My Ideas

Here you have a panel of liberals who mostly agree; talking in English making assumptions like of course free speech & a free media are a good thing. I can't help thinking that at the same time in another part of the city there was a "young Taliban" debate going on where the panelists were talking in Malay and saying "of course free speech & a free media are NOT a good thing". Actually there were probably 6 "young Taliban" debates happening at this time. Which is bad ,but not when you realise 200,000 Astro watchers were talking about Paris Hilton and whether her hair looked nice. (Apathy the biggest party in a democracy !) An inclusive meeting would be better for society & more interesting .. How do get Young taliban to come ? Incuding opposition means more exciting debate and possible change The problem's if you get a panel of all one side all liberals or all Taliban, the debates a bit boring. And if you get different sides they waste time posturing & politicking. Also I have a feeling people might not be willing to come in the lions den for fear either cos they know their ideas don't stand up to logical examination or that even if they do have good arguments they won't have a fair say. Ideally they should be able answer any question that comes up, but if it's necessary to promise to go easy on them and no difficult questions in order to get them to come, then so be it. To get people to change things Convince them the improvements were THEIR own idea.

Stop fighting & get good changes made While political sides are fighting no actions are implemented in the real world and so people suffer, whereas I suspect thete are some actions they can all agree on. It's like when one doctor says the sick patient should take the medicine before breakfast, but the other says he should take the medine after breakfast. While they spend days arguing about this the patient dies cos he didn't receive any medicine. How to be inclusive, and find a way from slagging matches and move forward with actions they both agree on ? Common ground - Chocolate Cake Challenge pick a topic e.g. Tranvestites and prostitution - You get 2 speakers from opposing corners. They sit with a big chocolate cake in between them. They each speak on the topic for 15 mins. Then they get 15 mins each in reaction to their opponents points. Then after that they have to find some common ground policies that they can implement e.g. Cheap AIDS testing, welfare payments to single mothers etc. If the audience decide they have found enough common ground, the debaters get to share the cake. Do you want to eat cake ?

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