DEMOCRATIC WORLD FEDERALISTS
PEACEFUL | JUST | SUSTAINABLE | WORLD
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MASTER LIST of Articles DWF NEWS 8/19/26
Subject Line: National sovereignty misused, protects world criminals
The Door Opens to Overcoming the UN Security Council's Dictatorship
A Second United Nations Charter: Modernizing the UN for a New Generation
Global Governance Forum
Endless preparatory committees, open-ended working groups, review conferences, and ... more meetings
NEVER REACHING CRITICAL WILL
From REACHING CRITICAL WILL (RCW) E-News, August 2026
UN's Responsibility-to-protect not happening for oppressed Afghan females
Five years on how will Taliban deal with armed opposition
Hamidullah Mohammad Shah Al Jazeera
A safe home for world criminals, shielded by national sovereignty
Israel protects Mexican official wanted for mass kidnap-murder, along with accused sex criminals and fraudsters
Nate Bear The Grayzone
[This article was originally published by ¡DoNotPanic! and features additional editing by The Grayzone.]
Israel's leaders commit heinous crimes with impunity protected by the misuse of national sovereignty
The Torture Regime
Dikla Taylor-Sheinman Jewish Currents
Spiritual and religious wisdom in relation to AI
Faith, Ethics, and Human Dignity in an Age of Artificial Intelligence: A Call to Action
Gerrit W. Gong
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August 19, 2026
EARTH CONSTITUTION WATCH
[The opinions, viewpoints, and conclusions expressed in these articles are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of DWF NEWS. We provide space for diverse perspectives to encourage open dialogue and informed discussion.]
DWF NEWS reports that the UN Security Council's dictatorship can be overcome. Thanks to the research findings of Dr. Shahr-Yar Sharei (Center for UN Constitutional Research), the 109 Movement calling for Charter Review is knocking at the door of the UN.
Since the birth of the UN Charter, world federalists have lamented over the fact that needed changes (amendments) to the UN Charter could be blocked by any member of the UN Security Council's Permanent 5 veto powers. But now we find legal reasoning which opens the door to a new Charter or world constitution. All that is necessary to avoid the P-5 veto is for the nations and/or world community to create "a new legal entity." The Earth Constitution (EC) provides the basis for that new legal entity which eliminates the UN Security Council dictatorship and replaces it with a democratically elected World Parliament.
A growing number of peace activists, worldwide, have ratified the Earth Constitution in order to establish Earth Federation government, (or if you prefer label it a "new UN" or "UN 2.0".) The EC's World Parliament will consist of a House of Peoples, House of Nations and House of Counselors. It will become the decision-maker on global affairs, replacing the failed, undemocratic UN Security Council which will either become advisory only, or be eliminated entirely.
~ R. Kotila, PhD
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The Door Opens to Overcoming the UN Security Council's Dictatorship
A Second United Nations Charter: Modernizing the UN for a New Generation
Global Governance Forum
Editor: The Constitution for the Federation of Earth (aka "Earth Constitution") is the "new legal entity" which frees the United Nations from the undemocratic UN Security Council's P-5 veto powers. Proposed amendments to the Charter are vulnerable to being vetoed by any one of the 5 Bully nations. In contrast, amendments to the Earth Constitution (EC) are veto-free from the P-5. The UN Security Council itself, a proven failure at its mission to end wars and bring world peace, is replaced by a democratically elected World Parliament, a key part of a "new UN" -- Earth Federation government under the Earth Constitution. -- R. Kotila, PhD
EXCERPTS (from "A Second UN Charter: Modernizing the UN for a New Generation")
Comments on Chapters XVIII and XIX
Overview of Applicability of Articles 108, 109 and 110 to Current and Future Reform Efforts Articles 108 and 109, as they currently read, are in force and define the requirements for amending the present charter. The changes proposed to Articles 108 and 109 would, therefore, only apply to future amendments of the Second Charter, rather than the current reform efforts. Because, as discussed below, the amendment veto powers given to the Permanent Five Security Council members could doom reform efforts, the redraft of Article 110 provides an extra-Charter process for pursuing reform.
In fact, the potential for a veto to ultimately defeat the reform project might lead other member states to consider the project futile, making it very difficult to make it viable. The Second Charter project, therefore, is only likely to succeed (at least in the short term) if we can devise a legally and politically viable way around the P5 amendment veto. ...
Indeed, if the reform project were to proceed with amending the current Charter, this would seem to be an impossible barrier to overcome. If states were, however, to found a new legal organization, in establishing that organization, they would no longer be bound to the amendment rules prescribed by the existing United Nations Charter. ...
An important precedent for creating a new political entity when stymied by the amendment rules of an existing entity can be found in the institution of the United States Constitution. Amendment of the American Articles of Confederation, in effect from 1777, required unanimous ratification by all 13 American states. With the knowledge that this would be a difficult hurdle to overcome, the American Constitutional framers in 1787 circumvented the amendment provisions of the Articles of Confederation by establishing a new legal entity with the same name, the United States of America, but with a wholly new constitution that would require ratification by only nine of the thirteen states. PAGE 90 READ MORE
https://globalgovernanceforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/A-Second-United-Nations-Charter.pdf
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Endless preparatory committees, open-ended working groups, review conferences, and ... more meetings
NEVER REACHING CRITICAL WILL
From REACHING CRITICAL WILL (RCW) E-News, August 2026
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Editor's note: Here's a sample of United Nations-related groups and meetings regarding disarmament. It is a seemingly endless list of UN meetings, meeting groups, committees, commissions, working groups, open-ended working groups, preparatory committees, review conferences, international meetings, etc. etc., faithfully reported on by REACHING CRITICAL WILL*.
Year after year "critical will" is never reached. World federalists long ago explained what is wrong, and what to do about it. But we are yet to replace the obsolete, fatally flawed UN Charter which amounts to a global war system. The Charter must be replaced. The Earth Constitution waits in the wings, ready to go. - R. Kotila, PhD
LISTED IN RCW'S E-NEWS AUGUST 2026:
Working Group on the Strengthening of the Biological Weapons Convention
Twelfth Meeting of States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty (CSP12)
Group of Governmental Experts of the High Contracting Parties related to emerging technologies in the area of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS)
International Meeting on Victim Assistance and Environmental Remediation
Preparatory Committee of the Seventh Review Conference of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW)
Third Review Conference of the Convention on Cluster Munitions
Informal Exchange on “Artificial intelligence in the military domain and its implications for international peace and security”
2026 Intersessional Meetings of the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention
First Substantive Plenary Meeting of the Global Mechanism on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the Context of International Security
The third session of the Open-ended Working Group on the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space in all its Aspects
FROM RCW'S WEBSITE:
*Reaching Critical Will (RCW) was created in 1999 to coordinate and enhance the engagement of activists and organizers in the United Nations’ work for nuclear disarmament. Since then, RCW has become a global leader in providing analysis and advocacy for disarmament and arms control across many weapon systems, working to end militarism and war and to investigate and elevate gendered aspects of weapons and of diplomatic processes from feminist, queer, and antiracist perspectives.
Our fiscal sponsor is the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom United Nations Office in New York (WILPF UNO Inc.). WILPF is an ECOSOC-accredited organization at the United Nations. READ MORE
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UN's Responsibility-to-protect not happening for oppressed Afghan females
Five years on, how will Taliban deal with armed opposition?
Hamidullah Mohammad Shah Al Jazeera
The United Nations says armed groups opposed to the government remain active.
EXCERPTS
Since the fall of the previous government in August 2021, several groups operating under different names and banners have emerged, claiming responsibility for attacks on government forces in a number of provinces. Their presence online has also increased noticeably in recent months.
The United Nations says armed groups opposed to the government remain active, but have been unable to pose a significant challenge to Taliban control of Afghan territory and do not control any fixed geographical areas.
Afghan government response
Afghan government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid played down the activities of armed groups opposed to the Taliban, saying their presence was concentrated largely online rather than on the ground.
He told Al Jazeera that the government “controls all Afghan territory and has the ability to deal with any insurgency or armed group that emerges in the country”, adding that these organisations do not constitute a genuine threat to Afghanistan’s stability.
Mujahid said Afghan society had become more committed to security and stability after decades of war and was no longer prepared to allow those he described as “warlords” to return to the political scene.
He said previous experience had led broad sections of the population to reject a return to armed conflict.
The opposition fronts, he added, are “active in cyberspace”, but that activity has not translated into a military presence capable of changing realities on the ground.
Writer and political analyst Khalid Ahmadi told Al Jazeera that “the main problem is that the armed opposition exaggerates its ability to carry out operations, but has so far failed to present a unified vision for a post-Taliban period.
“At the same time, the Taliban maintains control, but faces challenges over political legitimacy and foreign relations.”
The growing number of armed fronts therefore does not necessarily mean Afghanistan is heading towards “a new civil war”, but it does show that conflict did not end with the collapse of the previous government, he added.
READ MORE
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/15/five-years-on-how-will-taliban-deal-with-armed-opposition
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A safe home for world criminals, shielded by national sovereignty
Israel protects Mexican official wanted for mass kidnap-murder, along with accused sex criminals and fraudsters
Nate Bear The Grayzone
[This article was originally published by ¡DoNotPanic! and features additional editing by The Grayzone.]
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EXCERPTS
Israel is home to droves of international criminals accused or found guilty in a second country of various crimes. Among them is Tomás Zerón, accused mastermind of the kidnapping and murder of 43 Mexican students in Ayotzinapa.
Israel has become a haven for international criminals. Many are dual-nationals who have taken advantage of their ability to move seamlessly between Israel and their second country of citizenship to commit crimes and, in some cases, evade justice.
The scale of the criminality, and the volume of cases (relative to the population of Israel), is astonishing.
Other prime Israeli movers in the binary options fraud business were Yossi Herzog and Yakov Cohen, both connected with Yukom and other binary options front companies. They were charged with $140 million fraud in 2019 but despite being under a DOJ criminal investigation the US choose not to pursue their extradition, while other Israeli co-conspirators in the Yukom case have joined Elbaz in serving jail sentences.
Outside the fraud cases, Israel also attracts politicians attempting to shield themselves from justice in their home countries. One of the most notorious and ongoing cases is that of Tomás Zerón, the former director of the Criminal Investigation Agency of Mexico. Zerón is accused by Mexican authorities of having direct involvement in the kidnap, torture, and likely murder of dozens of university students.
Often known as the Iguala mass kidnapping and considered one of Mexico’s most heinous human rights abuse cases, in 2014 forty-three leftist students were kidnapped on their way to Mexico City to commemorate the anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre.
Zerón is said to have known or ordered the students to be handed over to a cartel group to be murdered and their remains disposed of. Zerón fled to Israel and despite an extradition order, an Interpol red notice and numerous requests from Mexico to hand him over, Israel has refused, reportedly as punishment for Mexico’s criticism of Israel at the UN.
Another Mexican diplomat who fled to Israel is Andrés Roemer. Formerly Mexico's Ambassador to UNESCO based in Paris, and Consul General of Mexico in San Francisco, Roemer fled to Israel in 2021 after being accused by 61 women of rape and sexual assault. Mexico has demanded his extradition, but he remains in Israel.
Roemer is not alone. Israel is a haven for Jewish sex criminals and paedophiles to hide from justice, with the phenomena so prevalent that even CBS News has written about it. Probably the most famous names associated with fleeing to Israel after being accused of sex crimes are the Hollywood directors Brett Rattner and Bryan Singer. Rush Hour director Rattner, a good friend of Netanyahu’s, fled to Israel in 2023 after being accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct and assault on set.
READ MORE
https://thegrayzone.com/2026/08/02/israel-mexican-official-wanted-for-mass-kidnap-murder-criminals-fraudsters/
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Israel's leaders commit heinous crimes with impunity protected by the misuse of national sovereignty
The Torture Regime
Dikla Taylor-Sheinman Jewish Currents
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EXCERPTS
Dear Reader,
It is no secret that Israeli prisons have become unprecedentedly deadly for Palestinian detainees. With more than 100 Palestinians having died there in the past three years, the situation has grown so dire that even the mainstream media is scrutinizing the Israeli prison system in new ways, shedding light, for example, on the sexual assault and starvation happening behind prison walls.
For our upcoming Fall issue, Dikla Taylor-Sheinman investigated how Israel’s torture regime developed—and its implications for the Palestinian freedom struggle. Through intrepid historical research and present-day interviews, her report, which we are bringing out from behind the paywall today, narrates a political history key to understanding the Israeli prison as a machine for Palestinian death.
... After taking power in 2022, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir devoted himself to ensuring that prisoners are treated as inhumanely as possible; since October 7th, the Israeli public’s appetite for revenge has given him the political leeway to do so, including by legislating away the already limited rights available to “unlawful combatants,” a dubious legal category developed by the US during the War on Terror, which Israel uses to detain people from Gaza without trial.
Under oppressive regimes, the prison becomes a locus of struggle, and Taylor-Sheinman’s narrative helps place the experiences of Palestinian prisoners within this broader context. ... At the same time, Taylor-Sheinman also shows that the brutality we see in Israeli prisons today has been exceptionally nightmarish: The rate of death has, for example, far outpaced that of Guantanamo Bay.
Taylor-Sheinman’s reporting reveals the truth that there is no easy path to changing Israel’s regime of carceral cruelty—but also emphasizes the urgency of finding a way.
— Mari Cohen, senior politics editor - Jewish Currents
REPORT
THE TORURE REGIME
by Dikla Taylor-Sheinman
EXCERPTS
On the first day of 2026, approximately 13 months after Usayd Al-Mahfouth was detained by Israeli forces in an early morning raid on his home in Nablus, I received a frantic phone call from his mother. “Did you hear the news?” she asked, panic rising in her voice. Hassan Issa Al-Qasha’leh, a young Palestinian man arrested around the same time as her son, had just died inside Be’er Sheva prison in southern Israel, six months before his scheduled release. “I am really very worried Usayd is not going to survive,” she told me.
When soldiers came for Usayd, arriving during dawn prayers on December 19th, 2024, he had just turned 17. Once a gregarious teen who loved cooking and riding his horse, Usayd had found his life upended when Israeli soldiers stormed Nablus’s Askar camp that August. He was in the street when soldiers shot him with high-velocity rounds that ignited his clothing and punctured a vein in his left leg, which doctors were forced to amputate the next day. For four days Usayd lay in a coma in the intensive care unit, undergoing multiple skin grafts on his burned hand and lower arm. By the time the soldiers came for him a few months later, his life was no longer in jeopardy, but Usayd was still receiving critical medical treatment. Nevertheless, the soldiers dragged him, hopping on one leg, from the house. He was loaded into a military jeep and taken away.
Neither Usayd’s family nor his lawyer knows what he is accused of, and because he was taken into administrative detention—imprisonment without charge or trial based on an unproven allegation of “dangerousness”—they are unlikely to ever find out. From the handful of prison visits afforded to his lawyer and the testimonies of released detainees, what they do know is this: On the day of his arrest, officers shoved Usayd into the side of a military jeep and beat him so badly that he has suffered from chronic ...
The realities of Israeli prisons are, indeed, increasingly the stuff of nightmares. READ MORE
https://jewishcurrents.org/newsletter/the-torture-regime-newsletter?
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Spiritual and religious wisdom in relation to AI
Faith, Ethics, and Human Dignity in an Age of Artificial Intelligence: A Call to Action*
Gerrit W. Gong
EXCERPTS
... Of particular importance to us as religious leaders are AI implications in the realms of faith, ethics, and human dignity. As we enter uncharted technological and ethical territory, we need especially now to align AI’s pervasive exponential reach with enduring faith-based ethical principles and moral values.
First, we must be clear, and help society understand, that AI is not and cannot be God. Many talk too glibly about “AI becoming God” or “godlike AI.” AI training data is sourced by humans; AI’s moral and ethical principles are only those its creators consciously inject and align. Even if AI training changes or if we achieve AGI (artificial general intelligence) or ASI (artificial super intelligence), we know reasoning — even superhuman reasoning — has limitations. Man is not, and certainly Divinity is not, defined solely by reasoning.
Those who seek to deify AI may unwittingly discover a modern Tower of Babel. Human efforts to create utopia or to reach heaven always fall short. Ultimately, we are constrained by human limits of moral understanding and capacity to know and do good. As a creation of God, man can create AI, but AI cannot create God.
As religious leaders we can help our people anticipate, adapt to, and beneficially use ongoing AI changes. We are not afraid of AI, nor do we think AI will be the solution to everything. We can help our adherents and congregants see AI as a useful tool that, properly and appropriately used, can bless many aspects of daily life.
Artificial intelligence’s still-evolving potential blurs the boundaries and limits of its reach and impact. Concentrating information, capital, and technology concentrates power. Power concentrated in the hands of a relative few challenges the common good, especially when some of those relative few think they know best for all society.
Amidst AI competition between and among companies, countries, governments at all levels, all societies and all peoples share a vital interest to encourage, support, and incentivize safe and responsible AI.
What I will call a “Faith Community AI Evaluation” can help. READ MORE
https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/faith--ethics--and-human-dignity-in-an-age-of-artificial-intelligence--a-call-to-action
*This address was delivered on July 29, 2025, during the Religions for Peace World Council in Istanbul, Republic of Türkiye by Elder Gerrit W. Gong of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles .. to represent The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints...
Gerrit is a Dutch name; Walter (my father’s name) is an American name; and Gong of course is a Chinese surname. I have always liked my international name. It invites me to be a global citizen in the household of faith.
Of course, I remain personally responsible for these remarks. ~ Elder Gerrit W. Gong
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