What is open politics?

Before I start, I would like to make one thing very clear, I have no time, or sympathy whatsoever for racist scum like the British National Party and its supporters. Indeed, I would like to think of myself as a born free Englishman who has the right to say whatever I want, and as such, I still insist that under no circumstances should there be any restrictions on the rights of anyone to speak freely.

Unlike some left leaning political commentators over in the illiberal regions of the blogsphere, where such things as spell check do not exist, who argue that they 'support free speech, but...' - my belief in the right to free speech is unconditional. That means there is no such thing as partial freedom of speech, or free speech for me, but not for them. As far as I'm concerned, free speech is not divisable - we either have it or we don't - and I say, we should have it all.

The history of Rome was a society like no other. We are all part of the Roman conflict. Some how during the fall of Rome, every one of us in the great world of our survived the fall of Rome, the 700 years of complete destruction of society, infrastructures, library's from 2000 years of history and we all were either part of the rise of Christianity, survived Paganism in some parts of the world or became part of the last religion that followed in fear of Christianity, Islam. Although many great people have been part of the Islamic history, the greatest portion of Islam that still survives today is the reason it was established, to counter the fear of Christianity during the fall of the Roman empire in the East. Islam took 2000 years of history and destroyed it and has yet to advance its own people out of the dark ages and uses this as a motivation for destruction of Christianity. As Christianity moved forward in the West, Islam slowly declined until all it had left was to fight for land and take over Christianity and its money, power and strong following of Christians world wide. The history of Rome ended at the beginning of the rise of Islam and Christianity. Both religions believe in God therefore every soul believing in God has the possibility of being saved. The error in judgement is not on the people but on the false prophet. I have read about how a false prophet will rise and millions will follow this great leader. They will truly believe he is the leader or prophet of his people. Because Islam use's Sex to gain young mens souls to die for God, Because Islam use's fighting to convert instead of love and because Islam has a leader without a face because of the fear of looking into the eye's of a false prophet or that the man was just a man who used the poor people of the day to motivate them to steal the riches of Christianity and the fall of Rome. The false prophet is Islam and the leader of Islam. The Billions that follow the war, the 72 women that will be at the end of young men's suicide deaths is so easy to see it is false. Everyone I have ever talked to has admitted it can not be. So if it can't be that millions will die for a lie then how can the religion that believes illiteracy and only knowledge of the Koran is a good thing. How can Women be bound to home and hide be a blessing of God. Because of his own inability to control him self, covering women helped him succeed to be a better person. I have met many good Muslims yet never have I met a Muslim that truly has seen the light of day or the blessings of God.

Hi everyone, I am an occasional reader (& discussion contributor) to the OpenDemocracy site. I'll admit that on first pass the idea of annual general elections probably is ABHORRENT to most people, but I'm wondering if we might be able to discuss this a little deeper? I did a research essay nearly 20 years ago when my Political Science tutor called me a "utopianist". I took great umbrage at his appellation and started the research to prove I was NOT a utopianist. Surprise, surprise, I discovered that I was! HOWEVER ... it's a little more complex than that. You see, there are two different TYPES of utopianism:

Hello. I am not sure how much this concept is wideknown, so let me mention the link for new aproach towards politics: www.extremedemocracy.com The book as I know in on-line now: http://akgul.bilkent.edu.tr/extreme-democracy/ Please, if you find some time, read it. It is worths Best regards, Gale

Hello to everyone. As long as there is no too many frequent places on Internet that discuss over open politics, I would like to present new google group: http://groups.google.com/group/top-politics This group gathers about dozen of initiatives "which reside on the TOP (Transparent Open Public) principles of political activities. We share concepts, ideas and suggestions about the Internet as a media, OpenSource as a paradigm and Democracy as the ultimate goal." It is relatively frequent, about 15 posts per day, so if you are interested in this issue, I highly recommend it.

The open source concept is tightly related to the idea that it is through working for common good that an individual realizes his personal benefit. This principle is especially used in the software domain, since it concerns information that is not material and therefore can be limitlessly distributed. Although the open source concept has been known since the 1970-s, all its force has successfully come to life thanks to the advent of the Internet, a medium that enables free distribution of information on the world level. Except in the domain of information science, the open source concept can successfully be applied to other spheres that deal with distribution of information. The concept can be successfully used in politics, and applied to all individuals and groups of individuals that lead socially important projects. They can expect the assistance of the whole community interested in the realization of the idea or project, similarly to the way it works in the software domain.

is an open democracy hierarchical ? because the net surely is. examine the concepts of i.p. addresses and routing tables. every terminal node\leaf that is not root absolutely depends upon the approval and authorization of hierachically superior nodes in the maintenance of packet routing tables.

I am Mark Rosst, an innovator in the field of Social Network Optimization. Structural Deep Democracy(SD2), which I have developed, is a non-ideological approach to organizing collective action and is a maximally leveraged approach to solving world problems. SD2 uses PageRank as a centrality algorithm to analyze votes to determine the center of TRUST and CONSENT in a human trust network. The top three or five lead such an organization with one of them as the executive. This creates a small and efficient locus of trust and accountability to lead the organization. PageRank allows the best leaders to determine who the best leaders are, eliminating the popularity game of conventional populistic-democracy. SD2 can be used by nonprofits, businesses, government entities, but it is intended to be best for grass-roots activism for groups thirty or more, and is scalable to a global level.

July 11, 2005 To: LA Times, Jamie Gold, Readers Representative: readers.rep@latimes.com & C-Span events@c-span.org AND To Whom It SHOULD Concern: Subject: LA Times again appears to be protecting Cardinal Roger Mahony? Because of the seriousness of the subject matter I again send letters about child molestation. Remember molestation could mean rape, but without the written documents we “protectors of children” will never know how sick and or evil some of the representatives of the Catholic Church are. Failure to demand laws by politicians for such documents is a sickening disillusionment to us.

This is a second generation text and the text of the first generation you can see on this link: http://tiaktiv.org/index.php?mode=uvod&jezik=en If anybody is interested in Internet democracy, system we promote, please come to the yahoo group tiaktiv-ap, even though since today we where nationally oriented. Bt, this idea belong to the world :) So, here we go: Vision The current political order has many dysfunctions which put it further away form the ideals of democracy. The order does not put the same level of responsibility on each political decision maker, encouraging misuse of authorities against the society itself. And instead of having the best and most responsible ones in the political process, we have at the top of the process the most competent and merciless manipulators. The people who are giving the legitimacy to the government in the pseudo democratic system, due to the restricted access to information and real image of the political reality, do not actually have the possibility to elect the best, but, instead, are doomed to make decisions based on deceptive, media shaped senses, and not on common sense and knowledge.

As you read this, a mega-site based in the US/Canada but to which intelligent articulate authentic progressives from Europe and elsewhere would be a fine leavening (warning: the state of progressive politics in the US needs A LOT of advancement -- but since the US is starting all these wars, I mean "leading globalization", of course, it matters) at any rate DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND (DU) is probably the biggest participatory site for progressives in the US. There are over 70,000 members and about 40,000 people a day participating. Currently, Democratic Underground (DU) is putting together a corps of 1000 committed authentic progressive cyberactivists to pursue 'actions' frequently, and not just every now and then, on the web mainly, discussed by the corps members and developed by the people who run DU. This to my knowledge, at least on this scale, is new and history-making. Be a part of progressive history. Let them know you are from outside North America if you are, as that could be a special boost, in various ways. Who knows? The idea could catch on and be emulated in the European Union! There would first be some kind of mass site like DU, and then a large corps of cyberactivists. In any case CHECK IT OUT !!!!!!

As a American, I have seen so much centralization without more individual powers. When our country was born, the law was i representaive for every 10,000 people. Now every damn, is decided by the top few elites. We have forgotten what freedom really is, freedom has been eroded. What we think as freedom is a illusion. Take a look around, all the rules, the tax. I am saying we have not sipped true freedom. We must put the end to all this, it is time to advance. Democracies should give REAL power to the people. For example the most important solution: is giving power of the purse to the people.

Dear freinds . Are you opimastic the bright future of democracy in Pakistan,As you know since last 56 years military regime ruling the peoples of Pakistan, Dilshad Bhutto Secretary General Sind National Party PAKISTAN mobil.92-300-2913443 dbhutto@hotmail.com

Like all societies thrive upon Covenants ,Great Civilisations recreate on Commandments. A Civil Society in this world could be when The World could could more consider beyond 'Political Social Dictations' these are moreover Schisms from Paranoia ,untill people realise noone is going to hurt them if they let be good somewhere.No body is coming to steal their new prosperity! Why aide workers are stingy? or rough handeling?or say Doctors and Nurses in Phycological Hospitals cruel?too much privacy! i say long ago somewhere in seventeenth century Utilitarianism was provocated compiled and practically rendered allover Europe. The courts from India and Shahs and Europe had announced new elites to use Products with exclusive natures that later reached World Wide Productions too.Today the whole full World has achieved prosperity .

Academics (I'm one myself) tend to be skeptics by profession and temperament; delighting in critique, we are dubious about the promise of constructive thinking. Having spent time mastering a set of concepts, we often resist or resent efforts to deploy those concepts in new contexts and unfamiliar ways: such usage seems to ignore the complexities we've learned to cultivate. Some such dynamic is, I think, at work in Neera Chandhoke's comments on Mike Edward's book, especially when she declares herself hesitant "to share his more than positive assessment of “civil society”, which ... overshadows his initial understanding of the problems it poses." and when she warns of the need "to take a measure of the downsides and the dark sides of democratic life. "

It is interesting to note that a discussion of civil society brings out a familiar set of assumptions about the capacity for intentional action ("agency") the nature of communication and ultimately what "politics" is and is about. The most replied to comment on this discussion list is that on the nature of political parties. This seems to be based on a very particular interpretation of civil society. Firstly it seems to privilege civil and political rights over economic, social and cultural rights. Are political parties the main issue a 'civil' society faces when people are starving to death and dieing of preventable diseases. This seems to be a malaise of liberal political imaginings.

Ms Chandhoke's response to Michael Edward's proposal and support for "civil society" is very thoughtful and succinctly notes the problems with such an organization of peoples. However, it is a useless argument, for it really misses the underlying basis for a civil society. Civil society rests on the belief that a society is an economic assemblage, that all problems are economic and can be solved by economics. Unfortunately, not all problems in the world, not all problems in a society are economically based, despite Marx and his predecessors and successors. As the underlying assumption to a civil society is specious, there really is no argument about a civil society; if there is, then both sides are accepting the underlying assumption...unless that underlying assumption is questioned.

We could make more progress with the problems we have with government, business and civil society organisations if we aimed at changing governance policies in all organisations so they directly reflected what constitutes good governance. This is now feasible using current technology. This will require us to face FUNDAMENTAL SHORTCOMINGS IN EXISTING GOVERNANCE. Governance is the process by which government, business and civil society organisations gain, exercise and maintain power in relation to individual end-consumers/citizens and their physical, social and cultural environments. Modern means of transparent communication are making present governance approaches obsolete. Since the Industrial Revolution, organisations have developed governance arrangements in a climate of slow, uncertain, incomplete and often secretive communications to meet mass markets of relatively uninformed individual end-consumers in independent nation states. Bullying, corruption, poor accountability, poor responsibility, poor stakeholder engagement and lack of transparency are possible and are tolerated as being competitive ways of gaining, exercising and maintaining power over people and their physical, social and cultural environments. The cooperative potential of most human beings is seen as inferior to the ultra-competitive nature of some people.

As far as I recall from my lectures on 'State Development' as part of my Archaeology Degree, prehistoric non-nomadic agricultural homesteads appear to have been egalitarian (non-political) societies which revolved around kinship bonds (i.e family ties) between society members. When an egalitarian society of this type reached over approximately 100 people, thus stretching social and genetic relationships by a limitation on regular face-to-face interaction and genetic distancing, such kinship bonds are broken down in favour of a centralised governing body. This governing body can drift between a dictatorship and a true democracy.

What do you all think of a system of direct democracy compared to representative democracy? I think the representative version is laughably misnomered these days, which led me to think of the direct version. My only addition to the Swiss sort of system would be a "3 strikes and you're out" sort of questionnaire - if you can repeatedly demonstrate a great deal of ignorance about the subject matter you are voting upon (example, question about joining the single European currency might be, would you need to change money when you cross national borders in Europe? Get perhaps 7 out of 10 of those questions wrong 3 times, OK, you don't know enough about the issue to vote), you don't get to vote (with parliament perhaps acting as a forum for the writing up of the information sheets to go with the questionnaires, and the questionnaires themselves). Lots of referenda, and if you don't care about the issue (low voter turnout is a criticism of the Swiss approach), that's your democratic right, too, seems to me - I might not greatly care about some obscure tax law changing in my country, but if you ask me, shall we attack nation X on a very questionable basis, then surely I will care. It's your democratic right to be involved, or not.