Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundialization.
As soon as I finished, I was mobbed by people reaching for handouts of the resolution.
"We are already actual citizens of planet Earth at birth." I said to one and all. "So we have a right to claim it, and to govern it. But as long as we are kept locked behind these invisible lines called nations, we are artificially divided, and senselessly war against each other. But as soon as we recognize our common human sovereignty, and realize that we are all one, all citizens of planet Earth, we gain enormous power, the power of the sovereignty of the whole. Only then can true justice and democracy prevail.
"Thomas Jefferson and America's founders," I added, "argued that corporations need to be regulated for the public good. Just as good cells in the human body, vital for our growth and well being, turn cancerous when the mechanisms of regulation fail, so corporations, can become the source of our destruction, unless we find the human power to bring them into balance and proper regulation for the common good. Our only hope of bringing them into balance is for we, the people, to take responsibility for governing our world.
"It's one thing to militate about what we don't like," I concluded, "war, injustice, the failing economy, devastation of our environment--and hope someone else solves it for us. But we are the leaders we've been waiting for! We are the sovereigns, we, the people, are the ones who create governments."
I handed out the "I am a World Citizen" buttons. The kids especially love them. "Cool," they would say fastening them to their coats.
"At our web site," I added, "you'll learn how you can join with your fellow humans in taking back our planet, even to setting up our own World Court of Human Rights and more. You can even download its Statute and the apps for the human rights documents we issue."
Buckminster Fuller reminded us: "If you want to change anything, don't fight the existing reality; create a new reality and you render the existing reality obsolete..."
And Mahatma Gandhi wrote "Be the world you want," while Renaissance man Steve Jobs had boldly suggested: "Be the future you want."
"Occupy Wall Street"? OK, but it's high time for us to take the Big Leap to land on the political space beyond so-called national frontiers.
In fact, guess what, we, humanity, are already occupying it!
World Citizen Garry Davis and the "99%" Movement
"The best way to forecast the future
is to invent it."
-- Steve Jobs The late Steve Jobs lived, worked, designed and produced in the Here & Now. He did not march in crowds. To the contrary, he was alone when he invented the miraculous tools you and I use daily which amazingly unite us as one wherever and whoever we are throughout our one world. And by his inventions, he "created" the future in which we now live.
In short, he thought of himself as the "center" of the world which he � and hosts of sage humans in the past - accepted as one and without artificial divisions.
Realize that you also are not actually "in" the United States for it does not exist in reality. It is a political fiction created 224 years ago to cope with a largely pre-industrial agricultural world for 3 millions humans when the horse was the fastest means of transportation.
You and I here and now are members of a race living on the planet we call Earth. (Fellow members are circling it every hour-and-a-half at 17,000 mph.)
No human, therefore, in the 21st century, is "in" a nation-state. First technology, then electronics, then nuclear, and finally space have rendered nations obsolete. Their dysfunction was startlingly revealed as of 1914 when so-called world wars (between nations) erupted planet-wide.
Now, humanity itself faces nuclear annihilation through sheer ignorance of who we are as a species. In short, we cling anxiously to the very national deathtraps which can only promise omnicide.
Yet you, who have gathered in New York's Wall Street and indeed around the world are ironically demanding "justice" and "democracy" which, in politics terms, are called sovereign human rights sanctioned by the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, from the same nations which endorsed it unanimously December 10, 1948.
Therefore, you already "outrank" the politicians from which you are demanding justice. Buckminster Fuller wrote that ""You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
A world government of, by and for the citizens of the world was declared over 58 years ago mandated by over 750,000 citizens throughout the world and based on articles 21(3) and 28, UDHR. (See: www.worldservice.org)
Finally, the geo-dialectic codes of human society � identified historically as "the one and the many," or morally, "do unto others as you would they do unto you" has now reached the global level where the "One and the many" � i.e. the individual citizen allied dynamically with humanity - are united in time and space representing a historic "shift" in consciousness and in human society itself.
The result is finally world peace, world freedom and world abundance as Buckminster Fuller, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, etc predicted in their earthly lives.
Archive of Recent UPDATES:
CALLING ALL WORLD CITIZENS!
FRIDAY, JULY 1, 2011
WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?
IT'S ONE WORLD NOW!
Citizens in the streets of the world are crying out for "JUSTICE, HUMAN RIGHTS and DEMOCRACY."
Yet even when the old rulers fall, they've been replaced by the military or other rulers who just dish out more of the same -- oppression, bureaucracy, riches for the few, exploitation of nature, and money policy based on unsustainable growth, debt, and war. Why? Because such universal concepts as "Democracy" and "justice" cannot be realized in an 18th century, dysfunctional, war-dominated and artificial political entity called a "nation."
As long as we allow the old order to artificially divide us into nationalities, the true power of the people will never be realized. Humanity entered the 21st century with its survival in question. But humanity also entered this century with the knowledge and tools to make a successful "Crossover" to One World Now! Today, we must think and act as citizens of the world on behalf of all generations to follow. The only way we can truly claim our power is to move beyond protest and rebellion and become the creators and founders of a new way for we-the-people to run our small planet. We must choose a positive way to transcend the entire broken system of nation-states and ask the question, "How can we, as sovereign world citizens, govern our world?"
The first step has already been taken. In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted unanimously by the United Nations, stated "Everyone is entitled to a social and international order" which can protect human rights and freedoms. It called on "every individual" to take "progressive measures both national and international" to secure these rights.
Eleanor Roosevelt, the US delegate to the UN, went further and wrote "How very much better it would be if Mr. Davis would set up his own governmental organization and start then and there a worldwide international government..."
So, in 1953, with 750,000 people signed up as World Citizens, I declared the "World Government of World Citizens."
The new government established the World Service Authority (WSA) in Washington DC, as the microcosmic beginning of a new model for a people-powered world. It started by providing a service for individuals to identify themselves as world citizens by obtaining world ID's, Passports, Birth Certificates and other documents based on the UDHR. The declaration of Human Rights was the great gift of the 20th century to human governance.
Buckminster Fuller, design-science philosopher, wrote that "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." In 1993, inspired by the genius of Buckminster Fuller, cybernetician Stafford Beer, Commissioner of World Cybernetics (1987-1994) invented a protocol for self-organization and self-government of we, citizens of Earth. Its formal title is "The World Syntegrity Project." You can observe the results of the grassroots "Infoset" meetings from 14 cities on 4 continents--with over 500 volunteers "syntegrating" to answer the question: How can we, sovereign world citizens, govern our world? (See https://worldservice.org/syn.html.)
"Syntegration" is a transparent, proven method to unite our wills, both as individuals and together as members of a world community of fellow humans---much like a symphony orchestra is composed both of individual instrumentalists and functions as a whole at the same time.
The aim of the worldwide grassroots meetings was to provide subject matter for the eventual elaboration of a flexible, ongoing and dynamic "world constitution" wherein each and every citizen could play a vital and useful part.
With the digital one world technology, world citizen agreements, knowledge and actions are today already inter-connected in the frontierless "technosphere"�the planetary real-time knowledge-enriched collective intelligence commons of humanity. With satellites, we are experiencing the first waves of citizen-centered connectivity, and the World Syntegrity Project 4.0 offers world citizens a ready tool to go from unstructured NO to coherent YES. The basis of YES for humanity is already expressed and codified in the above-mentioned Universal Declaration of Human Rights. "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government." (Art 21[3], UDHR) Our agreement to think and act as a world citizen is expressed in the Statement of Allegiance (see appendix 1 or web-site registration form for world citizen registration).
The aim of WSP4.0 then is to provide a world governance space to enable world citizens to focus on and achieve specific Crossover actions based on the recognition of humanity and Planet Earth as sovereign.
When you meet in a "World Syntegrity" gathering, you are already in the "Global Commons" as world citizens seeking the agreements and actions that realize the challenges of the core question ([3]). When connected with the communication power of the 'one-world technosphere,' it unites those who "enter" OUR GLOBAL SPACE with all other world citizens who together acknowledge and affirm its legitimacy. The collective intelligence of humanity can thus be focused effectively to find and enact the Crossover actions that enable individuals-in-society to make it successfully to a viable 21st century future.
The totally democratic structure of the meetings in the geometric form of the icosahedron allows 30 individuals of diverse backgrounds, cultures and social status to join in a disciplined framework to arrive at a whole-system answer to the World Citizen Question: [4]
The protocol is available from WSP 4.0 for world citizen use. We are looking for co-researchers-in-action to build the continuous learning system that connects the syntegrity follow-throughs with other world citizens to enable coherent, transparent, sociocratic, simultaneous Crossover.
The results of the original 1993 "Infosets" were transferred daily to the WSA's site, www.worldservice.org for all the world to peruse. What became most striking from the first round of World Syntegrity Project "Infosets" was the similarity of concerns addressed in diverse parts of the world.[5][3] In many cases, infoset participants in far-flung locales arrived at nearly identical conclusions. Ecological preservation, multicultural diversity, drug legalization and economic responsibility were just a few of the issues addressed in common by the various infosets. This was in 1993�before the omni-presence of the World Wide Web. These same issues are now real-time, front-line news�20 years further along, and, mostly, 20 years further down the wrong road. The nuclear option, for one, is still ticking away on the national Armageddon clock.
Any group of world citizens are offered to use the WSP protocol within the terms of reference of the world government principles inherent in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Pledge of Allegiance.
Let us suppose that in Cairo, Alexandria, Tunis, Tripoli, Damascus, Tokyo, Baghdad, Jerusalem, Gaza City, Tehran, Baghdad, Riyadh, Jeddah, Geneva, Manchester, etc., etc., 30 people gathered for three days using the icosahedron as model to "play" the game, "Syntegration," generating answers to the prime question:
"How can we, sovereign world citizens living in world cities co-govern our way forward to a viable society/world partnership?"
WSP 4.0 will connect the answers, concepts, people and action, over the next 3 years to: make explicit, measured, forward movement on core societal needs/goals relating to the survival and benefit of humanity living in/travelling through our cities; locate the principles and policy agreements that make sense to align Crossover initiatives; seek global world citizen legitimization of these results; develop capacity and competence for citizen-centered societal governance; co-operate fully in enabling a successful Crossover of all our World Cities to a viable future; join other world citizens and create the outcomes that matter together.[6]
Article 19 of the UDHR, to which all Member-States of the UN are subject, provides that "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion..." while Article 20 provides that "Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association." The issue is one of sovereign right. Every national constitution with the exception of Saudi Arabia, provides that its original power derives from the people themselves.
As "World Citizen No. 1," I here (re)announce this updated world peace-affirming program. We are enjoining a citizen-centered world future to enable World Citizens, at all levels, to tackle the issues of human survival facing humanity. Having worked 60 years to articulate the principles, practices, and protocols of world citizenship, we are now re-activating the World Syntegrity Project to amplify and integrate the values of human sovereignty in transcending the nation state prisons we are all in.
We are already FREE and our POWER IS NOW!
All aboard Spaceship Earth!
Launching of WSP4.0 Crossover Facility. Resourcing Offer from World Syntegrity Project.
Each world citizen syntegration increases the value of all world citizen syntegrations. To establish the effectiveness and viability of the WSP in its Re-Activate phase (2012-2015), a resourcing schema is presented below. The start-up funding requires a Booster funding to achieve and sustain the Momentum required for effectiveness in the 21st century. That funding will evolve in a 3 year agreement with our key allies.
Foundation Stewards:
These are individuals/groups of individuals who identify themselves as world citizens and commit the funds necessary to implement the syntegrated agreements around a Core Crossover question that matters to them most. They participate in the Launch Event and make available the requisite resources for the 6 month follow-through to bridge the time between launch event and next resource infusion.
These will identify themselves on a case-to-case basis. We seek a launch fund of 480,000 euros to ensure the competence and capacity of our digital socio-infrastructure. For 2012.
Viable Future Investors.
These are individuals and organizations who will partner with world citizens to accomplish a priority Crossover. (e.g. FROM heavy TO light footprint; FROM fossilized infra-structures TO renewable infra-structures, etc.) They co-create the solution with a high-talent world citizen team and are entitled to claim a R * 0 * I * achievement in ROI currency[7]. We seek only partnerships with for profit organizations willing to take responsibility for their own organization�s Crossover mandate(s).
Problem-Holders.
The World Syntegrity Project is available to enable world citizens in world cities to make significant Shifts in their city-planet relationships. These problems, held by local governments, and addressed by local world citizens, provides feasible answers for citizen-centered responsibility in major Crossover issues. (e.g., migration; C02 reduction; disaster resilience, etc.) We invite urban leadership to use the world talent living in their city to integrate a citizen-centered whole planet element in their Crossover strategy.
Local Champions.
Six world citizens can host a World Syntegrity project. 30-42 people have the breadth of experience/influence and depth of commitment to liberate the social energy required to make rapid social-system Shifts. At the moment, we can only provide the quality service the ReStart Up of WSP 4.0 demands for a minimum market price of 30,000 euros. This is an extremely low service fee�for a protocol that cuts Start to Results time by more than 50%; delivers 30-40 high-agreement solutions; and is immediately eligible for significant large funding.
The lowly-resourced.
If you are six world citizens with a Common Quest of world citizenship, and have the involvement of the key people you want to succeed with, send us your question, the participants who have agreed to join in, and the place FROM which the six of you want to move TO the place you want to get to as world citizens in the coming 2-3 years. We're already seeking funding for you!
For further information, contact:
Garry Davis at worldlaw@globalnetisp.net
David Gallup at info@worldservice.org
David Beatty at: david@reflection-action.nl
=================================================================
APPENDIX
PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
I, the undersigned, do hereby, willingly and consciously, declare myself to be a Citizen of the World. As a World Citizen, I affirm my planetary civic commitment to WORLD GOVERNMENT, founded on three universal principles of One Absolute Value, One World, and One Humanity which constitute the basis of World Law. As a World Citizen I acknowledge the WORLD GOVERNMENT as having the right and duty to represent me in all that concerns the General Good of humankind and the Good of All. As a Citizen of World Government, I affirm my awareness of my inherent responsibilities and rights as a legitimate member of the total world community of all men, women, and children, and will endeavor to fulfill and practice these whenever and wherever the opportunity presents itself. As a Citizen of World Government, I recognize and reaffirm citizenship loyalties and responsibilities within the communal state, and/or national groupings consistent with the principles of unity above which constitute now my planetary civic commitment.
[1][1] If you want to see a prime example of 18th century thinking, read Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' statement of June 10th on the subject of NATO).
[2][2] "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." Buckminster Fuller
[3] The generic question is always: How can we as sovereign world citizens govern our world? The current 21st version of that question is: How can we, as world citizens living in (a large city..or a watershed.. or around an ocean...or...or...) ____________, Crossover FROM ______ national TO -global government in the shortest possible time without ecological offense of the disadvantage of anyone?
[4] "Crossover" signifies that the dimension of World is core to where we are moving as a species. WSP 4.0 focus for the next 3 years is to enable citizens of the world to make the specific, significant FROM-TO decisions relevant to their situation and its place in the World. All Crossover Questions include Planet as relevant recursion and all Coherent Sets are government-in-action experiments. WSP 4.0 is in a learning-in-action phase and is currently designing a Continuous Improvement Learning System for syntegrated world citizenry.
[5][3] See the Universal Declaration of Human Rights attached
[6] This, of course, has to be designed and implemented. Thus a Crossover Question: How can we, as sovereign world citizens, co-create a reciprocal value-exchange economy to accelerate successful Crossover to self-governing non-hierarchical systems of government on planet Earth? Each question comes out of the hosts of the event, a unique variation of our Earth generic question: How can we as sovereign world citizens govern (in) our world together? This question is asked in an area of application (e.g. Artic Ocean; particular country; World Tourism Association, etc.) and is open to others to join, co-create, co-own responsibilities and rewards, etc.
[7] R*O*I* is Release and Realization of Inspiration. It is measured in terms of the distance covered from the present outcomes of the system TO the whole system solutions located and leveraged in the opening event. Return-on-Investment indicates that there will be a share-holding structure which enables all participants (and sponsor) shareholders to convert their holdings back to national currency.
Memorial Day - The Yearly Camouflage
MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011(Doonesbury's strip yesterday pictured Ms Trudeau asking Gary in the first box "You marching in the parade tomorrow?" "I guess so," he replied. Then in the next cut, he added, "It's a bit demoralizing. Memorial Day is for remembering, but no one wants to be reminded we're still at war." )
Starting from World War II, while the number of dead has been totaled,[1] the number of veterans from the world's wars remains unknown. But as national wars continue uninhibited for lack of world laws to stop them, it is obviously growing. Moreover, with nuclear arms "on the table" for nine states, humanity's survival itself is in grave doubt.
I, for one, would gladly enlist my fellow veterans worldwide, we who did the killing on the "fields of glory," in a global police force mandated by a framework of world constitutional law-not the United Nations Charter-representing all citizens of the world.(See https://worldservice.org/sowg.html)
After all, as Trudeau suggests, if Memorial Day has any real meaning, the unanswered question of "Why war?" and its geodialectical corollary, "How peace?" must be equally honored and, indeed, practiced. Or, as the editorialists, mourning families and politicians of all levels like to profess, simplistically, "They will have died in vain." (Like my own elder brother, Bud).
Some relevant items re our world community from the New York Times: 5/29/11: Thomas Friedman: "...the Egyptian revolution is not over. It has left the dramatic street phase and is now in the seemingly boring but utterly vital phase of deciding who gets to write the rules for the new Egypt."
Tkmur Kuran, professor of political science, Duke: "The preconditions for democracy are lacking in the Arab world partly because Hosni Mabarak and other Arab dictators spent the last half-century emasculating the news media, suppressing intellectual inquiry, restricting artistic expression, banning political parties, and co-opting regional ethnic and religious organizations to silence dissenting voices."
Then Anthony Shadid's "Can Turkey Unify the Arabs?" "Even amidst the din of the upheaval in the Arab world, that new sense of belonging represents a more pacific and perhaps more powerful undertow pulling in direction that call into question more parochial notions."
"None of the borders of Turkey are natural," said Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, "Almost all of them are artificial. Of course we have to respect them as nation-states, but at the same time we have to understand that there are natural continuities."
"It's been almost 100 years that we've been separated by superficial borders, superficial cultures and religious borders, and now with the lifting of visas to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, we're lifting national boundaries," said Yusuf Yerkel, a young academic on Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's staff.
"Across the region, the Arab revolution has inspired a rethinking of identity, even as older notions of self hang like a specter over the revolts' success. In its most pristine, the revolution feels transnational, as demands for justice, freedom and dignity are expressed in a technology-driven globalism." Young people don't buy into this idea of a clash, and they don't buy into this idea of fixed identity. They know how to negociate these so-called polar opposites, and they�re looking for something new."
Still not a word about war's elimination via global government buttressed by fundamental human rights.
Then in the mail was Ted Turner's United Nations Foundation "Spring 2011" newsletter. President Timothy E. Wirth letter announces that "we are working with the UN and our partners to address the world's toughest challenges with 21st-century solutions." And what are the "world�s toughest challenges"? Well, "to promote democracy, protect human rights and deliver humanitarian aid using new and creative approaches."
"To accomplish these goals," he writes, "we need a strong U.S.-UN partnership." (As Eleanor Roosevelt herself, the US delegate to the UN, told this writer, 63 years ago, the UN is only a "bunch of nation-states and has no power in itself to do anything except talk").
Further down the page, he mentions "the programs underway to help women and children lead healthy lives, to combat climate and to empower the next generation of global leaders." No mention of war being eliminated via world law and government or the nuclear danger but on the contrary, "that the UN is making our world a better place for every one of us..." and "that a strong UN is critical." (75 wars, big and small, have been fought since 1945 when the UN was formed. See https://worldservice.org/posipapr.html; "Position Paper, The United Nations vs. World Government").
However, happily, on p. 7, we read of a "Program Inspires Future Leaders" called UNA-USA Global Classrooms." "On Feb. 5, more that 700 students from 41 New York-area schools had the unique opportunity to debate and propose solutions to pressing international issues at the Global Classrooms." Sharon Shambourger of Life Sciences Secondary School in Manhattan, a model UN advisor for seven years "has attended more than a dozen Global Classrooms conferences and "watched students mature from rather school/neighborhood-oriented, to truly global citizens." (WSA will send them application forms for the World Passport).
I attended a historic "Meeting of the Elders" on May 8-9 at the Menla Mountain Retreat & Conference Center in the Catskills, NY. The notice announcing the reunion proposed that "The Elders will reflect upon how, through their ancient wisdom, they can help bring about a deeper understanding of the original instructions that constitute the key to preserving this sacred balance. Numerous indigenous cultures of the Western hemisphere have kept alive a prophecy that foretold how native peoples will come together and reunite as one, known as the prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor. In the South, Center and North, many native peoples share its foretelling about balance and harmony, and about how intellect and spirituality should come together as one. Our Elders tell us that we will unite and get our strength back like many arrows that will not be broken. They remember the history to keep the fire alive. We have to come together to be one, to have complete understanding."
From Columbia came the Kogui, the Wiwa and the Arhuaco; from North America, the Hopis, Algonquin, Havasupai, Tewa of the Colorado River Tribes, Southern Ute, Navajo, Shoshone, members of the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers, Havassupai, Tewa, and Bear Clan Mothers.
At the close of the meeting on Sunday evening, after humbly requesting permission of the Mames to address the Elders, I was permitted as a "World Citizen" and "indigenous to planet Earth" to do so. I was deeply honored.[2]
[1] 160,000,000 war dead in the 20th century: Wikipedia[2] When 16 year's old, at Kennebec summer camp in Maine, I became "blood brother" of a Passamaquady (Abenaki nation) chief at a traditional camp fire ceremony.
WSA P R E S S R E L E A S E
FOR GENERAL RELEASE
2/21/2011
Contact: David Gallup, 202-638-2662
CITIZENS OF THE WORLD, SYNTEGRATE!!!!
WASHINGTON, DC -- A new "Syntegration" process is being developed to offer a viable way for citizens to have a direct say in running our world. Around the world people are rebelling against despotic governments which grow out of an increasingly dysfunctional national system That system artificially divides humans living on the planet, and allows despots to oppress them in the name of national security.
"The nonviolent revolutions sweeping forth from Egypt, the cradle of civilization, show that people are sick and tired of the status quo. People know what they don't want," said Garry Davis, founder of the World Service Authority (WSA). "but what is the alternative? How can that disaffection be harnessed to bring a more democratic, prosperous and peaceful future? The first step is to have a vision, a model for a better way to run our world. How can we, the people, run an increasingly complex and diverse world in a way that protects our freedom, sovereignty and the safety and well-being of our precious planet?
To answer this question, Davis's WSA engaged the world-renowned cybernetician Stafford Beer, to design a process based on Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome structure, which "releases group creativity and synergy while at the same time permitting participants to maintain individual integrity."
That revolutionary decision-making process he called "Syntegration."
Launched in July 1993 by the World Service Authority, in 30 cities throughout the world, as the World Syntegrity Project, the prime question posed was "How can we, sovereign world citizens, govern our world?"
The resulting answers were transmitted worldwide via the internet. (See https://worldservice.org/syn/htlm).
The present coordinator of WSA's World Syntegrity Commission, Dr. David Beatty, claims that "All human societies and their environments are rapidly moving into a state change in climate, one that requires radically different ways of living together on our Home Planet. These Shifts require new ways of governing our relationships, our economies, our very identities as humans. And fast!" He adds that "The recent global financial crises reveals the inability of nation states and international financial organizations (e.g IMF, World Bank,) to redesign these premises. The dysfunctions of the national systems set in place over the last 200 years are increasingly evident."
The current events witnessed by viewers throughout the world of riots in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, Jordan , Iran, etc. against despotic regimes, represent a historic "shift" in consciousness of people, especially young, desperate for change based on human rights.
Presently controlled by wealth and bureaucracy, the nation state structure cannot handle the One World dynamics of climate change. The failure of the major national leaders to reach agreement in Copenhagen and the continuing non-commitment of the major polluting nations to change their policies are glaring examples .
According to Beatty, the fossil-fueled infrastructures and lifestyles of the Western nations are no longer viable designs for humans or the biosphere our lives depend on: food systems, water systems, energy availability, and bio-diversity. "Are all in 'red-alert' status" he claims, "and in combination with sudden and long-lasting climate changes undermining the premises on which modern civilizations are built."
"Economies built on growth, debt, and money as-a commodity" he adds, "generate wealth for a few and destitution and debt for the many. When we don't deal with these faulty foundations, social pressures increase, resulting in conflicts, millions of refugees, and collapsing civic society."
In short, we have to step up our basic civicism to a planetary level or face further dissolution. However, one of the few roads forward is that of the world citizen movements. The World Service Authority, founded by World Citizen Garry Davis, in 1954, following the registration of over 750,000 individuals in over 100 countries, has been responding to the needs of sovereign world citizens, creating frameworks for law, partnerships, supports-based on the Declaration of Human Rights. The World Syntegrity Project is now being revived by WSA under the direction of Dr. Beatty's World Syntegration Commission to advance its solution to the desperate demand for both "freedom" and "democracy" for billions of humans on the planet.
A "TOPDOWN" & "BOTTOM UP" WORLD
By Garry Davis
January 1, 2011
Among the myriad problems facing our human race and indeed each one of us as we turn the yearly clock is that of "ownership" of the planet itself on which we all live. In short, the major issue on which most minor issues are based is territory![1]
Where all action takes place: local and global. Or relative and total.
But whose territory is it, the nations' or humanity's? OR EACH CITIZEN'S? Without territory, there is no such species as humanity or political entity as a nation or you and me as individual humans not to mention every other living "being" on planet Earth. But if we consider that only nations "own" the planetary turf, then we, humanity are doomed. And deserve it just like the struggling silkworm in a suffocating cocoon neglects to break out into the clean and limitless air.
But we humans better claim it NOW before some brain-warped "cocoon-leader" pushes the BUTTON! and BOOM! There goes the territory...ours! Planeterally-speaking.
The metamorphasizing of citizenship before the national doomsday machine implodes alone can justify our human existence on this home planet.
Besides, now we're legally on world territory! The International Criminal Court's [ICC] Statute cites "enemies of humanity" for indictment. Consider the implication. What heretofore was only a fact (humanity) is now a recognized element of global jurisprudence! (If an international criminal court can claim in its Statute the existence of humanity, it has legitimized it!) Humanity, however, is defined as "all human beings collectively."[2]
And we, you and I, are charter members of humanity, are we not?[3]
So, already a de facto human being, now you and I have become de juris humans!
But we, as individuals, must claim it! That is, bond civically to our humanity, our species as we are already bonded generically. And we do that simply by exercising the fundamental right of political choice[4] by claiming world citizenship as an addition to our lower levels of citizenship down to the city or town we live in locally.
And guess what! You've just made a "global civic contract of world peace" with every other human who has made the same claim![5]
This then joins together in a true social pact both "bottom up" and "top down" unity.
All nations, of course, claim an exclusive part of world territory. But that claim is not only fictional but illegitimate condoning and perpetuating a condition of anarchy between them.
Result: war, the latest being a lawless condition called "terrorism" unwinnable and eventually destructive of all social codes leading to totalitarianism.[6]
Think back to 1789, for instance, when the United States government was formed. Its founders also claimed a part of the world territory naming it "The United States of America." The actual land, however, was still "sovereign world territory" but now partly circumscribed by United States law, deemed "exclusive" of the rest of the world's territory and "owned" by the newly-endowed "United States citizens." In that pre-industrial, pre-electronic, pre-nuclear and pre-space world in which the horse was the fastest mode of transportation, when 98% of the population were farmers, "territory" was relative to both local and national needs, views and loyalties yet while certain sages like Tom Paine claimed that "My country is the world."
"Top down" allegiance stopped at the nation's shoreline or other man-made national frontiers up to the 20th century.
But now in this 21st century coming up to its 11th year, with THE BOMB ticking away over our collective heads, with open space reaching the stars also over our collective heads now populated in the speeding airbus circling the planet every hour and a half, "Top down" government is survival-relevant for humanity itself.
Because that's where you and I live. (one single world territory) -- minus fictional national (18th, 19th and 20th century) frontiers.
(If you have trouble with the word "fiction," just think about the universality of nature and problems like "global warming," Carl Sagan's "nuclear winter" and solar power promoted by Buckminster Fuller as unlimited untaxable energy.[7]
Moreover humanity is sovereign. It obviously has political choice. But who speaks for it? Answer: you and me...as humans with a voice...and global awareness.
Now do you understand why, if you want to live through this and the next few years, you MUST I.D. yourself as a "citizen of humanity," i.e. a "world citizen" (probably the most ancient idea in the history books).[8]
It's no big deal. Socrates claimed it. Erasmus claimed it. H.G.Wells, Mahatma Gandhi, Charlie Chaplin, Martin Luther King, etc., even F.D.R, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama claimed it. Choosing your political allegiance is the essence of fundamental human rights. All the UN member nations have already sanctioned that choice via the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, etc."
And all human beings are living on world territory! (Look down once in a while to check).
So what are you waiting for? Fear? Ignorance? Don't know how?
Today, over 1,000 towns and cities throughout the world have "mundialized," that is, declared that they exist on "sovereign world territory," and that their citizens are legal world citizens as well as citizens of their local constituencies. The first town was Cahors, France in July, 1949.[9] Indeed many cities in the United States--the first being Richfield, Ohio, followed by Akron, Oberlin, Boston, Amherst, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Kansas City, etc.--as well as Burlington, VT, next door, have likewise "mundialized" since 1949. (See the list at www.worldservice.org/mundcity.html).
Millions of us have already claimed it. ("Bottom up" authority). And we have official documents to prove it: World Citizen cards, World Passports, World I.D. Cards. The lot.[10]
The fateful and decisive moment has come with the advent of a new year to make the evolutionary leap, the "metathesizing" transformation from the "cocoon" of 18th 19th and 20th century, dysfunctional nationalism to the freedom of world space surrounding the planetary soil to and on which we all have arrived at birth.
You don't have to be a prophet or a sage to understand this demonstrable if challenging truth. Every child over ten sitting at a computer going "online" knows it's one world and he/she is a functioning part of it. Every mother no matter where, what skin color or religion knows with the miracle of birth the truth of the one human family of which she is a sacred source and preserver.
Every aware human.
So, it's time to practice "Bottom Up with Top Down" political thinking.
Two final thoughts: We humans are both conceptually and perceptually endowed. We evaluate metaphysically while functioning physically. The first is identified by such qualities as "spirit," "understanding," "wisdom," "reason," "love," "fairness," "justice," "kindness," and the like. The second is identified by "DNA," "species," "physical," "organic," "biological," "earthly," "systemic" and the like. The universal code identifying all social intercourse is the dynamic relationship between the one and the many. "Do unto others, etc." is a "code" of social behavior. "E pluribus unum," "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite," In short, the "geo-dialectic" of human activity wherever and whenever humans congregate.[11]
Viewed "vertically," (or ontologically) the oneness of the human species is self-evident (as seen from the Space Station, for instance.) Viewed "horizontally," (or teleologically) the "we-they" aspect dominates "dividing" humans culturally, socially and civically.
World law then combines both the vertical and horizontal (ontological and teleological) aspects of human civilization. Our political thinking therefore must encompass both methods. Example: the mayor of a city represents the total civic population as a whole yet must also represent each citizen within the code of civic justice and personal responsibility. The code word then for world law is a "meta" politics deemed "systemic."[12]
A new and revolutionary technique of communication and problem-solving utilizing both "bottom up and top down" thinking combined with the frontierless medium of cyberspace, thanks to the internet, known as "syntegration" was inaugurated in 1993. Based on Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome structure[13] and reconfigured by the eminent cybernetician Stafford Beer as a dynamic tool for humans to reach valid and reasoned solutions to complex problems, the "Syntegrity Project" was then created, tested and practiced by 30 teams throughout the world in answer to the single question: "How can we, as sovereign world citizens, govern our world?"[14]
This coming year and 2012 promises to be one of joyful global coherence and fulfillment given such programs as "mundialisation" combined with "the Syntegrity Project" where in both "Top down and bottom up" thinking and participation allied with the ongoing and power-oriented identification of world citizenship[15] for the general world public join "not to fight the existing reality" as Buckminster Fuller sagely advised, but to "create a new model to render the old model obsolete."
We are "the new model," "bottom" and "top" linked gloriously together, and looking outward every night at the ever-expectant heavens.
________________________________________
[1] "5. A field or sphere of action, thought, etc." Webster's College Dictionary, 1991
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court
[3] "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights..." Article 1, Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
[4] "Everyone has the right to a nationality and everyone has the right to change his nationality," Article 15[2], Universal Declaration of Human Rights
[5] See www.worldpeaceisyou.com
[6] War Is A Crime, David Swanson, 1969
[7] "Big government can see no way to collect taxes to run its bureaucracy if people are served directly and individually by daily cosmic-energy-wealth income. Money-makers cannot find a way of putting meters between people and the wind, Sun, waves, etc." (Critical Path, p. 219, St. Martin's Press, 1981)
[8] World Citizenship and Government, Derek Heater, (St.Martin's Press, 1996)
[9] See http://www.mairie-cahors.fr/actualite/BAT_LIVRET_MUNDI%20BD.pdf
[10] See www.worldservice.org
[11] See www.worldservice.org/memor.html
[12] "Our so-called 'contemporary' political systems are copied from models invented before the advent of the factory system...They were designed in an intellectual world that is almost unimaginable -- a world that was pre-Marx, pre-Darwin, pre-Freud and pre-Einstein." The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler, Bantam Edition, p. 414
[13] Icosahedron
[14] See www.worldservice.org/syn.html
[15] A documentary and feature film on world citizenship is projected this year to "change the story." See www.OneFilms.com
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Changing Lives One Smile at a Time -- A Global Peacemaking Mission
By Garry Davis
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Want to make a child smile? Anytime and Everywhere? One who was born unable to do so since birth? A child barely able to swallow, who often has to wear a paper bag over his/her tiny face to hide an ugly cleft lip; a child whose mother cried for days after birth, humiliated, bitter and aggrieved that her baby was so malformed? A child who would not go to school for fear of being humiliated and scorned by fellow students? A child who would never marry? Who could die before her/his first birthday? (1 in 10 children born with a cleft condition!)
Also want to make the mother and father, and yourself so happy that joyful and grateful tears are shed by one and all when the nurse brings the infant back from a mere 45 minute operation repairing the pre-birth damage and the parents first look at that sweet whole face, for the first time smiling back? Grateful tears unite all witnesses to this daily blessing.
Operation Smile has been on what can only be called a "world citizen's children mission" since 1982. I just viewed its hour-long video showing the "before-and-after" result of the amazing and delicate work on each child's horribly disfigured face by the team of dedicated medical volunteers. My own eyes were also full of tears as I watched the mothers and fathers gaze with amazement and joy at the beautiful new face of their drowsy child. One father remarked tearfully that it was as if the child had just been born anew.
Operation Smile "operates in more than 60 countries worldwide," according to Kathy Magee, its CEO, "to provide quality surgical care and give new smiles for children suffering from facial deformities." Millions have already benefited from this humanitarian operation which costs a mere $240 and takes but 45 minutes.
But millions still wait in hope and anguish outside the small clinics in poor countries, babies in their mother�s arms with fathers standing patiently by their side.
"Children are probably the only 'language' that all of us have in common throughout the world, " said Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia at a recent dedication ceremony of a new center attended by physicians and leaders from over 40 countries. "The combination of medicine and children, I really believe," he added, "has the ability to unite nations and people."
I write the day before the mid-term elections in the United States. Considering the billions of dollars being spent uselessly on TV ads throughout this seemingly endless marathon with its total irrelevance to global problems� the ongoing nuclear threat, the debilitating national armament race, the worldwide economic meltdown of national currencies, the ever-disappearing glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctic, the debilitating poverty of one-third of humanity�the news of children and their parents being made happy and useful throughout our global village seemed to me to be an eminently worthwhile and timely topic-as well as a meaningful anti-dote.
I would even suggest that aid from one or two of the billionaires cited by Forbes, whose total worth exceeds $3 trillion, would immeasurably help expand Operation Smiles's humanitarian work in the name of the world's innocent children who know no frontiers other than the common despair of their present disfigurement, which, one might say, is symbolic of the adult world's social and political disharmony leading possibly to the elimination of all human faces. (It's worth noting that 78 of the billionaires are women seven of whom are "self-made").
The most recent billionaire closest in age (23) to the children themselves, however, is, coincidentally and mayhap, fortuitiously, founder of the fast-growing social-networking site, Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg with $1.5b.
Given Facebook's philosophy and ingenious process of "joining" people face-to-face worldwide a la internet (including yours truly), a perfect compliment of what Operation Smile is accomplishing one-by-one with children's faces, linking each in a worldwide common bond of new-found joy and usefulness, Mark Zuckerberg, to this writer's mind, becomes a most logical benefactor to help advance this critical work in the name of a nascent humanity to which both the children and the Facebook "constituency" may enjoy life in happy global togetherness.[1]
How about it, Mark?
________________________________________
[1] Convention on the Rights of the Child: (excerpts)
Preamble
The States Parties to the present Convention,
Recalling that, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations has proclaimed that childhood is entitled to special care and assistance,
Convinced that the family, as the fundamental group of society and the natural environment for the growth and well-being of all its members and particularly children, should be afforded the necessary protection and assistance so that it can fully assume its responsibilities within the community,
Recognizing that the child, for the full and harmonious development of his or her personality, should grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding,
Bearing in mind that the need to extend particular care to the child has been stated in the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child of 1924 and in the Declaration of the Rights of the Child adopted by the General Assembly on 20 November 1959 and recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (in particular in articles 23 and 24), in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (in particular in article 10) and in the statutes and relevant instruments of specialized agencies and international organizations concerned with the welfare of children,
Have agreed as follows:
Article 23
1. States Parties recognize that a mentally or physically disabled child should enjoy a full and decent life, in conditions which ensure dignity, promote self-reliance and facilitate the child's active participation in the community.
2. States Parties recognize the right of the disabled child to special care and shall encourage and ensure the extension, subject to available resources, to the eligible child and those responsible for his or her care, of assistance for which application is made and which is appropriate to the child's condition and to the circumstances of the parents or others caring for the child.
3. Recognizing the special needs of a disabled child, assistance extended in accordance with paragraph 2 of the present article shall be provided free of charge, whenever possible, taking into account the financial resources of the parents or others caring for the child, and shall be designed to ensure that the disabled child has effective access to and receives education, training, health care services, rehabilitation services, preparation for employment and recreation opportunities in a manner conducive to the child's achieving the fullest possible social integration and individual development, including his or her cultural and spiritual development
Article 24
1. States Parties recognize the right of the child to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health and to facilities for the treatment of illness and rehabilitation of health. States Parties shall strive to ensure that no child is deprived of his or her right of access to such health care services.
2. States Parties shall pursue full implementation of this right and, in particular, shall take appropriate measures:
(a) To diminish infant and child mortality;
(b) To ensure the provision of necessary medical assistance and health care to all children with emphasis on the development of primary health care;
(d) To ensure appropriate pre-natal and post-natal health care for mothers;
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2007 New Year's Message
Sovereign Humanity Is In Mortal Danger!
from Garry Davis
"We stand at the brink of a second nuclear age. Not since the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has the world faced such perilous choices... (t)he failure to adequately secure nuclear materials, and the continued presence of some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia are symptomatic of a larger failure to solve the problems posed by the most destructive technology on Earth." --Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
On January 18, 2007, the "Doomsday Clock" of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists was reset from 7 minutes to 5 minutes from the fatal hour of midnight: humanity's untimely extinction.
Eight heads of state possess nuclear weaponry as an alleged "defensive deterrent" in a politically anarchic world.
Einstein in 1945 warned us that the nuclear device is not a war weapon because, unlike a missile or bullet, its destructive power is "indiscriminate." In short, it is a killer of society itself, the very physical and temporal environment of human life. Only a world government, he concluded, could outlaw it and save humanity. Einstein also reminded us that "Imagination is more important than intelligence."
On November 22, 1948, 3 years after the end of WWII, we World Citizens interrupted a United Nations' General Assembly session in Paris "in the name of the people not represented here." We told the delegates "the sovereign states you represent divide us and lead us to the abyss of total war." And that "our common need for world law and order can no longer be disregarded." If the UN failed us in this critical task, we said, "Stand aside, for a People's World Assembly, will arise from our own ranks to create such a government."
History is replete with the concept of a governed world and world citizenship. But today we live in the first age when humanity itself is threatened.
What do we mean by "humanity"? Is it a conscious being? Can it think? Does it feel?
Would you or I die for it as national soldiers willingly die for their "nation" and as national presidents and supreme court judges pledge to defend their national constitutions "against all enemies, foreign and domestic"?
Can humanity, by itself, appeal to its constituent parts. . .us, as individuals, for its survival?
Or must each one of us, conscious of our dynamic relationship to it, speak AND act for humanity in our waking life? Finally are not we as individuals expendable whereas humanity obviously is not?
So the ultimate question comes down to: Is humanity our "collective human consciousness?"
Indeed, if consciousness is already global, then simply being human is to be global from birth. An actual "citizen of the world."
Humanity then must be a conscious global "government"! The so-called "brains" of Gaia, the living Earth to which we, as humans, already owe our primal allegiance.
Indeed Einstein's very last words were: "We appeal as human beings to human beings; Remember your humanity, and forget the rest."
Horace Mann, the great educator asked: "What have you done for humanity today?"
Abolitionist Charles Sumner stated that "The age of chivalry has gone; the age of humanity has come."
Transcendentalist Theodore Parker went further: "Humanity is the Son of God."
While Teilhard de Chardin wrote that "The 'noosphere,' was "a global net of self-awareness, instantaneous feedback, and planetary communication..."
And Nataraja Guru, in his epic Memorandum on World Government claimed : "Humanity is one."
That's the mental quantum leap and activist command for 2007! That in fact--and this is the crucial point--humanity is already a biological and conceptual "World Government."
Primal human allegiance to a conscious humanity then is the absolute wisdom criterion for human survival. Not "democracy" or "success" in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, the "Middle East" or whatever aggression and militarism by any nation-state anywhere on the planet.
But "Success" by, for and of the people of the world for whom planet Earth is home.
Faithful to our 1948 pledge to the UN General Assembly, and the world's people, as citizenship and government are corollaries, --Emery Reves claimed in 1945: "There is no first step to world government; world government is the first step."(1) --we World Citizens declared our global government in 1953 which has been operating for over half a century. The World Government of World Citizens then is the institutional down-to-earth verification of humanity's "world government."(2)
"Because we can be served by nothing less."(3)
(1) Anatomy of Peace, Harper & Brothers, 1945
(2) Its 4th Edition World Passport is now available with information on a CD-Rom disc distributed to all Member-States of the United Nations (See the Catalogue at www.worldservice.org/cat.html.)
(3) The Oran Declaration (See My Country Is the World, www.worldservice.org/cat.html)
Note: The World Coordinator has addressed a complete documentation on the World Government of World Citizens to the following heads of state:
1. Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, Iraq 12/5/06
2. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Israel 12/5/06 Acknowledged
3. President George W. Bush, USA 12/5/06
4. President Hu Jintao, China 12/4/06 Acknowledged
5. President Jacques Chirac, France 12/4/06 Acknowledged
6. President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Iran 12/4/06
7. King Abdullah II, Jordan 12/5/06
8. President Emile Lahoud, Lebanon 12/5/06 Acknowledged
9. President Vladimir Putin, Russia 12/5/06
10. King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia 12/5/06
11. President Bashar al-Assad, Syria 12/4/06
12. Queen Elizabeth II, United Kingdom 12/4/06
13. President Hosni Mubarrak, Egypt 12/5/06
14. President Roh Moo-hyun, South Korea 12/4/06 Acknowledged
The rest will follow.
Injunction against Nuclear Weapons Heads of State
Letter to Heads of State and Press ReleaseMay 1, 2006
To Presidents and Prime Ministers
George W. Bush, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Ehud Olmert, Pervez Musharraf, Abdul Kalam, Hu Jintao, Kim Jong Il
Conscious of my rights and responsibilities as a member of the total world community, I cannot standby while governments pursue a policy of nuclear attack regardless of the seeming justifications they may devise. Such an attack is not only criminal under international law, but morally and biologically indefensible. Nuclear Weapons are weapons of mass destruction. They are indiscriminately destructive and they poison our atmosphere, causing deaths around the world for many thousands of years. They threaten the very existence of humanity. Prevention of such an attack and eliminating the threat and capability to launch nuclear war is therefore a necessary requirement for the safety and wellbeing of the human community, as well as for its environment on planet Earth. Due to your publicly-declared nuclear policies which threaten humanity, the undersigned, as a stateless World Citizen and as a representative of a global constituency of sovereign citizens, will seek your indictment as individuals for the following crimes under the statutes of the International Criminal Court at The Hague:
(a) The crime of genocide;
(b) Crimes against humanity;
(c) War crimes.
The indictment's Table of Authorities will include, inter alia:
- the St. Petersburg Declaration, 1868;
- the Hague Convention, 1899;
- the IVth Hague Convention, 1907;
- the Aristide Briand Pact, 1909;
- the Kellogg-Briand Pact, 1928;
- the Nuremberg Principles, 1945;
- the United Nations Charter, 1945;
- the Tokyo Charter, 1947;
- the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948;
- the World Health Organization Constitution, 1948;
- the Covention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948;
- the Geneva Convention, 1949;
- UN Resolution 16653 (XV), Nov. 24, 1961;
- the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966;
- the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966;
- UN Resolution 33/71, Dec. 12, 1980;
- the Rights of the Child Convention; 1989
Included in the injunction will be a mandamus for total disarmament of all nuclear weaponry and facilities as well as damages which would be assigned to social needs of the human community along with protection of the global environment. Article 27 of the Statue of the ICC � "Irrelevance of official capacity" - codifies the legal fact, which has been part of the body of international law since 1950, that "...as a Head of State or Government. . .a member of a Government or parliament. . .shall in no case exempt a person from criminal responsibility under this Statute. . ." In short, you enjoy no personal "immunity" from international legal indictment as individual heads of state.
The Preamble and Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights furthermore mandate that global law and its institutions outlaw war itself throughout the world. Such evolution in the application of law is essential for the safety and well-being of the human community as well as its environment on planet Earth.
Yours sincerely,
Garry Davis
Enclosures:
Writ of Certiorari: SC-81-428 Brief filed March 15, 1985; ICJ: Davis v. Reagan and Gorbachev Dissenting Opinion; W.H.O. (ICJ), 1994: Associate Justice C.G. Weeranamtry
Cc: Kofi Annan, Secretary-General, United Nations; World Judicial Commission, WGWC; Heads of State; World citizenry
PRESS RELEASE
World Citizen Garry Davis to file injunction suit citing 9 nuclear heads of state as "war criminals" in International Criminal Court
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Former B-17 bomber pilot and founder of the World Government of World Citizens, stateless World Citizen Garry Davis (84) will personally file in the International Criminal Court in The Hague an injunction against Presidents and Prime Ministers George W. Bush, Vladimir V. Putin, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Ehud Olmert, Pervez Musharraf, Abdul Kalam, Hu Jintao and Kim Jong Il for their overt nuclear policies which he claims criminally threaten humankind.
In a letter dated May 1 to the nine national leaders, Davis claimed that "In view of the 'indiscriminate destructive' capacity of nuclear weaponry as well as the generational effects which will continue to kill over time, we humans, conscious of our rights and responsibilities as members of the total world community, cannot allow a policy of nuclear attack by whatever seeming justification of states. Such an attack is not only criminal in terms of international law, but morally and biologically indefensible. Prevention of such an attack, therefore, is imperative." He noted that the Nuremberg Principles "in legal fact, since 1950 part of the body of international law, thereby nullify your personal 'immunity' from international legal indictment as individual heads of state. . ." and that "the outlawing and total elimination of all nuclear arsenals are implicit for the safety and well-being of the human community as well as its environment on planet Earth."
In his letter, he listed the Table of Authorities his brief will utilize to buttress the indictment: - St. Petersburg Declaration, 1868; - the Hague Convention, 1899; - the IVth Hague Convention, 1907; - the Aristide Briand Pact, 1909; - the Kellogg-Briand Pact, 1928; - the Nuremberg Principles, 1945; - the United Nations Charter, 1945; - the Tokyo Charter, 1947; - the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948; - the World Health Organization Constitution, 1948; - the Covention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948; - the Geneva Convention, 1949; - the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966; - the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966; - the Rights of the Child Convention, 1989.
A team of international lawyers headed by Dr. Francis Boyle, professor of international law at Illinois University Law School, and Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights are assisting in preparing the brief.
Davis is not new to this legal process. As a stateless person, on August 28 1981, he submitted a writ of certiorari* to the U.S. Supreme Court which presented the case for world citizenship via the 9th and 10th amendments of the US constitution. When denied by the high court, he filed a Petitition for Rehearing in October, 1981 which claimed that the 9th amendment provided the only "legal remedy" for the citizenry to countervale the discretionary powers of the US president when acting as Commander-in-chief.** This too was denied.
His next attempt at building a case against war and for world citizenship was on March 15, 1985 filed with the International Court of Justice in which he cited Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev as "war criminals"*** under the Nuremberg Principles. He was denied "standing" at this UN-mandated court.
The International Criminal Court, founded in 2002 by the Rome Statute, adopted July 17 1998 and ratified by the 60th state on 11 April 2002, opened its legal doors on 1 July 2002 at The Hague. Its Statute granted the court authority to try national citizens for "crimes aganst humanity," "war crimes," and "crimes against peace" defined by the Nuremberg Principles of 1945. As of March 2005 98 countries have ratified or acceded to the ICC Statute.
Neither the United States nor Israel have ratified the ICC's Statute. However, Art. 17 denies admissability of a case if "(d) The case is not of sufficient gravity to justify further action by the Court."
Support against the nuclear policies of the nine states is worldwide and growing as threats against Iran by the Bush Administration for its avowed nuclear policy have become daily headlines. The world of physicists and scientists in general has grown exponentially in recent years in particular following George W. Bush's Nuclear Posture Review policy of pre-emptive and first-strike nuclear attack against so-called "rogue" states. Over 300 physicists, including 9 Nobel Prize Laureates (appended) have signed petitions condemning the nuclear policies of whatever state. (See letters attached to Senator Dianne Feinstein and George W. Bush signed by 10 members of the US Senate. )
*See www.worldservice.org/petition.html;
**See www.worldservice.org/scpetitn.html;
*** See www.worldservice.org/intcourt.html
Who Represents World Citizens?
2006 Message to World Citizens from World Coordinator
Copyright (c) 2006 by Garry Davis
In politics, the nation-state insidiously controls not only the dialogue but also the electoral process.
Note for instance the platforms of the recent United States candidates for president. Neither advocated a world constitution to outlaw war. Quite the contrary, both John Kerry and George W. Bush were for an increased military budget and the updated version of Reagan's "Star Wars," while the Pentagon continually strives to "master" space above all our heads.
Neither candidate endorsed a government beyond the nation to deal with environmental devastation despite the overwhelming dangers the human race itself faces due to global warming, ocean pollution, ozone layer depletion, rain forests burning and species, both plant and animal extermination. It is as if both they and the U.S. voters lived on another planet. But worse, the general public's loyalty to this national political illusion blinds it to the solution of humanity's ills taken together, i.e. world law based on human rights. Small wonder that less than 50% of the U.S. public votes in presidential elections.
The primal question national voters should ask: Can Bush, Blair, Chirac, Barmak, Putin, Khatami, Mubarak, Kirchner, de Silva, Lagos, Chen Shui-bian, Schuessel, Verhofstadt, Paccheco, Klaus, Rasmussen, Gonzales, Koehler, Papoulias, Kalam, Katzav, Talabani, Yudhoyono, Ciampl, McAleese, Koizumi, Abdallah II, Sirajuddin, Al-Qadhafi, Fox, Clark, Balkenende, Obasanjo, Stoltenberg, Musharraf, Macapagal-Arroyo, Kaczynski, Sampaio, Abdallah Al Saud, Mbeki, Juan Carlos, Gustaf, Leuenberger, Bashar al-Asad, Sezer, Khalifa, Chavez, Mauh, Wanawasa, et al, address much less resolve world problems-- your problems --as heads of state? In short, are we humans politically represented on the level where our own and humanity's problems reside?
The question answers itself.
Moreover all national leaders, while sanctimoniously maintaining their own mandate as executors of exclusive law, confess their impotence on the global level. The contradiction is blatant and transparent.
As Heads of State they are only constitutionally sanctioned to preserve the existence of their particular fictional states and not the state of the world in which they and their co-citizens live in reality.
Then why do we, the innocent victims of state domination, continually look to them in their never-ending meetings for solution? Are we not sheep being led to the slaughter all the while wondering who to elect as the next "butcher?"
What is lacking here?
In every other field but politics, individuals operate globally: the post-office, telephone and television being prime examples. Today, the Internet is coming along as a fast fourth.
The world's so-called peace movement lacks global political representation!
Why are "peace" groups all talking only to themselves? What are the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates doing about eliminating war-making...about creating the legal conditions of peace? And the former nuclear scientists? And the former generals and admirals and Peace Corps workers? And the philosophers, poets, gurus, and sages?
How is it that the arms race continues unabated while people starve? How is it that we can communicate with one another instantaneously worldwide and cannot travel without the absurdity of national passports and visas? How is it that all national leaders talk, talk, talk about human rights and yet they are violated by EVERY nation EVERY second?
In short, why are most world citizens not playing hardball politics?
Let's face it, no national parliamentarian, congressperson or state head can represent us, the people of the world.
Why not?
Because millions of us already identify ourselves as World Citizens as an inalienable right.
Well-intentioned peaceniks write and talk of "nations" being unwilling to "relinquish" their national sovereignty. But nations do not have sovereignty. Ultimately, it is you and I -- now reborn into world citizenship -- who have civil sovereignty. This is the axiom of civil democracy. Nations cannot "relinquish sovereignty" because it is not theirs to begin with: sovereignty belongs to the people. Indeed, with amazing insouciance, most national constitutions already declare this obvious truth as its very sanction.
With this axiom in mind, it is necessary also to look at this word "relinquish." If sovereignty already resides in the people, there can be no such thing as "relinquishing" it. It is inherent in us by the very fact of being human. The whole connotation of the words "relinquish" or "cede" is negative and totally unsuited for expressing the immensely creative and historic steps which the people of the earth must now take -- and you have already started to take -- in the direction of evolving a planetary government.
Those steps are 1) declaring your world citizenship publicly; 2) identifying that declaration with documentation; and 3) exercising the franchise of representation on the global level.
For years, the ogre of all the world government "movements" has been the "red herring" of "relinquishing" our rights, "ceding our claims," "renouncing our sovereignty," all of which makes the would-be follower immediately fearful that he or she will be losing something of valuable self-interest. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. The people of the earth would lose nothing of real self-interest by a civil world government. Quite the contrary, they would gain enormous freedom from needless suffering and taxation. Indeed, the nation-state has already renounced the citizen when the head of state wears his/her constitutionally-mandated Commander-in-Chief hat in time of war (which has today become quasi-permanent).
The only persons who would lose their usurped rights would be precisely those national leaders whom we are asked to believe in as the initiating-source of world government. Their right to destroy the earth over petty conflicts, for instance, would definitely be taken away from them. And along with that, the need for spies, diplomats, consular personnel, frontier guards not to mention the soldiers, sailors, and marines dedicated to killing each other as well as innocent civilians, and indeed, the army of money changers and profiteers therefrom.
Naive? Yes indeed. But what a boon for humanity!
The phrase we should use instead is "delegate sovereignty." People, as declared World Citizens, can then delegate their decision-making functions, their functional sovereignty, to others -- declared world legislative candidates -- to perform and exercise the immense benefits and services of a democratic world government.
Up to this point in history -- starting in recent centuries -- people have seen fit to delegate their sovereignty only to the level of national governments. But now, it is necessary that the people not "relinquish" their sovereignty, but reassert and extend it to the level of functional human unity as a legal and political institution.
Happily, the communicative tools now exist to perform this vital function.
World government, then, need not occur only when nations begin to "relinquish" their "national sovereignty." It begins when citizens wake up to the fact that they are by every right world citizens, that they have not only the right but the imperative to set up their own political machinery on the world level, and when they then take that step can actually begin to prosper and benefit from a world government into action.
We must be clear therefore that the formation of world government need not in any way depend on the actions or "recognition" of national governments. (See Memorandum on World Government by Nataraja Guru in "Document" section).
In essence, we must stop being a slave to the mentality of nationalism and the word "nation." We must stop falling into the mind-set that affirms old world order relationships even as it seeks to transcend them. Who then represents us, the sovereign world citizens?
The question is as self-evident as the answer. We, the human beings concerned, are not represented in our entirety, as members of the human race, because we have not yet democratically chosen our own world citizen representatives! And why is that?
BECAUSE NO WORLD CITIZEN CANDIDATES HAVE YET DECLARED THEMSELVES PUBLICLY AVAILABLE!
Governments start by individuals claiming de facto citizenship. Ref., the United States of America. That is precisely what my candidacy for World President, declared in 1983, is all about. The office of World President of our government would be largely ceremonial and symbolic. (George Washington was an "amateur" president being the first!) Once established, with follow-up subsidiary instruments: a world parliament, world judiciary, world executive, etc., it follows that positive law has been finally allied with the perennial truths of unity and universality taught by humanity's sages from time immemorial. In other words, a vote for World President is not only a vote for a person, not even a vote only for a political office, but a vote for a set of truths or conceptual values such as justice, freedom, benevolence, cooperation, and the gamut of social and economic rights as expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (See http://www.garrydavis.org for a World Ballot).
The specific mandate for global government as well as global elections is already provided for by Article 21(3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
"The will of the people shall be the base of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures."
This is a global sanction and mandate for declared and registered World Citizens to elect declared and registered fellow World Citizens.
It may come as very exciting -- or perhaps quixotic --news to the world public that such a government, though embryonic, will be 53 years old as of September 4, 2006. (See The Ellsworth Declaration in the "Document" section).
A number of world identity documents, including so far a World Citizen Card, a World Birth Certificate, and a World Passport (upgraded in January to ICAO* standards) issued by the government via its executive agency, the World Service Authority, are already recognized by many nations.**
Taking its initial lead from such documents as the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Optional Protocol to the latter Covenant, and other basic doctrines of international law, and having adopted the neutral international language Esperanto as its future official language, this legitimate government bids well to represent the most significant civil world democratic initiative of this new century.
The missing link to complete the instrumentation of world representation will soon become available: an Internet site, sponsored by the World Service Authority.
Declared candidates for world public office will be able to signify their availability to the world citizen constituency: http://www.worldcandidates.org (under construction) mandated by the aforementioned human rights article.
The site will not only provide a place for candidates to expose their program, experience, educational qualifications, etc., but also the actual ballots for both World President and World Parliamentarian can be downloaded. A link to the World Government site will access on-line individual registration, the fee paid by a recognized credit card.
The Internet is already being utilized for local and national electoral processes, three U.S. states permitting registration of citizens directly on their state websites. Every nation and every candidate for national political office must have a website in these days of electronic politicking. Indeed, this World Government site included from the outset (1995) the World Referendum, its five questions dealing with global subjects never asked by national pollsters.
Numerous world constitutions written since 1945 will be reproduced on the above-mentioned site along with references to fundamental human rights in both national constitutions and international covenants. A section on historical references to world citizenship and a world state will lend substance and credibility to the concept throughout humankind's evolution to a peaceful world. A library of excerpts from rare books dealing with the subject of world law will be accessible. An index of individual advocates throughout history to the present will complete the site.
If this millennium has any historical mission, it is evidently both to protect the planetary environment and to eliminate the scourge of war from the human community. Otherwise, as Einstein and James Lovelock have warned us, war or Mother Earth or both will eliminate us humans in toto.
*International Civil Aviation Organization standards for Machine-Readable Travel Documents
**https://worldservice.org/visas.htmlWorld Citizen Garry Davis Launches New Ebook: World Peace Starts With You!
If you want world peace, says 84-year-old peace activist Garry Davis, it starts with your claim to world citizenship first and foremost. "We, the people, are the ultimate source of sovereignty," he writes in the opening email to his vast internet list. The nation-state leaders, he claims, "are on the wrong level."
His latest book,* World Peace Starts With You! can be downloaded for $9.95 at http://www.worldpeaceisyou.com.
The 34-page book makes the case for personal world peacemaking with graphic explanations of world law--biological and conceptual--, a modern history of how world citizenship evolved, why human rights and world territory are corollaries, the new global concept of political asylum, the documentary proof of being a human, why world government is neither domination nor illusory but eminently serviceable and already in practical use through its issuance of documentary evidence--based on fundamental human rights--such as the World Passport, World Birth Certificate, World Citizen Card, World Political Asylum Card, World Marriage Certificate and World ID Card.
"Whole libraries are filled with books about world peace," says the former B-17 bomber pilot, "but none relate this problem directly to the individual's initiative or action. Yet the opposite of world peace is obviously world war which concerns every person on the planet. So shouldn't we, the world's people, have the choice between the two?"
Davis founded the World Government of World Citizens in 1953 following the registration in 1949 of over 750,000 individuals in over 50 countries as "citizens of the world" in the International Registry of World Citizens in Paris. "This claim was the exercise of personal sovereignty," he maintained, "from which all governments derive."
The mandate for the claim of global citizenship, he adds, was provided by article 21(3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 10, 1948: "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government..."
World Peace Starts With You! is a "How to..." book which includes application forms for world citizenship avowal and registration with the World Service Authority(R), the service organization or "global city hall" of the new government. Also included are forms for applying for the World Passport (based on Article 13, UDHR) which has been upgraded to conform to modern norms of identity documents, world birth certificates, world political asylum certificates, world marriage certificates and world (picture) IDs.
Testimonials and quotes from past and present notables about world government, humanity and world peace including Einstein, Tom Paine, Stafford Beer, Horace Mann and E.B.White, etc. complete the timely contents.
For a download sale, Davis includes a free bonus of his 1988 US presidential candidate speech at Middlebury College, VT in which he presents his global political platform. Present-day politicians as well as national voters would be well-advised to check it out given the potential of a global holocaust using nuclear weaponry.
A final section outlines the programs and activities of the World Service Authority, headquartered in Washington, DC.
An "Affiliate" program for the resale of the book is included for those readers who wish to pass it along to their friends. The internet banking facility, Clickbank, provides a free membership to service this profitable program.
*See www.worldgovernmenthouse.com or www.worldservice.org/cat.html for a complete list of books
A World Citizen Looks at Iraq Today
I am writing the day before the "deadline" for the announcement of the new Iraqi constitution. How does a world citizen interpret this event? First, the writing of a national constitution in a century of instantaneous world communication plus the possibility of nuclear destruction of humanity seems an exercise in futility.
The obvious question supposes: Is a national constitution given the absence of a world constitution endorsed by the sovereign people of the world for peace IN THE WORLD COMMUNITY relevant at all? Put another way, is a national constitution spelling out the modes of order for a particular people relevant to that people's biological and conceptual unity with humanity without at the same time acknowledging that overarching unity?
I have not seen the Preamble to the proposed Iraqi constitution. Does it mention the sovereignty of the people of Iraq itself as the sanction for such an enterprise? Does it recognize the need for and reality of de facto world law as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? (Ref. Article 21[3]: "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government." And Article 28: "Everyone is entitled to a social and internationa order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declarartion can be fully realized").
The news today in the New York Times is principally on the US troops fighting an "insurgency" in Iraq, whether there should be a "timeline" for withdrawal or as a top general, Peter Shoomaker claims in the same story, that the army is prepared for the "worst case" scenario, that the "required level of (US) troops in Iraq would last until 2009."
No commentary on this subject has put the Iraqi war in the context of a global community in which humanity is a viable and dynamic species poised on the brink of a nuclear holocaust amidst other environmental problems led by global warming and radio-active pollution due to nuclear waste.
The myopic view expressed by opponents of a "deadline" for a pullout or an extended occupation of Iraq by US troops is exposed by the argument that a "vacuum" would be generated by a pullout leading to a civil war among the various contending religious and political forces inside Iraq.
Let us suppose, however, that a new force representing world law would replace the military troops. Such a force has already been created. It is called the Sovereign Order of World Guards. Its recruitment began in 1956. But its history is ancient beginning ages ago with the women of Greece and told by the story of Lysistrata. Peace "armies" of concerned individuals abound throughout history. Today, in Sri Lanka a "peace army," under extremely limiting conditions, has been instrumental in maintaining a quasi-peace between the Tamils of the North and the rest of that country. Civilian peace groups even gathered in Iraq prior to the US invasion in 2001.
The SOWG, unarmed and willing as are the US troops as well as the suicide bombers to consider themselves dispensable in the name, not of a nation-state or a religious fanaticism, but of sovereign humanity itself, would constitute a moral and rational counterbalance to the now-opposing local forces. Representing the wellbeing of all the Iraqi people dynamically allied with their brothers and sister humans throughout the world would instantly change the character of the internal struggle for superiority. Killing an unarmed Sovereign World Guard would constitute not only an act of moral deprecation but be useless in terms of advancing a relative politics on the ground, as it were.
As for instituting "democracy" IN Iraq, minus a recognition of the essential oneness of the human family NOW, that goal is utopic and irrational.
The "cradle of civilization" which identifies the land between the Euphraties and Tigres rivers from which historically present-day humanity derives, must claim its age-old heritage by recognizing and enshrining in the forthcoming constitution its partnership with the world as such. Otherwise, it cannot but be relegated to that dustbin of history.
Garry Davis
What is your most important question concerning world peace?
World Service Authority(R) Washington, DC. 20005
FOR GENERAL RELEASE May 19, 2005 Contact David Gallup 202-638-2662
World Citizen Garry Davis Launches Teleseminar Web Site To Promote World Government
www.askgarrydavis.org seeks questions from Internet public on subject: "World Peace Starts With You"
WASHINGTON, DC At 9 pm (est) May 25th, 2005 callers from around the world can call 866-414-2828, enter code no. 641848 and listen to World Citizen Garry Davis speak on the theme: "World Peace Starts With You."
Davis, a World War II veteren, with over half a century's experience in individualist peacemaking, an array of books on the subject* and founder of a government of World Citizens**, stated from his South Burlington, Vermont office, "World peacemakers must utilize the latest marketing techniques to reach the world public where the real solution to human problems is to be found in, by, and for the individual human."
Emails have already been sent to individuals in numerous databases including those of voters in the World Referendum posted on the World Government Web site, www.worldservice.org. asking: "What is your most important question concerning the subject of world peace?" Davis promises to answer the questions, time permitting, on the upcoming teleseminar, a first of many.
The teleseminar marketing system is being used extensively by authors, lecturers, merchants of all categories, to promote and sell books, products and self-help income-producing techniques to anyone with a telephone and an email. Given the ubiquitous nature of cyberspace, and the quasi-universal use of the telephone worldwide, promoters of every kind have eagerly adopted the new technique reaping virtually instant awards from the waiting public.
Web sites already abound on the subject of world citizenship and world government. Davis' numerous radio and TV appearance as well as his talks on the university circuits (see bio) bespeak his credibility and experience in this critical domain heretofore lacking a voice in this growing medium.
The opening email minces no words of the former B-17 bomber pilot's basic premise: "You must raise your political sights if you want a peaceful world," he claims. "It is our world. It is our lives at stake. The nation-state system is dysfunctional. War itself is the major symptom. And exclusive national citizenship perpetuates war, a collective suicide pact. Human rights, by definition, are global."
Davis maintains that the very nature of teleseminars wherein 100, 500, or 1000 individuals wherever they are in the world can "unite" in time and space permits an instant "world peace action" by the callers claiming to be world citizens then and there and that by so doing they are "making world peace" between themselves.
The www.askgarrydavis.org site also informs the caller that Davis will attend the Book Expo America on June 3-5 in New York at the BookSurge Booth where he will sign his latest book, Letters to World Citizens, at 11-11:30 Sunday, June 5th.
*www.worldgovernmenthouse.com
**www.worldservice.org
Letter to Prospective US State Department Public Diplomacy Officer
March 19, 2005
Ambassador-designate Karen Hughes
Department of State
Washington, DCDear Karen Hughes,
We listened with great attention to your acceptance speech, televised on CNN, to head the "Public Diplomacy" office of the United States State Department.
We were especially pleased to hear that "The United States has much to learn about being better global citizens." and that "we have much to learn about becoming better citizens of the world." We were immediately reminded of the first secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson?s words written in 1790 that "Every man possesses the right of self-government--Individuals exercise it by their single will." Tom Paine, whose political philosophy was summated by "my country is the world, all men are my brothers and my religion is to do good," would have been rightfully proud of your statements.
The geopolitical corollary of world citizenship is, of course, world government the lack of which assigns "citizenship" to mere verbiage or at worst, obfuscation. Nonetheless, we, who have already claimed our right to world citizenship and therefore world government, are encouraged by your statement that, in your new appointment, you will "look forward to working with my fellow citizens to share our country's good heart and our idealism and our values with the world."
As Secretary Rice prefaced in her introduction to your candidacy, "Karen Hughes is uniquely qualified for nurturing America's dialogue with the world and advancing universal values." Responding to the Secretary?s compliment, you confirmed that "Too few know of the values we place on international institutions and the rule of law." That core value, the rule of law of, by and for the people, implied by the unenumerated rights "retained by the people" of the 9th Amendment, is, of course, the sine qua non of a peaceful world.
Moreover, should you be confirmed, as all government officials, you will, of course, be obliged to take the formal oath of allegiance to the U.S. Constitution derived originally from the sovereign people as noted in the opening three words. While swearing to defend it "against all enemies foreign and domestic" so help you God, you will, however, not be constrained nor prohibited by it to add world citizenship as a complement to your lesser citizenships from the municipal to the national.
That which is not prohibited by law is of course tacitly condoned. Indeed the very constitutional principle implies its extension to the anarchic global level in order that the rule of law protects freedom for one and all. As the Founders wisely and uniformly agreed, the 10th amendment itself sanctions and enshrines the principle of dual or concentric citizenship thereby eliminating the anarchic condition between the several states yet preserving each citizen's state allegiance within the fledgling American community.
We add that freedom, without the sanction and framework of law as the Founders constitutionally provided, is the breeding ground of fear, division, distrust and eventually, war. United States' history, unfortunately, is a testament to that perennial truth.
In our modern times when global problems abound, when communication is quasi instantaneous, and war itself, since 1914, has gone global with nuclear instruments threatening humanity itself, the 1948 human rights declaration of the United Nations provides in article 15(2) the sovereign right of the individual to exercise his or her political choice while article 21(3) confirms unequivocally that "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government."
Your proposed noble mission then, Ambassador-designate Karen Hughes, as you yourself aver and as we World Citizens interpret it, is to "advance not only the cause of greater peace and security but also the cause of greater opportunity and a better life for all the world's people."
Know that, as fellow citizens of the world, you have our full support and appreciation in the firm conviction that humanity itself will be beneficially served by your forthcoming vital human trust.
Please accept, Ms. Hughes, the expression of our most respectful and highest regards.
Yours faithfully,
(Signed)
Garry Davis
World CoordinatorCc: George W. Bush, President, United States
Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State
Members of Congress
Kofi Annan, Secretary-General, United Nations
Heads of State
Coordinators, Commssions of World GovernmentEnclosures
Sovereignty & the Iraqi People
The Iraqi people did not "lose" their sovereignty because of the US attack and occupation. Saddam Hussein, as dictator, had prevented their exercise of it long before the US invasion.. The United States government, therefore, did not "gain" sovereignty over the Iraqi people by invading Iraq. One nation invading another for whatever reason does not "gain" sovereignty over that nation's people by default.
The United States government, therefore, cannot "turn over sovereignty" to the Iraqi people on June 30th. It never possessed it.
Sovereignty derives from the people, not an occupying state power nor an oppressive regime. The U.S. Constitution, ironically, enshrines and confirms that inalienable principle in its opening words: "We, the people? " Once composed, the founders had to take the document to the sovereign people for ratification.
In short, governments come from people, not vice versa.
The Bush administration is merely the executive branch of a national government. Therefore it possesses no sovereignthy to "turn over" or "relinquish." Indeed, the United States citizenry despite the congressional vote of October 11, 2002.had no direct role in the Bush's administration decision to go to war with Iraq in the first place. Polls revealed that upwards of 70% of the public were opposed. Moreover, in that Bush's mandate as President is, as well, contraversial with only 24% of the electorate having turned out to vote in the 2000 presidential election and the Supreme Court finally assuring his presidency by its 5-4 vote to halt the recounting of the Florida electoral ballots, his claim to represent Iraqi's "sovereignty" is at best a blatant subterfuge and at worst an inexcusable confession of ignorance of its meaning.
Thus the June 30th alleged "turnover" of sovereignty by the Bush administration is a fraud and a tacit admission of its guilt in starting the war in the first place. Moreover, in its awkward attempt to smooth over its incredibly inept foreign adventure, it now spins the "deadline" by assuring both the Iraqi and American people that it will "build the largest US embassy in the world" in Baghdad as if that diplomatic white elephant?which will cost the US taxpayer another $40b?will somehow guarantee a "peaceful transition." No adult Iraqi can fail to see through the scam and feel increasingly hostile.
U.S. politicians have recently been comparing Iraq with Vietnam but for the wrong reasons. The comparison is valid but only in terms of the fundamental principle of sovereignty itself. The Vietnamese did not "lose" their sovereignty during the Vietnam war despite the US invasion and benighted attempt to conquer that nation by force. Recognizing belatedly that the Vietnamese people, however divided between North and South, were and still sovereign, resolutely defending their home soil against "foreignors," the United States had to shamefacedly resign its fraudulent mission?after terrible losses of innocent both male and female lives?and flee in disgrace and undignified chaos.
Emery Reves, in Anatomy of Peace*, spelled out succinctly how to "make" peace:
"Just as there is one and only one cause for wars between men on this earth, so history shows that peace - not peace in an absolute and Utopian sense, but concrete peace between given social groups which had previously been at war - has always been established in one way and only one: by setting up some sovereign power over and above the clashing social units, integrating the warring units into a higher sovereignty." (Emphasis added)
The conclusion is clear and self-evident. The Iraqi people do not live on the moon. And like everyone else, they are born of human wombs and die as humans, however they nominally, religiously and relatively divide themselves. And they live together in our common global "village" with us. We welcome them as such. Indeed, whatever happens in Iraq on a daily, even hourly basis is instantaneously transmitted to the entire Earth's human population via satellites above all our heads..
Writers of a national Iraqi constitution, while necessarily defining the housekeeping requirement of local civic power, are thus obliged in this century to acknowledge intrinsically the global citizenship already extant and mandated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 21(3) which provides the sanction for such an inclusion:
"The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage or by equivalent free voting procedures."
The mandate is clear: humanity is the ultimate sovereign on planet Earth.
The term "cradle of civilization" identifying this ancient land peopled by today's humans can be defended only by bold and wise exercise of their innate sovereignty in a new constitutional framework as world citizens together with whatever lower levels they themselves choose. In today's anarchic national world community this recognition of interdependence would mirror that human "civilization" already united in our century by technology, communications, travel, etc. thus justifying the prophetic words of unity of humanity's sages from time immemorial.
Garry Davis
*Harper & Brothers, (1945)
2004 New Year's Message
From World Citizen Garry Davis
2004 ? Humanity's Legitimate Power
By sheer reasoning and biological fact, the only "superpower" on planet earth is humanity.
Each and every human, despite relative differences, is already bonded at birth to humanity's existence, well-being and survival.
Today, with the threat of Armageddon facing humanity itself by virtue of nuclear weaponry being used as a threat by the dysfunctional, belligerent nation-state system, its fundamental legitimacy is by definition self-evident and irrefutable. The human family cannot war against itself.
Each and every individual in today's 21st century world is thus in a dynamic, civic contract with humanity to insure its very survival.
The individual political acknowledgement of that unconditional and sovereign contract is world citizenship.
Millions of ordinary citizens, therefore, having recognized their sovereign right of political choice, and claimed world citizenship, in so doing have not only legitimized themselves on the planetary level but have protected in principle all lower levels of civic accord.
In short, the individual's claim and assertion of world citizenship viewed communally is the public confirmation of humanity's inalienable legitimacy.
As the corollary of citizenship is government, the socio/political manifestation of world citizenship is world government so declared into existence on September 4, 1953.1
Moreover, the two and a half billion children of the world, innocent of adult folly, likewise have the inalienable right and will to grow up in a world of peace, justice and freedom from the threat of nuclear holocaust as well as war itself. They too are legitimate members of the human family in one human world.
Already, following the end of World War II, numerous popular initiatives throughout the world community have attempted to evolve political instruments in the name of sovereign humanity.
In the coming year, certain of these will act as democratically-elected world parliaments reflecting the public will for peace, well-being and freedom. "World laws" will be enacted by these global parliamentarians outlawing war itself, protecting the world's environnent and recognizing politically the perennial geo-dialectical principle of one for all and all for one on the planetary level.
In short, humanity's inherent power and legitimacy will finally begin to manifest itself fully on planet Earth.
The ancient prophecy of the Millenium will thus come to pass.
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References:
"When in the course of human events?.." begins the Declaration of Independence of 1776.
"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world?" begins the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Pope John Paul II in his homily of January 2, called for a "new world order?based on the dignity of human beings" and "an integrated development of society?"
Jesus Christ, in the Sermon on the Mount, prayed that "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven?"
Baha'u'llah: "The earth is but one country and all mankind its citizens."
Jurists the world over have already endorsed the concept of world law and its institutional framework.. Former vice-president of the International Court of Justice from 1997 to 2000, C. G. Weeramantry, for instance, acknowledges that. "Every person today is not only a citizen of his or her own country but a citizen of the world. And it is in that context that a modicum of information about world governmnet needs to be communicated."
Unlawful by Definition
"No legal system can confer on any of its members the right to annhiliate the community which engenders it and whose activities it seeks to regulate; in other words, there cannot be a legal rule, which permits the threat or use of nuclear weapons. In sum, nuclear weapons are an unprecedented event which calls for rethinking the self-understanding of traditional international law. Such rethinking would reveal that the question is not whether one interpretation of existing laws of war prohibits the threat or use of of nuclear weapons and another permits. Rather, the issue is whether the debate can take place at all in the world of law. The question is in fact one which cannot be legitimately addressed by law at all since it cannot tolerate an interpretation which negates its very essence. The end of law is a rational order of things, with survival as its core, whereas nuclear weapons eliminate all hopes of realising it. In this sense, nuclear weapons are unlawful by definition."
Judge Weeramantry, quoting B.S.Chimni, "Nuclear Weapons and International Law: Some Reflections."
The World Government House
POB 9390
South Burlington, VT 05407
Email: worldlaw@globalnetisp.net
Internet: www.worldservice.org
50th Anniversary of the World Citizen Government
World Government of World Citizens, 1012 14th Street, NW Washington, DC 20005
Press Release
For General Release: September 3, 2003
World Government Passes Half Century Mark
A half century ago on September 4, from the city hall of Ellsworth, Maine, a new government was declared by a stateless World Citizen: the World Government (of World Citizens). It was based on three common world "laws": One God (or Absolute Value); one world; one humanity.
It was mandated by over 750,000 individuals from over 150 countries who had already claimed the sovereign civic status of world citizenship via the International Registry of World Citizens opened January 1, 1949 in Paris. It was therefore premised on the actuality and legitimacy of the human race beyond the alleged sovereign nation.
The new government also claimed "territory" which encompassed the world itself thus fulfilling the prophecy of the Millenium.
The Nuclear Age had begun 8 years prior on August 6, 1945 with the United States bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki shocking the world public into awareness of its indiscriminate destructive power.
Thus began a "contract with humanity" to which each human was bound whether conscious of it or not. For if humanity died, all humans died whereas when individual humans died, humanity still survived. Einstein the "father" of the Nuclear Age warned at the time that if the human race did not now eliminate war itself, then war would eliminate the human race.
The new government certified the global contract overtly by providing individuals with documents based on fundamental human rights sanctioned by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations, December 10, 1948.
As individuals become aware of the new government's existence, they take advantage of its global identification services and legal assistance provided by its World Judicial Commission. Today, millions of human rights documents have been issued by the government's administrative agency, the World Service Authority(R), with main offices in Washington, DC and Tokyo, Japan.
On the negative side, humanity still faces grave threats. Nuclear proliferation among 9 nations has grown to over 20,000. Seventy-five wars, large and small have been fought between nations killing over 25 million with a refugee population exploding to over 50 million. Air, water and soil pollution is increasing. Rain forests are burning. Global warming is a scientific fact. Cultures clothed by national fictions clash where humans kill humans indiscriminately. Mass poverty amidst excessive wealth of the few creates explosive social crises resulting in increasing acts of vengeance.
Yet positive signs of human ingenuity and fellowship abound. Communication is virtually instantaneous globally. Thus awareness cannot be stopped at national frontiers. Laws are promoting justice beyond the national jurisdictions. Space itself is inviting human exploration. The Space Station makes a global revolution every 29 minutes. While still rampant in parts of the world disease is slowly giving way to scientific breakthough cures. While national leaders remain enmeshed in 18th century fictional feudalisms, nongovernmental organizations representing every human interest abound. Finally, humanity's sages have come roaring from their forest and monistic retreats to sound the prophetic alarm of Armageddon if the perennial principles of unity and universality are not manifested politically.
Should humanity survive the next 50 years, it can thank today's citizens of the embryonic world government.
New Year's Message 2003
New Years's Message
January 2003
by Garry Davis
A half century ago, come September 4, a new government was declared on planet Earth, the World Government (of World Citizens). It was the fulfillment of an age-old prophecy for it was based on the sovereignty of God's laws, the oneness of humanity and the reality of one world.
The locale was the City Hall of Ellsworth, Maine. A mere hundred people were in attendance. But the popular mandate was over 750,000 individuals in 50 countries who had already exercised their sovereign right to choose the status of world citizenship along with their lower levels of civic allegiances.
The member-states of the United Nations through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ?proclaimed by its General Assembly December 10, 1948?have also implicitly endorsed its founding provided by article 21(3): "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government."
A further sanction of its creation came from one of humanity's latter-day sages, Nataraja Guru, the parampara disciple of the revered Shri Narayana Guru of Travancore, India. The perenniel social contract of "one for all and all for one" politically identifying the new government is the key geo-dialectical formula raised to the global level.
Since that 50-year-old sovereign declaration, hundreds of thousands have registered their claim to world citizenship and been identified as such by the global government's administrative agency, the World Service Authority.
By claiming citizenship of the world, each and all are making peace with and between fellow humans beyond all artificial and institutionalized divisions.
As of August 6, 1945, with the advent of the so-called Nuclear Age, the very survival of humanity became questionable.
The only valid message at the outset of this new year relevant to humanity's survival therefore is the urgent reiteration of the World Government's sovereign existence and dynamic evolution.
For, if war between nations is to be avoided?whose breeding-ground is anarchy ?the number of declared and registered World Citizens must be increased by millions.
I myself have been, since May 25, 1948, both politically stateless and a declared world citizen.
Statelessness is also the political condition of humanity.
And to all registered World Citizens, you must ACT NOW in that capacity as representatives of humanity's and your own survival, security and happiness.
The destiny of the human race along with our fellow species on Earth depends on each of us.
Yours for peace in one world,
Garry DavisOur Global Anti-Terrorism Question
Our Global Anti-Terrorism Question for the 21st Century
January 2002
by Garry Davis
To begin with, I am not a lawyer, only a single, declared citizen of the world. But I have submitted two briefs to the United States Supreme Court and one to the International Court of Justice at The Hague on the subject of world law and its legitimacy. All were denied a judicial hearing. More about these below.
World law in its infancy can be found in the Nuremberg Principles. They were adopted by the tribunal set up by the Allies after World War II to indict and try the Nazi leaders. They were the ?losers? of that war. I was a B-17 bomber pilot in the 8th Air Force in this war, therefore, as a US citizen, I was one of the ?winners.? Among the other "crimes" we Allies created for the trials was "Crimes Against Humanity." These have been used ever since to indict, try, convict and punish certain individuals. But I have major problems with this ?crime.?
First of all, any word used in criminal cases must have a legal definition.
"Humanity," however, has not been defined legally. Can humanity then be legal? If not, then how can it become a plaintiff? And if so, then who represents this ultimate plaintiff? World lawyers?
Secondly, if an individual is charged with a "crime" against humanity, the charge itself automatically renders him/her guilty. For humanity obviously needs no defense, being inclusive. Also since the individual is part of humanity, anyone charged with a "crime" against "humanity" would per se be both part of the plaintiff and the defendant, an obvious contradiction in terms!
Then there is another problem. Most of the people charged with this "crime," have obviously not killed humanity as such, but only other individuals. Indeed, if humanity were "killed," there would be no one to try or be tried by. So where is the "crime"?
Throughout the world of jurisprudence, the threat of causing death is considered a crime in itself, a felony. And herein lies the final dilemma. Since August 5, 1945, a real threat against humanity itself became evident. We humans had entered the so-called Nuclear Age. The nuclear "gun" was and is pointed at everybody, i.e. humanity. Its proliferation continues to this day. Nine nations possess nuclear bombs but the USA and Russia dominate in terms of numbers on-line: 7,500 and 6,500 respectively. Today's headlines citing India's and Pakistan's quarrels about who "owns" Kashmir, concern humanity itself considering the possession of nuclear weaponry by both nations. Neither death nor radio-activity, however, is a respector of nationalities or indeed religions. Needless to add that the first atomic bombs, the "Big Boys," exploding over Hiroshima and Nagasaki?a US-condoned extra-legal and indiscriminate ?terrorist? act setting the stage for the ultimate one? were pop-guns compared to today's nuclear megatonnage, enough to wipe out all vestiges of living matter on the planet many times over.
A deadly psychological repression of the danger to humanity itself has insidiously conditioned the world public via the use of the ultimate oxymoronic phrase "national security." The common syndrome is fear. Its latest manifestation is the current "war against terrorism." That the presidents and prime ministers of these nine nuclear states all justify their possession of nuclear weaponry in its name is the ultimate political terrorism directed against us, the citizens of the world. Indeed, the trust of their citizens is not only being betrayed by these so-called leaders, but worse, they are the prophetic purveyors of humanity's demise. Should anyone of them push the nuclear trigger, humanity itself could cease to exist.
Are they not then the real "criminals against humanity"?
Today, President George W. Bush and his fellow national leaders are "pointing" a nuclear "gun" at me and you. The same "gun" is also aimed directly at humanity.
That is a global felony .
This nuclear threat is the penultimate crime on our home planet. We, humanity, therefore, have become the legitimate "plaintiff." (The ultimate "crime," of course would be the destruction of the planetary environment itself.)
These nine national?not world? leaders then, whatever their politics and personal inclinations, thereby menace humanity itself.
Should they not be indicted, tried, convicted and punished as war criminals? But this raises the obvious question: by what court? The ICJ, despite its pretension to justice, is not empowered to try the very states or its principal officials which chartered it.
Then, you will ask, are not these national leaders protected by their very official positions? Well, no official is above the law. In modern times we have seen indictments against Pinochet, Milosevic, Fujimori, Marcos, Stroessner, Bhutto, Babangida, Suharto and the list goes on.
Already, the very court established by the nations at The Hague, the International Court of Justice, in 1999 condemned nuclear weaponry as "illegal" with the incredible caveat that if a state itself was being "destroyed," the use of nuclear weapons would be justified. In other words, to "protect" the fictional state millions of human can be destroyed and radio-activity released to condemn future generations.
This decision will live in infamy as it affirms national sovereignty in lieu of humanity?s sovereignty.
What can we, the citizens of the world, do to prevent this ultimate catastrophe?
The answer is self-evident: Outlaw war.
How?
The opposite of "Crimes against humanity," is self-evident: "Compact with humanity," i.e. world law by, for and of the citizens of the world community.
If government has evolved to the national level from the 17th to the 20th centuries?the last being the bloodiest of all? but not to the 21st century global level where our technology and communications already are, then government must evolve to deal with OUR major problems which are global in scope.
In short, legalize humanity.
All the political tools have been available since 1948 when the General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a "common standard of achievement for all people and all nations?" Article 21(3) implicitly sanctions the evolution of a democratic world government:
"The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government."
And how is this peoples? general will to be expressed?
"This will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent voting procedures."
So far so good. The major lack, however, is candidates for world public office. Suppose, for example, Mr. Mandela or any respected leader publicly declares himself or herself a "candidate" for world public office, where is the global electoral framework in which such a potential candidate could legitimately campaign?
In January, 1949, I founded the International Registry of World Citizens in Paris. It was designed to be the first electoral machinery for such global public office. Over 750,000 individuals registered in a period of 13 months, an incredible mandate for a global parliament. Even enlightened national parliamentarians at the time formed an NGO called "Parliamentarians for Global Law" later changed to "Global Action." The legitimate political outcome of that first world citizen registry of 1949 is the World Government of World Citizens declared in September, 1953.
I began this article by citing my two briefs to the US Supreme Court and one to the International Court of Justice. In all three briefs, I affirmed the sovereign right of the individual to choose his or her political allegiance as the basis of all democratic government, as sanctioned implicitly by the 9th Amendment to the US Constitution. (In the petititon to the ICJ, I pointed out the illegitimacy of war itself and that both President Reagan and Chairman Mikhail Gorbachev were war criminals for threatening my life with nuclear weaponry.) I noted that most national constitutions claim that the government power derives from the sovereign people. Moreover the right of political choice is the very foundation of government itself. This is as true today as it was in 1776 when Thomas Jefferson crafted the Declaration of Independence in which the "inalienable rights" of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" could only be protected by government "with the consent of the governed."
Moreover, if it is legal to exercise one's sovereign right of political choice as did the US Founding Fathers and that choice is world citizenship, then the legitimate status of world citizenship prevails over that of national citizenship by definition.
The modern-day legitimacy of world citizenship by definition outranks all state leaders.
As humanity and all humans enter the 21st century, the primordial question each of us must answer is: Shall we continue the ancient war game in a nuclear-triggered world which could eliminate the race in toto, or shall we survive individually and as a species by outlawing war via the proven method of law?
The decision is ours, not God's, not nature's, not possible ET's, and certainly not national leaders, but ours as actual citizens of planet Earth, our only home.
And the time to make it is NOW!
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Garry Davis
garrydavis@worldservice.org or info@worldservice.org Internet: https://worldservice.org; www.worldcitnews.org
The Language is Out of Synch:
Notes for a "Middle East Peace"The Language is Out of Synch?
Notes for a "Middle East Peace"
August 2001
by Garry Davis
The language is wrong, out of synch with reality: "Palestinian," "Jewish," "Arab," "Israel," "Moslem," "nation-state," and all weaving around the holistic word, "Peace."
Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon, along with their myriad supporters, keep dwelling on "peace negotiations" when the very two words are irreconcilable: an oxymoron.
To negotiate means to "deal with or bargain with another or others, as in the preparation of a treaty or contract."* In other words, it implies two or more sides. But peace cannot be "negotiated" between opposing and factious elements. The very word implies an a priori unity, a given commonality. "Palestinians" and "Jews" as such, cannot, by definition, be united. The very language separates and opposes them. But are they already united by another term? Well, yes. It's banal, being self-evident, but true nonetheless: "human." Hearts beat in rhythm, red blood courses throughout the body, sleep returns nightly, energy flows again daily, organic functions go on despite temporal, cosmically irrelevant politics. And further up the scale, they both respond to human values: justice, fairness, reason, love.
"Peace" then is the consequence of a lawful contract between humans abiding in the same area. The area in question is part of a larger area called "Planet Earth." Both Jews and Arabs share a common humanity and live on planet Earth. Banal but true. As for the word "Israel," three simple questions will reveal its fictional character: 1, Do you have to be a Jew to live in "Israel"? 2. Does the state of "Israel" define a Jew? 3. Can the state of Israel defend judaism?
Then take the words "Allah," and "Jehovah." as a language issue. Two Gods? Of course not. Both Judaism and Islam are monotheistic, i.e. one God. Are not then synagogues and mosques, not to speak of temples and churches, all devoted to the same Deity? God's territory on earth? Are they not all sacred "territory?" How then can they be separated by man-made states? "God" and "world law" are consistent. "God" and "nation-state" are contradictory. Again, the language is out of sync. When Jews and Arabs pray to "Allah/Jehovah" do they seek His/Her help in promoting their particular political positions? Do they really think the Creator of the universe cares about their insignificant problems? Or when they pass from this realm, do they go to a Jewish or Palestinian "heaven?" I understand the seeming irreverence of these questions to the religious-minded. But then such a reaction is part of the language problem.
Then what about "Abraham." The Patriarch? The forefather of both Jews and Arabs. Now there's a common link. But who talks of him, Who wants to be reminded? The same family tree? Cousins all? That thought would surely expose the artificial dividing-lines. What would The Father say about a "Jewish" state or a "Palestinian" state, each with its own "defense" department with incidentally the Israel PM's finger today on 2-300 nuclear bombs almost enough to eliminate humanity itself? ("Nuclear defense," the ultimate oxymoron, is the most entrapping and insidious misuse of language.)
I suggest a "peace" language to respect the common ancestor: "The Abraham Federation" uniting both Palestinians and Jews as part of a "world citizen state!" After all, he would opine that cousins feuding over the same territory is a no-win situation.
Then what about that of-so-familiar "Middle East peace" language? Is there such a thing in a "nuclear instant communication age?" We all accept the term "interdependent world." How can there be "peace" in the "Middle East" while there is potential war in the rest of the world? You'd think in listening to the recent trialogues of Camp David and succeeding statements from both leaders that Arafat and Sharon were living alone on planet X rather than on Planet Earth while host Clinton, with his thumb poised on 7,000 online nuclear warheads only wanted to get his name on the plus side of the history books?.if there are any.
If it's peace people really want, the language must be consistent with the word. "Peace" is not a condition in itself; it is a consequence of prior conditions. These are four in number. The first is in terms of a Principle. Referring back historically, the US Founding Fathers had to find a unifying principle before they could propose an ideology, a strategy and tactics for evolving a new meta-government over the separate states. "E pluribus Unum" sufficed "From many, one." The last word defines the principle: Unity. Connotations of morality, social and political as well as biological conditions are intrinsic in the word. Once agreed on Unity, they could then turn to the second condition: ideology.
They came up with "natural law" connoting "natural (human) rights." All 3 million humans on the eastern seaboard whatever their state affiliations (except blacks, Indians and women) possessed natural (human) rights. From there it was an easy step to the third condition for peace: strategy. How to turn "natural rights" into political rights? They already knew all about the simple legal process from having applied it on lower levels of political organization: evolve a common code of conduct or laws, give it a "housekeeping" format to prevent abuse. Ipso facto: the "constitution" of the embryonic-only agreed to at first by the 55 convention members-"United States of America."
From there the fourth condition came naturally and finally into play: "tactics." Enter the public, the grassroots, the sovereign people, the ultimate beneficiaries of the process. It's all there in the history books. The Federalist Papers, constitutional conventions in every state; public debates, articles in the press, statements by elders; reference to precedents like the Iroquois Federation, and finally, popular ratification by peoples' congresses. In short, effective and beneficial utilization of the communication tools of the day. Remember, in 1787, no radio, no television, no satellites, no Internet. Yet they managed to pull it together: PEACE. (Until the Civil War, in which the first principle: Unity was denied).
Do you understand now how confused and totally inadequate is the language politicians use today?
Then what about Jerusalem? Do I, as a World Citizen, have any say as to its status? Do you, the reader? Does the world public? You'd better believe it! Jerusalem, like Mecca, like Benares, Amritsar, indigenous burial grounds, temples, mosques, churches, synagogues, indeed, like the Earth itself, is beyond sects, beyond religion, beyond relativist claims. It is sacred territory, held in trust for humanity, a world city. It cannot be assigned in perpetuity to a particular people no matter how spiritual they consider themselves or what historic claims they make. Like hereditary monarchy, both claims are absurdities. Spirituality is by definition universal, not secular or even religious, certainly not political. Only the living have a right to governorship. And the living are defined holistically, humanly, not partially or relativistically. The Jewish, Muslim and Christian prophets all knew and taught this truth.
Pertinent questions to both Arafat and Sharon would be: Are you more interested in preserving the State of Israel and in declaring the State of Palestine than in a real condition of peace between the humans living in that part of the world called the "Holy Land?" And do you both not have a responsibility as fellow humans to consider "peace" on the level of the world since you both will either suffer or enjoy its lack or benefits? Obviously, if the whole is in danger, all the parts are also in danger. What is Israel's and/or Palestinian's security in a world where war is still a dominant legal option? The bottom line question is: Are you really speaking for your "people" in language consistent with their real problems?
In short, a meta-language (read: global) is required for peace. The technical/environment/biological world already uses one: cyberspace, space age. Genomes, bioregions, synergy, humanity, etc. But the political language is still a carryover from the 18th horse-and-buggy, gas lamps century,: "nation-state," "political parties," "national constitutions," As Einstein wrote parenthetically: "As of August 6, 1945, a mental paradigm shift is required." Translation: a "meta-language" is required to meet the new world complexity and common danger of elimination.
The time is late. We, the sovereign world public, by sheer will to survive, have finally figured things out. Our world is already one; humanity is already one, and we partake of a common history, destiny and Origin, call it what you will. Identified appropriately, Chairman Arafat and Prime Minister Sharon, we-together with your people, our fellow world citizens-will have peace.
*Webster's College Dictionary, 1990
"Unite the Electric Grids!" -- Buckminster Fuller's Vision for a Peaceful World
November 1999
The visionary engineer, dubbed "the Leonardo da Vinci of our century." wrote in "Critical Path," "The energy grid is the World Game's highest priority objective."
When asked by a 12-year-old what one thing he would do to save the world, his immediate reply was "Unite the electric grids!" To the bewildered questioner, he explained. "There is no want of energy in the world, only a want of vision. The sun is pouring billions of kilowatts of power on the Earth every second. Then there is hydro, geo-thermal, bio-mass, wind, ocean differential and other sources of clean renewable power. About half of the grids that exist in the world today are connected and one-half remain unconnected. The latter are in the developing world. Link up all the electric grids and you would have a continuous source of abundant and clean renewable energy immediately available throughout the planet. The immense benefits of unlimited energy for all is immediately apparent. First, you protect the environment. No need to cut down the rain forests or pollute the ground and oceans with oil, coal and radio-activity from nuclear plants. Then when everyone has sufficient energy, birthrate decreases at exactly the same rate that the per capita consumption of inanimate electrical energy increases. Living standards rise as population declines especially in the developing countries. In short, the world's population will stop increasing when and if the integrated world electrical grid is realized. With everyone sufficient in energy needs, poverty disappears, greed, crime, strife is reduced to zero. Wars become unnecessary and therefore obsolete. Peace reigns on Earth."
National Energy Ministries and electrical engineers throughout the world are slowly becoming aware through a non-profit San Diego organization, G.E.N.I. (Global Energy Network Institute) that Fuller's solutions to major human problems depend to a large extent on clean renewable energy supplies.
According to Peter Meisen, founder/president of G.E.N.I., only 28 per cent of the annual world military expenditures could pay to end hunger, stabilize populations growth, prevent soil erosion, provide clear energy, retire developing nations debt, stop ozone depletion, prevent acid rains and climate change, provide safe water, eliminate illiteracy, stop deforestation, eliminate nuclear weapons, provide health care and AIDS control, remove land mines and provide refugee relief and shelter.
A U.S. Africa Energy Conference-"A Partnership for the 21st Century- is scheduled for December 13-15 in Tucson, Arizona, co-hosted by US Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson. Major objectives will be to address "citicial issues on investment in clean energy development and use, energy integration, sustainable energy development..."
"Tool designers change the world, not politicians," was one of Buckminster Fuller's favorite assertions.
He was a passionate advocate of world citizenship and world government.
For further information about G.E.N.I.and Fuller's work: www.geni.org; www.bfi.org; www.cruzio.com/~joemoore; www.worldgame.org
WORLD CITIZEN UPDATE
November 3, 1997
The Cassini Launch - A Crime Against Humanity?
Has President Clinton committed a "crime against humanity" in authorizing the launch of the Cassini Space Probe? Does the US president's constitutional powers vest him with the legal authority to threaten humanity with plutonium pollution? How far "out" does national law extend? To outer space? Were the sovereign citizens of the world consulted before the U.S. president pushed the Cassini launch button?
Let's back up to 1945 when the Nuremberg Trials indicted, tried and convicted Nazi leaders after World War II. Seven Principles were defined by the victorious Allied powers. Among these, the first states that "any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment." Then Principle VI provides that "crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity are punishable as crimes under international law."
In a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly in 1950, the Nuremberg Principles became part of international law.
Until the Cassini launch, the accusation of "crimes against humanity" has only been applied to individuals committing acts of violence against other individuals during wartime: Klaus Barbie, Karl Eichman, Papon are prominent examples besides the original Nazi leaders. Never mind that when humanity itself is assigned the role of "plaintiff," the accused is by definition guilty since no defense is valid against humanity's security. And never mind that for a crime to be committed, there must first be a code of enforceable law defining the crime. Positive world law does not yet exist. Moreover war itself is not considered criminal under the same international law since nations consider war a legal option for their so-called security.
But the Cassini launch itself is recognized by experts both inside and outside of NASA as a real, not theoretical threat to humanity itself. Its navigational program will use the planet Earth as a giant "sling-shot" when it swings back from Venus in order to gain enough momentum from earth's gravity to propel it to Saturn. The distance from the Earth on the "fly-by"? A mere 496 miles. Its speed as it makes the turn? 42,300 mph. Its cargo? 72.3 pounds of Plutonium-238, the deadliest man-made substance in existence. "One pound of Plutonium," says Dr. Helen Caldicott, "if uniformly distributed, could induce lung cancer in every person on Earth." NASA itself has estimated the chances of a Cassini accident that would release plutonium as one in three hundred and forty-five. How it arrives at the figure is not public knowledge. In its own "Environmental Impact Statement" for the mission, it states "In a worst case scenario, decontamination costs would be as high as $200 million per square kilometer...Up to 50,000 kilometers could be impacted involving a total decontamination cost of $10 trillion." It doesn't say where you put the contaminated soil or indeed how long it would remain contaminated and as for the civilian population, it claims that "approximately 5 billion of the estimated 7 to 8 billion world population at the time could receive 99 percent or more of the radiation exposure."
Numerous experts warned President Clinton of the dangers to humanity if he authorized the launch. Myriad NGOs protested to no avail. Former NASA safety experts consider Cassini a catastrophe. Horst Poehler, NASA contact scientist wrote "Remember the old Hollywood movies when a mad scientist would risk the world to carry out his particular project? Well those mad scientists have moved to NASA." Alan Kohn, NASA safety expert from 1964-1968, says that "the plans for the Cassini Flyby with a Plutonium package is unconscionable. No space mission is as important as the life and health of the public." Under the international law describing "crimes against humanity" President Clinton is solely indictable. The buck stopped at his presidential desk despite the Pentagon's insistence. Of course, if the actual crime is committed, it is too late for humanity. There may not be anyone around to bring the charge, even Bill Clinton himself though no doubt high government officials will be safely tucked away in some hollowed-out mountain retreat . However, the threat itself is already a global felony.
But where is humanity's court of law? Not the International Court of Justice to which neither humanity nor any individual has legal standing. Not even the national supreme courts whose mandate stops at national borders. No, we must go where humanity lives...in the municipal courts, worldwide. The carefully crafted brief must be introduced simultaneously in local courts preferably in cities which have already declared themselves "global" or "mundialized." Local judges may either throw the case out claiming it "frivolous," or simply reject jurisdiction. Then we appeal. And appeal. And appeal. In the meantime, public opinion is being alerted and focused. The top level-a "World Court of Human Rights" for which the statute has been already written-will be evolving with public, NGOs and even certain national government support.
Nineteen ninety-eight is the 50th anniversary of the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The right to life is codified in Article 3: "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.? It is also the 50th anniversary of the birth of the modern-day world citizenship movement.
There is no time to lose. The Cassini spacecraft is already on its deadly mission and due for the "flyby" in 1999. World public opinion must now focus on this historic and potentially lethal issue. The spiritual overtones of this indefensible launch into space just three years before the 3rd millennium merits the full attention, concern and energy of every conscientious human being on the home planet. President Clinton must be legally forced either to abort this deadly mission or to order its navigation program altered so that Earth and its population are no longer endangered.