Thursday 18th of April 2024

Citizen Initiated Referenda

I propose we start an action group to commence Citizen Initiated Referenda to take back control of our democracy from the party political machine(s).

Could any (all) of you better educated, informed and connected readers, bloggers and others please post links and material here to get us started on this movement.

I, for one, refuse to let this country sink into the hands of a bunch of conservative facists due to apathy.

Yours in Fury.

CIR (Citizens' Initiated Referenda) .....

Marian Sawyer from the Democratic Audit of Australia reminds us that the Australian Democrats have long advocated the use of CIR (Citizens’ Initiated Referenda) & it is included in their current policy - http://www.democrats.org.au/policies/policy_dis.htm?id=5&policy=Constitutional+Reform+Policy  

 

Marian also pointed me to the following article by Rodney Smith, of Sydney University - Political Representation in Australia 

 

Whilst I’m not promoting the Australian Democrats, it seems to me that without support from at least one of the established political parties, there would be little chance of such an initiative succeeding.

Referenda and surveys...

A funny thing happened...

From the BBC

Referenda, surveys and media

Keep up the relevant commentary Gus. I'm working on this one.


I believe none of what I read (unless I trust the journalist) and only half of what I see .....

 ( 0  0 )
     ""

 

Middlemen

The varied fortunes of some doppelgangers are exposed today.

Ahmad Chalabi (and here) - "also met with Secretary of State Rice and national security adviser Stephen Hadley, "although neither would be photographed with him," reports Knight Ridder's Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay." [From Cursor.org, recommended by Tom Engelhardt; both good.]

Insider led cops to his hideout
At first, Azahiri blew himself to bits, then the Polisi claimed he had been shot to death. No matter, he's dead, and won't be offering answers about where he got his stuff,  how he evaded capture for so long and who was looking out for him.

The middlingest of them all, in Tariq Ali: Blair Defeated on Terror Laws

... Will his gutless Cabinet put on white coats and tell him his time is up or will they allow him to bleed slowly to death? ...

The "next president of Iraq" still works for the CIA?

Chalabi was paid $US350,000 a month by the CIA for information on Iraq WMDs. With that kind of money, one can buy all the printing presses of false evidence in the world...

As mentioned on this site _ in a long time ago blog — Gus thinks that Chalabi was purposefully discredited by the US, in regard to the Iranian secret codes and the money laundering affairs, in order to "distance: him from his "former" masters. I may be wrong...

Gus thinks that Chalabi still works for the CIA but "appears not to" anymore because he "has been" discredited. So the unease in Washington comes from several angles: It is a fake unease so they can perceptively pass on part of the "blame" of the result of the war on him, and real unease because he could blow the whole thing out of the water and start a cascade of investigation in "how the CIA fooled itself" in order to provide the requested "certainty" (wheter it's fake or not, as long as we can make many people believe in it) from the white house for the President to declare war.

And the man will be running for President of Iraq... Full circle. The US would have removed Saddam the warrior and replaced him with their own CIA accredited business man, Chalabi.

In the meantime, more than 100,000 got killed.

War is a serious business.

Tighter editing needed.

Warmonger Judith Miller's chief source  was Chalabi -
... An internal e-mail by Judith Miller, the paper's top reporter on bioterrorism, acknowledges that her main source for such articles has been Ahmad Chalabi, a controversial exile leader who is close to top Pentagon officials. Could Chalabi have been using the Times to build a drumbeat that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction? ...

Chalabi isn't mentioned in her blog's news section with her Farewell Letter. Thoughtless omission? No, very thoughtful. Mighty kind, y'oil.

The Chalabi link slipped past The Age's Michael Gawenda, in Ill-starred reporter leaves NY Times, too.

But the connection did slip into Reporter jailed over CIA leak quits paper at The Australian.
... Miller, who has been criticised for relying on former Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi as a source ..

Sloppy editing, I suppose.

Back to the topic - Moderator

Ahh.......

How did all these postings on Chalabi et. al. slip into a thread on CIR?

Sloppy moderating I suppose ;-)

Vote often...

I'm with you all the way....

Posted by Gus Leonisky at 31 August, 2005 - 11:27am in the website hijacked blog

No government
Just a public service
One elected public board of up to twelve leaders for one year only.
One chair person.
No secret minutes
Extraordinary referendums on any major policy change
Regular referendums every three to six months
Information posting the “for and against

A few links so far....

Dear  Gus and others,

Well... so far I have found that many people have tried and so far failed to get Citizen Initiated Referenda (CIR) going.

It appears the pollies aren't too fond of it (surprised ?)

It will be a long road to get there but I would hope we can take the first step. Anyone game to help me?

Cheers

Frances

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Below are a few links I found in about half hour of searching. Some  Individual citations are:

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http://home.vicnet.net.au/~basils/contents.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/lawrpt/lstories/lr990622.htm
http://www.crikey.com.au/articles/2005/05/09-0847-4156.html
http://www.national-renewal.org.au/start.html
http://www.ntu.edu.au/faculties/lba/schools/Law/apl/journalarticles/chap...
http://www.prsa.org.au/
http://www.samuelgriffith.org.au/
http://www.nt.gov.au/lant/parliament/committees/condev/reports/VOL4-2.pdf

It's a big job

Dear Frances and others

Your looking at one hell of a job. First thing rember the law makes everybody vote so we get 100% of your say. Think about of the cost every time we go to vote, Who pays?

We do need to get our power back. Just look at the IR debate.

If anyone that he/she could do a better job no one stop them from running for the job.

We are better of than most eg. USA 2 partys only and if only 0.5% of the pop vote thats fine. We can have as many partys as we like and 100% must vote. It works most of the time but not all of the time. We don't need to fix it just fine tune it. Remember if the PM is bad he/she can be sacked..... eg. 11-11-1975. We do have the power...