https://cafelockedout.com/what-if-you-could-see-silence/ … Continue reading
Category Archives: English
https://main.cse-initiative.eu/?p=1460 … Continue reading
Wayne, Nice to hear from you. I have no interest in following or supporting Julian Assange. It’s NOT a subject that comes up when we get together. All the best, RVK 19 March 2026 (Explanation: By “we”, Bob means Fort Street “old boys”. W.H.) Bob, this is an e-mail I received (in a mass e-mailing) from Gabriel Shipton, Julian Assange’s half-brother. Mary Kostakidis is a Fortian and I once wrote to suggest to her the idea of trying to mobilise “the old school tie”. She rejected the idea fairly abruptly but with the passage of time it occurs to me that I may have tried the wrong approach. I should have spoken to other Fortians about the idea of supporting her rather than speaking to her about the idea of other Fortians supporting her. In any case Gabriel Shipton’s asking me for money seems equally misguided. I am the last person to be approached as a significant financial donor. I share this message with my friend and comrade Nikos Vakolidis, orthodontist in the northern Greek city of Ioannina. Let’s just discuss it between ourselves for starters, Bob, Nikos has not been abrupt with Gabriel Shipton as I have so perhaps … Continue reading
https://halva.proboards.com/post/3237 At least the Australian Federal Parliament and all the state parliaments apart from Queensland have bicameral legislatures. The demands of universal suffrage can therefore be met if only one of the two parliamentary chambers is based on universal suffrage. There are many disadvantages to universal suffrage and historically it has not applied everywhere in the parliamentary system. Experience during the COVID “pandemic” suggests that most people want to follow the dictates of what they perceive as authority and in many cases also to target their fellow citizens who are perceived (by “authority”) to be defying authority. It should not be unacceptable to accept this as a fact of life and try to find ways to minimize its negative consequences. Would providing an alternative to voting based on universal suffrage help towards achieving such an objective? Sortition (choosing politicians by means of a lottery) had a part to play in the ancient Athenian democracy and should be included among techniques to be given rational consideration. The most obvious relevant problem would be that it could result in the elevation of inappropriate people. This could be countered by having a court whose task is to identify not who would be appropriate … Continue reading
A chance meeting at the harbor in Aegina yesterday with Stratos Pantavos was a welcome development for me because the Steering Committee of the Aegina Active Citizens’ Association, of which we are both members, is not programmed to meet until 28th March and there is a lot to catch up. Stratos has been with our initiative around Capodistrias and, for a period, Altiero Spinelli, right from the beginning, i.e. for nearly twenty years https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCDso57HBV4 He co-chaired the meeting at which we were addressed by the late Giulietto Chiesa during the visit of this distinguished Italian politician (and former Europarliamentarian) to our island https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wPniHFeXiM&t=7s He chaired another meeting on European integration in 2019 https://main.cse-initiative.eu/?p=727 The east-west orientation that Giulietto Chiesa (and indeed Spinelli) were attempting to rescue has been replaced in our day by a new orientation seeking to integrate “the global south”. If he were still with us today Chiesa would (arguably) be part of this. Stratos is well suited to link our initiatives past with its present, particularly given the emergence of activists intellectuals such as Lorenzo Maria Pacini. Can a bridge be built between voices such as this and their evident and/or would-be counterparts in the “global south”? … Continue reading