The Last, Lost Empire: 3rd Edition 2012
by Ted Becker
What follows is a fair presentation of a wide variety of well proved practices—both in the United States and throughout the world—that are ways to engage and empower the citizenry to make critical decisions about the direction they want the nation to go and about pressing policy matters, including budget priorities.
Many have lots of Google pages. I am not trying to write the definitive package. However, any several of these would have the desired effect of making America’s national government responsive to its citizens wishes. In addition, and this opinion is based on decades of personal and professional experience in testing and practicing several of them, THE CITIZENS ALWAYS AMAZE!! (more…)
The Last, Lost Empire: 3rd Edition 2012
by Ted Becker
So What Role Does the Internet and Social Media Play in the Democratic Amendment Process?
The early days of the Egyptian Revolution, in Tahrir Square
The photo at the top of this blog shows the early days of the Egyptian Revolution, i.e., “The Arab Spring” in Tahrir Square. Notice the laptop as one of the weapons of choice of the revolutionaries. Another was the cell phone plus its camera. One of those Egyptians who the Western mass media dubbed as a “leader” was an Egyptian Google executive living in Cairo. No surprise there.
A professor of Communications at the University of Washington did a quantitative analysis of the role of social media before and during this massively popular uprising and here is part of what he found: “During the week before Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s resignation, for example, the total rate of tweets from Egypt — and around the world — about political change in that country ballooned from 2,300 a day to 230,000 a day. Videos featuring protest and political commentary went viral – the top 23 videos received nearly 5.5 million views. The amount of content produced online by opposition groups, in Facebook and political blogs, increased dramatically.” Read more about this here: New study quantifies use of social media in Arab Spring
So does this translate into pro-democracy movements in the West, such as the “Occupy Movement” in the USA and elsewhere? Obviously. Here’s an article from the May 1, 2012 edition of (ironically) Bloomberg News on the use of social media by #Occupy Wall Street in its planning and organization of various protest activities throughout the United States and all the way to Sydney, Australia. Occupy Wall Street Plans Global Protests in Resurgence
The Last, Lost Empire: 3rd Edition 2012
by Ted Becker
The Fourth Democracy Amendment Movement Is ON
A recent article by Steve Chapman of The Chicago Tribune, for many years a a leading conservative newspaper, details all the proposed constitutional amendments in the past few decades (balanced budget; anti-abortion; term limits for Congress; repeal of the income tax and direct election of Senators; put prayer back in schools, etc.). It is factually correct. You can read it for yourselves here…Amend the Constitution? Presidential candidates don’t mean it
The Last, Lost Empire: 3rd Edition 2012
by Ted Becker
The Populist and Progressive Amendments
Women’s Right to Vote
Women voting? Ridiculous!!! They don’t have enough brains or serious intellectual education to be able to understand the complicated business of politics.
Women should be kept barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen and not take men’s jobs. That was the commonly accepted view of most male voters in the United States for most of its history.
The struggle for women’s rights (including the right to vote) began formally at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. Although the Wyoming legislature gave the women of that “territory” the right to vote in 1869, the issue of women voting in national elections finally became an actual political party platform in 1892 when the Populist Party included it. “The Women’s Suffrage Movement,” in which many women were imprisoned during public demonstrations and marches took a long and hard road before it finally succeeded.
Here is a short YouTube video from a 2005 HBO movie called “Iron Jawed Angels” that gives a dramatic view of how women braved male scorn and violence in the early 1900s to march for a Constitutional Amendment to give them the legal right to vote. (more…)
The Last, Lost Empire: 3rd Edition 2012
by Ted Becker
The First Two American Democracy Amendment Movements
The ONLY way to transform the current overwhelming dissatisfaction with American politics and American political economic institutions into a much more democratic system of governance at the national level is to pass a SERIES of Constitutional Amendments to accomplish that goal.
A series of amendments? Is that even possible?
Ahem. Please. It’s been done several times in American history. When did this happen? How about right at the birth of this nation? (more…)
The Last, Lost Empire: 3rd Edition 2012
by Ted Becker
Protests, Demonstrations and Occupations Do NOT Change the American Political System
Alright already!! I think I’ve heard just about every “Occupy” idea there is: Occupy Wall Street,” “Occupy the Banks,” “Occupy Congress,” “Occupy Foreclosed Homes,” “Occupy College Campuses,” “Occupy Factories,” “Occupy Your Conscience,”—yes—even “Occupy Mordor.” From Barcelona to Bahrain to Berkeley: Occupy was the key word…for a while.
But no, “The American Occupy Movement” is not dead. If you want to read an excellent analysis of that, here’s Chris Hedge’s article: “Occupy Will Be Back” in the Daily Kos of June 18, 2012. (more…)
Do you know Bob Dylan’s real name? It’s Robert Zimmerman. You do know that when Bob Dylan wrote and sang his vision “The Times, They Are a-Changing” that his song and voice became the anthem of a generation which changed America forever. It was—despite what Dylan himself desired—an anthem that was at the heart of The Anti-Vietnam War Movement, The Environmental Movement, The Feminist Movement…the whole counterculture of the mid-1960s-mid 1970s. Because of its prescience and widespread impact, that song has become an all time classic.
And now comes Matt Slawlinkavich, a/k/a Makana, the Zen Master of Hawaiian slack key guitar playing. (more…)
The model of consensus building used in this video borrows from general mediation and conciliation theory and practice: A) It aims to hear every point of view; B) It allows people to not buy into a majoritarian sentiment – a thin majority creates almost as many losers as winners; C) It finds ways to include all as stakeholders in the policies.
The hand signals were devised because of limitations arbitrarily imposed by the police in the hope of crippling #OWS, but the #OWS core found ways to cope – much to their credit and via their spirit of democracy and innovation.
This YouTube is a great tool that should inspire many functional mutations, given new circumstances that will arise.
Congressman John Lewis during his impromptu visit to Occupy Atlanta
I don’t know about you, but I get a huge kick out of watching and hearing the cluelessness of politicians, media pundits, self-styled “objective TV correspondents,” bankers, and assorted stuffed suits and dresses scoff at Occupation of Wall Street, or #OWS. Why, they’re “leaderless!” They don’t know what they want! They are all “against” something and are for nothing. Fools. A ragtag bunch. Nostalgia for the sixties. Hippie wannabes. Weirdos. Do nothings! (more…)
AT LAST! It’s been a long time coming, but now it’s begun… and it’s not merely coincidental to the numerous and growing “Occupy” movements against Wall Street and the global banks who are bankrupting America and much of the rest of the world. The goal of both grass roots movements is the same: defeat the corporate state that has emerged in America under the disguise of “representative democracy,” which in the early 21st Century is a government that represents only giant corporations and their interests. (more…)
Many have lots of Google pages. I am not trying to write the definitive package. However, any several of these would have the desired effect of making America’s national government responsive to its citizens wishes. In addition, and this opinion is based on decades of personal and professional experience in testing and practicing several of them, THE CITIZENS ALWAYS AMAZE!! (more…)
Planning for Survival by Ismail Rifaat
