Aunt Bitsy Wandleswaden came over for dinner one night…

Throughout the conversation, she promptly asked me as she viciously cut her chicken…

“well child…what is democracy anyway?”

I stuttered for a bit, swallowed my broccoli and worked up the words to answer confidently and objectively.

“Well Aunt Bitsy, there are several  different critical analysis’ that attempt to classify Democracy from different categories existing in different countries. We can see democracy in comparison to countries which practice socialism, authoritarian regimes, or fascist regimes (like the globe has experienced throughout history) I conceptualize democracy by how “free” humans are in the country they exist  I can see this through freedom of women in the country, peoples voting rights, the poverty statistics, how representative the parliament or presidential government is. To me, Democracy has been analyzed as being very black and white (a country is either a democracy or it is authoritarian (fascist, communist, hybrid) However  I find it important moreover to see how democratic a country is by how many rights its people can exercise, as such how politically unrest the nation has been or could be based on civil wars, conflict, wars.” “Aunt Bitsy there are several different variables that we can look at to see how stable or unstable a county is by these factors of the populous.” This stems from the Greek concepts of representative democracy that discusses how the many (the population) represent in the government as a reflection of the peoples needs, desires.”

I am a Hathahater, so naturally my jaw dropped and perhaps some of the food I was eating when she so smugly won Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars last Sunday.

This is what she stated when when Hathahaters like me criticized her authenticity.

“”She tried to win over the haters in her Oscar speech but expressed that even with all of the criticism,  “I live my life with love. I live my life with compassion. I live my life hoping the best for absolutely everyone, no matter how they feel about me. And when you live that way, it’s amazing how beautiful every day can be.”

The notion that bothers me, is that she actually believes her role as Fantine was Oscar-winning- worthy…the Academy does as well. But it takes a very grounded disparity to take on a role of a mother who literally would sell herself to feed her daughter. I doubt she read the book. I know her mother played the role on Broadway- which is probably why Anne felt entitled in her role. Its like she stripped the role of Fantine not to bring life to the story of Les Mis but to integrate herself in a position of power and entitlement in Hollywood- by boasting her humbleness through her 25lbs weight loss and hair “loss.” when in previous years she said in disgust that she thought her 115lbs figure was too fat. but this is just the words of a hathahater or it could just denote to the fact her real voice doesn’t have enough gumption for the role- yet she sees herself as a Broadway star- rather discovered as a disney star. Moreover, her real voice couldnt reach the range of the music used, so there were other singers to help fill the musical void

I read an article in the Globe and Mail that discusses the correlation with the social problems in Afghanistan in comparison to the rising rates of mortality (of women) by anemia. http://http://www.globalissues.org/news/2013/02/26/15949

(just wanted to note, I finally know how to insert a link…yay me)

Anyway, it states it is a result of their social structures- meaning that in their religion  culture early childhood marriages are insisted upon and yet, women’s mortality rates are increasing- we could measure democratic freedom- by this scale. The mortality rates of women in countries that are in comparison free and not free, or democratic or not democracy. This relationship can show us something about democracy. Technically  girls under 16 are not legally allowed to be married, but this shows the interjection of state vs. cultural religion…for girls as young as 11 are being married. Firstly, there are human rights concerns with the religious norms as well as health concerns. Moreover, how accurately can data declare a country democratic if religion and culture of the country go against the grain of democratic progress. This progresses that 70% of women in rural areas are illiterate and drop out of school, there are grave concerns here, for the democratic frequency of the country. “Rahimi believes it is {one of the big problems} of “legal flaw” that girls can be married as young as 16 and allowed to start a family.” Arguably, there is a space for child marriges to occur at a greater rate- with this flawed law.

Hey…squadron,

I’m not sure if any of y’all are being bombarded by midterms/papers week but I know I have. I apologize in advance for my very rough draft. I ran out of time and only managed to look to compare my region to Freedom House, there will be more comparisons in the final draft. Anything is better than nothing eh?

happy rejuvenation week 🙂 423 paper

Here is a heavy topic,

Female gentile Mutilation continues all throughout the world, and on Wednesday the United Nations observed the annual zero tolerance day for FGM.

http://www.globalissues.org/news/2013/02/07/15815

The issue is that FGM clash two significant ideologies that clash when governing a country, Religion versus Culture. How can Religious traditions run a Democratic state- to which has the interests of all religions? It cannot, and that’s the current problem at hand. “(FGM) is shocking and inhumane to much of the world but remains a tradition among a significant minority.” Despite a country’s political ideologies, it has become important to the UN to diminish the problem completely. In December 2012 there was a unanimous adoption of the resolution on “Intensifying Global Efforts for the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilations.” The UN is focuses on stopping the action in many middle eastern countries still exercising their “religious right” to do this procedure on women. Now the question I brought up is the question of Democratic freedom. If we implemented Democratic regimes in these countries with this religion as their county’s identity- would this inhumane crime stop? Conversely, I don’t think so- because democracy has been implemented and attempted to activate  in several middle eastern countries (whether successful or not) In this regions’ circumstances  one cannot separate their political structure from religion, the two ideologies, and spheres of influence are intermingled. As long as their politics are ruled by the religion  these crimes will still be applicable until religion and state are split and separate entities of the country. My point here, is that the UN should be focused on this task- taking religion out of the political freedoms/rights of humans as seen in democracy and separate religion from the political structure- so these women have a shot at exercise THEIR political freedoms. Implementing to these middle eastern/asian countries that FGM is political crimes rather than elements of their culture. Better yet, making it illegal world wide, such as Shark fishing (don’t get me started on that subject) could the numbers of cases FGM slowly decrease.

Everyone, meet bird girl

she is the the figurehead for John Berendt’s book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. A southern favorite:)  

And a story that is so iconic, sacred, to the south- and somewhat haunting is now gonna be abused, exploited, by Broadway. I was somewhat angry when I heard that Midnight in the garden of good and evil, was going to be turned into a Broadway musical… All literary elegance and poetic devices will be lost by sappy choruses and jazz hands…

http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/theater/midnight_in_the_garden_of_musicals_mwnGlxCDETjJ3Iyfqqqp4K

I did mention in my blog from last week; the split week 5/6 confused my simple mind- however just to restate it, I would like to focus on Central America. It is tempting for me to do the soviet stricken countries that split and those countries who suffered from the iron curtain- but hoenstly, Ive studied this for 4 years now, and I want to learn about something no one has bothered to teach me…well I could have taught myself (and I do) but you know what I mean, I want to learn about an entire new region- plus the crime, drug trade, and poverty rate has always attracted me to central america. Its an entirely different kind of corruption than soviet stated have endured! I’m excited to start researching!

Alvarez et al. discusses the different classifications, under different circumstances to which democracy exists in the conceptual sense, and the regime sense. They state, that democracy comes from the consequence of having contested people take seats in office, as a consequence of an electoral vote. Puzzling, how members who would in theory represent the good of the ‘many’ be such a consequence. These authors have a minimalist view of democracy, but honestly who doesn’t?

They throw around the terminology- dictatorship and democracy rather interchangeably, where one could cause the latter- and vice-verse. They discuss scholars definitions of democracy such as Dalh’s contestation of democracy. Arguably competition, or contestation exists in elements of democratic regimes, where interests vary from party or person. Arguably, this articles goes through and measures this conceptual theory and apply it to early regimes demo/dictor in different regions. As such, they are measuring competition and how it looks (functions) with the data they know about the political situation in different periods. For example, contestation would act differently with a dictatorship/ monarchy than it would a bi-partisan or partisan democracy. Arguably contestation exists when opposition to gain office occurred  As such “democracy is a system in which parties lose elections” this is how Przworski defines the political regime. Then we could say that we would measure how accurate a democracy is- based on how parties competed and lost. furthermore, the probabilities of party election outcomes can be measured accuratly, however there is room for random error or random probabilities of outcomes.

This leads to the most important question can we predict/ meausre outcomes of elections accurately, and can we predict whether a non democractic regime could cause a democracy- when would we see the shift. This is what Alvarez et al. discusses further on. What is interesting about the article is the way that the authors look at measurements of elections from regions- and determine by the outcomes whether it was conceptually democratic at all. However, most important about the measurement of contestation- is the element for it to repeat itself- in order to deterime its nature of poltical origin. It is truly a contestation- a electoral democracy if repetition occurs. Sounds a lot like Validity.

“Democracy now!”

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/30/headlines#1300

Is a fabulous, yes fabulous blog/tv news reel about fast/hot topics about mostly the states about democratic issues in the current system.

Something that has been a big topic of discussion, is the illegals problems that exist in the states. Some 11 million illegal undocumented workers exist among Americans. In recent news, he started his new term in office with a old new bi-partisan immigration reform plan. Stating that the previous mentality America held about illegals wasnt creating an efficient democracy. Those in the republican party that had previously diminished past reform bills, and the 2008 “Dream Act” that proposed to solve the problem- now; as Obama stated, those in congress, and senate need to replace the old “us versus them” mentality of late in order to save democratic practices.

Obama states: “But for comprehensive immigration reform to work, it must be clear from the outset that there is a pathway to citizenship…a lot of folks forget that most of ‘us’ used to be ‘them.’ We forget that. And it’s really important for us to remember our history. Unless you’re one of the first Americans, a Native American, you came from someplace else. Somebody brought you.”

Arguably, this is quite controversial  because the amount of illegals affects the electoral system/ the economy and the strength of the country. And yet, the majority of those in the senate and congress have denied allowing these illegals to become citizens claiming they would more or less affect things. However, the fact they are not citizens, are working illegally is weakening the poverty, encourages employers to cheat and hire those for less- rather than actual ‘america citizens.’ Nevertheless, Obama finally said it simply, it is more undemocratic to continue to deny these 11 million citizenship- rather than have citizens of America suffer more from unemployment loss and a weak economy. Moreover, this new bipartisan reform bill is the most democratic immigration policy- while adhering to the republican’s harsh border control demands.