Alexandre Fenelon:
> -Yes, but I think it´s possible to evaluate degree of democracy
> -withouth propaganda, althought it remains somewhat subjective.
> -You wouldn´t deny that Serbia (before and after revolution)
> -or Russia are less democratic than Sweden and France and more
> -democratic than Saudi Arabia. Obviously, the Western press
> -manipulate those definitions. Our lright wing newspapers are
> -claiming that the last European dictator fell, being difficult
> -to believe why Serbia is less democratic than Russia, Belarus,
> -or Croatia (not to mention NATO protectorates Bosnia and Kosovo
> -whose administyration was not elected, btw)
I would not call Saudia Arabia "democratic" because it does not pretend to be democratic. Only if we agree on some objective measure of democracy can be judge among the others. Etymologically, a democracy would be a polity in which the _demos_, "ordinary people", had _kratia_, "power" (presumably to operate the government). This is certainly not true of the United States, and I doubt if it's true of France, Sweden, Serbia, or Russia except at certain transitional moments when one elite has lost control and another has not yet gained it.
Of course, I'm mostly going by what's filtered through the Western bourgeois media with occasional reports published directly on the Net possibly by a member of the _demos_, so I could be completely deluded, and the game of "democracy, democracy, who's got the democracy" not worth playing.