Democracy vs Authoritarianism

jackliu said:

I won't compare Egypt to HK, HK was actually wealthy with a developed economy, Egypt on the other hand is not, and their revolution was not complete, I see them kicked out the old leader but all the wealth and true power is still concentrated in the hand of the old elite.

If anything I would compare them with France revolution, they kicked out the old leader but it is still not a new beginning, they will either have a few years of bloody revolution or enter into another stagnation just like before, which will only push back another revolution.

If you want to study this, try to do some research of correlation between people's wealth and government type, also try to do some research on how the original democratic nation today got wealth, aka nation such as US, Western Europe etc... When they were in industrialization, was it really democratic by today's standard? And under what situation did they really became democratic as the standard you would give today.

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jackliu said:

I won't compare Egypt to HK, HK was actually wealthy with a developed economy, Egypt on the other hand is not, and their revolution was not complete, I see them kicked out the old leader but all the wealth and true power is still concentrated in the hand of the old elite.

If anything I would compare them with France revolution, they kicked out the old leader but it is still not a new beginning, they will either have a few years of bloody revolution or enter into another stagnation just like before, which will only push back another revolution.

If you want to study this, try to do some research of correlation between people's wealth and government type, also try to do some research on how the original democratic nation today got wealth, aka nation such as US, Western Europe etc... When they were in industrialization, was it really democratic by today's standard? And under what situation did they really became democratic as the standard you would give today.

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jackliu said:

oh wow, how brainwashed are you?? Do you really think democracy will spun spontaneously out of no where and thus result in haplessness on earth? Muhammad and Temujin was great person, but trust me, democracy never come to their mind when they created their empire. And how do you expect people that have been living under tribal mentality to suddenly start to care and love each other and work for the common goods? When people are starving everyday, when they don't' have a place to sleep at night now much crap will they give to voluntarily to establish a democratic system?

Oh and the Egyptian demonstration was not a show case for democracy, as much as a show case for how much they are pissed off with the existing government, last time I check all the people that helped to started the demonstration are not in the current government, and last time I check Egypt currenlty is not exaclty a great showcase of textbook democracy.

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Kurt said:

The Ummah held elections and Genghis can was the title of the elected Khan of all those who dwell in tents. Neither of them was capable to build these things by forcing others at the barrel of a gun or tip of a sword. It was about voluntary choices to join and not so voluntary choices due to defence and expansion in their environments.

You have a specific bias about what democracy must be that helps you to always convince yourself that what you imagined doesn't work. Pretty self-defeating idea about democracy, leaving authoritarianism as the only and thus working template for societies.
Economic success is dependent on increased cooperation and democracy is a useful system to keep a society more cooperative than any enforced cooperation system. Decreasing voluntary cooperation, usually due to changes in the share of the marbles gained, leads to the downfall of any system.
For this reason the democratic element is about acceptance recognition of the gouvernment and the possibility of internal revolution without as much collateral damage as with other rulebooks.
But these are two animals, cooperation is the necessity for better economic conditions and democracy is just one political system that often gets along with this requirement. The rise of several countries after WWII highlights the economic value of the internal workings of a society.

If there's a revolution, how many of the revolution leaders will be elected into the gouvernment? Please note this is a democratic election, not a party take over as after the Chinese civil war. "The revolution devours its own children" should be familiar to you as well as the Egyptian elective system with winner takes it all counties and three different election rounds per chamber under supervision of judges. Anyone incapable of gaining local majority has no seat. This can be groups with the backing of 49% of the population and favours organization with massive financial backing, while the demonstration was by economically less fortunate people.

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Kurt said:

The Ummah held elections and Genghis can was the title of the elected Khan of all those who dwell in tents.

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Naomi Wolf
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 29 December 2012 14.58 GMT

Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy
New documents prove what was once dismissed as paranoid fantasy: totally integrated corporate-state repression of dissent

It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves –was coordinated with the big banks themselves.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document – reproduced here in an easily searchable format – shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.

The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Year, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations' knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire – by whom? Where? – now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61).

As Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF, put it, the documents show that from the start, the FBI – though it acknowledges Occupy movement as being, in fact, a peaceful organization – nonetheless designated OWS repeatedly as a "terrorist threat":

"FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) … reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat … The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country."

Verheyden-Hilliard points out the close partnering of banks, the New York Stock Exchange and at least one local Federal Reserve with the FBI and DHS, and calls it "police-statism":

"This production [of documents], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI's surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement … These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America."

The documents show stunning range: in Denver, Colorado, that branch of the FBI and a "Bank Fraud Working Group" met in November 2011 – during the Occupy protests – to surveil the group. The Federal Reserve of Richmond, Virginia had its own private security surveilling Occupy Tampa and Tampa Veterans for Peace and passing privately-collected information on activists back to the Richmond FBI, which, in turn, categorized OWS activities under its "domestic terrorism" unit. The Anchorage, Alaska "terrorism task force" was watching Occupy Anchorage. The Jackson, Michigan "joint terrorism task force" was issuing a "counterterrorism preparedness alert" about the ill-organized grandmas and college sophomores in Occupy there. Also in Jackson, Michigan, the FBI and the "Bank Security Group" – multiple private banks – met to discuss the reaction to "National Bad Bank Sit-in Day" (the response was violent, as you may recall). The Virginia FBI sent that state's Occupy members' details to the Virginia terrorism fusion center. The Memphis FBI tracked OWS under its "joint terrorism task force" aegis, too. And so on, for over 100 pages.

Jason Leopold, at Truthout.org, who has sought similar documents for more than a year, reported that the FBI falsely asserted in response to his own FOIA requests that no documents related to its infiltration of Occupy Wall Street existed at all. But the release may be strategic: if you are an Occupy activist and see how your information is being sent to terrorism task forces and fusion centers, not to mention the "longterm plans" of some redacted group to shoot you, this document is quite the deterrent.

There is a new twist: the merger of the private sector, DHS and the FBI means that any of us can become WikiLeaks, a point that Julian Assange was trying to make in explaining the argument behind his recent book. The fusion of the tracking of money and the suppression of dissent means that a huge area of vulnerability in civil society – people's income streams and financial records – is now firmly in the hands of the banks, which are, in turn, now in the business of tracking your dissent.

Remember that only 10% of the money donated to WikiLeaks can be processed – because of financial sector and DHS-sponsored targeting of PayPal data. With this merger, that crushing of one's personal or business financial freedom can happen to any of us. How messy, criminalizing and prosecuting dissent. How simple, by contrast, just to label an entity a "terrorist organization" and choke off, disrupt or indict its sources of financing.

Why the huge push for counterterrorism "fusion centers", the DHS militarizing of police departments, and so on? It was never really about "the terrorists". It was not even about civil unrest. It was always about this moment, when vast crimes might be uncovered by citizens – it was always, that is to say, meant to be about you.

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He will take the helm at a time when China is emerging as the world's largest economy. This will be the first time since George III that a non-English speaking, non-Western, non-democratic state will dominate the global economic order.

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