Moti Nissani, Professor Emeritus (Biology), Wayne State University, discusses his new free online book Eight Billion Cheers for Direct Democracy: Direct Democracy is Humanity’s Last Best and Only Hope. Nissani argues that today’s most pressing problems—looming nuclear war, runaway technology, and eco-catastrophe—could be solved by creating and expanding real democracy (as opposed to US/Western oligarchy) borrowing ideas from ancient Athens and modern Switzerland, Iceland, and Berlin (the Philharmonic, not the Bundestag). His sad conclusion: “It is heart-breaking then, to know that in real democracy is the salvation of the world, and yet to suspect that real democracy is a pipe dream.”
Below is the first chapter of Eight Billion Cheers for Direct Democracy.
–Kevin Barrett, Veterans Today Editor
Eight Billion Cheers for Direct Democracy
Chapter 1: The World is So Wrong
We’ve got a system that is systematically inflating the wealth of the elite, rapidly suffocating everybody else, and . . . destroying the planet. . . . It’s so absurd — psychopathic, in fact. — Russell Brand, 201410
Electoral representative systems will fail to bring about responsive or good outcomes. — Alexander A. Guerrero11
Chapter Summary.
This chapter highlights the central paradox of contemporary civilization. On the one hand, humanity lives in an upside-down world of perpetual wars, tyranny, wage-slavery, injustice, materialism, selfishness, starvation, monstrous income inequalities, and ever-growing prospects of human extinction.
On the other hand, a far better world was inarguably within reach at least as far back as 1981:
It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a higher standard of living than any have ever known. It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary. War is obsolete. It is a matter of converting the high technology from weaponry to livingry. . . . This is not an opinion or a hope — it is an engineeringly demonstrable fact. This can be done using only the already proven technology and with the already mined, refined, and in-recirculating physical resources. This will be an inherently sustainable physical success for all humanity and all its generations to come. It can be accomplished not only within ten years but with the phasing out forever of all use of fossil fuels and atomic energy.12
Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror.
He is the host of TRUTH JIHAD RADIO; a hard driving weekly radio show funded by listener donations at Patreon.com and FALSE FLAG WEEKLY NEWS (FFWN); an audio-video show produced by Tony Hall, Allan Reese, and Kevin himself. FFWN is funded through FundRazr.
He also has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS, and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications.
Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin; where he ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host.
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