On Wednesday 10 Oct 2007 7:00 pm, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Wed, Oct 10, 2007 at 03:10:22PM +0200, Dave Long wrote: > > >Since RAF, there has been no terrorism in Germany.
What is/was the RAF? >I see a global trend towards authoritorian systems, aided >by brinworld (ubiquitous automatic surveillance, and enforcement). > Unless we do something, we'll live in an neverending nightmare. This is an interesting statement and I have thoughts that were sparked off by the ongoing civil war in the Pashtun areas of Pakistan. Once upon a time (prior to 1947) there was democracy in that region, and there was a respected Pashtun leader called Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan popularly known as "frontier Gandhi" because he implemented Gandhian principles on non violence in a region full of squabbling tribes. In elections held in pre-partition India the NWFP provice had voted for Nehru's Congress and had no real intention of joining Pakistan. But the forces of history and the machinations of Jinnah , Olaf Caroe and later Mountbatten and Nehru ensured that the tribal belt to Pakistan's Northwest lost its democratic forces, Jinnah's Muslim league armed and empowered Islamic Tribal leaders in the region and the NWFP joined Pakistan. Gaffar Khan was jailed in Pakistan. The point that I am getting at is that a democratic nation state requires two important conditions to survive 1) The state has to be the most powerful armed entity. Coercive powers must be retained by the state. 2) The "state" itself must not be one individual, but should be an entity that follows a constitution, and that entity should be controlled by a series of people who are voted in and out of power. When the state loses its coercive power to someone else - you can get civil war. If that "someone else" does not subscribe to democracy such as in the NWFP, then democracy dies and is very difficult to revive. Even force cannot revive it easily - unless massive force is used to eliminate all armed entities who are opposed to the forces of the democratic state. That means we get mass murder, genocide, human right violations and "collateral damage" from the very forces who are trying to restore "order and democracy". This is by definition a murderous mess. This is what is happening in Iraq now. Coming back to Eugen's statement: >I see a global trend towards authoritorian systems, aided >by brinworld (ubiquitous automatic surveillance, and enforcement). When the democratic nation state is threatened by armed coercive forces that threaten to get stronger than the state a coercive response based on force is the only effective way of combating that. The "authoritarian systems" that are being used by democratic nations have the tacit support of a significant proportion of the citizens of any democratic state. But the democratic state also allows the survival of opponents. If the opponents to the use of authoritarian systems get powerful enough in a democracy, those authoritarian systems may get rolled back a bit. But rolling them back will automatically ensure the rejuvenation of forces that threaten the democratic state, and authoritarian systems will be put back in place. The difference between a functioning democracy and a non democratic set up is the ability to either increase or roll back state authority as the situation demands. The democratic state may have supporters of 3 different viewpoints vying for influence 1) Supporters of the authoritarian systems used by the state 2) Democratic opponents of the authoritarian system being used in their state. 3) Opponents of the state itself in terms of ideology, borders and power structure. shiv
