Northern Seleyan Confederation Plenary Meeting

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Dame Jacqueline DuMont, Her Imperial Majesty's Foreign Minister, Empire of Ananto and Kalistan

We shall get started.  I have recently received word that Baltusia will be joining us shortly, but were tying up some loose ends in the Syndicalist Union.

I hereby call this Plenary Session to order.  Our order of business is listed in the Agenda.  And we will take them point by point, for example:  If there is no action on Item 1, we don't even need to consider Item 2.

If I may ask the indulgence within this auspicious gathering, Kalistan is a Brethrenist nation through and through.  As a practicing Brethrenist myself, I wish to exert a prerogative and carry out this meeting in Brethrenist fashion serving as a clerk of the meeting.

For those of you not familiar with Brethrenist Practice, as pertaining to this conference, we will invite you all to remain mostly silent, and let people speak out of the silence as they are moved to speak.  This will provide us plenty of opportunity to consider each others words without speaking over one another.  Additionally, we should all assume the best of our fellow delegates:  this includes the assumption that we are all representing ourselves and our nations with integrity and honesty.  Sometimes that is difficult in an international forum.  But we will establish trust if we can establish honesty as our rule, and assume that all present want the program to succeed.

Also we should assume that each of us are representing the interests of our country alone.  Other countries are welcomed to come in and observe and even speak, but they represent themselves, and if they are not in this room, it is not honest for us to serve as their proxies.  Those who prefer to serve as the proxies of other nations are not here, and they make themselves known by their conspicuous absence.

With that said, I shall propose Item Number 1:  

Point 1:  To Determine whether there is even interest in forming a multi-National Union, and to consider some stumbling blocks to cooperation.  What shall be a guiding philosophy and shared set of interests that make cooperation preferable to competition?

The floor is open to any who wish to speak on this.  At any time, you may ask me and I will try, in my capacity as Chair to provide a sense of the meeting or to restate any proposal that is made.