#athenian

Έργο που συγχρηματοδοτείται από με την ΕΕ, για τον εκσυγχρονισμό λειτουργιών του εναέριου χώρου με περιβαλλοντικά οφέλη. Το ATHENIAN («ATHENs termInal Area redesign & pbN») είναι έργο που αποσκοπεί στον ανασχεδιασμό του εναέριου χώρου της Τερματικής Περιοχής (ΤΜΑ) Αθηνών και στην εφαρμογή διαδικασιών δορυφορικής πλοήγησης βάσει επιδόσεων ακριβείας στην αεροναυτιλία (Performance Based Navigation…

[ID: Six pixel hearts of various flags in order being Honeybee Transfem, Centrgender, Lovequeer, Lovequeer 2, Kenovesil, and Athenian. End ID]

@our-honeybee-transfem-experience Honeybee

@stockphotomanonastick Lovequeer

@idwl Kenovesil

The version of democracy that we have had in the West, of late, has not served a lot of people all that well. The lot of democracy. This is why we have the current phenomenon of Donald Trump plaguing the world right now. Lots of folk in the United States wanted someone to shake things up and deliver something better for them. Be careful what you wish for.  This is because things can, indeed, get a lot worse. Trump is not the champion of the ordinary American, as he professes at times. Trump is no Bernie Sanders. He is someone who has never served a constituency. Trump only serves himself.

Democracy & A Lot Of Money

Democracy in America has been railroaded by the wealthy to serve their interests, often, at the expense of the working poor. Members of Congress have been bought and sold by billionaires and corporations at the expense of the American public. It has cost them their representation. The original Athenian conception of democracy was a body of men chosen individually by lot to serve the Athenian state. Thus, it supposedly avoided the emergence of professional politicians and their vulnerability to corruption. Imagine the President of the United States being chosen by lot. “Though considered the most democratic method of allocating citizens to office in Classical Greece, sortition (selection by lot) has never been adopted on a large scale by modern democracies (except for juries) and has fallen into oblivion. Usually when we think about the differences between the ancient (Greek) democracy and modern democracy, the first aspect that comes to our mind is that the former was a direct democracy, while its modern version is representative. In classical demokratia the citizens themselves exercised their sovereignty by voting in the Assembly (ekklesia), whereas in modern democracy the citizens empower elected representatives to act in their name—with the rare exception of a referendum or plebiscite.” - ( https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=107594)

Photo by Jay Brand on Pexels.com The lottery in modern times is all about, hopefully, winning a lot of money. Whereas in ancient times civic power was allocated via a lottery. American Democracy Serving Lots Of The Wealthy Did you know that the income tax rate for the very wealthy in the US was around 90% just after WW2? Now, it is around 30 to 40%. “In 1963, President John Kennedy, himself the product of one of America’s grandest fortunes, asked Congress to drop the nation’s top tax rate down to 65 percent. Congress would mostly oblige, and that top tax rate would sink to 70 percent in 1965. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and his friends on Capitol Hill would shove that rate down even further, first to 50 and then to 28 percent. This top tax rate then inched up to 31 percent in 1991 and has been bouncing around in the 30s ever since. The current top-bracket rate: 37 percent.” - (https://inequality.org/article/tax-the-rich-we-did-that-once/) JFK is remembered as this almost saintly president, in large part because he was brutally murdered whist still a relatively young man. However, his father was a very wealthy oligarch and getting elected to the presidency don’t come cheap in America. Dues had to be paid, I imagine. Reagan, as most Republicans did, served the interests of the wealthy. It is, always fascinating to try and comprehend how the vast majority of middle class and poorer Americans get conned into seeing the top tax rates slashed by more than half. I mean, whose interest is that in? Stupid is as stupid does.

John F Kennedy memorial by Graham Horn is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0 American Disengagement With The Democratic Process The lot of democracy. Voting is not compulsory in the US, so disengagement with the democratic system is popular. It is easy to gull those not paying attention. Negative campaign ads are the meat and potatoes of American electioneering. Throwing mud and disparaging your political opponent are art forms in the US. Big advertising spends have traditionally defined winning campaigns. “In the 2020 U.S. presidential race, Democratic candidates spent a total of roughly 3.16 billion U.S. dollars, more than any other election. “ - (https://www.statista.com/statistics/198183/total-disbursements-for-us-presidential-campaign-financing-since-1979/) The new player in the American version of the democratic process is social media. Online influence affecting elections is big and getting bigger all the time. The Russians and their bots have been going about their nefarious business in US elections since 2016. Other overseas actors are, also, players in the subterfuge stakes, according to the FBI. China, Iran and North Korea to name a few identified. The Internet is a very fraudulent space and the majority of sites and identities are not what they make out to be. There are way more machines than humans inhabiting the online realm.

Rosemary Ketchum at Pexels The lot of democracy is not, always, a happy one. The Big Steal was the Big Lie and the 2020 presidential election will go down in history for all the wrong reasons. Fundamentally, this is all about power and the getting of it. Oligarchs are not new, as they have been around since ancient Greek and Roman times. They were a problem for the many back then and they are a problem for most of us now. Trump and Musk are deeply corrupt. The global influence of these kleptocrats is to lower the standards and expectations of and around governments. They are a bad lot. “Donald Trump’s regime in America is breaking the law on an industrial scale. There are more than 200 legal actions currently taken out against the Trump administration by aggrieved parties in the United States. Thus, fighting the normalization of Trump is an issue on this basis. People get used to the outrage and are deadened in some way to the gross injustices. However, the behaviour of ICE takes the cake in the outrage stakes in their total disregard for judicial due process. The snatching of Americans off the streets by masked men bearing no identification or documentation and detaining them for weeks and months is abhorrent in the extreme.” - (https://wordsforweb.com.au/fighting-the-normalization-of-trump/) Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump. ©WordsForWeb

Critias

Critias (l. c. 460-403 BCE) was an Athenian politician, poet, and playwright, one of Socrates' followers, Plato's second cousin, a leading member of the Thirty Tyrants of Athens, and leader of the oligarchy they established. He is referenced by other writers as a gifted poet and philosopher but is best known for his ruthlessness as an oligarch of Athens.

His central role in the many abuses of power perpetrated by the Thirty Tyrants overshadowed his earlier achievements as a creative and philosophical influence in Athenian society. Besides his role as one of the Thirty Tyrants, he is also frequently cited as an early atheist who defied the religious conventions of his time. He claimed that the concept of divinity was invented by men who wished to have power over others and so concocted a fable of supernatural beings who would reward or punish behavior in keeping with the agenda of the elite. Professor Thomas Mautner notes that “his is the earliest statement on record that religion is invented by politicians in order to control the people” (116). To Critias, there are no gods or a single God; religion is simply a means whereby the strong and entitled control the weak.

Even so, this charge of atheism is based on a single fragment from one of his plays, placed in the mouth of a character, and since none of the rest of the work remains, it is impossible to know whether this character spoke for the author. Later writers, following the paradigm of Xenophon, who knew Critias, repeated the claim that he was immoral and an atheist, but this cannot finally be ascertained completely. It would certainly seem, however, that people's low opinion of him was justified by his actions during the rule of the Thirty Tyrants. This association with the oligarchy would eventually lead to his death as he was killed in battle in 403 BCE at Piraeus in the conflict which ended their rule.

Early Life & Rise to Power

Critias was born in Athens, the son of Callaeschrus, a philosopher, poet, and politician. Nothing is known of his early life, but it seems that he followed his father's pursuits and achieved a significant level of success. He first enters the historical record in 415 BCE in an incident related to charges of desecrating the statues of Hermes in Athens, but this is a slight reference, which provides little information on why the charges were brought or what Critias was doing at that time. All that is known about the incident is that Critias was cleared of the charges on the testimony of one Andocines.

By 411 BCE, he may have been involved in the political oligarchy known as the Council of the Four Hundred (or, simply, The Four Hundred), an anti-democratic faction that briefly held power in Athens. His participation in this group's efforts is questioned as it is known that he prosecuted one of its leaders, Phrynichus, posthumously in 410 BCE. Although his prosecution of Phrynichus is often interpreted to mean he opposed the Four Hundred, it is just as likely that, after they fell out of favor, Critias sided with the pro-democracy faction when it was clear they were gaining power.

He was a friend and supporter of the general and statesman Alcibiades (l. c. 451 to c.403 BCE) who played a significant and controversial role in the Second Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE). When Alcibiades was charged with desecrating the statues of Hermes and also profaning the Eleusinian Mysteries by drinking the sacred Kykeon at a party, Critias followed him into exile in c. 406 BCE. Critias returned to Athens in 404 BCE to again take up a political position as one of the Five Ephors (magistrates) who led the political factions of the emerging oligarchy, which came to be known as the Thirty Tyrants.