ABSTARCT: The realization of a new democratic world order seems to be rapidly becoming a distant dream. While the spectre of ancient tragedies, of a barbaric, degrading and destructive disorder hovers everywhere. Haunting society and human consciousness. We are making it our responsibility to both reflect and act; to "arm" democracy, tollerance and Reform with an army of 30,000 people representing science, order and awareness. They are needed now, and they will suffice.

(THE PARTY NEW - N. 5 - FEBRUARY 1992)

In each issue of this newspaper you have read a list of adjectives which are intended to describe the nature of our party: nonviolent, transnational, transdivisional, democratic, environmentalist, ecologist, democratic federalist, lay, liberal socialist, anti-authoritarian, anti-prohibitionist, anti-partycratic, anti-militarist, and anti-clerical.

We have tried, through this newspaper, to underline the contemporary urgency of these themes as effectively as possible. The disasters that the world is witnessing and the worst nightmares of this century, which seem to have come back to life, strengthen our conviction that we must take immediate action to make possible the organization of a political force capable of founding a new humanism, lay and tolerant, of justice and of the rights of the individual.

We have often wondered, in the last few months, what would happen if tens of thousands of people around the world understood the need to work with us to overcome what appears to be the main problem of our age: the division between science and knowledge, on one hand, and power and political decision-making on the other.

In short, we have often wondered what would happen if our proposals, which we believe to be reasonable, were to win out.

Would we now be able to halt wars, to offer a historic and political alternative to the age-old choice which has always been imposed on humanity, a choice between "justified violence" and "unjustified violence", between solidarity with those who die and kill to defend violence and power, knowing full well that this is not the way to eradicate the disease, but only to limit its effects?

Would we be able, for example, to put forward an effective alternative to the barbarous policy of prohibitionism with regard to drugs, a policy which causes thousands of crimes all over the world, which gives enormous power to the criminal drug-trafficking organizations, who are able to "buy out" whole sectors of the ruling classes and destabilize scores of countries?

Would we be able to build a federal government for Europe and for the world, a government capable of overcoming nationalism and revanchism?

u2e. Would we be able to pursue a new policy of relations with the Third World, to put into effect sectorial plans for political intervention, in a given timespan and with given resources?

Would we be able to prevent racism and xenophobia, widespread evils in Western society, which is showing itself to be incapable of living with the increasingly numerous masses of men and women who seek refuge from famine, poverty and death in our prosperous consumer society?

Would we be able to bring about respect for the right to life, now denied by those governments which practise the death penalty and inhuman torture and which allow condemned prisoners to be paraded in the streets, as happens in the Communist empire of China?

Would we be able to provide a democratic alternative to rotten partycracy, to the pluralist party system which ensures anti-democratic oligarchies and suffocates the principles of liberty, in the East as in the West?

Would we be able to bring attention to one of the central problems of democracy, that of the real possibility of communication, now denied by the existence of an imperial language, English, which is destroying other languages?

Would we be able to convert the mad arms race in the "independent nations" to expenditure on literacy programmes, for example, for the development of society and of individuals?

Would we be able to hold back the environmental disasters, the hole in the ozone layer or the greenhouse effect, the deforestation of the planet or the desertification which is devastating increasingly wide areas of land, the pollution of the air and the oceans?

Would we be able to avoid the rapid development of vast metropoli in Asia, Africa and Latin America, where children of eight or nine years old gang together in "death squads", destined to murder or to be murdered?

Would we be able to do all these things?

In a word, would we be able to found a new, positive justice, new laws to regulate the life and the quality of life of society?

We believe that politics is the ability to face the great problems of our age in an effective, creative manner. If it u2e. is true that the political sphere is now denied to us, as seems to be the case, then we must reconquer the right to politics in our society, in our time, especially now that the political sphere is the whole world. If it is not possible to enforce the right to life, then it is the right to life itself which is questioned and threatened. It is necessary, therefore, to uphold a new transnational and supernational system of justice which does not eliminate nations but crosses them and goes beyond them.

"Ex-Yugoslavia, dress rehearsal for a Coup and a Reign of Terror in the ex-USSR": this was the headline of the issue you received over two months ago.

We believe, and continue to believe, that what has happened in the ex-Yugoslavia, where the world, its institutions and its leaders have chosen to look on inertly, without taking action, is a tragic and explosive preview of what is about to happen in the ex-USSR, in the political, social, and human break-up of a multi-ethnic and multi-racial society that was "held together" by the armed forces of Communist power.

What can we do about it?

What action can be taken by democrats who have elected the world as their homeland to subvert that which seems to be the natural order of things?

What can we legislators do, in Latin America, Europe, Africa, or North America, we who feel within us the need to introduce elements of justice, liberty, and respect for life into the most tormented and dramatic political situations?

Edgar Morin has written: "if 100 billion cells can manage to live together and organize themselves in our bodies, why is it so difficult to govern 5 billion people? In reality it is the technostructure which now works in an absolutely insane manner."

Perhaps this is the key: we intend to provide a structure for political action; we intend to develop and organize the action of legislators in all the countries of the world around a number of immediate objectives.

We take the opportunity, in this issue of the newspaper, to convoke the founding Congress of this transnational and transdivisonal force, the Congress which will organize the structure for our ideas.

It will be the Congress of action for the democrats, parliamentarians and citizens who want to fight for the abolition of the death penalty all over the world by the u2e. year 2000; for the creation of the United States of Europe; for anti-prohibitionism with regard to drugs; for the linguistic integration of all the citizens of the world; for the defeat of nationalism and the arms race.

It will also be the Congress of refoundation: every member of this party must be able to work independently and freely, in Baku as in London, in Lima as in Paris, which means that it is extremely important to create a statute, based on the principle of direct membership, which will identify the working methods of the individuals, the associations, and the leagues who wish to join the "New Party".

Those who have joined the party in the last few weeks, Ministers and parliamentarians in 18 democratic elected assemblies, the members of over 50 national parties from Romania, Czechoslovakia, the ex-Soviet Union, Africa, Spain, Hungary, the United States, Switzerland, England, Canada, Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia Hercegovina, and Kosovo, have given strength, power, and hope to our project. They have allowed us, amongst other things, to give new life to our own special way of conceiving politics. Some of us were inspired by them to find the courage, in the last week of 1991, to wear the Croatian uniform at Osijek, unarmed, in order to uphold the right to life and to freedom, in this case of the women and men of Croatia, and also the citizens of Serbia, who are oppressed by the racist, Bolshevik, intolerant acts of barbarism perpetrated by the dictator Milosevic and his "federal" army.

The immediate responses that we receive will give strength and courage to our project and to our Congress. The self-financing political force that we wish to create requires tens of thousands of new members across the world. Everyone has a "share" to spend and a chance to take part. We know that through our ideas we represent the hopes of vast minorities around the world. But we also know that we are not able, on our own, to realise the hope for change that we are putting forward, the better future we want to create together with all those who read these words and decide to meet in Rome for the great Congress of the Transnational Party.