The Federatoion of the World (posted with permission of the author)

[thecrow]

THE FEDERATION OF THE WORLD
by
Silver Donald Cameron

When commentators and reporters describe people like me as
"anti-globalization," I get annoyed.

"Globalization" in its true sense is not a set of policies or
institutional initiatives. It is simply a fact. How can one oppose
the movement of the air, sushi, the circulation of the oceans, the
Internet, the migration of birds, the world-wide circulation of
ideas? The world has become very small, and each of us is connected
to all of it.

What I do oppose what millions like me oppose is a global
conspiracy of institutions which give priority to money over human
beings. I oppose a "harmonization" of trade rules and regulations
which means that commerce trumps working conditions, health-care and
the environment. I oppose a system which empowers unelected
officials, meeting in secret and accountable to no one, to determine
the conditions under which you and I will live our lives.

But I am entirely in favour of bringing democracy to Afghanistan and
Iraq, if that is what their people want.(Did anyone think to ask
them?) I am even more in favour of bringing democracy to the World
Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the G8, and the
people of North America.

One of the great oddities of economic globalization which really
amounts to economic and social homogenization is that so many of its
enthusiasts have little concept of the rich complexity and variety of
the world as it is. "Globalization" seems to be driven by people as
ignorant as George W. Bush, who had travelled outside the United
States only once before he became president.

And I am struck by the fact that the "anti-globalization" forces are
so often led by people who really do know the larger world people
who have travelled widely, and have often lived abroad as teachers,
journalists, health-care workers and students.

The barons of industry and their servants in government have created
global organizations to serve their interests. The rest of us don't
have such resources. So we create small organizations to fight on a
local scale issue by issue, event by event, town by town. Paul
Hawken recently estimated that the world's people have created nearly
two million organizations actively engaged with environmental and
social justice issues. But we don't have a commanding voice on the
world stage.

That may be about to change. Last year, an international coalition of
civil society organizations and prominent individuals launched a
campaign to establish a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly. The UN
General Assembly provides a forum only for the national governments
of the world. The UNPA, by contrast, would be a place where the
world's people could be directly represented. It would begin like
the European parliament as a consultative body made up of
parliamentarians from around the world. It could evolve again, like
the European parliament into a directly-elected World Parliament
with gradually-increasing powers and authority.

Among the Canadians calling for a UN Parliamentary Assembly are Lloyd
Axworthy, Flora MacDonald, Romeo Dallaire, Elizabeth May, Lois
Wilson, Warren Allmand, Allan Blakeney and Douglas Roche. You could
hardly find a more distinguished group of internationally-minded
Canadians two foreign ministers and a solicitor-general, our most
revered soldier, a former president of the World Council of Churches,
an ambassador for disarmament, the leader of the Greens.

The appeal has been endorsed by the Liberal International, the
Socialist International and the Global Greens. It's been signed by
parliamentarians from 113 countries, by 108 civil society
organizations, and by a growing number of eminent individuals like
Boutros Boutros-Ghali. You can see the list and sign up yourself at
www.unpacampaign.org.

The idea is gaining some traction. Last July, our own House of
Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International
Development called on Canada's Parliament to "give favourable
consideration to the establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary
Assembly," noting that Canada could be the first nation to endorse
the proposal.

It's time. We all breathe the same altered air, sail the same rising
seas, drink the water that falls from the moving clouds. Emissions
from Nova Scotian smokestacks and tailpipes compromise the polar
bear's habitat, cause emphysema in Moscow and drown the island
nations of the Pacific. We need political connections to match our
natural connections.

In 1835, in a prophetic poem called "Locksley Hall," Lord Tennyson
foresaw commercial air travel, and aerial battles between the "airy
navies" of the nations raining down a "ghastly dew" of bombs. All of
that has come to pass. But Tennyson also imagined a day when
...the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'd
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

The federation of the world Tennyson's dream has not come to pass.
But if we are to survive, it must. A parliamentary assembly of the
peoples of the world would be a huge step forward.

-- 30 --

Silver Donald Cameron
Halifax Herald

[DavidDvorkin]

1. There'd have to be a charter guaranteeing rights, first

Something so well established and enforced that the parliament would have to honor it. Parliaments, no matter how democratically elected, don't inherently protect the rights of minority groups.

It would also have to be utterly secular.