In the midst of a two-party dominated and heavily-scripted federal election campaign, I spoke with the widely-respected and independently-minded Senator Scott Ludlam (Greens, Western Australia) about his life-long interest in urban thinking and city life as a laboratory of new...
Read More[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="383"] PHOTO: Do cities hold the key to our democratic future? (By Florence Roca)[/caption] Senator Scott Ludlam has city life and urban thinking hard-wired into his political genes, and believes that cities are becoming political laboratories. John Keane...
Read More[caption id="attachment_10147" align="alignright" width="300"] PHOTO: Do cities hold the key to our democratic future? (By Florence Roca)[/caption] Senator Scott Ludlam has city life and urban thinking hard-wired into his political genes, and believes that cities are becoming political laboratories. John Keane...
Read MoreThe most telling tale in Charles Moore’s winsome biography of Margaret Thatcher spotlights the moment of her greatest political triumph: the military defeat of Argentina in mid-June 1982, after a 74-day war that cost nearly a thousand lives on windswept...
Read More[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="668"] The army massacre of June 4, 1989, in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square should be remembered everywhere. EPA/Michael Reynolds[/caption] It's 24 years since the Tiananmen Square uprising. In an interview with John Keane, democracy activist Chin Jin...
Read MoreAn earthy citizen of a country led by politicians and journalists bugged by “boat people”, Chin Jin fits no standard categories. Now the foremost democrat in Sydney’s thriving Chinese community, he first set foot on the north-west shores of Australia...
Read MoreYou said in your recent public speech in Castellon that we’re now living in the age of mega-projects. What exactly did you mean by this? In Europe as elsewhere, we’ve entered times marked by big-footprint projects, organised efforts to do things...
Read MoreDuring mid-January 2013, John Keane delivered a number of talks and lectures and gave interviews in Castellón and Valencia, Spain. The subjects ranged from mega-projects and power, the political dangers of silence, public disaffection with official politics and the future...
Read MoreLook around, or beyond the borders where you live. You’ll probably have noticed that disquiet and disaffection are spreading through the drought fields of democracy. Political parties and legislatures are not exactly in favour. Public disenchantment with politicians and official...
Read MorePirate Party campaign ‘ship’, Cologne, March 2008 Tobias Walter/flickr Is there life after conventional parliamentary politics? That’s the intriguing question on the lips of many German citizens this weekend as supporters of the Pirate Party assemble in the north German city of...
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