You're falling victim to the same error in thinking as the parent: your argument is based on the assumption that the only effect an individual has on a democracy is through exercising their right to vote. That's demonstrably false, as even a basic of understanding of American history shows. Historically, the vote is the least effective means of social change.

You have further voice than this. You have your actual voice, your written voice, the voice your actions through good works or civil disobedience, and a communal voice through community organizing. Want a trivial example? Women and blacks didn't get the right to vote through voting. Women's suffrage was not a gift given to them by men, it was a right won by struggle, and it started with individuals working for their interests, organizing and growing strong. This is why reasoned debate, education, and activism are vital for a healthy democracy.

Where you are right, and where democracy is strong, is as follows: If a single individual has abberant ideas which are anathemic or counter to the interests of virtually everyone, then that person is isolated, and has limited power. So in a healthy democracy a guy like Hitler or Stalin, or Micheal Eisner or Jack Valenti can do little harm. Unfortunately America function much more the principle of democracy by dollars, and abberant groups (whose interests oppose the general public) have enormous power to distort democracy and do violent social harm. One mechanism they do this is by manipulating culture, the flow of information, and the framing of the political discourse. The solution of course is more democracy, not less.

It's possible of course to construct hypothetical scenarios where democracy might go wrong: 51% of the population is Christian, and they vote to execute the remaining 49% of jews, homosexuals, muslims, etc. But in practice this doesn't actually happen. That kind of vile nonsense takes place when private tyrannies (individual or corporate) have more voice and power than public consent.

I'm curious, did 'The Wave' get much mainstream attention in the U.S.?

Regarding the parent poster, there really should be a -1 dishonest post.

some of us realize that individuals effectively have no say in democracy

You're quite wrong about that, and I can only imagine that you were the victim of a strong anti-democracy indoctrination campaign. Let's take what should be an uncontroversial example: civil rights. Civil rights came about because of the actions of many individuals. It wasn't a gift from a corporation. It wasn't a gift from the government or the ruling classes. It happened because people stood up for themselves and what they believed in, and through democratic processes exerted their will over the ruling classes, getting change for the better.

Where your education has failed you, is you don't seem to understand what democracy is. Democracy is not 40% or less of the population going to a voting booth once every X years to select which beholden, corrupt bastard is going to be making decisions for the next X years. Democracy is people being active, educating themselves, getting active (and getting out in the streets if necessary) to make sure that the people making decisions are actually listening. Democracy requires you to get off your ass and do something from time to time. Democracy requires you to take responsibility for what your country is doing in your name. And a healthy democracy requires educating yourself to the methods by which the corporate media manipulate you, and what their motivation is (I suggest an excellent study "Manufacting Consent" as a starting point for this.).

Turning American into a healthy democracy means learning how the system is corrupted and failing, and working to correct that. By and large, that means better sources of information (and the internet helps here), taking corporate money out of the electoral system, and instituting more democratic mechanisms, for example allowing more public referendums. Shorter terms, etc etc.

Of course, the alternative is to take an anti-politics stance, and allow your fate to be decided by large corporations, which are essentially private tyrannies, beholden to no one, working toward a single goal: profit, and the environment, human rights, worker safety, freedom from slavery, or whatever else only has a value if it can be used to generate a profit.

I followed your link, and yeah, their list of positions looked pretty ok at first glance, must have been writte by some good marketers. Then I checked out the video to the right with the grey haired WASP sitting in front of a banner which reads "for race and nation". Now I don't know about you, but I studied a lot of Nazi history while attending Y.L. Peretz Hebrew school, and "for race and nation" raises some pretty big warning flags for me.

I also read the quotes at the sidebar. I hit refresh three times, and I got three white pride quotes.

I also read their position on immigration, which is pretty scary, and all about race. So the grandparent seems to be pretty on the money.

James Lovelock's thesis can be refuted by finding examples where democratic forces are pushing FOR environmental safegaurds (and are hampered by UNdemocratic forces), or by showing examples where a lack of democracy leads to worse environmental policies. It's pretty trivial to find both kinds of examples.

Let's consider the first type. For years, the citizens of most democratic governments have been pushing for harder environmental legislation, but the governments have lagged behind the will of people, at a rate which depends on how much the government is beholden to other interests (in other words, how UNdemocratic the government is). In Europe, for example, the countries with the strongest and healthiest democratic forms have the best environmental record. Switzerland, which has a direct democracy (in which citizens vote directly to implement policy) has the best environmental footprint in contentinal Europe. The United States is an excellent example. Goverment policy here has long lagged behing public desires. Take the Kyoto protocols, which were overwhelmingly supported by the American population If you look at the polls, even most Bush supporters were in favor of the KP's, but were convinced that Bush supported them too. That's a triumph of corporate media control, and an indicator of dysfunctional democratic mechanisms.

What about undemocratic government? Well, that's a pretty easy one. It might be possible to find totalitarian regimes that take good care of the environment, but they are really in the minority. I can't think of any examples. Yes I know China is taking the lead in green technologies, but that's an economic strategy, and not an environmental strategy. Consider Russia, which is a nightmare, and was equally bad under Soviet control.

No, the solution to global warming is more and healthier democracy. If you just step outside of the United States, the global warming contraversy is over, finished. If you talk to a hundred people you might find one or two deniers, and if you talk to a hundred scientists, you might find one or two skeptics. But in a democracy that's an overwhelming majority. The problem, which is especially bad in the United States, is an undemocratic system which simply doesn't follow the will of the people (if you deny this, keep in mind that 70% of american supported a public option in the health care reform). The system breaks down largely because of a corporate media oligarchy with a complex web of ownership and agreements, which lends more weight to positions which favor corporate interests. But that's a lack of democracy, not a problem of too much democracy.

I gotta say, the headline of this article got my dander up. Elites institution, privileged individuals, and their well paid apologists have been campaigning against an "excess of democracy" as long as the notion of democracy has existed. Using the global environmental catastrophe as another front in this battle makes me livid. The fact is that the common citizenry of the plan have the most to lose from global climate change, and as such, we are the best deciders of our interests. The "enlightened men", the nobility, the "better classes of man", are the ones that have gotten us to this place, and I certainly don't trust them to get us out of it. The average citizens of the planet have a lot more in common interests with each other (especially regarding the climate) than do the elite institutions, governments, and corporations. They are far more likely to sacrifice our well being for the sake of their own interests.

I'll repeat: what we need is more democracy, not less.

Dude, don't you understand the concept of hedging your bets? What about marketing? Public Relations? BP and Chevron investing miniscule amounts into alternative energy doesn't prove that they are not against alternative energy. It just shows that they realize that there's a profit to be made there, and if there's profit to be made, they're going to go for it.

At the same time however, they will spend much much more money lobbying to make sure that goverments (particularly the good old usa) will not do anything to hurt their primary source of profits: wasteful oil consumption. They're also vitally opposed to a decentralized energy production: that's why they push for huge solar fields and wind fields, instead of a model where every citizen, business, whatever, tries to produce as much energy as they use... through efficiency and alternative energy sources.

Even with today's technology, it's possible to produce zero energy consumption houses where you can live quite comfortably. It's expensive, but possible. If that technology were improved on, mass produced so that economics of scale came into play, and became mainstream, what do you thin would happen to the energy oligarchy's bottom line? You don't think they will do whatever they can to prevent that? And they can do a lot: they can engage in huge and misleading public relations campaigns (which would have once been called propaganda). They can lobby the government to keep our car efficiency standards at worst level in the industrial world, incidentally making our automobile manufacturers less competitive internationally, and they can get politicians elected with big ties to the oil industry, who are willing to engage in wars in impoverished nations which are rich in oil, to ensure their access to the source of all their profits.

Hell, the oil companies know the trough is going to be empty someday too. They just want to make sure that they get as much profit out of the process as possible, and what happens to the environment, to you, to me, to the air we breath, to the cities we live in, to our soldiers... all that shit is completely irrelevant to them. What they care about is profits, and right now, their most profitable business is to keep us as dependant on oil as possible. So their going to do their best to make sure that they stay in a position to maximize their profits. That's not controversial, it's the definition of a corporation.

Dude, I followed your link. In his chart, the only passenger system that performs worse than a car is "San Jose Light Rail". That's pretty specific. Bikes, Trains, other rail systems all perform better. Since the dude who made the post used average loads to calculate the per passenger energy use, I can only assume SJLR suffers from poor planning, and poor utilisation by the citizenry. That could easily be corrected if the citizens would stop driving their horribly inneficient cars, and get on the goddamn train. A more meaningful comparison would be to compare the per passenger energy use of the Swiss train and tram systems, which are well run and well utilized, or an average of all European rail and tram systems, which would provide a reasonable expected value, instead of a single outlying statistic.

Note that more people riding the train will increase its efficiency, whereas more people driving their cars won't... unless you're getting more passengers into a single car, i.e. carpooling, which is a good idea, but still won't bring it down to the efficiency of a well used rail system, and has no hope of doing better than a bike. Where the fuck did you get the idea a car uses more energy than riding a bike? Bizarro world?

I also note that the site that you cite shows that bicycling is the second most efficient form of transformation out available, second to an electro-scooter/twike. But I would question that finding... If you are going to calculate the energy used by a rider on a bicycle covering a certain distance, and then compare it to a rider on an electro scooter, you also have count the calories being burned by the rider of the electro scooter in the comparison.

You are apparently being selectively stupid to justify living the fat-ass lazy selfish lifestyle you enjoy. Are you also in the tea-party? You're that guy with the "keep your government hands off my medicare" sign aren't you?

If you are interested in the complex system of media control in the United States, there's an excellent study called "Manufacturing Consent" by Noam Chomsky.

Plain text would be logical. Then voluntary efforts can easily write automatic routines for extracting useful data.

Would someone with points please mod the parent up? I'm going crazy with all of the people spewing disinformation when a quick trip to opensecrets.org would settle the matter.

China needs to learn that in the U.S. the corporations run the state, not the other way around.

It's a cultivated and educated effort at fear mongering, which is consistent with the U.S. indoctrinal system which has been in place, and under refinement, since the end of world war II. The analyst in question has this say about himself:

Dr.Dr. Larry M. Wortzel is president of Asia Strategies and Risks, LLC. He provides consulting services on defenses, security, political and economic issues related to China and East Asia. Wortzel has 37 years of experience assessing events and working in the Asia-Pacific region. He is the author of two books on China’s politics and military affairs. In addition, he has edited and contributed chapters to eight other books on China’s military forces. Wortzel has lectured in and contributed his expertise to newspapers, magazines and government officials in China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand. During a 32-year military career he served in China, South Korea, Singapore, and Thailand. Wortzel has been a strategist for the Pentagon and was director of the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College. He was vice president for foreign policy and defense studies at The Heritage Foundation, a Washington, DC, think tank. He is a commissioner on the Congressionally-appointed US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

(from his webpage)

The guy is a member and servant of the circle of elites who profit, and enjoy enormous social success from their support of our militarized social and economic system. Pursuading a population of relatively free and relatively educated person to support an political system which can afford to spend $3 trillion dollars (washington post estimate) on an injust, unjustified terrorist war against an impoverished nation, against a dictator we incidentally empowered and supported through the worst of his crimes, and over the objections of its own citizenry, but quails at spending $1 trillion to ensure health care said citizens.

Wortzel enjoys a position of prestige and wealth for his support of the forces of that are destroying us, as do the reporters and editors of the New York Times for parading his observations without the criticism they deserve.

For anyone with a certain amount of research background, or even basic knowledge of network security and stability issues (in this case network in question is power network), the appropriate response to the paper would be analysis, and investigation and applicatoin of measures to improve the stability. The U.S. power grid has in recent years suffered from such cascading network failures several times in the last decade, and we Americans should be grateful that someone is investing the resources to investigate these issues. By publishing his results in a peer reviewed scientific journal, Mr. Wang has done us a service, and deserves our gratitude. Instead he's getting caught up in this policy wonk's latest search for enemies.

I wasn't expressing a personal opinion, I was clarifying the rational used by another poster. In other words, I was explaining the logic by which one might decide that it was okay to engage in an illegal act against the church of scientology. I personally haven't formulated a strong opinion in favor of, or against the dos attack on Scientology (although I consider the COS harmful). I don't feel like I know enough about the specifics. I do however agree with the principle that it is sometimes necessary, just, and/or beneficial to break the law in an effort to enact social change.

It is possible to follow the law and still be a bad entity. When unjust or harmful organisations or cultures have control over, or are successfully able to manipulate the law, often the only means left to combat that organisation or way of thought is through extra-legal means. This is the fundamental principle of civil disobediance. For example Rosa Parks broke the law when she refused to give up her seat to a white person. Ghandi broke lots and lots of laws when he fought British rule of India. I think these examples prove that just because you've broken the law, doesn't mean you've done something unethical. Or to use the internet's favorite example: Hiding Jews was against the law in Germany back in the late 30's, early 40's, but we now consider people who did that kind of thing heroes. Sometimes breaking the law is a good thing, and it's often not clear to the citizens of the time what's good or bad.

Now, let's see what's different between the examples you provided and the examples I provided. In insurance fraud, helpless consumers are hurt, and typically insurance fraud is done for private gain. So it's morally dubious, and claiming it's okay because insurance giants suck is just rationalization. On the other hand, if you were to hack into Blue-Cross/Blue-Shield's computer systems and do no harm except to expose some dirty dealings regarding sabotage of health care reform, that might be morally justifiable. Bank Robberies? Same argument applies. Murdering an abortion doctor? Well that's a great example. Murdering a doctor who provides abortion is just plain bad. It's bad not because it violates a law, it's bad because it harms another person. It's also fantastically hypocritical -> it's okay for me to kill because he's (maybe, kinda sorta) killing. That's irrational and it's directly harmful to another human being.

If we look at Anonymous's actions: 1. As far as I can tell they aren't profiting from their attack, so it doesn't seem to have selfish motivations. 2. It was only the institution of Scientology that was attacked, and only the institution which suffered harm. Based on that, I'd say it falls into the morally justifiable side of civil disobedience.

The ethics of civil disobedience are complex, and should be thought over carefully. It's a good idea to debate whether breaking the law is really a good idea or not, or just selfish rationalization. But it's not wrong to do something just because it's illegal. The more democratic the government, the more likely civil disobedience becomes necessary, but even in the most democratic societies powerful institutions wind up being able to exploit and exert undue influence over the law, which might lead to civil disobedience becoming necessary. The further a society tends towards an oligarchy or dictatorship, the more necessary and justifiable such actions might become. Incidentally, that's the original reason we have a system of trial by jury: your peers are better qualified to determine if your violation of a law deserves punishment or not than some powerful, beholden judge. Unfortunately the jury-trial system has been gamed pretty badly is also in need of reform.

I'd just like to add that the two tests I applied seem to me to be good ones for determining the ethics of civil disobedience: if you don't harm anyone (it's okay to harm an evil institution, but not the individual who may just be unwitting dupes), and you don't profit personally, it may be justifiable. There are further things to consider, like what are the unintended consequences of your actions.

It's not a question of beliefs. If Scientologists were harmless crackpots running around telling people that lord Xenu is behind everyone's problems, then attacking them would be pretty reprehensible. But Scientologists are a harmful, scary cult, invented by a con artist, that teaches people they don't need doctors, they don't need psychotherapy, they just need to give the church of scientology assloads of money and they'll be healthy, happy, and will live forever, for example with the case of Lisa Mcpherson, or with the case of Lindia Waliki , and others.

Because the church of scientology is enormously wealthy, and has a lot of rich and powerful members, they successfully censor and defame Scientology critics over and over. The Church of Scientology has been subject of credible accusation of human trafficking, and has harassed critics of the church (see "Operation Freakout"). It has infiltrated government agencies (see operation snow white) for which several scientologists, including hubbards wife were conficted. Scientologists consider enemies of the church to be "fair game", by which they mean that attacks on opponents of the church fall outside Scientology ethics. For example, in "Penalties for Lower Conditions", Hubbard states that opponents who are "fair game" may be "deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.". Some months later Hubbard recinded this policy saying: "The practice of declaring people FAIR GAME will cease. FAIR GAME may not appear on any Ethics Order. It causes bad public relations. This [policy letter] does not cancel any policy on the treatment or handling of an SP.". Read the language carefully...

The church actively, aggressively, and very successfully courts celebrities, which gives the church a veneer of legitimacy, and successfully spreads their word. A non-violent, extra-legal attack like that by Anonymous can be seen as an act of civil disobedience, in which a large group of relatively poor and powerless (compared to the COS) individuals break laws in order to strike back at a more powerful institution which is enormously harmful. Presumably the main purpose of the attack is generating interest in the evils of Scientology, i.e. using extralegal means to combat their giant, well funded propaganda machine. Considering the well-document, harmful nature of the COS, I would assume that this is the reasoning of Dr. Evil.