ABSTRACT: There are many questions and many difficulties. Is our undertaking premature? Or is it already too late? As the five million dollars begin to run out, as much of the human energy devoted to the project begins to run out, would it perhaps be more reasonable to surrender?

Is it really true that present-day Italy, the great "reservoir" which can give the transparty independence and strength, is unable to supply more than it supplied during the two decades of Fascism for democracy, for the right to life and the life of rights, and for Reform? "Do what you have to, whatever may happen" is our reply.

(THE PARTY new - n. 6 - march 1992)

The Party of tolerance and democracy

We are not fundamentalists of "nonviolence", disarmament, or democratic federalism. Our choices are, above all, political. We would not be the party of tolerance and democracy, as we are, if we decided to fill the values of political opportunity (not opportunism!) with moral or religious overtones.

The national states, whether they be large or small, are closed off in their independence and their sovereignty, rejecting the democratic federalist order and the rational, reasonable system of interdependence which must be constructed as soon as possible, founded on the promotion of the human, political, religious, social and economic rights of the individual, in order to respond to the most dramatic problems of our age. We were firmly convinced that they should be reformed, that we should go beyond them. We are even more firmly convinced now. The objects, rather than the subjects, of the events of these years, the national political forces, even the best of them, especially in the countries that have freed themselves of dictatorships, but also in Italy, France, and other European Community countries, are reproducing the old demons of our century.

Free from ideological bonds, we have not hesitated to come out in support of the independence of the Baltic States, Slovenia, and especially Croatia, attacked and occupied by a chauvinist, coup-seeking army.

Our action has weighed on the decisions of Italy and other countries in the European Community.

The lethal danger of national states.

Now, however, we must hesitate and wait no longer to point out the lethal danger, for many societies in today's world, of the isolationism of national states.

The creation of new national armies will weigh heavily in terms of the economy and development, using up a considerable percentage of GNP and thereby bringing about poverty and underdevelopment, and in terms of the balance of institutional and political life, a balance which is extremely delicate and exposed to new authoritarian and anti-democratic impulses.

In many countries, peoples living close together in the same area will once again be drawn to emnity and violence instead of joining forces to further the common interest of the world, to defend it culturally, politically, and socially, in the richness of its diversity. This will give rise to intolerant and violent ideologies, and to racist, ethnic and religious forms of fundamentalism.

The logic of fundamentalism and violence, which is so often lethal, is beginning once again to prevail over the more human logic of reason, science and conscience.

The anti-prohibitionist battle

Reason, science and conscience tell us that another "demon" is rising up as the century draws to an end: prohibitionism in the field of drugs. Laicism, the rights of the individual, civil liberties, and an equal relationship between states are countered by moralism, bureaucracy, the crime emergency, authoritarianism, and different forms of colonialism.

The anti-prohibitionist battle which we are leading requires the collaboration of men and women, national parties, cultural organizations, and leading figures in the world of science and culture in order to develop a large-scale information campaign, to build a great movement for the reform of drugs policies, immediately and with powerful force.

The "International Parliamentary League for the Abolition of the Death Penalty in the World".

In this issue of the newspaper we examine the rather problematic progress of the project to build the "International Parliamentary League for the Abolition of the Death Penalty in the World by the Year 2000", a project which grew out of the appeal we promoted, in the wake of the attempted coup of August 1991, for the abolition of the death penalty in the ex-Soviet Union. We hope that the Congress will be able to give an organized form to this battle for tolerance and civilized justice.

A different form of thought, action, existence, and resistance.

The "transnational transparty" that we have tried to build is an extreme attempt to organize a political and human community that can provide a sufficient number of politicians and people with a different form of thought, action, existence and resistance; a different force, therefore, compared to the inadequacy and the perversity of parties which are exclusively "national" or "ethnic", or which are simply traditional.

The five million dollars which we had miraculously managed to raise, mainly in Italy, and which we began to spend on this project and this "political ideal" one year ago, have now almost run out. Just as the intellectual, human, personal and militant energy devoted to the project is beginning to run out.

So has the first year of the project been a failure?

Is this extraordinary Federal Council destined to last only a few months more? A Federal Council made up of parliamentarians from over twenty countries, the exponents of fifty-five national parties, people who are "leaders" in their own countries, the idealistic and grass-roots activists of this project, of this ideal and extremely concrete battle, the men and women who played leading roles during our memorable proceedings in Rome and Zagreb.

Non-Italian members outnumber Italian members for the first time.

As we write, non-Italian members of the Party (above all from the ex-Soviet Union, from Russia, the Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Kazahkstan, Byelorussia, Kirghizia, Georgia, and Uzbekistan) outnumber members from Italy for the first time. This has happened despite the inadequacy of this newspaper, written and translated, despite ourselves, as if from another world, tormented (as we, too, are) by the depressing issues and distractions of national democracy and partycracy.

On the other hand, we cannot fail to note that there is not one single member in France, for example - a desolating country that seems to be splitting into two parts, both of them corrupted by demagogy and arrogance, where the ecologist faction (of which we were the forerunners) basks in self-satisfaction, blessed with their "profitable" policies, in the shadow of nuclear power stations and submarines.

In these conditions, are we the left-overs of the past, or are we the messengers of new, more vital times?

The situation in Italy.

What are we to say, what are we to think, about the "European", "democratic", "reformist" and "federalist" Italy? In this country, only about two thousand people are members of the Radical Party, more or less the same number who really participated in the great battles for civil rights, winning some of the most essential of them.

Will hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Italians - despite the fact that they are aware of this project, of this ideal and concrete battle, and of the battles won in the past - continue to refuse to give us a hand with our undertaking? When they do not ignore the problem, almost all of them wonder how it was possible for the whole of Italy to be Fascist, the whole of Germany Nazi, and for their parents to be involved in wars, aberrations, tragedies, and shameful events. The left and the right in Italy, the official left and right, which are proudly certain that they represent salvation, are in actual fact exactly the same: they are nothing, because their supporters are, or have become, subjects or sheep and are not, from a political point of view, people.

In Fascist Italy - if we exclude those who were fighting for another dictatorship and another aberration - ultimately even then there were no more than two thousand people who fought for democracy and tolerance.

Is this the destiny that lies in store for us?

The XXXVI Congress of the Radical Party

As you know, the XXXVI Congress of the Radical Party has been convened from 29 April to 3 May in Rome. It will be held. We do not yet know how. Maybe in the meantime, just in time, the Italian elections will bring a new lifeline of strength, and also of funds. This may happen because there is someone who is still fighting through elections to defeat the great tragedies of the world - famine and underdevelopment, wars, and prohibitionist drugs policies. For these battles, that "someone" has chosen to go it alone, and is proud of the fact, even though he may well lose.

And so, to my dear and valued non-Italian friends, and to my Italian Radical friends, I say thank you and keep fighting.

It is still possible, as you see, not to give up the fight.

Do what you have to, whatever may happen. Until the Congress, then, goodbye.