'Voting is worthless'? Global protests share contempt for democracy

From India to Israel to Spain, and even on Wall Street, demonstrators appear to have little faith in the ballot box

MADRID — Hundreds of thousands of disillusioned Indians cheer a rural activist on a hunger strike. Israel reels before the largest street demonstrations in its history. Enraged young people in Spain and Greece take over public squares across their countries.

Their complaints range from corruption to lack of affordable housing and joblessness, common grievances the world over. But from South Asia to the heartland of Europe and now even to Wall Street, these protesters share something else: wariness, even contempt, toward traditional politicians and the democratic political process they preside over.

They are taking to the streets, in part, because they have little faith in the ballot box.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44697094/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/

I agree that the vote is worthless . The corrupt system has hijacked and bought off the political parties , even the minor ones . Democracy is a total fraud and there is an urgent need for a revolution . Here in Italy we get every day lies written in the newspapers or spoken by the politicians . There is a cast or recycled politicians that hang on in Parliament or the Senate for Decades , some of them with a criminal record . On top of that we have every day interference from representative of the Church of pedophiles . The garbage spewed out by those criminals is unbelievable . One bishop recently admonished the population to pay the taxes to the government , forgetting that the church by virtue of a treaty with the state pay very little taxes . What hypocrisy ! A couple of days ago a Cardinal , moralized about the sexual life of politicians at the time when every person knows that the church protected pedophiles for many decades and has many pending lawsuits going about this matter .
It took a long time for people to realize that the current form of " democracy " is deeply sick . People are required to vote once every three or four years and after that the " elected " politicians do whatever they like .
Mass demonstrations don't work because the system ( the mass media ) chooses not to show the demonstrations or minimize the number of participants . In the last decades I noticed that in many cases there have been huge anti war demonstrations , but the government decided to send troops to war anyway . Governments hide behind the sentence : " we have treaty obligations " , which is another way of admitting the puppet nature of the governments .
A more viable form of government is in Switzerland . On major policies , there is a requirement to consult the electorate . Here in Italy on the major policy of relinquishing the Lira and accept the Euro , there was no consultation with the population at all . On the policy of joining the EU there was no consultation . On the Lisbon treaty there was no consultation . On the EU rule that unelected people runs that corrupt organization and write the laws , there has never been any consultation . There is a current dispute in a Region of Italy close to the border with France . The citizens do not want the high velocity train to pass through there due to environmental damage . This dispute has been on for about 20 years and the criminal government responds , not by listening to people , but sending the police riot squad . What happened to consultation ? This is only one example of many of failure to consult ......
Incidentally I hope that the EU falls due to the economic problems . As it is now it is an expensive undemocratic FARCE .

I keep getting the sinking feeling that no matter what we do, things will continue to be bad. I used to have 'Heaven' to look forward to -- but now I think this world might be as close to 'Heaven' as we'll ever get. Perhaps the 'Purgatory' we live in is as good as it gets. However, I continue to like the idea of politicians being required to get PhD's in Governance, so that they have half a chance of knowing what the hell they are doing. I also like the idea of voters having to take a test to prove that they can vote intelligently, before they are allowed anywhere near the ballot-box. Finally, I like the idea of the general public casting half of the votes for every issue the elected representatives vote on. But really, life might simply be hard and problematic, no matter how we set things up. Pain might be the cost of doing business in the universe, regardless of whether the preachers and politicians are corrupt or not...

Parlaiment: Parlai ment

In french means speaking lies. House of speaking lies. I rest my case.

Exactly Tom. Without integrity there is no real representation of the populace.

However, there are a few states in the US that actually have a working system where they operate in the black and give back to the community.

IMPO, the real revolution started with the banks bailout. It is so totally outrageous that anyone with half a brain figured out that the ordinary citizen got dumped on where they get to pay for the banisters world-wide corruption and are financial slaves because of the political system(s) that approved supported this action.

If the US ever hopes to fiscally recover they really need to dump the Federal Reserve, get rid of lobbyists, make integrity in business the standard and start their own National Bank.