San Francisco Chronicle, Tuesday, November 2, 1993, front page:

Global, Online Political Party Takes Mission to UN Leaders", by John Eckhouse.

Computer users of the world, unite-online. Karl Marx's vision of an International political party traversing national boundaries to pressure the ruling class never came true, but then he did not know how to use Internet.

Initially financed by the US government, the electronic superhighway is in the vanguard of organizing the Transnational Radical Party, whose leaders are scheduled to meet with UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali today in New York.

This year, more than 40,000 people of 75 nationalities have joined the party, which calls for members to lobby their legislators to adopt laws that would help expand UN peacekeeping operations, abolish the death penalty, protect the environment and decriminalize drug use.

Most people hear about the party through traditional means such as word of mouth, handbills or newspaper articles. But when the party took out its first US newspaper advertisement, it invited people who wanted more details to send a message on Internet, which is used by about 20 million people.

"We received through Internet 150 requests for information and only 100 by letter," said Emma Bonino, political secretary of the Transnational Radical Party and deputy speaker of the Italian Chamber of Deputies. "This shows me we are only beginning to find ways of using Internet." Through the network, people with a computer and a modem attached to a telephone line can obtain the party's political initiatives in six languages. Visitors also can chat, exchange opinions or plot strategy on the party electronic bulletin boards known as "agora", or "the square", located at its headquarters in Rome.

Internt may be of little use, however, in less developed nations where few people have access to computers.

"To get connected in Georgia, Moldavia or Macedonia is, frankly speaking, quite difficult," Bonino said. "But in the United States it is surely more effective and will be far cheaper to organize this way than through a full-page ad in your New York Times." Her delegation, mostly members of the national parliaments in Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Egypt and Canada, met yesterday with the presidents of the UN Security Council and General Assembly. Today, they will present Boutros-Ghali with a petition signed by 30,000 people calling for the immediate establishment of an International court to judge war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia. Although approved in May by the United Nations, the judicial body has not received money to operate.

The Transnational Radical Party also wants the United Nations to lead an International campaign to abolish the death penalty by the year 2000; to renounce the 1988 Prague Convention, which called for criminalization of drug use; and to send more peacekeeping forces to countries where human rights are under attack.

The party consisted mostly of Italians until recently. But this year, it has expanded into Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, and the United States.

Annual dues are 1 per cent of the per capita gross national product of the member's country. The 1993 membership fee for residents of the United States is $255, which Marx might have thought a bit steep for the computer proletariat.

"It's quite expensive, but politics are expensive," Bonino said. "As we found in Italy, either you get your money through corruption, or you ash the people for the money to make changes.":

For further information, send electronic mail to e.bonino@agora.stm.it.

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