People's Constitution Iran

No more wars. New legal structure for the US and the world. Presenting a revised US Constitution and Constitution for the Human Federation

09/14/2021

The trillion dollar military can't beat a band of terrorists carrying AK-47s riding around in pickup trucks .

We must end this era of pointless-endless war and start a new one.

I, Alan Dechert, an award-winning engineer at Intel, chairman of the Committee for Open Source Global Governance (OSGG), and heterodox constitutional law theorist, am the chief architect of this constitutional text.

I am asking for help refining the text. Beginning an important phase in a software development project, the code might be described as "feature complete" and "alpha quality." I am asking for your help to bring the code up to beta quality.

We will treat the text as we treat major computer software development projects, dealing with "problem reports" as they come in from near and far in a systematic way to bring the code up to Beta. Next comes Release Candidate 1, then RC2, and so on until perfect (or as perfect as we can make it).

My work on this idea goes back decades. I began serious discussions with legal scholars about five years ago. I never felt I was qualified to write any of it. I intended to work with a few scholars who might like the idea and would be willing to contribute some of their expertise -- even if they believed it could never be enacted.

Most of all, I wanted a suitable scholar to take charge of it. I was unable to recruit anyone for this role, and wound up writing a great deal of it myself. A few scholars contributed some insights and even some text. So, I -- and OSGG -- will retain ownership of it sink or swim.

I am passing along this message to you asking for your help. The links* are to the document in ODT format (Open Document Text) and PDF**

The document contains 3 constitutions: the existing text for the USA side-by-side our proposed replacement text; and text for a proposed international sovereign, the Human Federation.

I am not interested in handwaves (I'm 69 and not planning on attending law school... I did consider that one but decided against). My inbox has had its fill of them and I don't save them anymore. I would most appreciate it if you would mark up the document with any insights you might have. Can you provide any amendments? (at this point, we would want to stuff them into the body of the text without actually calling them "amendments"). Minor corrections? Do you know where any of the specific words or phrases come from?

I've tried to identify some of the origins, but I don't really know that much except for what I wrote. A few clauses were provided by scholars like Michael Dorf, Dan Farber, and Shubha Ghosh. I've noted that in the document, although I may have missed a few things. I haven't bothered to add notes to the existing US Constitution although I want to do that. I'm pretty sure James Madison wrote the first 10 amendments -- and the nearly forgotten 27th amendment -- but haven't gotten around to mentioning that. I tried to incorporate J P Stevens' 6 amendments (although I eliminated the 2nd altogether). One clause is from Emmanuel Kant's 1795 essay on Perpetual Peace.

Here are some essential features of the document:
• USA's World Cop role would be handed over to this international sovereign, with simultaneous adoption of two new constitutions
• worldwide ban on nuclear power as well as nuclear weapons.
• ownership of military weapons banned (Human Federation will collect them and keep what it needs for its mission)
• Unsustainable practices curtailed.
• How humans will make use of space; Outer Space Treaty subsumed; no "space force;" mineral resources in space can be produced and made available to humans in a responsible legal manner; Luna and Mars to become countries.
• New articles specifically covering equality in the US constitution as well as the international one.
• Strengthening local government
• Health Care becomes a human right in the US; Roe v. Wade memorialized in clause 5 written by Michael Dorf as I requested
• Peace becomes a human right, as spelled out in US constitution as well as international constitution
• voting in the US becomes mandatory with greatly enhanced voting processes
• One new Supreme Court Justice installed every two years (effectively defining an 18-yr term)
• term limits in US Congress (24 yrs combined service)
• Education becomes a human right
• Plural Executive -- Attorney General becomes elected executive with 10-yr term (process is spelled out)

A common response is we're trying to do too much. However, due to very long trends and a long string of major events, it's time to revolt. This is a unique time. The World Cop can't stop a band of guys in pickup trucks carrying AK47s. We have cowboys in space. Climate. There remains serious doubts about the voting systems. Something has to give. We can do this now and it may be the last time for centuries this can be done again.

Some will say this is utopian dreaming. Wrong. Utopia literally means nowhere. Utopia is used in strawman arguments. There is no reason we can't have a much better system of global governance and US governance. Instead of utopia, we can call it Ecotopia if you prefer (Ernest Callenbach, my friend and cohort many years ago in Berkeley, used this word).

OSGG can be a complete success. It's not easy to understand just how, but I know how. It's as feasible as open source voting and renewable energy... and those things are becoming law as we speak, first in CA then the USA, then the world.
Please, will you get in touch with me asap? There is a lot to discuss that I dare not attempt in one email. We need your help.

Alan Dechert, (916) 792-1784
* Here are the links to the documents I mentioned.
https://theanswer.fyi/constitutions.pdf
https://theanswer.fyi/comparisonsource.odt
(depending on your device and software, the odt file may not automatically open up. It's there and will download. It was written using Libreoffice, which is free and open source and runs on most anything)
** You can get to all the content on our site from
https://theanswer.fyi/frequently-asked-questions/

You can also see the intro at https://theanswer.fyi/ knowing that there is an Easter Egg opened by clicking on our logo (people making pledge requests as explained in our FAQ)

Photos from People's Constitution Ghana's post

05/21/2020

07/16/2018

https://youtu.be/Kh6nl1GmiwQ
Here are the letters referred to in the vid
http://openvoting.org/ad/letter12jul2un.pdf
http://openvoting.org/ad/letter12july2nga.pdf

In summary, we ask for states and countries who want to participate in the process to send us a letter with a contact person we can work with.

episode2TheLetters

07/16/2018

Can we abolish war? Here's THE ANSWER on that. Please watch and share the video.

https://youtu.be/tZ9GIBlem6g

THE ANSWER
Episode 1, Peace as a Human Right, of weekly series by Alan Dechert ( [email protected] )

Today's (July 5, 2018) video is about 17 minutes

Here are several documents referred to in the presentation:

TWO INTERLOCKING CONSTITUTIONS (drafts) -- ONE FOR THE U.S. (pages 1-20) AND ONE FOR THE WORLD (pages 21-32)
http://openvoting.org/ad/revised-const.pdf

THE ELECTION TRANSPARENCY AND SECURITY ACT OF 2018 (now targeted for 2020)
http://openvoting.org/ad/e-tas.pdf

Emerging, our current age, the Solar Era, is a roll-up of all the ages that have been seen in the last 230 years. Each of these developments have had significant impact on our system of governance, which authors 230 years ago had no knowledge.

1. Industrial Age (citizens were all farmers before)
2. Age of fossil fuels (non-biological non-renewable energy)
3. Electronic Age
4. World War (and WMD)
5. Automobiles
6. Flight
7. Television
8. Space Age
9. Racial Equality
10. Computer age
11. Internet
12. Information age
13. Social media
14. Women
15. Smartphones
16. Robotics (emerging)
17. Solar Era (emerging)
18. Cryptocurrency (emerging)

Some large current issues impacting public policy that have been brewing all the while:
- climate change
- population
- privacy

Two MacArthur speeches
--------------------------
1955http://openvoting.org/ad/macarthur-booklet.pdf (quote was from this one... see last paragraph on page 7)
1961http://openvoting.org/ad/macarthur-1961-booklet.pdf

copied from, http://www.macarthurmemorial.org

Global Challenges Foundation (GCF) New Shape Contest
----------------------------
GCF recently awarded three contest entries $600,000. Two of the three focused on reforming the United Nations. See https://globalchallenges.org/

OSGG submission to GCF New Shape Contest (9250 words, 25 references):

The OPEN SOURCE GLOBAL GOVERNANCE PROPOSAL
http://openvoting.org/ad/osgg.pdf
http://openvoting.org/ad/osgg.jpg

episode1

12/04/2017

Global Challenges Foundation has launched their Educators' Challenge contest. This is supplemental to their New Shape Prize contest which closed on September 30 (results known in the Spring).

They report receiving 2702 entries from 122 countries. Ours was one of them!

You don't have to wait until the Spring to get involved. The Educators' Challenge is open now. You don't need to have a formal teaching role to qualify. Anyone with an audience has a chance to win $5,000.

To learn more about our New Shape Prize entry, write to [email protected]

To learn all about Educators' Challenge, visit

https://globalchallenges.org/en/our-work/educators-challenge

09/09/2017

09/02/2017

If a convention of many countries was held in order to create an international sovereign to end war and establish a system of collective security, I believe the people of Iran would support it.

09/02/2017

**Installing a new constitution is a lot of trouble. Why bother?

We gave some hint of it in the introductory post. We will provide much more detail in this post.

The short answer to the Why Bother question is that none of the major problems we face can be solved by itself, because each happens to be intertwined with many other problems. We have to address them all (or all the ones we can see right now). We can't even the US Constitution to address even the most basic issues today. Dissolving world wide military conflict will require an international sovereign, which has never existed. So, we have to install that at the same time (called Human Federation).

MORE INFO BEGINNING WITH OUR INTRODUCTORY TEXT
--------------------------------------------
The introduction says, "The revised version of the US Constitution addresses many weaknesses and faults that have become apparent over the past 230 years, which, for practical reasons, cannot be changed by amending. Wholesale replacement is required, as it was required in 1787."

We also bring up the abolition of war in the introduction. This specific item is mentioned right off because we have found it is the most compelling feature of the plan. We can tell from our site statistics what people react to the most, and that's it.

We also point out in the introduction that. "This basic purpose of the Human Federation (HF) would be to make swords into plowshares -- collect the world's military hardware and recycle it.

As more countries join, the need to retain any of it diminishes.

The other basic purpose of the HF is space -- mostly to get colonization started (beginning with the Moon). Over time, the function is mainly monitoring, while continually improving readiness to respond to extra terrestrial hazards (like incoming Near Earth Objects)."

List of issues addressed
------------------------
Here is a summary of what's in the proposed draft constitutions. They are included in the same document because one cannot be enacted without the other. The new US Constitution would refer to the Human Federation.

We expect further revisions, with additions, changes, and deletions as more people become involved. However, we feel the basic ideas are here. The revised US constitution has 16 articles, and the Human Federation draft constitution has 17 articles. Some of the material is new; some of it is recycled from the US Constitution; some of the wording in the Human Federation's article 17 if from the German constitution.

To get the details, you have to read the 31-page document. Here is a summary of the proposed constitutions:

1) Preamble edited to include "secure the Rights of the People" and provide for common defense deleted.

2) Gender neutral language

3) "Indian" changed to "Native American"

4) US Constitution linked to new Human Federation (see US Article 9 on sovereignty), which has to be adopted concurrent to adoption of new Human Federation Constitution (first clause says, "This Constitution is the Supreme Sovereign for all people choosing to be governed by it").

5) Electoral College removed and replaced. We specify electors which are not people, but tokens which will become fractional when apportioned. Small state weighting retained, but winner-take-all removed.

6) Basic structure of government described in articles 1 - 4 of deprecated constitution retained.

7) Article 5 shortened because there is no need to prescribe how a constitutional convention can be called. It's the Right of the People to alter or abolish the government

8) Article on Elections inserted. States each have a consortium to maintain their voting technologies. Software has to be open GPL.

9) Six amendments proposed by retired justice John Paul Stevens all adopted. Two of -- banning Gerrymandering and 2nd amendment restriction -- are covered differently, however.

9a) Gerrymandering banned -- automated rule-based procedures for drawing lines maintained by the Census bureau. We simply leave out the language for the 2nd amendment, as it is not considered a right, but a privledge covered by state laws

9b) Anti-commandeering rule (add "and other public officials" to Supremacy Clause)

9c) Campaign finance restrictions, clean money. JPS language included

9d) Doctrine of Sovereign Immunity gone.

9e) Death penalty eliminated

10) Office of Local Governor established -- the immediate government official people interact with all the time

11) Article on Equality

12) Free public colleges and universities

13) Peace declared a human right.

14) Supremacy clause of the Constitution retained since it declares itself the "supreme Law of the Land" but not the Supreme Sovereign (which owns no land). The Constitution of the Human Federation is itself the Supreme Sovereign for all people choosing to be governed by it.

15) War Abolished

16) nuclear weapons abolished

17) nuclear power phased out, and nuclear waste permanently stored (by 2100 C.E.)

18) possession of fissionable material banned (except for Human Federation)

19) fossil fuel burning phased out (by 2040)

20) work toward a zero-waste economy with extensive recycling. Right of future generations to inherit a viable land

21) Calendar System defined. Deprecated Constitution has times and dates that were not defined. New era declared -- Solar Era, with Year 16 S.E. equivalent to 2016 C.E.

22) Universal Heath Care -- health care a human right guaranteed by government; abortion rights spelled out ( #5 by Dorf). #6 says reproductive health care and family planning included in these services.

23) Luna established as a county and a member of the Human Federation, Outer Space Treaty to be changed accordingly.

24) Mars also defined as country and Mars Epoch specified (coincidentally Mars and Earth were very close to the same position in orbit around sun 01/01/00 ~275 +/- degrees).

25) Most of the Bill of Rights from deprecated US Constitution contained in Article 15, although 10th amendment moved to section on sovereignty. Other amendments moved to appropriate articles.

27) Presidential term starts 2 weeks earlier.

28) Term limits on Congress members (24 yrs including service in both houses)...

29) SCOTUS members fixed at 9, with regular terms -- new one on odd years; 18 yr max

30) Clause added: "Citizens come under protection of the laws of the United States at birth."

31) voluntary population control -- states publish their Carrying Capacity

32) Default for Human Federation is open, non-secret. Anything held in secret must have strong justification for being kept secret

33) HF Article 16 to establish state autonomy -- one country cannot muck with government (or elections) of another

34) Human Federation would investigate and enact measures to protect earthlings from collisions with space junk, including human-made junk as well as natural near earth objects

35) The Human Federation has highest authority, but limited scope of responsibilities. For example, it has nothing to do with regulating commerce, or other day-to-day human activities on earth.

09/02/2017

SCROLL DOWN TO SEE POSTS

INTRODUCTION TO THIS SITE AND THE CONCEPT
------------------------------------------------------------
This is the front page, which has threads started by the site administrator. This post only is pinned to the top. Other posts appear with the oldest at the bottom (from 1 Sep 2017).

If someone other than the site administrator starts a thread, it will appear on the "Visitor Posts" page, which can be accessed by the link in the column on the right.

The main page for the People's Constitution project, is at this URL:
https://www.facebook.com/hf.discuss/

Many other pages local to the state or non-US country exist or are forming. The address for these pages are like so:

https://www.facebook.com/hf.discuss.xx

Where the xx suffix represents the US state. Examples:

https://www.facebook.com/hf.discuss.ca
https://www.facebook.com/hf.discuss.tx
https://www.facebook.com/hf.discuss.ut
https://www.facebook.com/hf.discuss.ny
https://www.facebook.com/hf.discuss.fl

Non-US countries have a 3-character code like this:

https://www.facebook.com/hf.discuss.nor
https://www.facebook.com/hf.discuss.deu
https://www.facebook.com/hf.discuss.dnk
https://www.facebook.com/hf.discuss.nld

etc. If your state or country is not included yet, we're working on it. Facebook rules say we need 25 likes to assign the short alias, so if not found, we haven't started the page yet or don't have the 25 likes yet. If you want to help get it established, let us know (see message link in the column on the right).

In addition, there is a Shop Now button. Currently, this leads to a donation page. We need money to make all this work, so please support us with a contribution. In the future, we may have memorabilia (T-shirts, buttons, stickers, pens, etc.) to send to contributors.

These pages have (or will have) local administrators who will post updates, including event announcements past and future.

CONCEPT
-----------------
We endeavor to replace the current US Constitution and create a new international sovereign called the Human Federation.

The revised version of the US Constitution addresses many weaknesses and faults that have become apparent over the past 230 years, which cannot be changed by single amendments for practical reasons. Wholesale replacement is required, as it was required in 1787.

The current version of the documents can be found here. The Constitution for the Human Federation begins on page 21:
http://openvoting.org/ad/revised-const.pdf

This basic purpose of the Human Federation (HF) would be to make swords into plowshares -- collect the world's military hardware and recycle it.

As more countries join, the need to retain any of it diminishes.

The other basic purpose of the HF is space -- mostly to get colonization started (beginning with the Moon). Over time, the function is mainly monitoring, while continually improving readiness to respond to extra terrestrial hazards (like incoming Near Earth Objects).

The draft constitution of the Human Federation says, "This Constitution is the Supreme Sovereign for all people choosing to be governed by it."

HF would own no land and, once new laws are in place, legislative sessions would become shorter and shorter.

These pages represent real life political campaigns that will expand to become constitutional conventions. According to current US law, it will take 3/4ths of the 50 US states (38) to ratify the new US Constitution. Some people feel that red states in the US will be most difficult to convince, so we are making some extra efforts there. The Human Federation constitution calls for at least 40 charter members. So, we see a need for approximately 100 of these state and national pages.

People's Constitution No more wars. New US legal structure and the world. Presenting a revised US Constitution + world

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