Tag Archive for 'global democracy'

Double standards in diplomacy – Citizens of the world wake up!

Published on February 4, 2012. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

written by: Fred – Egality Berlin

Today, only minutes after it was revealed that the United Nations Security Council was unable to come to an agreement on the wording or actions to employ against the Assad government in Syria, U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice, and many other diplomats said they are “disgusted that Russia and China prevented the UN Security Council from fulfilling its sole purpose.”

On the other hand it is not even a week ago that most of the very same diplomats were celebrating a ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which had put sovereignty of nation states above human rights. And this is no exception, let’s for example not forget that the United States of America still refuses to sign the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Beeing a diplomat implies living and representing such double standards. Sadly only a very few question their role in the game. All those diplomats not questioning their role, but instead preserving traditional international law, should be aware that they are also responsible for the consequences of today’s institutional architecture: genocide, famine, climate change, financial crisis, etc.

Let’s be clear though: the responsibility is not on the diplomats alone. Thomas Pogge rightly compares citizens who do not question the current international system that allows one-fourth of the world’s population to live in abject poverty to passive Germans during the Nazi era.

Thomas Pogge on Global Poverty

I therefore call on the citizens of the world to wake up. We have to ask ourself: is global justice possible without global democracy? We finally have to put pressure on those diplomats who are acting in our name against our own will!

And to be clear, I personally do not simply want the United Nations Security Council veto power to be removed. I want the whole system to be changed. I call for democracy at every level, from the local to the global!

Some Links on the issue of UNSC veto power:

(please contact us if you feel your website should be linked too)

Egality stands with pro democracy protests

Published on May 30, 2011. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

written by: Fred – Egality Berlin

We stand with protesters all around the world that are calling for real democracy!

Only if we are united in solidarity we will be able to not only change democracy on the local level, but also make international institutions democratic, which is extremly important, because for the most part it is the democratic deficit on the global level that destroys our democracies. As a recent article in The Guardian explains, it might be the lack of democracy at the global level that will bring down the arab spring. I strongly recommend reading ”The IMF versus the Arab spring“.

Photo: Spanish Revolution by Mauro A. Fuentes Álvarez via Flickr
And would it not be possible to write a similar article “The IMF versus the Spanish Revolution“? Don’t we almost always face the power of the global financial market when we go and fight for democracy at the local or national level?

In the Guardian article the author quotes a tweet by Paul Kingsnorth: “Could someone please arrest the head of the IMF for screwing the poor for 60 years?”

I personally would not necessarily say that it was the head of the IMF that is responsible for currently more than 1.000.000.000 people going to bed hungry every day. In my opinion it is the whole system of global governance that is to blame. And it is not only to blame for “screwing the poor” in the Global South, but also for destroying the middle class in western countries. It urgently needs to be reformed and democratized!

Here a nice video based on a lecture given by George Monbiot

Video: Photocopy Democracy by T.D.

 

Egality activists are currently involved and help organize pro-democracy protests world-wide: in Cairo, Palestine, La Havre,  Madrid, Berlin and London. Wherever they happen, we support democratic revolutions, and couple our support with a call to globalise them. If you want to take part: get in touch!

No Taxation Without Representation

Published on March 26, 2011. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , .

This is the content of a leaflet distributed at today’s March for the Alternative in London.

Why the fight for global taxation must also be a fight for global democratic institutions

Our unions are right.

The only alternative to the cuts is global: fighting global tax-havens and creating global taxation.

But there should be no global taxation without global representation.

If we globalise taxes we have to make sure we globalise democratic control, that we democratise global institutions.

Why fight for global taxation?

Our unions are right when they fight for global taxation – a global clamp on tax havens, and a system of global taxes. Indeed, from radical to mainstream, the political projects of the left are all dead as national projects in an age of globalisation. Socialism, social democracy, the welfare state, even social-anarchism and communism – these are all dead if they are only for national solutions. Today, leftwing politics can only survive as a global political project.

Why? This is because markets are global and democracy is not. Global markets mean that money can cross borders and escape our democratic control. If we vote for national tax, multinationals corporations (like the banks or Vodafone) can very easily move somewhere else. Multinational come to our national governments and threaten that ‘such high taxes make it unprofitable to be here, we’ll produce somewhere else, with lower taxes’ or ‘with such high taxes we are less competitive then companies in other countries, we will have to lay-off workers’. Additionally, in a global economy multinationals can report that they make profit in countries where taxation on profit is lower (these are tax havens).

Our unions argue for a fantastic solution – if instead of national tax policies we have global tax policies, we’ve won the war. If we have global taxation, multinationals and capital can’t escape anymore. They can’t run away to where taxes are lower, because there is simply nowhere to go to. We can get back the control we had before the age of economic globalisation – but now on a global scale.

But global taxation is not enough.

Why fight for global representation?

Our unions also miss a crucial part of the solution – the need for global democracy. If we want to create global taxation or globally clamp down on tax havens, we need to rely on global institutions to do the job. There is no way to enforce global policies without global institutions, old or new.

“No taxation without representation,” shouted citizens in British colonies 250 years ago. They were rightly saying that they would not agree to be subjected to policies (taxes) over which they had no democratic control. There is no reason why this will be different this time. The only global institutions we have today are undemocratic: the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the United Nations Security Council are all controlled by the rich and powerful governments and the lobbyists of multinational corporations.

People hate these global intuitions because they are undemocratic. They are right. We should not give more power to global institutions without us having global democratic control; without representation; without us having a say. That means either a radical democratic reform of global institutions, or the creation of new, democratic, global institutions. Yes, global taxation is the solution, but global taxation needs to come with global democracy. Otherwise we just give power to those who created the problem.

Around the world, many support globalising democracy. Evo Morales, the Bolivian president, wants to have regular global referendums. George Monbiot, the Guardian’s columnist, suggests to create a world parliament with consultative powers. Albert Einstein wanted world federalism. Boutrus-Boutrus Ghali, former head of the UN, wants to add a directly elected second chamber to the UN – a UN Parliamentary Assembly. All these ideas have problems, but they all provide a starting point for a discussion we must have – how to globalise democracy.

Join us in an old-new call: No global taxation without global representation.

Yes to global taxation, but not without globalising democratic control, not without democratic global institutions.

The undemocratic invasion of Libya

Published on March 22, 2011. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Crossposted from halfiranian.com

Undemocratic invasion of Libya

Oh the bloody irony. While the fighter jets of the US, UK and France drop bombs on Libya in the name of freedom and democracy, few are bothering to point out the undemocratic process that sent them there.

At a national level the situation is pretty dire.

Last night, after a debate in the UK parliament, 557 MPs voted to support military intervention while only 13 opposed it. That’s 98% political support for an invasion that only a minority of the UK population think is a good idea (45% by this morning’s poll).

That’s a pretty shocking disparity between politicians and populace but in itself it’s not undemocratic. It just suggests that UK MPs are more belligerent than their constituents.

The real problem arises when you look to the global level.

In every press conference and every statement made by the western powers attacking Libya, justification for their actions is drawn back to the position of the international community. “The UN backs the no-fly zone”. “The international community wants Gaddafi to go”. “The world demands it”. Even The Guardian claims “Cameron built an international consensus” for Gaddafi to go.

But is that true?

There is no institution that represents the international community when it comes to military intervention, the closest we have is the UN Security Council, which, upon closer inspection, is about as democratic as Libya itself.

The 15 countries who sit on the UNSC represent 53% of the world’s population – not a great start. That means nearly half the planet is not even part of the debate around these critical international issues.

And it gets even worse.

If we look at the Libya resolution, the countries that actually support the resolution represent only 19% of the UNSC or 10% of the global population (table below).

So the bottom line is that we have a resolution that was supported by diplomats from ten countries who together represent 10% of the world’s population.

Does 10% mean international consensus to you?

And herein lies the problem. The fundamental difficulty in taking any sort of legitimate international action – on war, migration, poverty or climate change – is that we don’t have the means to make those decisions in a way that’s even vaguely democratic.

Before bombing democracy into Libya, maybe we should think about sorting out our own flawed institutions.

Country Population (source: Wikipedia)
Countries supporting the resolution
United States 311,025,000
Britain 62,041,708
France 65,821,885
Bosnia 3,843,126
Colombia 45,895,000
Gabon 1,501,000
Lebanon 4,255,000
Nigeria 158,259,000
Portugal 10,636,888
South Africa 49,991,300
Total population of countries supporting resolution 1973 (% of UNSC) [% of World] 713,269,907 (19%) [10%]
Countries not supporting the resolution
Russia 141,914,509
China 1,341,000,000
Germany 81,802,000
Brazil 190,732,694
India 1,195,570,000
Total population of countries *not* supporting resolution 1973 (% of UNSC) [% of World] 3,664,289,110 (53%) [43%]
Total world population 6,907,070,586

Only (real) Democracy Can Save The Planet

Published on December 11, 2009. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Article in openDemocracy:

The only certainty at Copenhagen is failure – either a bad deal or no deal. This is because of the fundamental disconnect between those affected by climate change and those with the power to address it. Unless people have an equal say in the issues that affect them, we will never achieve just or sustainable agreements for global issues. We need democracy. Continue reading ‘Only (real) Democracy Can Save The Planet’