We asked all sorts of people -- authors, athletes, movie stars, politicians, thinkers, workers, dreamers -- ten tough questions about democracy. We will publish many of the answers on this page, with new ones every day. Be sure to tell us what you think in the forums.

Who would you vote for as President of the World?
I think there’s only one person I could possibly vote for and that would be Nelson Mandela – pretty obvious choice for me I would have thought.

Kazuhiro Soda is the Director of Campaign! The Kawasaki Kandidate

Who would you vote for as President of the World?
The Dalai Lama – I’m a big fan of him. It would be a very peaceful world. He could be a great leader for us.

Who would you vote for as President of the World?
It’s very difficult because I think all the people who really want to become a president or to rule in any way aren’t really the ones who are supposed to do that. So I think I would search for someone who is very experienced, very empathetic, and who as Groucho Marx said don’t want to be a member of a club that wants you for a member. Maybe my grandmother because she has lots of experience and she’s not cramped with this academic terror that makes people think the same things.

Who would you vote for as the president of the world?
Oh-uh. President of the world, I don’t know, my father maybe? That’s a tough one because I never think about those things so I don’t know what to say. Somebody who is kind, who is not selfish but I can’t say a name.

The UN's special envoy has now met with Burma's military leader, General Than Shwe, but this is by no means reason to celebrate. The international community has still done nothing beyond making speeches with a few harsh words. Meanwhile, thousands of monks are reported to have been rounded up and will be sent to prison, and at least one news outlet claims that thousands have been killed and are being buried in mass graves in a jungle.

If anything is to change in Burma, it will be because of massive public pressure. Governments have proven for decades that they are willing to do nothing.

Facebook has numerous groups devoted to the plight of the Burmese. One of the main groups has a massive resource with things you can do, listings of protests and other information. If you're a Facebook user, have a look at that group. If you're not, or if you have friends or family who are not Facebook members, we've copied much of the information into this entry and will update it regularly. NB: Joining a Facebook group will not make any difference -- it's the actions suggested (and probably much more) that might.

It is not only our documentary film maker
Sabiha Sumar who was lucky to attend a Dinner with her President, Pakistan's leader General Musharraf:

Some journalists had the opportunity to have supper alongside Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York last week. Among them was Richard Stengel reporting for Time magazine about his Dinner with Ahmadinejad:

Follow these brave bloggers and read about the reaction of the military regime in Burma at Times online:

"Armed with small digital cameras, they have documented the spectacular growth of the demonstrations from crowds of a few hundred to as many as 100,000. On weblogs they have recorded in words and pictures the regime’s bloody crackdown, in a city where only a handful of foreign journalists work undercover. With downloaded software, they have dodged and weaved around the regime’s increasingly desperate attempts to thwart their work. Now the bloggers, too, have been crushed. Having failed to stop the cyber-dissidents broadcasting to the world, the authorities have simply switched off the internet.

Now Ko Latt and his blogging comrades have abandoned their keyboards and gone underground, sleeping in a different place every night, watching and waiting to see if the democracy movement has been truly crushed or is simply on hold. “When things were hot on the streets, we were not the main worry,” Ko Latt says. “But as the situation cools down, they will follow us. They know who we are, they know we are bloggers, and I am afraid.”"

Follow Burmese bloggers and their resistance in Ko Htike's blog as well as on Burmese Bloggers without Borders.

(Picture taken by racoles.)

As the Why Democracy? project has progressed, it's got me thinking about how loosely we have used the term "democracy" on so many occasions. Is it the end product? Is it a fantasy? Is it merely a stepping stone to better governance and civic engagement?

My disillusionment with so many things happening in South Africa at the moment makes me wonder about how the people who fought so hard for a democratic society would feel about the crises we face today.

In Egypt (site of the Why Democracy? film Egypt: We Are Watching You), where 11 journalists were sentenced to prison terms last month, Ibrahim Issa, editor of Al-Dustour and a high-profile critic of President Hosni Mubarak, is now headed to trial.

Press freedom exists to about the same extent in Egypt as democracy, i.e., both flourish only in the propaganda of the government. Elsewhere, blogger and journalist Hossam al-Hamalawy reports that a cleric is backing a judge's attempt to have the government ban 51 blogs and websites (including al-Hamalawy's). And Nora Younis writes of another blogger, just released from prison, who has revealed the name of the security officer who he says tortured him.

Al-Hamalawy's blog gives a great inside view of Egypt's political turmoil and the struggle against the Mubarak regime. In other posts he details the ongoing government crackdown on student groups, the massive coordinated strikes now taking place and international solidarity movements.

Worldchanging.com's Emily Gertz discusses the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of blogs and mobile phones, referring to recent events in Burma and an activist project in Congo, among other things:

"In the world of online activism, expectations have not inflated to the level of a few years ago, when a wave of techno-utopian optimism swept the activist 'net that maybe a "technical intervention," that is blogging, could stop the mass killings in Darfur -- an effort which, on those terms, failed.

Still, could another such "failure," fueled by the dismay and anger about the Myanmar government's violent crackdown, undercut the momentum of mobile-enabled activism? It's a good moment to consider how networked communications don't -- and do -- help achieve human rights."

Link to full post.

My graduate thesis was about The Daily Show and its relationship to media and politics, and so I grew almost embarrassingly excited when someone in the house told me that Evo Morales (who is featured prominently in the Why Democracy? film Looking for the Revolution) had been Jon Stewart's guest last week. It's a decent 8-minute interview, and it's interesting to hear the crowd's positive response to Morales' various acheivements that don't jive so well with official US policy. The interaction between Stewart, Morales, and Morales's translator is pretty hilarious, too.

The story is simple. A newspaper, Mid-Day, had published a series of articles critical of a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India. Last week a ruling by the Delhi High Court sentenced four journalists associated with those articles to four months of imprisonment because it held that the reports amounted to contempt of the Supreme Court.

The Indian press protested that ruling and when the journalists approached the Supreme Court, it put the sentencing of the High Court on hold. [BBC story here.]

The Indian economy has been growing rapidly the last few years and necessarily requires enormous amounts of energy for it. As it is dependent on imported hydrocarbon fuels for its needs, it has an interest in those states which are potential energy suppliers. The stability of Myanmar is a matter of concern for India as it is considering investing US$ 150 million in natural gas exploration there.

As an economist with an interest in economic development, I have always been intrigued by the relationship between democracy and economic growth. That is so because I call two distinct places home: India, where I was born and grew up, and which is the largest democracy in the world; and the US, where I spent much of my adult life, attended universities and worked, and which is the most powerful and successful democracy in the world.

I confess that to whatever extent the idea of democracy is appealing to me, I am not overly impressed with the actual implementation of democracy in India. I am also not sure that granting universal adult franchise was the right thing to do at the time of India’s political independence in 1947. Democracy, it appears to me, is not just about exercising choice but rather it is about informed choice. I think that in India we have what I call a “cargo cult” democracy, as I have argued before on my blog.

After denying the existance of homosexuality in Iran in his speech at Columbia University in New York, bloggers and analysts around the world discussing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statement.

Pakistan's Supreme Court ruled today that President Pervez Musharraf (the subject of the Why Democracy? film Dinner with the President) can run in the upcoming elections without giving up his position as head of the country's army.

Buzzvines opines that the decision contradicts the constitution and offers three possible explanations:

"1. The justices and their families were threated to get a favorable verdict
2. The justices will be making a lot of trips to the banks
3. The justices were first allowed to gain the nation's confidence by
the staged drama earlier this year so that when a preposterous verdict
was read the nation would accept the verdict."

On the other side, some commenters on Metroblogging Islamabad are hailing the decision as a sign of the Supreme Court's independence. And cyrilalmedia argues that this decision by no means the final one.

Meanwhile, most sources expect to see former PM Benazir Bhutto return to Pakistan on Oct. 18.

International politics is a funny thing. Where else could you group the world's most powerful leaders to discuss the most critical issues of our time and still have them not solve anything?

The most recent United Nations General Assembly meeting demonstated this with enough political squabbling to dishearten even the most enthusiatic Secretary-General. The usual suspects (Iran and Zimbabwe) were put the sword but did not take it lying down as Robert Mugabe did not pull any punches in his address (audio available here).  

Have a look at the The Gate blog for a description of the meeting's events or IOL for Mugabe's criticism of the United States and Britain.  

Their books both started a global debate around free market politics,
especially in the context of the Blackwater shooting in Iraq earlier
this month. Both books are high priority publications this year and
both writers are highly discussed these weeks: But what do bloggers
think about Alan Greenspan's and Naomi Klein's latest work?

• Mizzima News: Speculation over possible confrontation among Burmese generals
• Telegraph: Japanese man killed in Burma: Pictures
• New America Media: Photo of the Day - Monks protesting in Myanmar
• Channel 4: Burma - a journalist's report
• The Burma Campaign
• Profiles of "The Lady" Aung San Suu Kyi on the Telegraph and BBC

Find a dossier with information about the current crisis and its background in Burma on BBC online and related articles and sources in our archive.

Watch a video on how the peaceful demonstration turns into violence against the protestors on Telegraph TV.

Here’s the thing-  asking “why democracy?” sounds to me like asking “why sunshine?” or “why puppies?”.  For people like myself, who have never known anything but a pluralistic, Western democracy, the issue is a non-starter.  We’d rather focus on the deficiencies within our democracy than take on the whole concept itself- pro or con.