International Organizations

"The world youth congress is a youth-led congress, contributing to the vision of a world in peace and without war and to the vision of a more peaceful, just and sustainable future. The idea of the youth congress derives from the preparatory process of the youth gathering of the IPB World Congress “Disarm! For a Climate of Peace – Creating an Action Agenda”"

"Militarization is the wrong path for the world to take; it fuels tensions and raises the potential for war and conflict. It aggravates already heightened nuclear tensions."

"We are witnessing the consequences of irresponsible political decisions that have led to dramatic under-investment in healthcare. All over the world, health systems are reaching the limits of their strength and heroic front-line staff are under massive pressure. The coronavirus emergency shows the weakened state that our societies find themselves in: a world driven by financialization, shareholder value, and austerity has weakened our ability to defend the common good and placed human life in danger on a global scale."

"World leaders must put disarmament and peace at the centre of policy making and develop a new agenda for disarmament that includes banning nuclear weapons. We reiterate our call for governments to sign up to the TPNW treaty."

"The COVID-19 crisis has made clearer than ever the flaws in our system, one that prioritizes military spending and global instability over the well-being of our people... Indeed, global priorities are wrong; it is time for a new era of peace, a global ceasefire as called for by the U.N. and people around the globe. Let us demilitarize the world and invest in global peace and diplomacy."

"Disarmament is a major key to the great transformation of our economies, to ensure that human beings and not profit are most valued; economies in which ecological challenges will be solved and global social justice will be pursued."

"The COVID-19 crisis has made clearer than ever the flaws in our system, one that prioritizes military spending and global instability over the well-being of our people... Indeed, global priorities are wrong; it is time for a new era of peace, a global ceasefire as called for by the U.N. and people around the globe. Let us demilitarize the world and invest in global peace and diplomacy."

"The overall objective of the world youth congress is to build bridges and foster discussions among youth with different perspectives on and approaches to peace, justice and sustainability alongside non-youth stakeholders active in the peace movement and in the various fields. Voices of youth against war and for peace should be increasingly and strongly heard. Among others, the specific objectives are:"

"In a statement responding to the analysis, the International Peace Bureau (IPB) also pointed to the public health crisis as evidence of the need for a worldwide shift in priorities... Sharing a SIPRI infographic, IPB co-president Philip Jennings tweeted: “The military industry complex is raking it in and we don’t feel safer. Time to halt this madness.”"

"For all these reasons, we call on working people and youth to take the struggle for measures against the crisis into our own hands. In Italy we have already seen workers rebelling against the lack of protection measures and for paid leave in factories and companies."

"The dynamics of the economic and will strengthen the tendencies toward recession, aggravating the effects of the health crisis. This relationship means that the duration and depth will be dependent on the combination of both crises. The drops in the stock market are bursting a bubble that helped maintain weak economic growth (particularly in the U.S.), without having resolved any of the structural problems that burst forth with the 2008 crisis (low productivity, low investment). Companies today are more indebted than in 2008, so a series of bankruptcies (in airlines, shale oil companies in the U.S., tourism, etc.) could hit the banks. Unlike 2008, the banks appear to be in a better position, but this all depends on the depth of the recession. There are other significant differences compared to the last recession: instead of coordination between the governments of the main powers that was seen in 2009 (when they were obviously terrified by the depth of the crisis), today confrontations are prevailing due to tensions and ruthless competition not only between the United States and China, but also between the U.S. and Germany (with strong economic ties to China), and even between the United Kingdom and the European Union."

"We encourage the organizations of the working class to intervene in the crisis with a program independent of the different capitalist factions, and at the same time we point out the need to confront the power of the capitalists and put an end to their exploitation of the workers of the whole world and of the planet itself. We are fighting for workers’ governments and socialist revolution to transform society root and branch, because capitalist society protects profits, not the lives of the working classes."

"The crisis of public has long been a widespread demand in several countries, particularly in the U.S. Surveys showed that even before this crisis, healthcare was among the main concerns of the U.S. population because of the debt it generates for families and because 27.5 million people do not have any kind of coverage. Bernie Sanders has been attacked, not only by Trump but also by the Democrats and Biden, because he calls for Medicare for All. All healthcare systems are organized around the profits of big . The decline in public healthcare is not just caused by forces, but also by forces claiming to be “progressive” or , as can be seen in Latin America where “progressive” governments have failed to change the structure of “first-rate” and for the rich while public healthcare for the poor is absolutely backward. State-sponsored scientific research is significantly degraded. Since the elderly suffer the most from the lack of medical and health care, the attacks on pensions that are sweeping across all continents and governments are especially outrageous. They transform the increase in people’s into a “problem” for the budgets of s. These states make jobs more precarious while reducing taxes for the rich."

"In different countries, especially where there is more class struggle, governments will seek to make political use of the COVID-19 health crisis, with the aim of restricting democratic freedoms and preventing demonstrations of discontent and struggle. The case of Chile is illustrative: the government of went from complete idleness to a discourse about the enormous consequences of the virus, demanding measures like the cancellation of massive events while refusing to discuss the fact that working people still will not have access to free testing and the Chilean public health system remains enormously unfunded and in crisis. Thus, the government is creating a climate that discourages the mobilizations that take place every week in the country’s main cities. Piñera will attempt to use the health argument to pass repressive laws such as one that would authorize the president to decree the of “” (hospitals, ports, etc.). We reject any repressive measure that is disguised as and is directed against the masses and their mobilizations (whether organized or spontaneous). It should not be the government that decides whether or not to hold a demonstration, but the organizations in struggle with the advice of healthcare professionals and researchers."

"The governments that have been negligent from the beginning (the U.S., Iran, Italy, and so many others) are reacting with measures that are limited to banning flights and strengthening s and isolation, without more profound responses that would reduce deaths as much as possible. They are afraid of demonstrating their ineptitude in the face of such a health crisis. At the last minute, Trump declared a “national emergency” and agreed with the Democrats in Congress on a special package for and rapid testing. If he appears incompetent in the face of a crisis and thousands of people die, he could lose the U.S. presidency, even to Biden. The same applies to any other government. In the meantime, measures of police control are imposed on the population. The currently appears “successful” in its response, but in the first weeks that the new coronavirus appeared, the government offered the denialism typical of restorationist capitalist bureaucracy, ignoring the warnings that could have reduced the number of deaths (including that of , a doctor who warned about the epidemic and was consequently accused by the authorities of “spreading rumors” before he died from COVID-19). China is the most extreme example of authoritarianism around the world, with its tight bureaucratic control that prevents vital news from leaving and other affected areas."

"organizations from the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Bolivia, Venezuela, Uruguay, Costa Rica, and Peru, members and sympathizers of the Trotskyist Fraction for the Fourth International, are publishing the following statement at a time when the crisis of the Coronavirus pandemic is developing rapidly. The disastrous situation of healthcare systems in the great majority of countries is preventing adequate responses (such as massive testing), causing thousands of avoidable deaths, and providing confusing information about the reality of the pandemic in each country. The economic and financial effects of the crisis will likely be unloaded onto the shoulders of the workers and the poor, who in turn are the most vulnerable to the danger of infection. We propose urgent measures so that large companies pay the costs of this crisis. They are the ones who have always profited from the degradation of and precarious working conditions, the measures carried out by the governments, states, and parties in their service. These are banners of struggle for the organization of workers and youth. Great crises require great solutions."

"Slavery did not end with abolition in the 19th century. Instead, it changed its forms and continues to harm people in every country in the world. Whether they are women forced into prostitution, men forced to work in agriculture or construction, children in sweatshops or girls forced to marry older men, their lives are controlled by their exploiters, they no longer have a free choice and they have to do as they’re told. They are in slavery. Today slavery is less about people literally owning other people – although that still exists – but more about being exploited and completely controlled by someone else, without being able to leave. [...] Many people think that slavery happens only overseas, in developing countries. In fact, no country is free from modern slavery, even Britain. The Government estimates that there are tens of thousands people in modern slavery in the UK."

"In a world where we are exposed daily to global problems that need to be solved as well as serious challenges in our own lives and communities, it is easy to get caught-up and feel overwhelmed. However, what if you had a creed that could help you feel grounded and maintain an optimistic approach despite the obstacles life throws at you? This magical creed was created 100 years ago and yet it is still very relevant today. Long before the concept of thriving was brought to the forefront of people’s conversations, the Optimist Creed by Optimist International existed. It has shaped generations of young leaders since 1919 by teaching them to look at optimism as a way of life through action, instead of an abstract idea... In your life, there will be obstacles along the way. You have a choice to find a lesson and value in every challenge you experience. My wish for you is that the Optimist Creed is a reminder to persevere and maintain a healthy perspective. Find your own creed or adopt this one if it speaks to you, because if we focus on optimism with purpose, the world will be a much better place."

"To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others."

"To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble."

"To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own."

"To think only of the best, to work only for the best, and to expect only the best."

"To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future."

"To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile."

"Promise Yourself"

"To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind."

"To talk health, happiness and prosperity to every person you meet."

"Purposes To develop optimism as a philosophy of life utilizing the tenets of the Optimist Creed; to promote an active interest in good government and civic affairs; to inspire respect for the law; to promote patriotism and work for international accord and friendship among all people; to aid and encourage the development of youth, in the belief that the giving of one’s self in service to others will advance the well-being of humankind, community life and the world."

"Mission By providing hope and positive vision, Optimists bring out the best in youth, our communities, and ourselves."

"Vision Optimist International will be recognized worldwide as the premier volunteer organization that values all children and helps them develop to their full potential."

"To make all your friends feel that there is something in them."

"“Promise yourself to be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind." So begins the Optimist Creed of Optimist International that members recite at club meetings worldwide. Begun in 1919, Optimist International celebrates its 100th anniversary during 2019. What a great creed to reflect on in today’s tumultuous world! ...the Optimist Clubs sponsor several recognition events including Youth Appreciation Recognition, Achievement in Education Awards, Respect for Law and Friend of Youth Awards. Optimist Club members volunteer for Salvation Army bell ringing, support a youth golf tournament for area golfers who can advance to district and national tournaments and support programs and events for kids with cancer and their families."

"To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true."

"So far as I know, the MPS never produced and distributed an agreed public statement of its program. Outside the economics profession, it was invisible. The MPS was no more influential inside the economics profession. There were no publications to be discussed. The American membership was apparently limited to economists of the Chicago School and its scattered university outposts, plus a few transplanted Europeans. “Some of my best friends” belonged. There was, of course, continuing research and debate among economists on the good and bad properties of competitive and noncompetitive markets, and the capacities and limitations of corrective regulation. But these would have gone on in the same way had the MPS not existed. It has to be remembered that academic economists were never optimistic about central planning. Even discussion about the economics of some conceivable socialism usually took the form of devising institutions and rules of behavior that would make a socialist economy function like a competitive market economy (perhaps more like one than any real-world market economy does). Maybe the main function of the MPS was to maintain the morale of the free-market fellowship."

"In some way, the founding and the first conference of the Mont Pèlerin Society, which, I feel entitled to say, was my own idea, although I received a great deal of support in its organisation especially from Röpke as well as from Mises, constituted the rebirth of a liberal movement in Europe. Americans have done me the honour of considering the publication of The Road to Serfdom as the decisive date, but it is my conviction that the really serious endeavour among intellectuals to bring about the rehabilitation of the idea of personal freedom especially in the economic realm dates from the founding of the Mont Pèlerin Society in 1947."

"I was invited to become a member of the Mt. Pelerin Society in 1957, and I vividly recall my first participation in a general meeting, at the Suvretta House in St. Moritz, the most luxurious hotel I had ever seen. I recall the feet cushions in the lobby and the Spanish princess who got so many of us a bit excited by her mere presence. (No connection with the society.) I do not know who nominated me for membership, perhaps it was Frank Knight, but I do know that everyone acknowledged that the society was really Hayek's and that any new member must have been approved by Hayek himself. By 1957, the membership had grown somewhat from its small beginnings a decade earlier, but there was still a club-like aspect to the meeting and with an underlying tension between the central European and American members (the latter mostly with Chicago connections). To those of us who had libertarian-populist blood in our veins, there was too much deference accorded to Hayek, and especially to Ludwig von Mises, who seemed to demand sycophancy."

"The group’s members depicted themselves as ‘liberals’ (in the traditional European sense) because of their fundamental commitment to ideals of personal freedom. The neoliberal label signalled their adherence to those free market principles of neoclassical economics that had emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century [...] to displace the classical theories of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and, of course, Karl Marx. Yet they also held to Adam Smith’s view that the hidden hand of the market was the best device for mobilizing even the basest of human instincts such as gluttony, greed, and the desire for wealth and power for the benefit of all. Neoliberal doctrine was therefore deeply opposed to state interventionist theories, such as those of John Maynard Keynes, which rose to prominence in the 1930s in response to the Great Depression. Many policy-makers after the Second World War looked to Keynesian theory to guide them as they sought to keep the business cycle and recessions under control. The neoliberals were even more fiercely opposed to theories of centralized state planning, such as those advanced by Oscar Lange working close to the Marxist tradition. State decisions, they argued, were bound to be politically biased depending upon the strength of the interest groups involved [...]. State decisions on matters of investment and capital accumulation were bound to be wrong because the information available to the state could not rival that contained in market signals."

"In attaching so much importance to the idea of the League of Nations England was moved in part by a sincere idealism but also by a false idea she had formed of a League of Nations that would overcome cannon with volleys of edifying discourse. Harold Nicolson, a member of the British Parliament, told me he had received the following letter from one of his constituents: "I hope you are for the League of Nations and no foreign entanglements." This confusion of ideas, this incredible self-confidence, this refusal to look reality in the face had produced the effects that might have been foreseen. Having slumbered on her green lawns from 1919 to 1939 England awoke after Munich when it was too late, and she came to the war with almost no army."

"A mirage, and an old one... One may as well talk of London morality being due to the Archbishop of Canterbury. But take away Scotland Yard!"

"I have loved but one flag and I can not share that devotion and give affection to the mongrel banner invented for a league."

"There are many things the world has realised and is prepared to take into account and to provide against. This League of Nations is an attempt to do it by some less barbarous methods than war. Let us try it. I beg this country to try it seriously, and to try it in earnest. It is due to mankind that we should try it. Anything except the horror of the last four and a half years!"

"I have not read it, and I don't intend to read it. It's not worth the paper it's written on. To the end of time it'll always be a case of “Thy head or my head.” I've no faith in these schemes."

"The League of Nations is the greatest humbug in history. They cannot even protect a little nation like Armenia. They do nothing but pass useless resolutions."

"Despite its poor historical reputation, the League of Nations should not be dismissed as a complete failure. Of sixty-six international disputes it had to deal with (four of which had led to open hostilities), it successfully resolved thirty-five and quite legitimately passed back twenty to the channels of traditional diplomacy. It failed to resolve just eleven conflicts. Like its successor the United Nations, it was capable of being effective provided some combination of the great powers - including, it should be emphasized, those, like the United States and the Soviet Union, who were not among its members - had a common interest in its being effective. Remarkably, given Manchuria's role as an imperial fault line earlier in the century, this was not the case in 1931. So uninterested was Stalin in the Far East at this point that in 1935 he offered to sell the Soviet-owned Chinese Eastern Railway to Japan and to withdraw all Soviet forces to the Amur River. If the Soviets were not interested in Manchuria, it was hard to see why Britain or the United States should be, especially at a time when both were reeling from severe financial crises."

"[T]he two most important and intractable problems were to make the Covenant an efficient instrument for the preservation of peace and to bring about disarmament. Although this was not generally perceived at the time, these aims were contradictory. In order that the Covenant should be made effective it was necessary that sanctions, and in the last resort force, should be used against the aggressor. Men deluded themselves by speaking of collective security. What aggressor nation, they asked, could resist the united might of fifty nations? But they overlooked the elementary truth that zero plus zero still equals zero. In 1925...the only members of the League who possessed significant military forces were England and France... Consequently the whole burden of enforcing the Covenant rested on the[ir] shoulders... This meant that the general staffs of these two countries were faced with more extended military commitments than they had ever known in the days when their sole task was to protect the national interest. The answer should have been to make a proportionate increase in the British and French military establishments. Instead they were told that collective security diminished the extent of their commitments and that in consequence it would be safe to embark on a massive programme of disarmament. Never in our history has there been a more flagrant case of muddled thinking and self-deception."

"The real difficulty of the situation lies in the practical working of the coercion. Let it be laid down that the League as a whole will take the necessary action, economic or military. Well and good; but the League is not a military or economic unit and possesses no central executive. It is a society of independent sovereign states, their independence somewhat modified by treaty obligations and a habit of regular conference, but none the less real. I doubt whether the League as a League could declare war or wage war. The force would have to be supplied by each state separately, of its own deliberate will... One cannot expect Siam or Canada to mobilize because one Balkan state attacks another. And if the duty is not incumbent on all members, who is to decide what members are to undertake it? The Council has no absolute authority. No nation will be eager to subject itself to the strain and sacrifice of coercive action unless its own interests are sharply involved. But the question is whether, in a world that increasingly detests war and mistrusts force as a instrument of international policy, the various national Parliaments or Governments will in general have sufficient loyalty to the League, sufficient public spirit and sense of reality, to be ready to face the prospects of war not in defence of their own frontiers or immediate national interests, but simply to maintain the peace of the world."

"[T]he League of Nations will be of no value unless it has behind it the sanction of strong nations, prepared at a moment's notice to stop aggression. Otherwise the League of Nations will be a scrap of paper."

"Is it not apparent that the policy of sanctions involves, I do not say war, but a risk of war? Is it not apparent that that risk must increase in proportion to the effectiveness of the sanctions and also by reason of the incompleteness of the League? Is it not also apparent from what has happened that in the presence of such a risk nations cannot be relied upon to proceed to the last extremity of war unless their vital interests are threatened?"

"The Labour movement was loth to accept the logic of its own declarations. Everyone knew in his heart that resolutions of protest wouldn't stop the dictators. But Labour people abhorred war and were deterred by the prospects of a world-wide conflict with all its horrors. We tried to take refuge in repeated demands for collective action by the League of Nations. The League had no forces of its own and it was patent to me that it must rely on those of its member states who were ready and capable of shouldering the major responsibility of defending the collective security we talked so much about. Economic sanctions were both slow to operate and not very effective."

"Up till the year 1934, the power of the conquerors remained unchallenged in Europe and indeed throughout the world. There was no moment in these sixteen years when the three former allies, or even Britain and France with their associates in Europe, could not, in the name of the League of Nations and under its moral and international shield, have controlled by a mere effort of the will the armed strength of Germany. Instead, until 1931 the victors, and particularly the United States, concentrated their efforts upon extorting by vexatious foreign controls their annual reparations from Germany. The fact that these payments were made only from far larger American loans reduced the whole process to the absurd. Nothing was reaped except illwill. On the other hand, the strict enforcement at any time till 1934 of the disarmament clauses of the Peace Treaty would have guarded indefinitely, without violence or bloodshed, the peace and safety of mankind. But this was neglected while the infringements remained petty, and shunned as they assumed serious proportions. Thus the final safeguard of a long peace was cast away. The crimes of the vanquished find their background and their explanation, though not, of course, their pardon, in the follies of the victors. Without these follies crime would have found neither temptation nor opportunity."