WEBVTT

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A True Democracy

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Thank you, thank you for being here. I am traveling the country

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presenting conferences on a subject I have been working

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on for the past six years, something that I think

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should be of interest to you. Something that is poorly addressed in our media;

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yet a subject that seems trite: that is democracy.

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And ... while the referendum debate of 2005 was being prepared (NT: on the European Constitution)

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and studying what turned out to be an anti-constitution

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since the European constitutional treaty is in fact an anti-constitution.

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In other words, it is a text aimed to destroy national constitutions.

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(I will explain what I mean when I say that)

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As I was studying the anti-constitution, I woke up.

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Meaning, I was politically asleep.

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I was like the majority of us, a voter without any specific loyalty, without

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a party, without a syndicate / union, even with no social organisation.

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I was taking care of my own business, like all of us. And on the 2005

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referendum debate, because of an anecdote that turned all eyes on me

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(and I am not saying this to talk about me),

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I started to think about what kind of institutions would be able to make

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the same changes that happened to me,

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happen to a greater number of people.

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Athenians were very good at this, mind you. In other words, humans are sensitive...

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The majority of humans are sensitive to the way others view them.

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We are driven by what others expect of us

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and we are held back to a certain limit.

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Often, that limit is in the suspicious or disapproving look from others.

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Meaning that the look of others,

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benevolent or reproachfull, helps us behave well or badly.

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And this is what happened in a way for me, I think.

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At least in regards to my decision to act,

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to engage in politics, trying to understand, and putting myself to work for the greater good,

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and finally after the intense emotions that I lived

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for two or three months during the time of the referendum,

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March, April May and June 2005, I did not stop.

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Meaning that for the entire period we contested the European Anti-constitution.

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We will talk briefly about it, maybe during the Q & A

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I will try, although it is difficult for me, but I will try to be brief

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and leave time for a Q & A

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because I come here looking for ideas too, from you.

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The political Trap

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So after criticizing an anti-constitution,

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which was the European constitution, I asked myself: What do we replace it with?

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Could we build something else instead?

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And so several schools of thought emerged in my head

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I am looking to decipher, enumerate, the variables of the political trap

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in which we are all trapped throughout the world.

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We are in a political trap that has shared characteristics

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in all the countries around the world, especially by inverting the meaning of the words

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by literally inverting the meaning of the words like Orwell argued in 1984.

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You know, Big Brother and the Newspeak deprived people that they wanted

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to dominate from the possibility of resisting

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by inverting the meaning of the words and by suppressing the words entirely

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that would highlight the problem. They weaken us.

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Thus we need a real effort here, that we should all do,

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which is re-appropriating the real meaning of the words

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that contain solutions. We aren't even able to find them

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because we were giving them an inverted meaning.

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In addition, I am working on an alternative, I am researching

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(Oh here you go! That's nice, does this work? Can you hear me now? Note: Etienne is handed a microphone.)

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I am researching in a constructive way, realistic way, not at all utopian.

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I am looking to institute, to imagine a system of institutions

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that would finally protect us against the abuse of power.

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So in fact, the back bone of my work,

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in fact of all the work that I have done politically for the last six years

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is.. finding what are the causes of the abuse of power? What makes social injustice possible?

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And I am going to share with you what I have found today

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on this project and what we could do

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to protect ourselves efficiently and for the long term.

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Here again I believe I found some paths... By searching I found...

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But, I don't come with polished ideas, fully conceived, finished and packaged, I am not here to sell you anything

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because I am not a candidate for anything. Many people asked me to run,

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it is simply, absolutely not an option.

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I refuse even the notion of power the same way one would refuse drugs.

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I know that if I used drugs, it would be delicious

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I clearly see that drug addicts live in a world..

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But I also know that it is a dangerous world, so I don't use drugs

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Well, it is the same with power. I want to stay alert,

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trying to be of service without hurting myself in the process

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When we study the history of humankind, there is practically no exception

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that power corrupts, power changes people for the worse,

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money too, but power corrupts. So I am not here

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to try and convince you, I am not here for your votes

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but instead I believe that we are all in need of

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each other, to implement and to desire the success of

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the idea that I am going to defend before you and which could work.

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It is about implementing a real democracy.

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Seeking the root cause

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What I would like to focus on is:

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What is a constitution?

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What link does it have to social injustice?

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The nature of the social injustice, the battles against the social injustices,

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will inherently divide us if we burden ourselves with the consequences instead

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of focusing on the causes.

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What should we have to change so that we finally have

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a true constitution? I am a beginner in politics.

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It has been 5 years that I have been practicing

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and I crossed paths with activists, old activists

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that have over 40 year of political life. Every Wednesday

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they distribute flyers in the markets, they run meetings non-stop

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they think non-stop about the greater good and this for decades.

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To each one his or her sector has a priority,

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and this one's priority is the corporate injustices, because to him this idea appears of utmost importance and is essential.

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This right, unjust, which gives power to the owner of companies

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and none or very little to employees whose only power is their work,

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for this activist, it is essential and he fights against that.

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He tries to improve the workers' situation in companies.

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But also, so is the case for another activist, who is working hard

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on ecological catastrophes

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that are becoming more and more threatening. For another, the problem is nuclear energy

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and its danger, for another person, it is the GMOs etc.

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I don't want to get into more details. What am trying to say, is that I met

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hundreds of people with their own specialty

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in activism and protests and they embraced, heart and soul, social injusticel - it is the word I use

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to group all protests - a social injustice that he fights

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and in which he becomes expert and knowledgeable of the mechanics of injustice

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and the cunning of those behind it, and is often driven to

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consider as an enemy another activist, which surprises me

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that he fights someone who is also fighting social injustice that has nothing to do with his,

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but is as important. The first example that comes to mind

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when I tell you this, is the anti-nuclear activist

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who perceives nuclear as an imminent threat

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and has made it a priority, and this activist when he is side by side

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with an activist fighting financial fascism or

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predatory finance, and which is a priority for him,

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but he happens to be pro-nuclear because he considers that it is progress,

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Well, for now he thinks it is dirty, but in the long run it will be clean

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These two activists can hate one another to the extreme,

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when from where I am standing, I consider both activists

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relatively heroic, alone in their corner, where they spend most of their time,

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all their energy, and their fight is worth it on both sides.

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Their disagreement deserves a debate, a discussion

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And then we will vote, we will have a referendum, and we will see what comes out of it.

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It is not worth banning each other when we should be resisting.

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So what I want to say, I could elaborate on this, but I am going to summerize

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What I would like to say is that all these activists have a common goal

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that they are fighting over, what I call, consequences.

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The consequences of a cause, which in fact is common.

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I think that ALL these social injustices,

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but I could be wrong, I am not perfect,

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but it appears that all these social injustices

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have a common point, a common cause which is none other than our political powerlessness / impotency.

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And you are concerned too, like me, I believe, unless you are ...

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even if you are from the parliament. I find our common political impotency

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to be the common cause.

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behind our inability to resist all social injustices,

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practically all. And if you would like, I follow a precious method

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that I think will serve me all my life.

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I discovered this, I find it very helpful.

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I found out an advice from a guy named Hippocrates

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in Antiquity, he was a doctor and put forward, in a few words

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an idea he left us, which is very helpful.

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It is very logical, very practical and very pragmatic

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Hippocrates left us with these few words: "search,

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"search for the root of causes." Then he died and disappeared

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but he left us with this "search for the root of causes"

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and it is very shrewd, I believe.

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We can take one or two examples: We don't cure a disease

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by attacking symptoms, everyone understands this I think

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We cure a disease by looking for the cause of the disease

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and by attacking the cause, we fix the disease.

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And when we are faced with several causes, which is often the case,

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practically everything is multifactorial, if there are several causes

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we don't attack just any cause, we try to locate

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the source, it is a different image, we try to go back to the source

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to locate the cause of origin, in other words, to detect and

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destroy cause "zero" (the root cause) which controls the other causes.

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And I integrated this research method

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and it is this method that I use. So when I look at all these social injustices,

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I don't limit myself to fighting corruption,

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I try to find the cause of corruption.

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I fight however, the bankers who are bankrupting us.

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I try to understand, what gives these bankers

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all the power and none to me. Do you understand what I am trying to say?

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I don't attack a banker by saying "he is evil and we are good".

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Not at all. I don't think along these lines. I try to understand

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what is the cause, the principal cause of my total political powerlessness.

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I think of course in terms of the greater good, for the city,

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for our social society.

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A true constitution

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When we graduate from law school we are under the impression

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that the constitution... is a tool that protects people

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but I think we don't know much, most importantly what is bad

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is that we are only taught this in law schools.

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I think that every citizen should know from a very young age,

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people should learn

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what they could win or lose from having a good or bad constitution.

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Let me explain in a few words: The idea of the constitution is simple ...

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it is simple and it is fabulous. It is there to save us.

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We need it, this is what we need today.

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I will get back to it later, I will come back to the link between this and our problems.

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But to say it in two words, to say what we ought to explain to our children

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when they are little,

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but we should later keep in our minds, between us, so as not to lose sight of its importance.

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If I put the citizens on the bottom, the group of people who want to create society,

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if there is no written law, no State of law,

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we will be hitting each other and will live by brutality.

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But to create peace, and this over 2500 years ago,

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they decided to submit to law

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which would be superior to this society and would prohibit the powerful

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from imposing "their law" which in essence was not a law.

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The law of the fittest is not a law, it is a perception

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To prevent that the most powerful abuse the rest of us,

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humanity put in place a law, a written text of rules

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which are produced, written by people in power

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who are above us. So we consent to putting in place,

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we say "to institute" powers, that will have

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the important duty of producing the law to which we will consent.

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This is very important but at the same time very dangerous

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Meaning these powers that we accept to govern us

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are at the same time very useful and very dangerous.

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Therefore, given this context, thousands of years ago,

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the people who were aware of this danger,

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because they were not insane,

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put in place a set of rules above these powers.

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Rules that were superior to these powers in order to protect us.

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These rules are called the law of law, the Constitution

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The constitution, is law, but it is a higher system

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whose charge is to question the powers and to weaken them,

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to weaken the powers so as to protect us.

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This, any kid could understand. A kid should know this.

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An adult also understands this. We should have in our heart

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this protective organization and we should defend

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this precious ideal, this protective, appeasing thing that is this Constitution.

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Beware! A true constitution, not a fake one.

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We will see what I call "power thieves" are champions

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in word inversion, including the word "Constitution"

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They are champions for using the word Constitution when

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in fact it is exactly the opposite,

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because it is not because you put together a text that you have solved the problem

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This text, I repeat, this higher text

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shouldn't just organize the powers.

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Because powers in place don't need us to get organized

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A constitution does not serve to organize the powers.

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A constitution is meant to weaken the powers, to make them

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protect us, to protect everyone from any abuse of power,

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to protect us at all times, rich and poor, young and old,

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to protect us from the maximum amount of abuse of power

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there is a constitution. Once we understand this

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normally, we are ready to understand that a person

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that is going to write, the people that are going to write this higher text

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to keep in check those who will produce the law,

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meaning those of parliament, the judges, the ministries, the presidents,

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even those of the media. If the constitution covered the media too,

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journalists would fear the Constitution too.

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The banks, because financial systems should be covered too

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by a modern constitution in which powers would be separated

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We may talk about this later. Right now, these powers

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produce rules that we fear.

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These powers, you understand now, should fear the constitution which is designed to protect us

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Do you see how since they are useful and dangerous

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It is necessary that they have something to fear.

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It is absolutely insane to grant to these people (in power) the role of writing the constitution.

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I hope you see that if the people in power write the rules that they should

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be following and that they should fear, it won't work.

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Is this clear? If you bring it back to basics, it is simple

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and very important. And I am surprised

00:20:05.436 --> 00:20:07.385
that it is not in public debates more often. But that it is not

00:20:07.385 --> 00:20:10.168
in the debates of parliamentarians, ministries, and men in power

00:20:10.168 --> 00:20:14.650
this does not surprise me. That it is not discussed by

00:20:14.650 --> 00:20:19.968
people in parties... Well I know that there are great people in parties.

00:20:19.968 --> 00:20:21.551
I have many friends in political parties, but at the head of each party

00:20:21.551 --> 00:20:23.451
there are people that are ... it is like a filter

00:20:23.451 --> 00:20:28.627
it seems as though the parties choose amongst us those who lie the best,

00:20:28.627 --> 00:20:33.651
who are the most resilient to ill treatments, the biggest traitors, the most...

00:20:33.651 --> 00:20:39.669
Well not all of course, I know some are not, however, it seems

00:20:39.669 --> 00:20:41.969
that the people at the head of parties are in no way similar to us.

00:20:41.969 --> 00:20:45.473
It looks like they went through a filter. So I am not surprised that amongst these people there is no talk of constitution.

00:20:45.473 --> 00:20:52.197
But for us and to me, the current context is favorable

00:20:52.197 --> 00:20:54.119
to explain this. Nowadays, the abuse of power is in open daylight

00:20:54.119 --> 00:20:56.197
We see these abuses on a daily basis. It is impressive when

00:20:56.197 --> 00:21:01.329
we have 4, 5 new and considerable abuses.

00:21:01.329 --> 00:21:07.620
And always, something that we can no longer formulate

00:21:07.620 --> 00:21:13.625
so much we have became used to it, always our political powerlessness / impotency is there.

00:21:15.563 --> 00:21:23.194
Stop me if am exaggerating, if I am saying something that

00:21:23.194 --> 00:21:30.575
is .. if I am extremist. This "democracy" that they show off

00:21:30.575 --> 00:21:37.574
as if "it was the best on earth in terms of politics",

00:21:37.574 --> 00:21:42.554
what does it leave me as a fundemental right? The right to designate every five years political masters

00:21:42.554 --> 00:21:49.174
that will decide everything for me. I don't votes the laws

00:21:49.174 --> 00:21:52.646
so I select people who will vote them for me

00:21:52.646 --> 00:21:58.080
and who are my political masters. I elect among them people

00:21:58.080 --> 00:22:02.679
I have not been able to choose: These are false choices.

00:22:02.679 --> 00:22:08.246
When my choice is dreadful candidate A and terrible candidate B, in this case it is a false choice.

00:22:08.246 --> 00:22:10.962
I am not allowed to choose people I consider good around me.

00:22:10.962 --> 00:22:16.913
Not at all, freely I cannot do that.

00:22:16.913 --> 00:22:21.330
This "democracy" supposedly leaves me only with the possibility,

00:22:21.330 --> 00:22:24.446
the right to designate masters, among people I have not chosen

00:22:24.446 --> 00:22:28.846
and against whom I cannot do anything.

00:22:28.846 --> 00:22:31.395
For five years, I will say it again, I cannot do anything for 5 years.

00:22:31.395 --> 00:22:36.346
I can march in the streets if it amuses me, they could care less.

00:22:36.346 --> 00:22:38.657
I can't do anything if they betray me,

00:22:38.657 --> 00:22:43.440
even if they betray me to the extreme

00:22:43.440 --> 00:22:47.214
I cannot do anything. All I can do

00:22:47.214 --> 00:22:52.583
is at the end of their mandate, not re-elect the scoundrel that just betrayed me for the past 5 years.

00:22:52.583 --> 00:22:57.151
I exaggerate here, I am pushing it, but it is just to make a point.

00:22:57.151 --> 00:23:01.902
I am not saying that they are all scoundrels. Although....

00:23:01.902 --> 00:23:04.130
No, I am not saying that. But what I am saying is that

00:23:04.130 --> 00:23:07.865
even if he is a top quality scoundrel - and there are a few, you know it -

00:23:07.865 --> 00:23:12.215
even if he is the finest scoundrel , all I can do

00:23:12.215 --> 00:23:17.169
is not re-elect him. The poor guy ! The poor scoundrel.

00:23:17.169 --> 00:23:20.066
Because, in fact, it does not matter what will happen to him

00:23:20.066 --> 00:23:24.349
because if I don't reelect him, I will elect another one,

00:23:24.349 --> 00:23:28.017
the one I refused to elect five years earlier because he betrayed me the five years before that

00:23:28.017 --> 00:23:32.151
and I only have this choice. I only have one choice between two larger parties.

00:23:32.151 --> 00:23:33.978
When I am not happy with one, I take the other one

00:23:33.978 --> 00:23:35.411
and when am not happy with the other one, I retake the one I just rejected.

00:23:35.411 --> 00:23:41.427
They are part-time workers. And they have voted some sort of unemployment benefit, you wouldn't believe it

00:23:41.427 --> 00:23:42.635
I don't know if you realize this, they voted unemployment benefits

00:23:42.635 --> 00:23:47.762
that lasts five years. Which means they continue

00:23:47.762 --> 00:23:51.378
to be paid as if we had elected them

00:23:51.378 --> 00:23:54.612
when in fact we did not reelect them. They continue to be paid full-time for a half-time job.

00:23:54.612 --> 00:24:01.695
Just waiting that the one elected gets sacked ... Right? And they call this "democracy".

00:24:03.354 --> 00:24:07.218
The political awakening

00:24:08.704 --> 00:24:13.626
At 50 I did not understand very well what a democracy was.

00:24:13.626 --> 00:24:17.875
Thus, I accepted, I accepted like you, like everyone,

00:24:17.875 --> 00:24:23.684
some sort of an incredible lesson, that they told me since I was a kid.

00:24:23.684 --> 00:24:29.318
"Election = democracy". Boy, repeat after me: "Democracy = election",

00:24:29.318 --> 00:24:34.152
"Election equals democracy, democracy equals election."

00:24:34.152 --> 00:24:37.485
And they repeated this at school,

00:24:37.485 --> 00:24:40.686
they repeated this in the newspapers, on TV, in the books

00:24:40.686 --> 00:24:43.851
Books that speak of democracy, I have... I don't know,

00:24:43.851 --> 00:24:48.468
specifically about democracy, the organization of democracy,

00:24:48.468 --> 00:24:54.441
400 or 500 books maybe. Well let's just say out of 400 books

00:24:54.441 --> 00:24:57.753
there were 10 that really speak of true democracy.,

00:24:57.753 --> 00:25:01.153
that speaks of a democracy that deserves this name, of democracy

00:25:01.153 --> 00:25:07.444
"demos kratos", "the power of the people". The other books speak of our actual regime,

00:25:07.444 --> 00:25:13.847
the one we should refuse to call "democracy". The regime in which we live

00:25:13.847 --> 00:25:17.080
carries a different name. It is called representive government;

00:25:17.080 --> 00:25:19.862
We should say the so-called representative government.

00:25:19.862 --> 00:25:23.180
But let's call it by its official name.

00:25:23.180 --> 00:25:29.660
Back in 1789, 1776, the USA, founders of our regime

00:25:29.660 --> 00:25:32.425
set up something totally different from what a democracy should be.

00:25:32.425 --> 00:25:34.309
They knew exactly what democracy was, but they didn't want it.

00:25:34.309 --> 00:25:38.158
They were prominent citizens. The 99% didn't make the French Revolution happen.

00:25:38.158 --> 00:25:41.525
When Sieyès writes: "What is the Third Estate ?"

00:25:41.525 --> 00:25:43.759
you know, the Third Estate, during the French Revolution

00:25:43.759 --> 00:25:49.658
You had the nobles, the clergymen, and the rest.

00:25:49.658 --> 00:25:53.942
The rest was the Third Estate. The Third order.

00:25:53.942 --> 00:25:57.708
You could call it nowadays the 99%.

00:25:57.708 --> 00:26:01.893
The problem is that Sieyès

00:26:01.893 --> 00:26:06.410
in 1789, a great thinker, bishop Sieyès, a great thinker of

00:26:06.410 --> 00:26:10.347
the French Revolution, when he wrote "What is the Third Estate ?",

00:26:10.347 --> 00:26:15.709
and when he thought of what should come as replacement of the Old Regime,

00:26:15.709 --> 00:26:24.661
Sieyès thought about the 1% of the Third Estate. He was thinking of the rich businessmen,

00:26:24.661 --> 00:26:28.594
the bankers of the Third Estate. They financed

00:26:28.594 --> 00:26:30.759
the wheat wars, the baking flours wars, that starved the people

00:26:30.759 --> 00:26:33.026
for over three years before the French Revolution.

00:26:33.026 --> 00:26:39.782
This pushed the people, the folk, to rise against their masters that they couldn't stand anymore

00:26:39.782 --> 00:26:42.662
to take their place afterwards. The people were manipulated.

00:26:42.662 --> 00:26:46.430
That's when Talleyrand, and I must watch my language,

00:26:46.430 --> 00:26:49.529
that scoundrel Talleyrand did what he did.

00:26:49.529 --> 00:26:51.847
I said I wouldn't leave my main thread, but I'll make this one exception.

00:26:51.847 --> 00:26:57.562
I strongly recommend that you

00:26:57.562 --> 00:27:03.755
discover the historian Henri Guillemin.

00:27:03.755 --> 00:27:07.597
Look on the internet for "Guillemin", or "Guillemin Napoléon"

00:27:07.597 --> 00:27:12.646
"Guillemin, the Commune". "Guillemin 1914 - 1918"

00:27:12.646 --> 00:27:16.995
You will find televised lectures/shows. The man is dead.

00:27:16.995 --> 00:27:19.714
But he left us fabulous treasures.

00:27:19.714 --> 00:27:23.151
The man is a diamond. I listened to two lectures on my way here.

00:27:23.151 --> 00:27:27.132
Two or three. They are half-hour conferences.

00:27:27.132 --> 00:27:30.529
He explains how representative governments were born.

00:27:30.529 --> 00:27:33.680
He explains the Third Republic (NT: 1870 - 1940 in France)

00:27:33.680 --> 00:27:37.301
The Republic of Businessmen. The Republic for kicks & laughs.

00:27:37.301 --> 00:27:41.631
The Republic of "honest men". That meant the wealthy.

00:27:41.631 --> 00:27:46.246
The Republic of the "moderate". The Republic of the "Center-Left".

00:27:46.246 --> 00:27:48.984
That just meant the bankers, the colonialist bankers

00:27:48.984 --> 00:27:53.279
who went to willingly pillage the countries of Africa.

00:27:53.279 --> 00:27:55.747
They called it "Center-Left" and called themselves "Democrats".

00:27:55.747 --> 00:27:59.653
They called themselves also "Progressive".

00:27:59.653 --> 00:28:02.370
All were businessmen and bankers. It had nothing to do with the people.

00:28:02.370 --> 00:28:04.806
Or at least the idea you could have of a people's party.

00:28:04.806 --> 00:28:12.099
So it's very important. I see many young people, who are 20 years old,

00:28:12.099 --> 00:28:18.301
20 years old or 30 it seems, not even. I woke up, I was 50 years old.

00:28:18.301 --> 00:28:24.074
I am so angry to not have begun earlier. You need time to discover all this.

00:28:24.074 --> 00:28:29.308
You need time. If you start when you're 20 years old, you are lucky.

00:28:29.308 --> 00:28:32.341
There are so many things to find out, it's true.

00:28:32.341 --> 00:28:37.774
You can only understand the current situation if you study it and you need to work on it a bit.

00:28:37.774 --> 00:28:40.641
But it's delicious! History feeds us with so much information.

00:28:40.641 --> 00:28:44.624
When you discover how Bonaparte, Napoleon,

00:28:44.624 --> 00:28:51.957
was pushed by the private bankers to take power in France,

00:28:51.957 --> 00:28:56.660
to assassinate the ideals of the Revolution, to create the so-called bank of "France"

00:28:56.660 --> 00:28:59.174
which isn't at all from France, but the bank of bankers

00:28:59.174 --> 00:29:04.391
that pushed Napoleon... It sheds some light on what is happening today.

00:29:04.391 --> 00:29:08.154
It helps you understand the current situation. It hasn't changed at all.

00:29:08.154 --> 00:29:14.008
But it is very important so that you are able to imagine a solution; to correctly understand

00:29:14.008 --> 00:29:16.322
the basic situation of the problem at hand. As long as we are being manipulated with words,

00:29:16.322 --> 00:29:21.911
and use words but give them their opposite meaning,

00:29:21.911 --> 00:29:29.327
you are lost. When you accept giving the words

00:29:29.327 --> 00:29:34.700
an opposite definition to what they are, you won't even be able to formulate the solution.

00:29:34.700 --> 00:29:37.768
We don't live in a democracy. We voluntarily live [in a lie].

00:29:37.768 --> 00:29:44.012
Sieyès knew fully well what he was writing when he made the representative government.

00:29:44.012 --> 00:29:48.410
That is: a regime where the people don't get to vote their own laws.

00:29:48.410 --> 00:29:52.878
The people are not autonomous. The people don't vote their own laws.

00:29:52.878 --> 00:29:57.776
The people are heteronomous. The people submit to laws written by others.

00:29:57.776 --> 00:30:02.944
At the bottom of page 11, I have written for you the quote of Sieyès

00:30:02.944 --> 00:30:10.865
that lets you understand what kind of regime we live in since day one.

00:30:10.865 --> 00:30:13.345
We never lived in a democracy that slowly sank and became different.

00:30:13.345 --> 00:30:17.911
From day one, we live in a regime that renounces democracy.

00:30:17.911 --> 00:30:21.844
It is very important that we know this

00:30:21.844 --> 00:30:25.794
so that afterwards, we can imagine alternatives. What bishop Sieyès said

00:30:25.794 --> 00:30:31.893
back in 1789 was: "The citizens who nominated for their

00:30:31.893 --> 00:30:35.632
own sake representatives" - so, they nominate themselves -

00:30:35.632 --> 00:30:40.037
"[the represented citizens] renounce and must renounce making the law themselves.

00:30:40.037 --> 00:30:44.547
They have no particular will to impose.

00:30:44.547 --> 00:30:48.198
If they dictated their will, France could not be that representative State.

00:30:48.198 --> 00:30:52.932
France would be a democratic State. The people, I repeat,"

00:30:52.932 --> 00:30:56.797
- says Sieyès - "in a country that isn't a democracy,

00:30:56.797 --> 00:31:01.949
and France can't be one, the people can talk,

00:31:01.949 --> 00:31:05.882
can act, only through their representatives."

00:31:06.851 --> 00:31:11.258
Democracy and the Random Draw / Common Lot

00:31:12.829 --> 00:31:17.397
If, when you discover this book

00:31:17.397 --> 00:31:20.247
that I strongly recommend,

00:31:20.247 --> 00:31:24.397
- and I've been talking about this book for over a year in conferences -

00:31:24.397 --> 00:31:29.481
this book has shaken me, transformed me. I beleive it will transform you.

00:31:29.481 --> 00:31:32.464
It is a very important book. This book that I will talk about

00:31:32.464 --> 00:31:35.380
doesn't have a very "sexy" title at all.

00:31:35.380 --> 00:31:39.413
If you see it in a library without having been told that it is great,

00:31:39.413 --> 00:31:41.328
you'll probably just miss it and think:

00:31:41.328 --> 00:31:47.631
"That one, maybe another day." The auther is Bernard Manin

00:31:47.631 --> 00:31:52.745
and the title is "Principles of representative government."

00:31:52.745 --> 00:31:55.946
It is an essential book. It is a book

00:31:55.946 --> 00:31:59.695
that talks about election and of random draw / common lot. It is a book that is surprised

00:31:59.695 --> 00:32:01.951
that the random draw completly dissapeared

00:32:01.951 --> 00:32:07.097
from the political scene. And with that tone, the book tries to

00:32:07.097 --> 00:32:14.196
make an honest inventory of the pros and cons of democracy,

00:32:14.196 --> 00:32:17.296
of the random draw and of the election. When did we start using the election process?

00:32:17.296 --> 00:32:20.236
How does it work? Has it given us satisfaction? Who talked about it

00:32:20.236 --> 00:32:23.446
and when did the transformation take place?

00:32:23.446 --> 00:32:26.564
And since we have never heard of the random draw,

00:32:26.564 --> 00:32:28.663
- well maybe you have heard of the random draw -

00:32:28.663 --> 00:32:31.109
but I, during my whole education, including law school,

00:32:31.109 --> 00:32:32.756
I never heard of the random draw / common lot.

00:32:32.756 --> 00:32:35.043
And when democracy was debated

00:32:35.043 --> 00:32:37.523
with the existence of the random draw, it was described as an odd ball

00:32:37.523 --> 00:32:40.372
and we passed quickly to another subject. I absolutely didn't see

00:32:40.372 --> 00:32:46.155
how central the random draw was to democracy. And we discover it with Bernard Manin

00:32:46.155 --> 00:32:50.905
in a very lively, tonic, and passionate litterary way.

00:32:50.905 --> 00:32:52.894
And there is a whole bibliography

00:32:52.894 --> 00:32:56.656
that will make you discover other books on democracy, the true democracy!

00:32:56.656 --> 00:33:00.089
The true one, the one the Athenians had. The one that could be ours

00:33:00.089 --> 00:33:04.291
if we wanted it! We need to want it for it to become true.

00:33:04.291 --> 00:33:10.290
I will talk more about it. But books like the one by M. H. Hansen,

00:33:10.290 --> 00:33:14.788
that describes Athens in detail, and who spent his life working

00:33:14.788 --> 00:33:17.428
on all we could know about Athens and all the documents

00:33:17.428 --> 00:33:19.896
from far or near on the topic... a great scholar

00:33:19.896 --> 00:33:24.227
who wrote many great books on athenian democracy.

00:33:24.227 --> 00:33:27.747
Concerning the period of Demosthenes, he compiled it all in one book.

00:33:27.747 --> 00:33:30.758
So it's a summary and it's captivating. It is about the life of Athenians

00:33:30.758 --> 00:33:34.905
who go to the Assembly in the morning... Well when they go to the Assembly that is.

00:33:34.905 --> 00:33:37.542
The Assembly is about 6000 people and 2000 present themselves for the random draw.

00:33:37.542 --> 00:33:43.535
And every day, people are randomly drawn.

00:33:45.320 --> 00:33:50.147
So I'll explain this in very few words,

00:33:50.147 --> 00:33:52.694
and I will let you argue as to why this could be wrong. I know many possible objections.

00:33:52.694 --> 00:33:55.360
I am getting used to them now,

00:33:55.360 --> 00:33:57.560
but I hope you will find objections that I haven't seen yet.

00:33:57.560 --> 00:34:01.330
I actually appreciate that ... I am looking for it. I am not trying to be right.

00:34:01.330 --> 00:34:06.176
I am trying to imagine a robust system that could work

00:34:06.176 --> 00:34:09.944
and that wouldn't be a utopia. And if you show me that I am wrong,

00:34:09.944 --> 00:34:12.949
I will adapt, I will change, I will work on it or on something else.

00:34:12.949 --> 00:34:15.324
For now, I am under the impression that I have a hold on something strong.

00:34:15.324 --> 00:34:17.962
And I want to see it under fire from your objections.

00:34:17.962 --> 00:34:22.631
The Athenians

00:34:24.462 --> 00:34:29.134
So Athenians, 2500 years ago, had

00:34:29.134 --> 00:34:33.992
a small city-state of 60,000 citizens, give or take,

00:34:33.992 --> 00:34:40.031
depending on the period, depending on the plagues and so on. It lasted 200 years.

00:34:40.031 --> 00:34:45.182
The Athenians, after 800 years of tyranny and when a reform came along

00:34:45.182 --> 00:34:52.487
by one of the prominent citizens - someone of the high society, Solon -

00:34:52.487 --> 00:34:56.705
- who started to reform Athens and started to change

00:34:56.705 --> 00:35:03.621
the mechanisms of power to protect the social body and core from abuse of power -

00:35:03.621 --> 00:35:08.054
the Athenians started to put in place a regime under which

00:35:08.054 --> 00:35:13.921
they wrote by themselves the laws and also voted their own laws...

00:35:13.921 --> 00:35:18.971
the laws that they obeyed. They would gather

00:35:18.971 --> 00:35:22.071
in an assembly, a great assembly, 6000 seats,

00:35:22.071 --> 00:35:26.659
and whoever was willing could come. And same as nowadays,

00:35:26.659 --> 00:35:29.321
many did not come. And it wasn't always the same who showed up.

00:35:29.321 --> 00:35:32.502
You had a daily agenda that was published on the Agora,

00:35:32.502 --> 00:35:37.467
and you came to the Assembly if the subjects of the day were of interest to you.

00:35:37.467 --> 00:35:40.984
And I'll diffuse the first objection that generally pops up

00:35:40.984 --> 00:35:45.949
and that is that the Athenians, the people of Athens, so the citizens

00:35:45.949 --> 00:35:51.267
or at least those who were the citizens of Athens weren't all the Athenians in Athens.

00:35:51.267 --> 00:35:53.423
You had half of humanity that was set aside:

00:35:53.423 --> 00:35:58.900
women back then had no political right. And you also had slaves,

00:35:58.900 --> 00:36:01.235
and slaves had no political rights either.

00:36:01.235 --> 00:36:03.951
Foreigners also had no political rights either.

00:36:03.951 --> 00:36:07.144
Of course, children and animals had no rights either.

00:36:07.144 --> 00:36:08.561
What I am getting at is that there are common points

00:36:08.561 --> 00:36:11.244
that you still find today: children, animals, the insane people...

00:36:11.244 --> 00:36:15.762
or even us, living human beings who have no political rights.

00:36:15.762 --> 00:36:18.347
So what I want to say to diffuse that objection

00:36:18.347 --> 00:36:21.944
so that it doesn't bother you the whole while because I know

00:36:21.944 --> 00:36:26.310
some of you know this and it stops us from moving forward.

00:36:26.310 --> 00:36:29.944
I know fully well that they were slave traders and they were male chauvinists,

00:36:29.944 --> 00:36:32.328
but I am not interested in that. Personnally, I am neither

00:36:32.328 --> 00:36:35.293
a slave trader nor a male chauvinist. What I want to say

00:36:35.293 --> 00:36:41.961
is that you shouldn't transpose that system as if it were a model to our present day.

00:36:41.961 --> 00:36:44.777
The Athenian regime is of course not what I am pointing out here.

00:36:44.777 --> 00:36:50.228
What I am pointing at here is that all the civilizations at the time

00:36:50.228 --> 00:36:52.361
- remember 2500 years ago isn't the same as today -

00:36:52.361 --> 00:36:55.478
all the civilizations at the time ill treated their women

00:36:55.478 --> 00:37:02.478
and had slaves. It was not specific to democracy.

00:37:02.478 --> 00:37:05.577
And emocracy can fully well work without those elements.

00:37:05.577 --> 00:37:08.278
Or at least, today it could. Maybe back then, it couldn't have worked without it,

00:37:08.278 --> 00:37:11.060
because women worked so much that the men could

00:37:11.060 --> 00:37:14.311
free their time and take time

00:37:14.311 --> 00:37:16.400
for politics. Slaves too freed up time

00:37:16.400 --> 00:37:19.333
for men. But today, we would have with the help of oil and machines,

00:37:19.333 --> 00:37:22.301
we would have more than enough to free some time in our schedules

00:37:22.301 --> 00:37:24.667
to make room for politics, all of us, without the need for slaves.

00:37:24.667 --> 00:37:28.135
And we would have women along side us in the assembly.

00:37:28.135 --> 00:37:31.301
So as you can see, that objection is not worth the trouble.

00:37:31.301 --> 00:37:35.117
Objectively, that objection is worth nil.

00:37:35.117 --> 00:37:40.333
I understant that an elected representative, who wants us to stop talking about the random draw

00:37:40.333 --> 00:37:42.533
that is going to put him out of a job, is going to tell me:

00:37:42.533 --> 00:37:45.684
"But Mr. Chouard, you are defending

00:37:45.684 --> 00:37:47.418
a slave trading regime ?
- Yes, yes, I know.

00:37:47.418 --> 00:37:51.083
- And you wouldn't happen to be a slave driver, by any chance?
- No, no, I am no slave trader or driver."

00:37:51.083 --> 00:37:55.616
What I observe in Athens, in the small community of Athens,

00:37:55.616 --> 00:37:58.767
and of course I am only talking about athenian citizens,

00:37:58.767 --> 00:38:03.201
therefore excluding women, [slaves & foreigners], OK

00:38:03.201 --> 00:38:08.766
So in that community, you had many poor citizens.

00:38:08.766 --> 00:38:13.266
Almost all of them were poor and you had very few rich,

00:38:13.266 --> 00:38:19.583
very rich. And this looks oddly like today.

00:38:19.583 --> 00:38:26.601
And listen closely: for 200 years, 200 years of randomly drawing people,

00:38:26.601 --> 00:38:29.049
- and you will see how random draw garanties this -

00:38:29.049 --> 00:38:35.616
for 200 years of randomly drawing people every day, the rich never governed.

00:38:35.616 --> 00:38:41.015
Not one day. And the philosophers, Plato, Aristotle,

00:38:41.015 --> 00:38:44.850
spent their lives spitting on democracy. To say how wrong democracy was.

00:38:44.850 --> 00:38:45.987
Because how dare you imagine a regime

00:38:45.987 --> 00:38:48.950
where the poor, the rabble, the poor lead and govern. They govern poorly.

00:38:48.950 --> 00:38:54.396
They lie, they learn how to lie. So Plato slandered,

00:38:54.396 --> 00:39:00.144
and the word isn't strong enough, Plato invented wrongs

00:39:00.144 --> 00:39:05.895
that someone who then studies democracy can easily break.

00:39:05.895 --> 00:39:09.279
He can easily undo the lies. Plato should have been

00:39:09.279 --> 00:39:12.900
- and he was a noble - should have been a company boss.

00:39:12.900 --> 00:39:17.333
One of the city bosses, and bad luck for him, he lived at the time

00:39:17.333 --> 00:39:19.886
when democracy was around. So he missed his political career altogether,

00:39:19.886 --> 00:39:22.834
because of demcoracy. So he spent his whole life writing how bad

00:39:22.834 --> 00:39:26.100
democracy was. You need to know this. Mind you, he said some very interesting things,

00:39:26.100 --> 00:39:32.817
about us, our condition. You won't hear me reject entirely the works of Plato.

00:39:32.817 --> 00:39:39.701
I invite you just to be aware of Plato's situation when Plato speaks about democracy.

00:39:39.701 --> 00:39:42.500
He had a score to settle, a personal score,

00:39:42.500 --> 00:39:44.807
and in my eyes it didn't correspond at all with the greater good.

00:39:44.807 --> 00:39:47.233
Plato actually respects quite poorly the greater good when he talks about democracy.

00:39:47.233 --> 00:39:50.134
So you need to keep it in mind when you read Plato. Aristotle is in the same situation too.

00:39:50.134 --> 00:39:56.320
Most philosophers despised democracy.

00:39:56.320 --> 00:40:04.201
So Athenians protected themselves from abuse of power.

00:40:04.201 --> 00:40:06.983
And this happened after having seen over 800 years that power changed people,

00:40:06.983 --> 00:40:10.297
transformed them. People who were good at the start

00:40:10.297 --> 00:40:12.564
ended up becoming madly insane and started to serve

00:40:12.564 --> 00:40:14.914
personal interests rather than the greater good.

00:40:14.914 --> 00:40:20.130
So noticing that it was the case and quite pragmatically - not at all idealisticly -

00:40:20.130 --> 00:40:24.832
with their priorities set right, they made something very robust

00:40:24.832 --> 00:40:28.247
that could still work very well today. The Athenians put in place

00:40:28.247 --> 00:40:34.082
a system of rotating responsibilities. You can actually still find it in our conversations.

00:40:34.082 --> 00:40:39.680
I am sure that when you are having a conversation, often you say:

00:40:39.680 --> 00:40:42.247
"The problem is that politics is now a question of professionals.

00:40:42.247 --> 00:40:46.133
It is always the same people who end up leading us, and there is just not enough renewal in politics."

00:40:46.133 --> 00:40:49.216
Often, we say that or hear it, nowadays. Well the Athenians

00:40:49.216 --> 00:40:53.066
solved the problem by making an institution where the responsibilities rotate.

00:40:53.066 --> 00:40:56.266
You have short mandates, one year maximum,

00:40:56.266 --> 00:41:00.754
often six months, even shorter. Even the boss of Athens

00:41:00.754 --> 00:41:06.169
was randomly chosen every day. Every single day, the chief of Athens was randomly drawn.

00:41:06.169 --> 00:41:09.138
So you had short mandates, non-renewable,

00:41:09.138 --> 00:41:14.031
which garanteed to Athenians and others

00:41:14.031 --> 00:41:17.232
that you had political amateurism.

00:41:17.232 --> 00:41:20.732
The Athenians did not want professionals politicias to run the show.

00:41:20.732 --> 00:41:24.150
They did not want it. They absolutely did not want it

00:41:24.150 --> 00:41:27.998
to protect themselves against abuse of power.

00:41:27.998 --> 00:41:32.248
They said, and they knew, then... or they had as first hypothesis

00:41:32.248 --> 00:41:37.977
that at the beginning, you have real political equality.

00:41:37.977 --> 00:41:41.242
That is why it is at the center of your schematic. A real political equality.

00:41:41.242 --> 00:41:43.341
Athenians knew very well that they weren't equal.

00:41:43.341 --> 00:41:45.224
They knew fully well that you had intelligent people

00:41:45.224 --> 00:41:47.562
and idiots. They knew you had people with virtue

00:41:47.562 --> 00:41:51.125
and dishonest people. They knew you had strong people and weak ones.

00:41:51.787 --> 00:41:54.906
They knew that. They knew that there were people capable

00:41:54.906 --> 00:41:57.721
of governing a ship and others who weren't capable of it.

00:41:57.721 --> 00:41:59.938
That wasn't the question at all. Here, the question is politics.

00:41:59.938 --> 00:42:04.405
"Concerning politics," said the Athenians, "there is no necessary skill.

00:42:04.405 --> 00:42:10.488
We are all competent." To give strength

00:42:10.488 --> 00:42:16.805
to this central principle, of true political equality,

00:42:16.805 --> 00:42:22.289
you had to put political amateurism in place. And we are all,

00:42:22.289 --> 00:42:26.956
as said Aristotle, in a democracy where the citizens are alternatively

00:42:26.956 --> 00:42:30.021
governing and governed. Governing and governed,

00:42:30.021 --> 00:42:38.438
at random. The central procedure that made Athens possible

00:42:38.438 --> 00:42:43.138
was the rotating responsibilities and so political amateurism

00:42:43.138 --> 00:42:45.622
and political equality all held together!

00:42:45.622 --> 00:42:47.821
If you take random draw away, it all falls apart.

00:42:47.821 --> 00:42:51.622
You loose democracy. The procedure that makes it possible

00:42:51.622 --> 00:42:56.055
is the fast rotating responsibilities and political amateurism.

00:42:56.055 --> 00:43:03.624
It is the random draw. On the contrary, the election is by definition

00:43:03.624 --> 00:43:06.572
- and it isn't even subject to a debate -

00:43:06.572 --> 00:43:12.055
the selection of the best one out of us. An election isn't choosing

00:43:12.055 --> 00:43:14.538
the worst, this we agree on, and I am not exagerating.

00:43:14.538 --> 00:43:18.473
The goal of the election is to choose the best. Whether you achieve this or not,

00:43:18.473 --> 00:43:24.539
you are looking for the best one. The best one, "aristos" in Greek.

00:43:24.539 --> 00:43:29.783
Aristocracy is the regime of a government led by the best.

00:43:29.783 --> 00:43:33.348
So what Aristotle observed 2500 years ago,

00:43:33.348 --> 00:43:38.948
was that aristocracies degenerate, degrade over time, always. That was what Aristotle said.

00:43:38.948 --> 00:43:42.031
So already 2500 years ago, we saw that an aristocracy never stays for long.

00:43:42.031 --> 00:43:47.881
An aristocracy becomes an oligarchy, said Aristotle.

00:43:47.881 --> 00:43:52.709
So this is nothing new. So if you will, up to 200 years ago,

00:43:52.709 --> 00:43:59.877
until Rousseau, Montesquieu, every one knew,

00:43:59.877 --> 00:44:03.191
and this was general knowledge, everyone knew

00:44:03.191 --> 00:44:10.675
that the election was aristocratic by nature. And that the procedure of democracy

00:44:10.675 --> 00:44:14.509
was the random draw. Everyone knew this.

00:44:14.509 --> 00:44:16.608
What I like about democracy is that it is not about finding something

00:44:16.608 --> 00:44:19.559
that is perfect. I know fully well that it isn't perfect.

00:44:19.559 --> 00:44:23.458
That's not the topic here. I am not looking for a utopia... Something that is perfect.

00:44:23.458 --> 00:44:26.842
I am looking for a way out of an awful situation in which people are [trapped].

00:44:26.842 --> 00:44:29.978
We are going back to war here. You find the same signs

00:44:29.978 --> 00:44:33.090
that were present just before the previous World Wars.

00:44:33.090 --> 00:44:36.536
But for the same reasons, with the exact same political impotency of the greater mass of people

00:44:36.536 --> 00:44:39.348
who don't want to go to war, and the same political power

00:44:39.348 --> 00:44:43.197
of those who have money and who want war.

00:44:43.197 --> 00:44:46.446
Listen to Guillemin, you will see the geneses of the wars:

00:44:46.446 --> 00:44:49.248
the genesis of the Napoleonic Wars, the genesis of the Commune (NT: period 1871 in France)

00:44:49.248 --> 00:44:54.697
and that of the war in 1870, the genesis of the 1914-1918 war,

00:44:54.697 --> 00:44:59.449
and the genisis of the Second World War. And every time, those were unecessary wars,

00:44:59.449 --> 00:45:02.868
manipulated wars, wars that were only wished by the 1%.

00:45:02.868 --> 00:45:07.950
It is very important that you listen to Guillemin.

00:45:07.950 --> 00:45:10.983
You will see clearly what is happening to us today.

00:45:10.983 --> 00:45:13.333
And you already know it, or at least you already partially know it,

00:45:13.333 --> 00:45:17.000
but you will see how strong it is and how strong it can become.

00:45:17.000 --> 00:45:20.202
I mean by that that it doesn't only seem clear to you but it becomes powerful.

00:45:20.202 --> 00:45:24.400
You tell yourself: "Hang on, we've got to do something about it!"

00:45:24.400 --> 00:45:29.283
I won't go further into details... I don't have much time.

00:45:29.283 --> 00:45:32.018
But what I still need to explain

00:45:32.018 --> 00:45:34.717
is that the random draw scares. It scares us today.

00:45:34.717 --> 00:45:36.850
When I talk to you about randomly drawing people, the first reactions are:

00:45:36.850 --> 00:45:40.418
"But what on earth is that thing ?! The random draw,

00:45:40.418 --> 00:45:43.114
yeah right! You want to put power in the hands of randomly chosen people ?"

00:45:43.114 --> 00:45:48.913
No! That's just it. Random draw isn't used for giving power;

00:45:48.913 --> 00:45:53.531
it is used to keep power for us, us all, the 99%.

00:45:53.531 --> 00:45:58.013
Up to now...and last year still, I was saying "the rich & the poor"

00:45:58.013 --> 00:46:00.446
and that was a problem. But it is in effect very simple,

00:46:00.446 --> 00:46:03.046
I was thinking about the ultra-rich, and the poor were everyone else.

00:46:03.046 --> 00:46:05.864
So they are not really poor, but they are us. And we are having a hard time

00:46:05.864 --> 00:46:08.897
imagining that we are the poor ones. We can't identify with that term.

00:46:08.897 --> 00:46:11.580
So it wasn't the correct image. And then the rich,

00:46:11.580 --> 00:46:13.364
we are all rich compared to someone else.

00:46:13.364 --> 00:46:15.029
So that wasn't right. But when I say:

00:46:15.029 --> 00:46:18.994
1% the rich, 99% the others, everyone gets it.

00:46:18.994 --> 00:46:20.565
And the Protestors / Occupy movement gave us those words,

00:46:20.565 --> 00:46:25.711
it is useful, it describes better the fact that it has always been the same problem.

00:46:25.711 --> 00:46:29.194
And so, in a democracy, or a democracy that is worthy of the name,

00:46:29.194 --> 00:46:31.244
What the Occupy movement / Protestors are looking for today is:

00:46:31.244 --> 00:46:33.692
"We want a real democracy". Well, Athenians

00:46:33.692 --> 00:46:35.877
had already found exactly what they needed,

00:46:35.877 --> 00:46:38.792
what they were looking for. But sadly, you don't find the random draw

00:46:38.792 --> 00:46:41.226
present in the Occupy Movement. It is still missing.

00:46:41.226 --> 00:46:43.479
They haven't discovered it yet. But listen to

00:46:43.479 --> 00:46:49.142
how it was back then, in Athens, for the 99%,

00:46:49.142 --> 00:46:51.929
that is all those who want to write the laws.

00:46:51.929 --> 00:46:54.877
Well no, not write the laws because we are not all capable of writing them.

00:46:54.877 --> 00:46:57.393
Here, in this room, we would already be too many to write laws.

00:46:57.393 --> 00:47:00.043
To write a law, you need to build a small group.

00:47:00.043 --> 00:47:02.859
But we want to vote for the laws. That is we want to say,

00:47:02.859 --> 00:47:07.530
for every single law, not bit by bit, but law by law,

00:47:07.530 --> 00:47:10.844
we want to say, if we are autonomous, if we are citizens,

00:47:10.844 --> 00:47:14.896
and not simple voters but autonomous citizens,

00:47:14.896 --> 00:47:20.375
we want, we the Athenians, we want to vote ourselves our own laws.

00:47:20.375 --> 00:47:25.116
So how did it work ? Well we would get toghether in a great assembly

00:47:25.116 --> 00:47:29.016
where people would come up. So you had speakers

00:47:29.016 --> 00:47:30.599
who would come to the floor of the assembly and say:

00:47:30.599 --> 00:47:34.131
"We need this law because of this reason". Then another speaker comes.

00:47:34.131 --> 00:47:36.368
When you are 6,000, you don't all talk. The people in the assembly

00:47:36.368 --> 00:47:38.850
can ask for permission to speak and go down to the floor and talk.

00:47:38.850 --> 00:47:42.284
But there is no debate or discussion. Everyone is silent during the assembly.

00:47:42.284 --> 00:47:45.298
You vote. It is outside of the assembly that you will do the talking,

00:47:45.298 --> 00:47:47.299
to prepare. But once you are in the assembly,

00:47:47.299 --> 00:47:52.251
you vote. You listen to the speakers. You listen to the successive debates.

00:47:57.313 --> 00:48:02.507
And so that the system can work, the assembly can't do everything.

00:48:02.507 --> 00:48:05.689
The assembly can't prepare a law. The assembly won't prepare them.

00:48:05.689 --> 00:48:10.018
The assembly can't carry out the laws either. The assembly is not going to be the police,

00:48:10.018 --> 00:48:14.870
or the judges. So the Athenian assembly, the democratic assembly,

00:48:14.870 --> 00:48:19.068
it would be neighbourhood assemblies. Here, we're in Montpellier.

00:48:19.068 --> 00:48:21.217
You would have multiple neighbourhoods, and in each,

00:48:21.217 --> 00:48:25.600
you would have assemblies. But for each assembly, we need representatives.

00:48:25.600 --> 00:48:32.333
Our own assembly needs representatives.

00:48:32.333 --> 00:48:34.850
And a democracy worthy of the name has representatives,

00:48:34.850 --> 00:48:39.395
but they are not masters. They are the servants

00:48:39.395 --> 00:48:41.578
that we must constrain so that they remain servants,

00:48:41.578 --> 00:48:45.736
So that they never become our masters. And the random draw was there for that.

00:48:45.751 --> 00:48:52.421
The random draw is there to give a very small bit of pwoer, and never twice in a row,

00:48:52.421 --> 00:48:57.747
and never for long. So the randomly drawn in Athens were,

00:48:57.747 --> 00:49:00.530
for example, the Counsel of the 500 that were randomly drawn.

00:49:00.530 --> 00:49:06.160
The Counsel of the 500 prepared the laws. They made parlementarian study groups and think tanks.

00:49:06.160 --> 00:49:08.595
They didn't vote the laws. The representatives never voted the laws.

00:49:08.595 --> 00:49:11.642
So for the random draw, you are afraid of it when, at first,

00:49:11.642 --> 00:49:13.709
you think: "We are going to randomly draw people who are going to vote instead of me."

00:49:13.709 --> 00:49:17.593
Not at all. A democracy doesn't work that way.

00:49:17.593 --> 00:49:20.177
Representatives aren't the ones who are going to vote for the laws.

00:49:20.177 --> 00:49:22.660
Do you see what I am getting at ? We will always vote for the laws.

00:49:22.660 --> 00:49:27.879
The 99% who want to build a real democracy,

00:49:27.879 --> 00:49:30.492
a democracy woth of its name, they will put in place

00:49:30.492 --> 00:49:32.844
the random draw because they know they need representatives

00:49:32.844 --> 00:49:36.307
to write the laws, or to carry them out, or to be the police.

00:49:36.307 --> 00:49:40.174
Policemen were randomly drawn. Judges were randomly drawn.

00:49:40.174 --> 00:49:44.868
Short mandates, non-renewable, and at the end, you were accountable for your actions.

00:49:44.868 --> 00:49:49.524
There were a serie of control mechanisms added to the random draw, and they were fabulous!

00:49:49.524 --> 00:49:56.993
To be randomly drawn didn't mean that you did nothing. You had a collection of responsibilities

00:49:56.993 --> 00:50:00.325
and you were in danger. People could loose their life at the end of their mandate, since they were accountable.

00:50:00.325 --> 00:50:03.209
I'll grant you that it's a bit brutal, but life was more brutal at the time.

00:50:03.209 --> 00:50:05.309
We wouldn't have to be so brutal today, of course.

00:50:05.309 --> 00:50:07.774
We could simply punish, without sentencing someone to death.

00:50:07.774 --> 00:50:10.860
We could punish instead. But what I want to say is that since you were held accountable,

00:50:10.860 --> 00:50:13.608
it was quite strict! What did he do during his mandate? Why did he do it?

00:50:13.608 --> 00:50:16.043
And you kept asking questions until you were sure that he had correctly served the greater good.

00:50:16.043 --> 00:50:20.126
And if he had correctly served the greater good,

00:50:20.126 --> 00:50:24.208
you built an arc of triumph for him. You treated him with the highest honors,

00:50:24.208 --> 00:50:30.892
you looked at him with gratitude, and he would make a reputation for himself.

00:50:30.892 --> 00:50:34.306
And with the eyes of society on you, and its appreciation,

00:50:34.306 --> 00:50:38.039
you didn't need a money reward. Only insane people try their very best for society

00:50:38.039 --> 00:50:40.956
only if you reward them with money. Most of us

00:50:40.956 --> 00:50:45.481
we work really hard for the greater good, without the need of money rewards.

00:50:45.481 --> 00:50:47.699
We need money to live, and that's it. Afterwards,

00:50:47.699 --> 00:50:50.265
the simple fact that people are grateful and are happy

00:50:50.265 --> 00:50:52.115
with what you have done keeps us going and makes us happy.

00:50:52.115 --> 00:50:54.598
For most normal people, that's enough. Of course, you have crazies

00:50:54.598 --> 00:50:56.836
who need a million euros a year to actually bother working hard,

00:50:56.836 --> 00:51:02.365
but you should throw those in jail. That's absolutely not the general case.

00:51:02.365 --> 00:51:07.332
That was just a joke. So the randomly drawn were filtered.

00:51:07.332 --> 00:51:13.016
Well, not filtered, they were slightly selected.

00:51:13.016 --> 00:51:15.451
In your schematic, what I am going to tell you

00:51:15.451 --> 00:51:18.032
is on the left part... the vertical line there...

00:51:18.032 --> 00:51:20.866
that was the checks done on randomly drawn people,

00:51:20.866 --> 00:51:24.899
because Athenians were afraid, as you are, to randomly draw idiots

00:51:24.899 --> 00:51:28.646
or dishonest people. Of course they were afraid! But they put in place a large set of control mechanisms

00:51:28.646 --> 00:51:32.824
that made sure they had nothing to be afraid of from those randomly drawn.

00:51:32.824 --> 00:51:34.824
So at the start, it is on a voluntary basis.

00:51:34.824 --> 00:51:37.096
That was the first filter. So already, those who thought themselves

00:51:37.096 --> 00:51:40.377
to be incapable of taking up the responsibilities didn't come forward

00:51:40.377 --> 00:51:43.227
to be randomly drawn. So that was your first filter.

00:51:43.227 --> 00:51:48.498
Then, you had ostracism that pushed out those

00:51:48.498 --> 00:51:51.464
you didn't trust. And Athenians didn't trust most of

00:51:51.464 --> 00:51:56.499
those who could speak well. Athenians, who had strong political experience,

00:51:56.499 --> 00:51:59.113
and it is very interesting to discover it - you learn so much from it -

00:51:59.113 --> 00:52:06.246
yhey built up a political system to protect themselves from the abuse of power.

00:52:06.246 --> 00:52:09.797
From demagogues, from corruption. They put in place

00:52:09.797 --> 00:52:12.630
many institutions that are absolutly incredible.

00:52:12.630 --> 00:52:17.747
So ostracism today has a very negative meaning. But ostracism,

00:52:17.747 --> 00:52:20.465
back then, not only was it not negative,

00:52:20.465 --> 00:52:22.622
but it was a very important word for Athenian democracy.

00:52:22.622 --> 00:52:26.437
It let you put someone aside that you were afraid of.

00:52:26.437 --> 00:52:30.213
So since they were looking for agreement, in order to pacify society,

00:52:30.213 --> 00:52:34.525
you absolutely had to push aside individuals that could cause hate

00:52:34.525 --> 00:52:40.441
or fear, or panic. So for individuals who worried them, Athenians

00:52:40.441 --> 00:52:42.974
could, with the help of a procedure call "ostracism"

00:52:42.974 --> 00:52:44.758
put those individuals aside. I'll talk about it later

00:52:44.758 --> 00:52:49.229
if you are interested, you'll just have to ask. So you had a method to put aside

00:52:49.229 --> 00:52:51.760
people that you feared. You also had "docimasy" [Greek].

00:52:51.760 --> 00:52:55.027
I keep the word because I like it a lot. There is a certain form of poetry in some greek words,

00:52:55.027 --> 00:52:57.110
like "isegoria", the right to speak for all at every moment,

00:52:57.110 --> 00:53:01.528
or like docimasy, that sort of test, not of skills,

00:53:01.528 --> 00:53:06.161
since I told you earlier that all Athenians believed they were equally skilled in politics.

00:53:06.161 --> 00:53:09.078
That was their hypothesis. They knew there weren't equal [in skills]

00:53:09.078 --> 00:53:11.412
But the hypothesis was equality in politics, however,

00:53:11.412 --> 00:53:16.544
they could understand that there was the issue of aptitude.

00:53:16.544 --> 00:53:19.728
For example, an insanely disturbed person, a mad man, you had to have a

00:53:19.728 --> 00:53:22.462
mechanism to put him aside. So docimasy served to put mad men aside.

00:53:22.462 --> 00:53:25.111
They also had criterias - and we could think of what criterias

00:53:25.111 --> 00:53:27.634
we could choose as ours, modern criterias - but they had their criterias

00:53:27.634 --> 00:53:32.730
that I find fun. You couldn't be randomly drawn

00:53:32.730 --> 00:53:35.295
and pass the docimasy

00:53:35.295 --> 00:53:39.112
if you weren't someone who took good care of your parents.

00:53:39.112 --> 00:53:43.611
It is curious to see that. You couldn't take care of the greater good

00:53:43.611 --> 00:53:47.612
if you weren't even capable of taking care of your own parents.

00:53:47.612 --> 00:53:57.795
So this simple assessment should lead us to study the athenian system.

00:53:57.795 --> 00:54:01.627
They practiced it for over 200 years.

00:54:01.627 --> 00:54:05.546
If it were so bad, if there were so many faults, if there were so many problems,

00:54:05.546 --> 00:54:11.128
if it were even suspicious, they would never have lasted 200 years.

00:54:11.128 --> 00:54:14.227
200 years, that's a very long time. It's the same length of time as us trying out the election system.

00:54:14.227 --> 00:54:21.178
Since 1789 (French Revolution), you have approximately 200 years. A 200-year long trial of elections.

00:54:21.178 --> 00:54:24.928
And in Athens, you had a 200-year long trial of random draw.

00:54:24.928 --> 00:54:30.294
If it were so wrong, if it had so many objections, without any answers to them,

00:54:30.294 --> 00:54:33.244
it would never have lasted 200 years. So have a look, you will see.

00:54:33.244 --> 00:54:35.845
If you feel you have an objection, when you dig slightly deeper...

00:54:35.845 --> 00:54:38.276
you need to work on it a bit... if you just work a bit on the subject, you'll find out

00:54:38.276 --> 00:54:41.547
how passionate it is. If you work, you'll see that the objections

00:54:41.547 --> 00:54:49.312
all find a solution. When I weigh the pros & cons,

00:54:49.312 --> 00:54:51.639
and this is not an opinion, but facts,

00:54:51.639 --> 00:54:55.100
when I look at 200 years of random draw,

00:54:55.100 --> 00:54:58.082
and when I see that during 200 years of random draw

00:54:58.082 --> 00:55:02.233
it is the citizens in their vast majority, almost exclusively

00:55:02.233 --> 00:55:05.867
the 99% that voted their laws and who for over

00:55:05.867 --> 00:55:10.684
200 years voted their laws that put forth a society

00:55:10.684 --> 00:55:16.883
that knew prosperity, was rich, politically stable. They weren't miserable.

00:55:16.883 --> 00:55:19.082
They weren't more miserable then their neighbouring societies.

00:55:19.082 --> 00:55:21.998
It wasn't chaos at all. They had their problems, for sure.

00:55:21.998 --> 00:55:24.617
Democracy had problems that would be interesting

00:55:24.617 --> 00:55:28.628
for us to study to try and avoid them and make the system better.

00:55:28.628 --> 00:55:33.960
But over 200 years of practice, the 99%, the poor were in power.

00:55:33.960 --> 00:55:35.677
And they didn't squash the rich either. They didn't kill them.

00:55:35.677 --> 00:55:39.702
They didn't steal from them. The rich lived a very good life back in the time of Athens!

00:55:39.702 --> 00:55:42.384
They lived much more comfortably than the poor.

00:55:42.384 --> 00:55:44.751
They had great villas, many slaves,

00:55:44.751 --> 00:55:48.501
and lived wealthy lives but they didn't have political power.

00:55:48.501 --> 00:55:52.118
We have a hard time imagining it.

00:55:52.118 --> 00:55:55.217
We grew up in a regime, since we were children,

00:55:55.217 --> 00:56:01.633
where all the societies in the world

00:56:01.633 --> 00:56:04.983
have rich people in power and they have everything. And if we are poor,

00:56:04.983 --> 00:56:08.418
we don't have power. We have nothing. And there is a synchronisation

00:56:08.418 --> 00:56:10.517
to which we have becomed used to.

00:56:10.517 --> 00:56:14.593
I want you to become aware that in Athens, for 200 years,

00:56:14.593 --> 00:56:21.821
because of random draw, the political power and the economical power

00:56:21.821 --> 00:56:25.739
were desynchronised. You did not have the same people who were politically rich

00:56:25.739 --> 00:56:32.006
and economically rich. And today, it is the opposite, for 200 years,

00:56:32.006 --> 00:56:35.406
the false universal suffrage, in our false democracy,

00:56:35.406 --> 00:56:41.073
with false citizens, these elections with their false choices,

00:56:41.073 --> 00:56:43.038
for over 200 years [have left us powerless]. Listen to Guillemin, you will

00:56:43.038 --> 00:56:45.489
find the details of what I am telling you. For 200 years,

00:56:45.489 --> 00:56:50.259
it is always the 1% who have been in power,

00:56:50.259 --> 00:56:55.023
voted laws of ultra-rich people for the ultra-rich. It is without a single exception.

00:56:55.023 --> 00:57:02.657
And the 99% have never been in power, not even during the Popular Front [1936-1938], not even in 1981 [Women's emancipation].

00:57:02.657 --> 00:57:09.655
So the simple assessment that the random draw gives power to the poor,

00:57:09.655 --> 00:57:11.839
that democracy, the true democracy, gives power to the 99%

00:57:11.839 --> 00:57:16.907
and that representative government gives power to the 1%, the rich

00:57:16.907 --> 00:57:22.785
that should normaly stir you. I am not saying adopt it right away.

00:57:22.785 --> 00:57:25.551
I know fully well that you will need time to get used to the idea

00:57:25.551 --> 00:57:28.135
because it is so shaking, upsetting. You'll need time to shake off the habits.

00:57:28.135 --> 00:57:30.751
It's been 50 years that I have been taught "Election equals Democracy",

00:57:30.751 --> 00:57:35.152
"Democracy equals Election". That's not true!

00:57:35.152 --> 00:57:39.045
The solutions.

00:57:43.124 --> 00:57:47.924
So I'll stop talking about athenian democracy until further questions.

00:57:47.924 --> 00:57:53.309
So I would like to talk about our concerns,

00:57:53.309 --> 00:57:56.492
the problems we face today, and the solutions

00:57:56.492 --> 00:57:59.974
that I have come up with because I am interested in your opinion.

00:57:59.974 --> 00:58:02.891
Do you think that it could be possible, doable ?

00:58:02.891 --> 00:58:05.925
What wouldn't work ? What are your objections?

00:58:05.925 --> 00:58:10.584
I am in need of your objections.

00:58:14.015 --> 00:58:16.479
Over the past 6 years, I have been living with controversy.

00:58:16.479 --> 00:58:18.628
Endlessly, I rub against opposition. Almost every day,

00:58:18.628 --> 00:58:21.145
I am in a controversy, people contradict my point

00:58:21.145 --> 00:58:26.194
and you move so much faster when people contradict you, oppose you.

00:58:26.194 --> 00:58:30.495
We need that. Today, there is a good chance that most of you

00:58:30.495 --> 00:58:36.713
won't completly agree, but most often, in an assembly,

00:58:36.713 --> 00:58:39.661
we come together because we share more or less the same point of view.

00:58:39.661 --> 00:58:42.077
The progress made in such an environment isn't as good.

00:58:42.077 --> 00:58:44.827
What is better for moving forward is when we [disagree]

00:58:44.827 --> 00:58:50.411
That's the gamble of democracy. In Athens, the general idea of democracy

00:58:50.411 --> 00:58:55.111
was to get people together, and most importantly people

00:58:55.111 --> 00:59:01.879
we dislike, to bring up conflictive situations. That's what is important.

00:59:01.879 --> 00:59:04.744
To make the best possible decision, the Athenians beleived

00:59:04.744 --> 00:59:07.963
that we should give everyone a say. That was isegoria.

00:59:07.963 --> 00:59:12.039
To give everyone a chance to speak up, the right to speak for all, concerning any subject, at any given moment.

00:59:12.039 --> 00:59:18.934
Isegoria... a beautiful word. That right of speech and the setting for conflicts

00:59:18.934 --> 00:59:23.635
let them shed light on which were the correct decisions.

00:59:23.635 --> 00:59:27.021
What I observe everywhere is that in the Constitution,

00:59:27.021 --> 00:59:30.932
the rules that organise our power are not planned at all.

00:59:30.932 --> 00:59:34.320
That is, they are anti-constitutions.

00:59:34.320 --> 00:59:39.152
The institutions that organise our power are missing.

00:59:39.152 --> 00:59:41.439
That is why we are powerless, politically impotent.

00:59:41.439 --> 00:59:45.666
Because nothing is programmed to give us any kind of power.

00:59:45.666 --> 00:59:49.290
That is a cause. You know, I was telling you

00:59:49.290 --> 00:59:52.423
about the tree of social injustices earlier, with all its consequences.

00:59:52.423 --> 00:59:56.524
All the branches that are types of political corruption,

00:59:56.524 --> 00:59:59.657
abuse of power in companies, ecological catastrophy,

00:59:59.657 --> 01:00:04.823
unemployment, low income, and so on. All those social injustices

01:00:04.823 --> 01:00:09.624
all the discrimination, the racism... All those social injustices,

01:00:09.624 --> 01:00:16.378
to me, they are all consequences of our political powerlessness / impotence to fight against them.

01:00:16.378 --> 01:00:18.380
We are many, very many, (and we don't need all),

01:00:18.380 --> 01:00:21.343
we are many ready to fight against these injustices.

01:00:21.343 --> 01:00:25.576
But we are without power. I propose that we take on

01:00:25.576 --> 01:00:28.926
the cause of our powerlessness and get rid of it.

01:00:28.926 --> 01:00:31.758
Like someone who is sick isn't going to just take some aspirin

01:00:31.758 --> 01:00:33.926
when his head hurts. He is going to try and find out why

01:00:33.926 --> 01:00:36.294
he has a headache. So for very serious diseases,

01:00:36.294 --> 01:00:39.496
where it isn't just a headache that goes away with aspirine,

01:00:39.496 --> 01:00:42.676
and by then, the cause has dissapeared, but for serious diseases,

01:00:42.676 --> 01:00:47.722
the doctor is going to have to search for the cause of the disease. The root of the issue.

01:00:47.722 --> 01:00:49.884
So that political impotency, where does it come from?

01:00:49.884 --> 01:00:52.708
It comes from the Constitution. You see, I go back to the source of things.

01:00:52.708 --> 01:00:54.543
I go back to the root. It stems out from the Constitution.

01:00:54.543 --> 01:00:58.710
Ah! The Constitution. So how come these Constitutions

01:00:58.710 --> 01:01:01.891
are bad Constitutions? So I try to understand this.

01:01:01.891 --> 01:01:06.109
But, but, but, but... who writes these Constitutions?

01:01:06.109 --> 01:01:09.292
Who wrote them? Who voted them in? It is still we, the people.

01:01:09.292 --> 01:01:11.526
It is always the people who vote their Constitution in.

01:01:11.526 --> 01:01:13.392
So now we see that it isn't suffisiant to solve the problem,

01:01:13.392 --> 01:01:15.675
since the Constitutions, as I told you, program in almost every country,

01:01:15.675 --> 01:01:19.175
the powerlessness of the people. So voting for the Constitution doesn't change that.

01:01:19.175 --> 01:01:22.658
You musn't just accept a Constitution you are asked to vote on.

01:01:22.658 --> 01:01:25.592
That's a scam. That's not where the game is played.

01:01:25.592 --> 01:01:27.675
What is important is not who votes for the Constitution.

01:01:27.675 --> 01:01:30.626
What is important, is who writes it. So who writes it?

01:01:30.626 --> 01:01:34.210
Everyone around the world, no matter the historical period, the question is who wrote the Constitution?

01:01:34.210 --> 01:01:35.976
Do you remember what I told you earlier?

01:01:35.976 --> 01:01:40.377
You have us, you have the powers who are capable of producing the law,

01:01:40.377 --> 01:01:45.860
useful for us but also dangerous, and then you have the institutions that they should be afraid of.

01:01:45.860 --> 01:01:50.093
Who writes the institutions that they never fear?

01:01:50.093 --> 01:01:58.896
They do! That's my point. And I work hard, and I come here to meet with you,

01:01:58.896 --> 01:02:01.993
because it must absolutely become your point as well.

01:02:01.993 --> 01:02:06.575
It must become your thesis, our soul focus point.

01:02:06.575 --> 01:02:08.963
If I alone fight this, it won't work. But if we are millions,

01:02:08.963 --> 01:02:11.684
billions even, we can say: it is not the place or the role of people in power

01:02:11.684 --> 01:02:13.443
to right the rules of their power. We must stop having

01:02:13.443 --> 01:02:15.791
professionals in politics that find a seat in Constitutional Assemblies

01:02:15.791 --> 01:02:20.459
for the following to stop: the simple fact that these political professionals

01:02:20.459 --> 01:02:22.224
program the impotency of their people. But it's normal,

01:02:22.224 --> 01:02:25.892
they have a personal interest in that. I am not saying they are scoundrels.

01:02:25.892 --> 01:02:30.005
I say that, since they are professional politicians,

01:02:30.005 --> 01:02:33.971
even virtuous, even very noble, even very generous professionals,

01:02:33.971 --> 01:02:37.104
that when they will be writing a Constitution that they should fear,

01:02:37.104 --> 01:02:41.046
and that will hinder their interests, in essence,

01:02:41.046 --> 01:02:45.696
in that specific moment, they are in a conflict of interest.

01:02:45.696 --> 01:02:48.447
Conflict of interest is a concept that is very important to understand.

01:02:48.447 --> 01:02:51.998
It is the key. It is the key to all this mess.

01:02:51.998 --> 01:02:55.551
It is the source of the catastrophic situation we are in.

01:02:55.551 --> 01:02:57.954
I will give you an example of conflict of interest,

01:02:57.954 --> 01:03:00.634
and I'll come back to our professional politician writing the Constitution.

01:03:00.634 --> 01:03:04.822
Conflict of interest occurs like this: you have a judge, a very good judge,

01:03:04.822 --> 01:03:09.851
an honest judge, who worries about the greater good, about justice.

01:03:09.851 --> 01:03:16.604
More detailed, more conscientious than him, you won't find. Not an ounce of dishonesty.

01:03:16.604 --> 01:03:21.194
A good judge. In his role, in the agenda of cases to do during the day,

01:03:21.194 --> 01:03:29.879
comes along his son, or his daughter, either as a victim or accused of a crime.

01:03:29.879 --> 01:03:34.150
Everyone on earth understand that this judge,

01:03:34.150 --> 01:03:39.188
even a good judge, is incapable of producing justice

01:03:39.188 --> 01:03:41.578
for his daughter or his son. Do you understand?

01:03:41.578 --> 01:03:44.177
That is called conflict of interest. The conflict of interest

01:03:44.177 --> 01:03:47.494
doesn't mean that he is dishonest, not at all,

01:03:47.494 --> 01:03:50.410
it doesn't say he is a corrupt scoundrel, not at all!

01:03:50.410 --> 01:03:57.536
It just says that for that specific moment, he can not be fair.

01:03:57.536 --> 01:04:00.137
So what do we do, for that specific case, accross the world?

01:04:00.137 --> 01:04:02.517
It is not even a problem, not even for the judge!

01:04:02.517 --> 01:04:05.681
He makes it a point of principle and honor by recusing himself.

01:04:05.681 --> 01:04:12.665
You declare him incapable of doing that particular trial.

01:04:12.665 --> 01:04:19.398
Why ? Because he would be judge and jury, he would be in a conflict of interest.

01:04:19.398 --> 01:04:23.265
So you can't have that. It is very important that you understand that this is wrong.

01:04:23.265 --> 01:04:27.864
You understand it? Well I say that our political representatives,

01:04:27.864 --> 01:04:34.414
our ministers, our judges, our presidents, our news reporters,

01:04:34.414 --> 01:04:38.035
our bankers, all those who hold important power, [are in conflict of interest].

01:04:38.035 --> 01:04:40.498
Media and banks, you must also put them in the same bag

01:04:40.498 --> 01:04:44.147
as parlementarians, government, judges. It's a whole.

01:04:44.147 --> 01:04:46.198
You don't have three powers but you have five powers

01:04:46.198 --> 01:04:49.268
that threaten us and that we must weaken and control through a Constitution.

01:04:49.268 --> 01:04:53.833
So all these people, including candidates for such positions,

01:04:53.833 --> 01:04:57.033
including people who aren't parlementarians yet,

01:04:57.033 --> 01:04:59.885
who aren't ministers yet, but who see themselves in the future

01:04:59.885 --> 01:05:03.479
as candidates for a party, for power, they are included.

01:05:03.479 --> 01:05:07.447
Do you see? So all these people, even the kindest ones,

01:05:07.447 --> 01:05:11.696
the virtuous ones, the good ones, the devoted to greater good,

01:05:11.696 --> 01:05:17.581
when we are in the constitutional process, when we are writing a Constitution,

01:05:17.581 --> 01:05:20.813
when we are writing the text they should fear,

01:05:20.813 --> 01:05:26.206
if that Constitution is well written, they are in a radical situation.

01:05:26.206 --> 01:05:31.789
It is a strong conflict of interest. They will have a personal interest contrary

01:05:31.789 --> 01:05:36.032
to the greater good of us all. We have let them deactivate

01:05:36.032 --> 01:05:39.376
a great tool that is the Constitution, that could protect us

01:05:39.376 --> 01:05:42.927
efficiently today against bankers, against oligarchs.

01:05:42.927 --> 01:05:46.850
We have let the word lose its meaning:

01:05:46.850 --> 01:05:50.900
a concept, an essential tool that legally protects us.

01:05:50.900 --> 01:05:55.417
We have let the word lose its meaning by letting

01:05:55.417 --> 01:05:59.618
the Constitution be written by exactly those who should be fearing it.

01:05:59.618 --> 01:06:05.220
The solution is not with those people. If we wait and want them to make things change,

01:06:05.220 --> 01:06:07.933
it will never change. That isn't the root cause,

01:06:07.933 --> 01:06:13.388
they aren't the cause of the problem.

01:06:13.388 --> 01:06:16.103
The root of the issue is the people who let them write the rules.

01:06:16.103 --> 01:06:21.956
That's us.
We are the lazy ones or the uncultivated.

01:06:21.956 --> 01:06:28.346
I know : lazy, uncultivated, afraid, coward.

01:06:28.346 --> 01:06:34.815
I am saying it nicely but you see what I mean.

01:06:34.815 --> 01:06:36.303
But wait, wait, wait...

01:06:36.303 --> 01:06:43.677
If you recuse yourself from writing the Constitution, you shouldn't complain

01:06:43.677 --> 01:06:46.811
about your political impotency. It is your fault.

01:06:46.811 --> 01:06:50.695
It is our fault. And I beleive that I found the cause. So it gives us hope.

01:06:50.695 --> 01:06:55.425
If it is in us, then we can change it!

01:06:55.425 --> 01:07:01.445
If it only depended on others, and they are scoundrels who double the stake by being in conflict of interest,

01:07:01.445 --> 01:07:06.448
then we'd be stuck! But if it is us, then it's simple finally.

01:07:06.448 --> 01:07:09.909
It's not complicated at all! Beleive me when I tell you it isn't complicated.

01:07:09.909 --> 01:07:11.975
It is complicated only if we are few. Voilà.

01:07:11.975 --> 01:07:15.142
If we are 1,000, 2,000, even if we are 100,000, it won't work.

01:07:15.142 --> 01:07:18.525
They'll butcher us. When I say "They", I mean the "people from Versailles".

01:07:18.525 --> 01:07:20.507
Listen to Guillemin, he will explain what happened during the Commune.

01:07:20.507 --> 01:07:22.375
You will understand who "the people of Versailles" are.

01:07:22.375 --> 01:07:32.907
It's awful. They still exist today and they still squash

01:07:32.907 --> 01:07:36.959
us! When you look at the Greeks nowadays, just look at them. They are us!

01:07:36.959 --> 01:07:38.905
When I look at Palestinians...we are Palestinians!

01:07:38.905 --> 01:07:47.305
If we don't do anything, in the long run, it will end up with work camps. We have to wake up.

01:07:47.305 --> 01:07:51.344
Internet Revolution

01:07:53.328 --> 01:07:57.284
It seems to me that the Internet is a revolution as important as .

01:07:57.284 --> 01:08:00.585
the first printing machines. The printing press gave us the power to read.

01:08:00.585 --> 01:08:03.318
It gave the people the incredible right to emancipate.

01:08:03.318 --> 01:08:05.683
That you have the right to read is good but not sufficient.

01:08:05.683 --> 01:08:09.963
Even with the printing press, you can only read

01:08:09.963 --> 01:08:14.155
the books that have been written, in general, by the elite,

01:08:14.155 --> 01:08:20.605
by oligarchs, by people who are no longer part of the mutlitude.

01:08:20.605 --> 01:08:23.189
What the Internet has given us, what the Internet has given to the people,

01:08:23.189 --> 01:08:27.861
and by that I mean the people of the earth, is the right to write.

01:08:27.861 --> 01:08:30.612
And that is probably [the breakthrough]. We have not yet seen the full consequence of this,

01:08:30.612 --> 01:08:33.346
and maybe I am wrong, but I am under the impression

01:08:33.346 --> 01:08:35.929
that it is at least as important as the first printing machine.

01:08:35.929 --> 01:08:38.380
It will give us the possibility to educate the people

01:08:38.380 --> 01:08:43.295
that we need, and to put powers back on top,

01:08:43.295 --> 01:08:46.812
above our elite. It will let us put a text on top

01:08:46.812 --> 01:08:50.646
that they will fear. And in my eyes, it can change everything.