[Prev] [Next]   [Index]   [Thread Index]

01269: Re: [WDDM] Achieving True Democracy 200705-02

From: Albano <cordei(at)ccr.jussieu.fr>
Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2007 10:59:49 +0200
Subject: Re: [WDDM] Achieving True Democracy 200705-02

I'll like to reply as it will be, but these days I have not so much time
to, and I'm sorry, because it could be an occasion to develop ideas
concerning democracy.
Jean Paul Sartre said once that "Liberty doesn't existe, what is
existing is the fight to Liberty". Liberty exists by the fact we fight
for. And it is "inside" this fight that Liberty can exist. But by itself
it is not existing.
So it goes with democracy. It appears "behind" the fight for it. But we
can perfect the "real existing democracy" (as un famous east german
economist said about "real existing socialism").
Nowadays the main menace coming the new right wing tendencies in some of
the developped countries and "democratic dictatorships" in the South
countries is that they are trying (and they believe it could be
possible), by differents means of "opinion building" to ensure
systematic success in elections.
In almost all societies ringt wing opinion is in structurally in
majority, but the difference is not a wide one. Some 5 to 10% people
makes the difference. And this people can be influenced by controlled
mass media. The mass media, controlled by great economic interests,
has the possibility of shifting 5 to 10% of the electors.
This works because the all-around the world electoral system is
representative. The electoral dispute, as some colleagues said in this
list of discussion, is a dispute among elites in competition for taking
power of all-nation decisions.The power of decision must be shared. Part
for representative democracy, but in a function of a referee. The
deliberatory process would be
the function of participatory democracy....but you must have a large
amount of politized citizens able to judge about collective affairs...
Albano C.

lpc1998 a écrit :
Dear PVR, Mark, Filia, Annette & Albano,

Annette, many thanks for your kind words.

It is good you are conversant with the ways of the power elites. It
will come in handy when we discuss the strategies in dealing with
them. For the time being, let us look into the WDDM itself and see
whether we could find a way to enhance its contribution to true democracy.

Albano, your cautioning is timely. I have appended it below for the
convenience of readers since it was written in another email.

Yes, as far as we know there has never been a true democracy, except,
perhaps, the one in Athens 2,600 years, but this does not mean we have
to surrender to false democracy. We are only a part of the continuum
of people who have been inspired by the spirit of democracy since its
Athenian birth.

You are also right that we should not go for perfect true democracy.
After all, very little things in the real world are perfect.

However, it is important that we do not confuse imperfect true
democracy with false democracy, with the latter brimming with
cheating, oppression, deceits, dishonesty, lies or half or distorted
truths while with the former, democracy is operating under less than
ideal conditions.

The so-called "Representative Democracy" as we know it is false
democracy because as you have said elsewhere it is not democratic or
ever meant to be. Moreover, while the representatives, when in
offfice, are representatives who rule in the name of the people, they
are often the representatives of somebody else, and are seldom the
representatives of the people who have supposedly elected them to office.

What do you think is the first step we in WDDM could now take in the
directon of true democracy?

Eric Lim (lpc1998)


=============================================


I continue to be surprised. Let's be simply realistic. In the world UN
counted some 40 or 50% of the countries ruled by democracies. But no
one
is a true democracy and a true democracy never existed. There are only
false democracies or, if you prefer, imperfect democracies .But
imperfect democracy is the one that is possible. Talking about "true
democracy" is supposing it is possible to achieve an organisation of
the
society where citizens use the sovereign powers and arrive at solutions
acceptable for all. We must avoid that. There must be confrontation and
regulated conflits, and the result is not harmony. Let's only create
the
conditions for peace and justice (fair sharing of richness) and ....
long life to dissensus.

Democracy is not only proceedings but also a list of values. These
values are not "harmonious". In fact ther must be couples of
contradictory values, the defenders of one term of a couple of values
contest the defenders of the second term. The regulation is to
maintain civic ways of debate.
Albano Cordeiro



*/Annette Jackson <aja95799(at)bigpond.net.au>/* wrote:

Eric,the comments you made were very good,

What are the keys to the power elite.

o Their control of the executive powers of countries
o Having front people and groups e.g. Royals,
Presidents, The Pope, Religions and Politicians and
while they do the business in secret behind the scenes.
o Controlling the press that feed into peoples minds
o The Mastering of mind control
o The use of a scents of magic and deception to sell
something to the public
o Ensure they crush and get rid of heretics,free
thinking and liberal minded people

Don Veitch and John Seale said that there have been 3 revolution
of the world.

1. Mass agriculture
2. Inductrial revolution
3. Mass communications revolution (the world wide wed)

The third is our great hope.

* We need to make the internet the prefferred place where
people get their information,not the television
* We need to development a media, that caters to the average
person in all countries
* We need to use the likes of You Tube,My Space and so on to
sell our message.

We need need define who are the good groups of society and join
forces.

There are good people out there that have money and some power,we
need to define who they are.

60% of society do no like violence's, that is why violence's it
planted in people's protests.

Recently in Australia our parliament,they had a conscience vote on
a topic, a poll after it, found that over 80% thought the
conscience vote was a good thing.

I believe as Ricardo Semler found out, when people have been
program, and it takes awhile to bring out openness in people
,belief in their right to have free speech,Semler found that once
people did start to talk there was no stopping them,people will
need some leading to direct democracy.

It is hard to break habits within people,and some personalities
will never like it direct democracy.

I believe that some measure should be developed that rewards the
best national for the year, a public vote to decide,cannot vote
for own nation.
*An Example*
Key measures weighted to countries size.
The total value of all land,property & businesses
The personal & business saving
Known resources
Reserves of items and materials
The debts of the nation
Employment
Health
Income
Education
Condition of environment
Living Standards
Home & Property ownership
Relationships with other nations
Fair trading with other nations
Human freedom and rights

I have enjoyed the recent comments by all and can see we are
heading in a positive direction,we will have some hurdles to get
over,but l believe we have people in this movement with their
heads and hearts in the right place.

Some of the final parts of whatever system we propose, should be
finalised by the people,what they would like to vote on and what
our representatives should look after,and how many time they would
vote per year.

Cheers
Martin Jackson

P.S.Bruce you might enjoy this,PINK-DEAR MR. PRESIDENT-MIKE
GRAVEL`s MySpace Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a0DZRyENss

~----- Original Message -----

*From:* lpc1998
*To:* wddm@world-wide-democracy.net
*Sent:* Saturday, May 26, 2007 12:58 AM
*Subject:* [WDDM] Achieving True Democracy 200705-01

Dear PVR, Mark & Filia

Thank you, PVR, for starting this exchange of views and ideas
on how to achieve true democracy.

First of all, the People's Constitution is not just "to truly
reflect the people's opinion on how governance should be ...".
It should be the Will of the People that governs the
political, legal and social systems of the country.

No, our main and immediate battle is not with the political
parties. It is to establish a community that develops and runs
on true (as opposed to existing false) democractic principles.
A thriving and growing true democracy community will
demonstrate to the ordinary people what is true democracy,
what are its benefits, and that it provides a far superior
political system or governance that upholds their interests as
the real owners of the country.

Moreover, such a community would be able to provide the
material, intellectual and other resources for the promotion
of true democracy on an ever increasing and sophisticated
scale and eventually when there is support from the majority
of the people we would have the first true democracy in the world.

Political parties have in themselves full of contradictions
and weaknesses. We shall study these contradictions and
weaknesses carefully and use them against the political
parties. For instance, we can set one political party against
another.

In the final analysis, what really matters is that the true
democracy principles we develop must not only be relevant to
the lives of the ordinary people, but also be
potentially tremendously beneficial to them. It is only in
this way that it could win over the hearts and minds of the
majority of the people from the existing political system.

When increasing number of people are won over to true
democracy and when they give their least preference to
election candidates from the political parties, increasing
number of existing politicians sensing "a new political
trend" would dump their political parties to be independent
candidates to boost their electoral chances. In such an event,
the obsolescence of the political party will become inevitable.

So the question is how do we develop true democracy principles
and practices that could win over the majority of the people?
The starting main battle is with ourselves, not against each
other, but against the undemocratic forces that has enslaved
our souls.

Real-life meetings are useful for those who are able to
attend, especially for people from the same locality or
region. They do help to advance bonding, friendship,
understanding and, perhaps, trust.

WDDM as a whole is globally orientated and a cyberspace
community of politically aware people. It is best it leverages
on available information technologies to enable it to evolve
into, perhaps, the first true democracy community albeit
cyber with a global reach.

Eric Lim (lpc1998)



*/Vijayaraghavan Padmanabhan
<vijayaraghavan.p(at)rediffmail.com>/* wrote:

Dear Eric Lim and all,
You have suggested that we need a 'people's constitution'
to truly reflect the people's opinion on how governance
should be and to end the present virtual 'rule' by
representatives. Agreed. But how are we going to make this
happen unless we are going to occupy the political space
by taking on the political parties through a workable
strategy? And political space (lying within the collective
consciousness of people) is occupied in modern times by
contesting in elections. Hence our mission statement
should be tailored keeping this in focus.

Dough Everingham in his e-mail has suggested we need to
oppose political parties like we oppose so many other
undesirable groups. But that is not enough to occupy
political space. We need to directly take on them and
allow the people to decide and choose between the same old
kind of party politics or a new kind of politics where
they are able to participate in matters of governance more
genuinely.

PVR


On Thu, 24 May 2007 lpc1998 wrote :
>Dear PVR and Mark,
>
> Yes, having read some of your emails, I am too convinced
that we do share many points of agreement.
>
> Yes, we are seeking for a system of government where
elected and other representatives of the people would be
constitutionally bound to serve the people. To this end,
we need a People's Constitution to replace the current one
written by the representatives for the representatives.
The key provisions in the People's Constitution are what
we have to develop and eventually to have the people's
endorsement. Yes, this is a very long journey indeed.
>
> However, we should not be limited by the principles and
practices of existing politcal system which effectively
makes the people's elected representatives rulers over the
people. We are only limited by the people's needs for an
effective government and at any point of the time by the
level of the people's political maturity and resources for
public affairs and by available relevant secure technologies.
>
> "Government by Representatives" in practice is little
different from "Rule by Representatives". What we actually
want is "Goverment of the People, by the People and for
the People". And our aim is to make "Government by the
People, ..." a reality, and not for this critical concept
being used as a tool for deception or oppression.
>
> In this connection, I see no objection to
"Representatives in Government" who are bound by the
People's Constitution, if this is what you (PVR) have in mind.
>
> Yes, Mark, the people in a true democracy have the final
say on all matters concerning the people and country,
including whether they need representatives in Government,
but such representatives must, at all times, remains
agents or employees of the people, and never be the
people's rulers. Here the basic assumption is that a
sovereign people would want to remain sovereign.
>
> In this connection, for the consitution to be the
People's Constitution, it has to be discussed by as many
people as possible and when it is ready, it has to be
actually endorsed by not less than 50%+1 of the total
eligible voters at the time of the voting.
>
>
> Eric Lim (lpc1998)
>


[Prev] [Next]   [Index]   [Thread Index]