Words on paper are nice, but the reality is that Chavez’ power is first of all based on the Venezuelan Military Officer Corps. Of course I support the direction he’s been going, so far, but as Hegel said, sometimes things change.

Have you ever perused the Constitution of the USSR? Lotta nice verbiage in that too:)

Quiet as it’s kept, there still ain’t no Santa Claus. Don’t Believe Everything You Think:)

‘The World’s Oldest Democracy’ is still practicing this Hammurabian relic of ‘justice’ in year 2009.

“Capital punishment means
that those without capital
get the punishment.”

Democracy is a funny thing. It seems to me, many would prefer a benevolent dictator if they had their drothers. A democracy takes time and regular engagement. But it pays off in so many respects. In the USA people are lost in “making a living”, whatever that means – it’s a kind of oxymoron because it means letting go of living in order to pay for things that are primarily marketed as “needs” when they are barely “wants”. In debtness is the rule of the US economy. It is a phony economy which is showing itself like a heart attack that starts with little chest pains (think Savings and Loans fiasco, and then the Dot Com bubble and then Enron with all kinds of little hints with one shyster after another – Milken and now Madoff). This is Amerika; one big fat BUBBLE ready to explode. It contracts, and blows itself up again…and on and on it goes. And life just gets swallowed up. War after war after war. And no one pays attention…they stop remembering what it is not to be on the treadmill…like the heart attack…and then one day…its FATAL.

But as to democracy, that takes time, work, caring, community, collaboration, children, and people of all ages to be engaged, and aware and questioning, critical thinking (and it doesn’t require a PhD or even a ABC after your name).

The US economy will need to crash and burn before a re-think happens, a heart attack bad enough to get the collective attention, just short of fatal.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2889

Venezuela’s Constitutional Reform: An Article-by-Article Summary

November 23rd 2007, by Gregory Wilpert – Venezuelanalysis.com
The following is an article-by-article summary of the changes being proposed to Venezuela’s 1999 constitution. The summary is in no way official and should only be used as an aid in making sense of the proposed constitutional reform. The official reform text is quite long (31 pages), as it includes the full text of each to be changed article, even if only one sentence or word was changed in the article. Making out what, exactly, the changes are relative to the original 1999 constitution can thus be a sometimes time-consuming and difficult task.

Venezuelans will vote on the reform on December 2nd and will do so in two blocks. Block “A” includes President Chavez’s original proposal, as amended by the National Assembly, which would change 33 articles out of the 350 articles in the constitution. Also included in block A are another 13 articles introduced by the National Assembly. Block “B” includes another 26 reform articles proposed by the National Assembly. Voters may vote “Yes” or “No” on each block.

——————————————————————————–

Reform Question: “Are you in agreement with the approval of the constitutional reform project, passed by the National Assembly, with the participation of the people, and based in the initiative of President Hugo Chavez, with its respective titles, chapters, and transitional, derogative, and final dispositions, distributed in the following blocks?”

[Articles in italics are those proposed by the National Assembly, non-italic articles were proposed by the President.]

Block A

Section II. Politico-Territorial Division of the Country: President may declare special military and development zones, citizens have a new “right to the city.”

Art. 11 – Allows the President to decree special military regions for the defense of the nation. Also, it would allow him to name military authorities for these regions in a case of emergency.

Art. 16 – Allows the president to decree, with permission from the National Assembly, communal cities, maritime regions, federal territories, federal municipalities, island districts, federal provinces, federal cities, and functional districts. Also the president may name and remove national government authorities for these territorial divisions (these do not, however, supplant the existing elected authorities in these regions).

Art. 18 – Provides a new right, the right to the city, which says that all citizens have the right to equal access to the city’s services or benefits. Also names Caracas, the capital as the “Cradle of Simon Bolivar, the Liberator, and Queen of the Warairarepano” [an indigenous name for the mountain range surrounding Caracas].

Section III. Citizen Rights and Duties: Voting age lowered to 16 years, gender parity in candidacies, creation of councils of popular power, social security fund for self-employed, reduction of workweek to 36 hours, recognition of Venezuelans of African descent, free university education, introduction of communal and social property.

Art. 64 – Lowers the minimum voting age from 18 to 16 years.

Art. 67 – Requires candidates for elected office to be set up in accordance with gender parity, reverses the prohibition against state financing of campaigns and parties, and prohibits foreign funding of political activity.

Art. 70 – Establishes that councils of popular power (of communities, workers, students, farmers, fishers, youth, women, etc.) are one of the main means for citizen participation in the government.

Art. 87 – Creates a social security fund for the self-employed, in order to guarantee them a pension, vacation pay, sick pay, etc.

Art. 90 – Reduction of the workweek from 44 hours to 36.

Art. 98 – Guarantees freedom for cultural creations, but without guaranteeing intellectual property.

Art. 100 – Recognition of Venezuelans of African descent, as part of Venezuelan culture to protect and promote (in addition to indigenous and European culture).

Art. 103 – Right to a free education expanded from high school to university.

Art. 112 – The state will promote a diversified and independent economic model, in which the interests of the community prevail over individual interests and that guarantee the social and material needs of the people. The state is no longer obliged to promote private enterprise.

Art. 113 – Monopolies are prohibited instead of merely being “not allowed.” The state has the right to “reserve” the exploitation of natural resources or provision of services that are considered by the constitution or by a separate law to be strategic to the nation. Concessions granted to private parties must provide adequate benefits to the public.

Art. 115 – Introduces new forms of property, in addition to private property. The new forms are (1) public property, belonging to state bodies, (2) direct and indirect social property, belonging to the society in general, where indirect social property is administered by the state and direct is administered by particular communities, (3) collective property, which belongs to particular groups, (4) mixed property, which can be a combination of ownership of any of the previous five forms.

Section IV. Functions of the State: Creation of popular power based in direct democracy, recognition of missions for alleviating urgent needs, foreign policy to pursue a pluri-polar world, devolution of central, state, and municipal functions to the popular power, guaranteed revenues for the popular power.

Art. 136 – Creates the popular power, in addition to the municipal, state, and national powers. “The people are the depositories of sovereignty and exercise it directly via the popular power. This is not born of suffrage nor any election, but out of the condition of the human groups that are organized as the base of the population.” The popular power is organized via communal councils, workers’ councils, student councils, farmer councils, crafts councils, fisher councils, sports councils, youth councils, elderly councils, women’s councils, disables persons’ councils, and others indicated by law.

Art. 141 – The public administration is organized into traditional bureaucracies and missions, which have an ad-hoc character and are designed to address urgent needs of the population.

Art. 152 – Venezuela’s foreign policy is directed towards creating a pluri-polar world, free of hegemonies of any imperialist, colonial, or neo-colonial power.

Art. 153 – Strengthening of the mandate to unify Latin America, so as to achieve what Simon Bolivar called, “A Nation of Republics.”

Art. 156 – Specifies the powers of the national government, adding powers that are spelled out in earlier and in later articles in greater detail. New powers of the national government include the ordering of the territorial regime of states and municipalities, the creation and suspension of federal territories, the administration of branches of the national economy and their eventual transfer to social, collective, or mixed forms of property, and the promotion, organization, and registering of councils of the popular power.

Art. 157 – The national assembly may attribute to the bodies of the popular power, in addition to those of the federal district, the states, and the municipalities, issues that are of national government competency, so as to promote a participatory and active democracy (instead of promoting decentralization, as was originally stated here).

Art. 158 – The state will promote the active participation of the people, restoring power to the population (instead of decentralizing the state).

Art. 167 – States’ incomes are increased from 20% to 25% of the national budget, where 5% is to be dedicated to the financing of each state’s communal councils.

Art. 168 – Municipalities are obligated to include in their activities the participation of councils of popular power.

Art. 184 – Decentralization of power, by its transfer from state and municipal level to the communal level, will include the participation of communities in the management of public enterprises. Also, communal councils are defined as the executive arm of direct democratic citizen assemblies, which elect and at any time may revoke the mandates of the communal council members.

Art. 185 – The national government council is no longer presided over by the Vice-President, but by the President. Its members are the President, Vice-President(s), Ministers, and Governors. Participation of mayors and of civil society groups is optional now. Previously the federal governmental council (as it was called) was responsible for coordinating policies on all governmental levels. Now it is an advisory body for the formulation of the national development plan.

Section V. Organization of the State: President may name secondary vice-presidents as needed, presidential term extended and limit on reelection removed, may re-organize internal politico-territorial boundaries, and promotes all military officers.

Art. 225 – The president may designate the number of secondary vice-presidents he or she deems necessary. Previously there was only one Vice-President.

Art. 230 – Presidential term is extended from six to seven years. The two consecutive term limit on presidential reelection is removed.

Art. 236 – New presidential powers as specified in other sections of the reform are listed here, which include the ordering and management of the country’s internal political boundaries, the creation and suspension of federal territories, setting the number and naming of secondary vice-presidents (in addition to the first vice-president), promote all officers of the armed forces, and administrate international reserves in coordination with the Central Bank.

Art. 251 – Adds detail to the functioning of the State Council, which advises the president on all matters.

Art. 252 – Composition of the State Council changed to include the heads of each branch of government: executive, judiciary, legislature, citizen power, and electoral power. The president may include representatives of the popular power and others as needed. Previously the council included five representatives designated by the president, one by the National Assembly, one by the judiciary, and one by the state governors.

Art. 272 – Removal of the requirement for the state to create an autonomous penitentiary system and places the entire system under the administration of a ministry instead of states and municipalities. Also, removes the option of privatizing the country’s penitentiary system.

Section VI. Socio-Economic System: Weakening of the role of private enterprise in the economic system, possible better treatment of national businesses over foreign ones, no privatization any part of the national oil industry, taxation of idle agricultural land, removal of central bank autonomy.

Art. 299 – The socio-economic regimen of the country is based on socialist (among other) principles. Instead of stipulating that the state promotes development with the help of private initiative, it is to do so with community, social, and personal initiative.

Art. 300 – Rewording of how publicly owned enterprises should be created, to be regionalized and in favor of a “socialist economy”, instead of “decentralized.”

Art. 301 – Removal of the requirement that foreign businesses receive the same treatment as national businesses, stating that national businesses may receive better treatment.

Art. 302 – Strengthening of the state’s right to exploit the country’s mineral resources, especially all those related to oil and gas.

Art. 303 – Removal of the permission to privatize subsidiaries of the country’s state oil industry that operate within the country.

Art. 305 – If necessary, the state may take over agricultural production in order to guarantee alimentary security and sovereignty.

Art. 307 – Strengthening of the prohibition against latifundios (large and idle landed estates) and creation of a tax on productive agricultural land that is idle. Landowners who engage in the ecological destruction of their land may be expropriated.

Art. 318 – Removal of the Central Bank’s autonomy and foreign reserves to be administrated by the Central Bank together with the President.

Art. 320 – The state must defend the economic and monetary stability of the country. Removal of statements on the bank’s autonomy.

Art. 321 – Removal of the requirement to set up a macro-economic stabilization fund. Instead, every year the President and the Central Bank establish the level of reserves necessary for the national economy and all “excess reserves” are assigned to a special development and investment fund.

Section VII. National Security: Armed forces to be anti-imperialist, reserves to become a militia.

Art. 328 – Armed forces of Venezuela renamed to “Bolivarian Armed Force.” Specification that the military is “patriotic, popular, and anti-imperialist” at the service of the Venezuelan people and never at the service of an oligarchy or of a foreign imperial power, whose professionals are not activists in any political party (modified from the prohibition against all political activity by members of the military).

Art. 329 – Addition of the term “Bolivarian” to each of the branches of the military and renaming of the reserves to “National Bolivarian Militia.”

Section VIII. Constitutional changes: Signature requirements increased for citizen-initiated referenda to modify the constitution.

Art. 341 – Increase in the signature requirement for citizen-initiated constitutional amendments from 15% to 20% of registered voters.

Art. 342 – Increase in the signature requirement for citizen-initiated constitutional reforms from 15% to 25% of registered voters.

Art. 348 – Increase in the signature requirement for citizen-initiated constitutional assembly from 15% to 30% of registered voters.

Block “B”

Section III. Citizen Rights and Duties: Non-discrimination based on sexual orientation and health, increase in signature requirements for citizen-initiated referenda, primary home protected from expropriation.

Art. 21 – Inclusion of prohibition against discrimination based on sexual orientation and on health.

Art. 71 – Increase in the signature requirement for citizen-initiated consultative referenda from 10% to 20% of registered voters.

Art. 72 – Increase in the signature requirement for citizen-initiated recall referenda from 20% to 30% of registered voters. Also, voter participation set at minimum 40% (previously no minimum was set, other than that at least as many had to vote for the recall as originally voted for the elected official).

Art. 73 – Increase in the signature requirement for citizen-initiated approbatory referenda from 15% to 30% of registered voters.

Art. 74 – Increase in the signature requirement for citizen-initiated rescinding referenda from 10% to 30% of registered voters. In the case of law decrees, increased from 5% to 30% of registered voters.

Art. 82 – Protection of primary home from confiscation due to bankruptcy or other legal proceedings.

Art. 109 – Equal voting rights for professors, students, and employees in the election of university authorities.

Section IV. Functions of the State: State and local comptrollers appointed by national Comptroller General, political divisions determined on a national instead of state level.

Art. 163 – State comptrollers are to be appointed by the national Comptroller General, not the states, following a process in which organizations of popular power nominate candidates.

Art. 164 – State powers are specified in accordance with other articles of the reform. States can no longer organize the politico-territorial division of municipalities, but only coordinate these.

Art. 173 – Political divisions within municipalities are to be determined by a national law, instead of being in the power of the municipalities. The creation of such divisions is to attend to community initiative, with the objective being the de-concentration of municipal administration.

Art. 176 – The municipal comptroller is to be appointed by the national Comptroller General, not the municipalities, following the nomination of candidates by the organizations of popular power.

Section V. State organization: Councils of popular power participate in the nomination of members of the judiciary, citizen, and electoral powers, procedures for removing members of these branches specified more explicitly.

Art. 191 – National Assembly deputies who the president has called to serve in the executive may return to the National Assembly to finish their term in office once they stop working in the executive. Previously they lost their seat in the assembly.

Art. 264 – Specifies that Supreme Court judges are to be named by a majority of the National Assembly, instead of being left to a law. Also, in addition to civil society groups related to the law profession, representatives of the popular power are to participate in the nomination process.

Art. 265 – Supreme Court judges may be removed from office by a simple majority vote of the National Assembly, instead of a two-thirds majority and an accusation by the citizen power.

Art. 266 – Adds the ability of the Supreme Court to rule on the merits of court proceedings against members of the National Electoral Council, in addition to its ability to do so in the case of all other high-level government officials.

Art. 279 – Includes representatives of popular power councils for the nomination of Attorney General, Comptroller General, and Human Rights Defender. Also, specifies that each of these may be removed by a majority of the National Assembly, instead of leaving the issue to a separate law and a ruling from the Supreme Court.

Art. 289 – Adds to the Comptroller General’s powers the ability to name state and municipal comptrollers.

Art. 293 – Removes the National Electoral Council’s responsibility to preside over union elections.

Art. 295 – Inclusion of representatives from the Popular Power in the nomination process of members to the National Electoral Council. Specifies that members may be chosen by a majority of National Assembly members, instead of a two-thirds majority. Election of electoral council members is supposed to be staggered now, where three are elected and then halfway through their 7-year term, the other two are to be elected.

Art. 296 – Members of the National Electoral Council may be removed by a majority of National Assembly members, without the need of a prior ruling from the Supreme Court.

Section VIII. Constitutional exceptions: Right to information no longer guaranteed during state of emergency, emergencies to last as long as the conditions that caused it.

Art. 337 – Change in states of emergency, so that the right to information is no longer protected in such instances. Also, the right to due process is removed in favor of the right to defense, to no forced disappearance, to personal integrity, to be judged by one’s natural judges, and not to be condemned to over 30 years imprisonment.

Art. 338 – States of alert, emergency, and of interior or exterior commotion are no longer limited to a maximum of 180 days, but are to last as long as conditions persist that motivated the state of exception.

Art. 339 – The Supreme Court’s approval for states of exception is no longer necessary, only the approval of the National Assembly.

Obviously the Leninist (Stalinist/Trotskyist/Maoist) model has limited applicability. Seems to have worked out fairly well in Cuba, up to a point? but not so well in Kampuchea & various other places. The Social Democratic alternative is really just more Capitalism with a few judiciously strewn crumbs; the “Democratic Socialism” fashionable some some US circles means slicker packaging/marketing for the same Zio-Imperialist reality.
Well, I’m digressing. The key pt about the “socialist solution”, and here I depart from Karl Marx (who remains the greatest thinker about social problems of all time) is that the idea that the Working Class can organize itself in such a way as to abolish exploitation of the many by the few is very problematic.
The American “founding fathers” must be acknowledged has having devised a system which has worked pretty well for the classes which established it. I’d call it a work of genius pulled off by a “perpetrator class”.
My view is that it will take an even greater work of collective genius to devise a system and accompanying ideology that will enable a class composed of a few billions of now victimized/exploited/oppressed people to democratically organize themselves in a way that will enable them to prevent the reemergence of class relations, of the domination of society by a small self-defined grouping or class.

What good is de jure “public ownership” when de facto, everything is run by one priesthood or another, whether Islamic, Hindu, Mosaic, Christian, “Anarchist”, or “Marxist”?

Some additional “indepth” sources include writings by Herbert Aptheker on the American Revolution & other periods; by Eric Foner, esp. his “Reconstruction”; by Philip Foner; “Black Reconstruction” by WEB DuBois; also Chas & Mary Beard covered a great deal while tailoring it so than some of their books were used as textbooks during the New Deal era. The list goes on but I’ll stop here.

Again, congratulations; your labor has produced sthg that should be of immense use to many “USians”.

But democracy, one that is participatory is challenged by size. There has never been even the semblance of democracy in the history of humankind with populations over 100,000 (give or take).

Democracy, to work, needs to be integral to daily life of it’s citizens. Handing over decisions to a representative abdicates democracy and the power of local communities. When reps are sent off, they are taken over by the powerbrokers and the “get along” policies of the Congressional tapastries.

Size is important. Applying a given economics to a China or USA results in a massive distortion of a real economy (Russia/Soviet Union is another case in point).

In a world which is global (that is a given) it must be understood that there are global issues and local issues/governance. There is tension between these. Do we need nation-states, or smaller regional entities with strong long control? How does the local and global reconcile the natural tension?

These are, I think, the important question. Today, the system in place does not have the capacity to reflect on it and certainly no desire to act on it.

http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/may_01/may_01_4.html

The capitalist system has produced its own kind of international oppression—imperialism—and in order to fight against it, workers have no choice but to organize internationally. The working class has no nationality. The human solidarity necessary to establish a just society on a socialist, collective basis can only be established on an international basis by a united world working class.

Socialists condemn the intervention anywhere in the world by the military forces of the U.S. and other nations.

Socialists support the right of oppressed nations to self-determination, free of imperialist intervention everywhere, including Colombia and other countries in Latin America, Central America, Africa, Iraq, Kosova, and all other Balkan nations.

Socialists support the right of Cuba’s revolutionary socialist government and its people to be free of any U.S. boycotts, blockades and military aggression. Cuba’s defense of socialism provides a beacon of hope for all people fighting against capitalist social, economic and political injustice and struggling for racial, national and sexual equality.

For a workers’ government and workers’ democracy

The working class is the majority class. Its basic strategy, and that of its natural allies among the world’s exploited and oppressed, is diametrically counterposed to the capitalist strategy of divide and conquer. International working-class solidarity is essential for uniting the world’s exploited and oppressed in the struggle to advance its common interests.

The capitalist class divides the workers, consciously using national oppression, sexism, racism, xenophobia, and discrimination based on every difference among human beings. In opposition to this, the socialist program consciously seeks to unite workers and their allies across all of these divisions.

The socialist program is a program of workers’ self-reliance and self-activation. The working class needs its own political party just as much as it needs its own unions. Just as the boss cannot be relied on to dispense fairness and goodwill in the workplace, neither can the bosses’ political parties be expected to defend or advance workers’ interests in the government.

The working class needs leadership that understands that workers and bosses have no common interests and that workers need to organize and struggle for their rights, wages, and benefits independently of the bosses and their political parties. The labor bureaucracy acts as an arm of the employers, seeking crumbs from the boss’s table and agreeing to defend the boss’s profits at all costs. Instead, labor needs a self-sacrificing leadership to fight for working people’s interests.

The U.S. government is a capitalist government

The government of the United States is a capitalist government, and all its actions—its taxation policies, its war and foreign policies, its foreign-aid programs, even its social-welfare programs—are all policies on behalf of the capitalist class, not the people. Reforms that have been achieved have never been the result of the capitalist politicians’ and parties’ good will. All have been the result of independent struggles by the working class and its allies. Such reforms included ending (some) child labor, the right of Black people and women to vote, civil rights, the right to form unions, and the right to free, public education.

Workers Should Own and Control Industry

Workers should own, control and manage all the basic industry of the country. These assets—energy-generating systems, mines, mills, factories, healthcare services, transportation, giant agribusiness farms, construction companies, etc.,.—should be taken from private ownership and profit-making and put to public use under the ownership and control of the working class. Then production could serve human needs instead of private profits.

We need a workers’ government

The socialist program advocates that the workers control the government of the country. The first priority of a workers’ government is to disarm the current military establishment, especially its nuclear arsenal, whose sole purpose is to protect capitalists’ property, and establish workers’ ownership and control of all public property.

In a socialist planned economy the vast wealth and resources of the United States would immediately be put toward the social welfare of the world’s working people. The resources now hoarded by the capitalist class could, if liberated, feed, clothe and shelter all the world’s people.

The resources now put toward the military-industrial complex and the prison-industrial complex can be turned into vast public works for the advancement of science in the interest of human health (such as mobilizing science to cure cancer, heart disease, and AIDS), and saving the environment from the ravages wrought by the capitalist system for profit.

The prerequisite for the protection of a healthy environment is a social revolution to end capitalist production and institute socialist production—a planned economy to serve human needs.

The Obscenity of Poverty in the Midst of Plenty

There is no logical reason for homelessness, hunger, illiteracy or poverty in the United States, or, in fact, anywhere in the world today. But there is another kind of logic at work in the creation of the gross inequalities in capitalist society: the logic of the capitalist system of production for profit.

Humankind has already developed the ability, technology, and the know-how to solve all the problems of homelessness, poverty, and hunger!

The only thing that prevents these solutions from being enacted is the system of production for profit instead of human need. The capitalist system threatens human advancement. It threatens the survival of the human species. It threatens the survival of the planet earth as a hospitable environment for the human species, as well as millions of animal and plant species.

Once the capitalist system is abolished by the united actions of the working people of the world, once human society is organized around the principle of meeting human needs through human solidarity, there will be a granite-hard basis for the true flowering of humankind. Then, real human history, free of its fetters, can begin. That is our goal.

A revolutionary socialist political party is indispensable

But how to get to this goal? We believe that the historical record supports the view that in order to achieve a socialist revolution, a carefully thought-out political party is necessary. After all, the concept of socialist revolution is based on the organization of the majority, the working class, to take the reins of society into its own hands.

That huge task requires the most conscious plan of action and politically conscious body of workers to carry it out. Only an organized political party that has absorbed the lessons of the historical experiences of the working class and its allies among the oppressed peoples of the world—and applied these historical lessons in its day-to-day activity—can hope to guide the process of a socialist revolution.

Such a party cannot be built on the spot; it must be built ahead of time through a process of gathering and testing dedicated workers who understand the necessity of dedicating their lives to this cause. Such a party must promote the socialist program in the realm of ideas and in the class struggle. It must both educate and act.

A revolutionary party must know how to act in a unified fashion against the capitalist class, and at the same time be thoroughly democratic in arriving at its positions on all questions. Democratic centralism is the organizational principle of the Socialist Workers Organization. This means unity in action and complete democracy within the organization.

In capitalist society, the ruling class has the advantage of great wealth and control of all the main institutions in society, including the media with its ability to manufacture and manipulate public opinion. The workers have in their favor only the fact that they are the overwhelming majority of the population. That majority status becomes meaningful only insofar as it can be organized. It must be organized in great numbers, in mass actions, and at the point of production.

The Socialist Workers Organization was formed when Socialist Action, the group from which we originated, ceased its commitment to function democratically. Democracy is not an idealistic concept, but a necessity for a revolutionary movement.

Workers are a diverse and heterogeneous class on diifferent levels of consciousness. Their unity must be consciously cultivated and developed by the political party whose goal it is to put the working class in power.

The only way such unity can be developed is by the dialectical process of the democratic resolution of differences within the party, and complete unity in action in the struggle.

Unity in action is the only way that the working class can defeat the capitalist class. But unity in action must be tempered in the forge of ideological debate and struggle. Democracy is the means for resolving such and achieving a genuine socialist society.

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=7886780711843120756

I get the feeling after clicking Diane’s name that she isn’t reading the articles much less the responses.

Good article N.D.,

The “right to vote” in the US hasn’t always been a victory. It was given to (or allowed to be wrested by) women so that the labor movement could be weakened by placating a large portion of it.

You are very serious. Your link to your musical play-list seems to have vanished with those thousands of Indians who democratically died of poverty behind the cage of their caste. Keep it on !

If you want to read your piece with the sounds of peace and hope, try this link to my musical play-list.

Again, I’d love to know what kind of music you might have had playing when you wrote this; if none, then you indeed have inspired thought about making this new beginning in 2009, one that not only includes hope, but tolerance and understanding.

I can’t remember the last time I’ve read something that moved me so!

Substantially I find the American democracy more genuine than the nominal Indian democracy in the landscape of an ugly inhuman caste system and large different populations. The Americans are at least lingually homogenous.

I assume the historical development of American democracy has contributed to the development, strengthening and continuance of Imperialism. Undoubtedly the U.S. constitution guarantees freedom of speech and allows protest. But with a long history of slavery and submissiveness I do not expect any significant rebellion against Imperialism from within. The slaves of yesterday are the voters of today.