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Whatsa Democracy?

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Democracy has got to be the most overworked and under-defined word in the English language these days - in fact, in any language, given that memes spread across the planet faster than the speed of light. The more ruthless and rash the United States becomes in its determination to rule the world, relying increasingly on the power of words, the greater the urgency of unmasking its use of the word 'democracy' as a farce.[tag]

Come together for real democracy... Real Democracy Now Brighton
Come together for real democracy... Real Democracy Now Brighton
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According to the conventional 'wisdom', if all citizens above a certain age - usually eighteen or twenty-one - are entitled to vote for representatives in a country's law-making bodies, they are living in a democracy. But if the US were really serious about defending democracy, it would not claim that Cuba, for example, or Russia, fail the test. These two countries, together with a long list of other nations, are not considered members of the 'club of democratic nations'. In the case of Cuba, there is only one political party, and in the case of Russia, the President wields too much power and elections are suspicious. Yet, as reported by Medea Benjamin at http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/09/democracy-in-cuba-and-at-home/ Cuba has pioneered decentralized democracy, and Putin has long enjoyed an approval rating in the eighties!

In reality, democracy is less about elections than about who actually writes the laws. Russia is not a beltway sanctioned democracy because when situations require it, Putin tells the elected members of the Duma what laws to pass, behaving like a dictator. The United States is a democracy because our President can't do that: but is it preferable for lobbyists to tell the Congress what laws to pass, while 'think tanks' take over the job of writing them from our elected representatives? Is a country that relies on military might, intervening wherever its commercial needs are not being satisfied to impose 'regime change' a democracy, when a large majority of its citizens oppose such policies? Is it a democracy when most of the assets are in the hands of a small minority? Or when only half the population has access to medical care?

Across the world, kids are taught that countries should be democratic, and as they grow up they judge their own and other countries by the accepted definition of the words:'free and fair elections', a 'free' press, the 'rule of law' implemented via a system of 'checks and balances', meaning that the judiciary is independent of both the executive and the legislative branches of government. But countries can boast all of these achievements, and not really be democratic, in the sense of responding to the needs of the majority of its citizens.

The word 'democracy', as all school-chidren know, was coined by the Greeks over two thousand years ago, means 'the people' hold the power. In actual fact, only male citizens, not women or slaves, could express their opinions publicly and vote in ancient Athens, yet politicians the world over claims that if every citizen has a vote, the system is democratic. During the eighteenth century Enlightenment, in a world (i.e., Europe) in which population growth made direct participation impossible, autocracies became constitutional monarchies, a relatively benign form of rule from above, of which Great Britain is the poster-child: although she appoints the Prime Minister, the Queen has no power, but can only hope for the best. Other constitutional monarchies include the Scandinavian countries, which are social democracies that are sometimes ruled by conservatives. The Scandinavian constitutional monarchies are considered to be the most advanced countries in the world.

An important requirement for a regime to be considered democratic is that it is entirely in the hands of 'civilians' who tell the military what to do. If a military man gets himself elected in a 'free and fair election' (for example, President Al Sisi of Egypt), he is not a dictator, even though his former military buddies can be expected to spring into action at the slightest threat to his rule.

Non-constitutional monarchies such as Saudi Arabia and the other countries of the Persian Gulf do not even pretend to be democratic. They are not among the long list of 'our dictators' such as those of Africa - or until recently, Myanmar - or, going a bit further back, the caudillos that ruled America's 'back yard' until an enduring Cuban revolution persuaded the rest of the continent to resist American oversight. The Persian gulf monarchies occupy a unique niche located on vast reserves of oil. American officialdom never refers them as 'democracies', and stations planes and ships on their soil to protect their feudal rulers when their people, such as Yemenis or Bahrainis, rise up demanding democracy.

What about the countries of Eastern Europe, held for decades under Soviet, shall we say, guardianship? Now they're 'free' and you won't find anywhere a bunch of people more committed to the American definition of democracy. The Poles, in particular, are so committed to American style democracy that they are itching to go to war with 'Putin's Russia'. The Baltic nations are so committed to democracy that everyone is target practicing while Neo-Nazis parade through the streets, in a page from Nuland's Ukraine.

Currently, Ukraine is the big democracy story. Victoria Nuland, former Bill Clinton aide and still, as she was under Hillary Clinton, Assistant Secretary of State for Eastern European Affairs, almost single-handedly fomented a coup against the President of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovich, who had been elected in 2010 in internationally recognized 'free and fair' elections. The majority of Ukrainians who demonstrated in the Maidan for weeks in 2013-14 simply wanted to live in a 'more democratic' country, while Nuland's goal was to chop off a piece of Russia's 'near abroad'. Battalions of thugs who, according one of their leaders, Dimity Yaros, Exclusive: Leader of Far-Right Ukrainian Militant Group Talks Revolution With TIME, had been training for the job for months in Western Ukraine (the part that borders on Poland and the Baltic states") were brought in to settle the matter.

When the Ukrainians found themselves living under a much worse regime than the one they had helped to overthrow, those in the East, many of whom, as a result of history and geography were mainly ethnic Russians, were appalled: the Ukrainian Nazis the new leaders used as their shock troops were the descendants of those who had helped the Germans kill thousands of their forebears during the second world war. When Yaros and his buddies, as well as former presidential candidate Yulia Timoshenko, unabashedly called for the elimination of 'Jews and Russians', eastern Ukrainians refused to participate in the presi-dential election, organizing referenda in Donetsk and Lugansk that created two breakaway entities known as Novorossiya. Kiev responded with military force to kill them or force them to move to Russia, abandoning Ukraine's vast stores of coal and most of its industry to the Kiev regime.

It would have been unthinkable for Vladimir Putin not to support the breakaway republics, as they are called, given the Soviet Union's World War II losses to Nazi Germany, estimated at 26,000,000 (compared to 70,000,000 for all of Europe and fewer than 500,000 for the United States). And yet, that measured support is presented as an aggression by the country that carried out the coup in Kiev! America's leaders promote 'democracy', and 'regime change' in the same breath, and far too many voters fail to see the contradiction. Apparently, 'democracy' is about what happens inside a country, not whether it is the victim of outside manipulation, and Americans have been led to believe that democracy is only word they need to know when it comes to judging politics. Ideology is a foreign notion to be shunned, thus Americans do not have the knowledge that would cause them to be shocked when fascist militias are used to shore up a 'democratic' regime.

Unlike the United States, Europe is steeped in ideology. The European Union repre-sents the highest level of civilization the world has achieved, its almost thirty countries functioning as democratic welfare states, with parties from the far left to the far right participating in the political fray. Worried that Americans might eventually demand the same six week vacations and free medical care enjoyed by Europeans, the Wall Street-led military/industrial/financial complex engineered an economic debacle that has brought the welfare state to its knees. Combined with the presence of ever larger Muslim minorities, the situation is driving Europe into the arms of new fascists similar to those who clubbed their way to power in the Maidan.

This leads to an impertinent question: If allowing all citizens to vote fails to prevent power from residing in the hands of a few, should the word 'democracy' be used as the criterion for proper government? Socialists of all stripes insist that it isn't enough for democracy to be 'political', giving each citizen a vote. It must also be 'social', ensuring that the needs of all are met. They are opposed by 'liberals' who would like us to believe that guaranteeing 'equality of opportunity' suffices to ensure the well-being of all. Increasingly around the world citizens are coming to the conclusion that 'democracy' as the sole criterion of government is a God that has failed.

In 1949, six eminent writers, the Americans Louis Fischer, Stephen Spender, and Richard Wright, the Hungarian-British Arthur Koestler, the French Andre Gide and the Italian Ignazio Silone published a book on their conversion to and subsequent disillusionment with communism, titled The God that Failed. What is interesting about this book is that Fischer called the moment in which some communists or fellow-travelers decide not just to leave the Communist Party but to oppose it as anti-communists 'Kronstadt'. 'Kronstadt' was a 1921 military rebellion during the young Soviet Union's struggle against Western armies seeking 'regime change'. In bold below are Kronstadt's demands that are still being made today across the 'democratic' world:

1 Immediate new elections to the Soviets; the present Soviets no longer express the wishes of the workers and peasants. The new elections should be held by secret ballot, and should be preceded by free electoral propaganda for all workers and peasants before the elections.

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Deena Stryker Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Born in Phila, I spent most of my adolescent and adult years in Europe, resulting over time in several unique books, my latest being Russia's Americans.

CUBA: Diary of a Revolution, Inside the Cuban Revolution with Fidel, Raul, Che, and Celia Sanchez

Lunch with Fellini, Dinner with Fidel: An Illustrated Personal Journey from the Cold War to the Arab Spring

(more...)
 

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