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“US foreign policy has nothing to do with ideology, as it only cares about the kind of democracy it wants. The US wants to impose a “designed and tamed democracy” in the Arab region, so as to protect its own interests.”

This is an article from an online service called the “Gulf News” which is basically an opinion section blatantly attacking the motives behind US foreign policy. Its builds off my post on democratization nicely, in that it states that the US only has an interest in a certain version of democracy in the middle east, one that it can tame and control. At the end of the day, the US efforts abroad are to further its own influence. Democracy just happens to work well because it is morally defensible and easily influenced by US interests. The article uses one example in particular with great effectiveness to prove its thesis. If  the US had a legitimate interest in democracy for its own sake then its behavior regarding HAMAS would have been different. When HAMAS won the elections in Palestine, the US refused to recognize them as legitimate, saying that is a “terrorist organization”. But they also say, “the September 11 attacks would not have happened if there was democracy in Arab countries” Hmmm… doesn’t seem to make logical sense. The article also goes on to critisize the US involvement in setting up various dictatorships in Latin and South America. I talked about Iran in my own editorial bashing of US foreign policy.

If you think American foreign policy is about a humanitarian effort to bring freedom and democracy to the people of the world then you need to stop watching Fox News, abandon your ‘White Man’s Burden’ philosophies, pick up a history book and a newspaper (not owned by Murdoch), and see what is really going on. Ignorance might be bliss for you, but it sure isn’t for Iraqis.

As you all know (I hope) the UBC AMS elections were held last week, but apparently turnout was appallingly low. This once baffled me but I have since come up with a reason why. I’ll run you though my thought process. First I was incredulous, going through the possibilities, but then things started to make more sense.

 

So I ask, did you vote?

If you did, then you were one of the few. If not, why not?

Couldn’t find the time?

There really is no excuse not to. Its as easy as logging into your CWL account and clicking a few buttons, something which I’m sure you do every other week to see what room that 8am class is in because you can never remember. You could even do this from the comfort of one of the five friendly neighborhood Starbucks!

Couldn’t care less?

The issues are fairly important. I’m sure very very few people are unconcerned with rising tuition fees, the U-Pass, and the Whister Lodge (they’re thinking of selling it for god’s sake!!!) Even if you don’t know the candidates, you can respond to the referendum questions.

Didn’t know they were happening?

B.S. You knew. If you come to this Poli class then you’ll see the literally hundreds of campaign posters plastered along the walls down Buchanan. Every block. Every floor. You even got an email reminding you. I even saw an acapella group singing a catchy tune about the AMS elections at the bus loop!

OK well maybe it was this….

According to this article in the ubyssey some campaigners for Silley were running around the Totem park commons block with a laptop getting random people to vote for that candidate. They realized that nobody was going to vote anyways, so it wasn’t about being the best candidate, but getting the most people to log on. Not ideal democracy….

Or this….

The AMS elections of 2010 had some serious electoral fraud going on! Electronic fraud. Apparently you could access the system and cast as many votes as you like if you do it right. The results favored one candidate by a large margin. The article also says that it is likely this wasn’t the first time this happened. Well, I for one don’t like voting in a non-democracy.

maybe these are some reasons why people are not turning up (in a manner of speaking) to AMS elections. Either they are plain lazy, or disgusted by the shambles AMS democracy is in. I sure am.

I didn’t vote.

 

 

Emotional Chinese premier says democracy cannot be held back as he admits country is in urgent need of reform

– ‘Due to my incompetent abilities and institutional and other factors, there is still much room for improvement in my work. I should assume responsibility for the problems that have occurred in China’s economy and society during my term in office for which I feel truly sorry.’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2114917/Wen-Jiabao-Emotional-Chinese-premier-says-democracy-held-back.html

 

Well this is a fairly uplifting story. It seems that China is actually contemplating true democratic reform instead of simply repressing its citizens in times of hardship. In response to the growing unrest in regards to the economy and other social factors, PM Jiabao has said that he is in favour of some democratic reform, some “leadership competition”. 

While this is well and good for democracy, I wonder how sincere this rhetoric actually. Nowhere does he indicate that there might be a multiparty system, just a replacement of leadership within the Communist Party. I contend that this is nothing more than rhetoric to make his failures with the economy, and his resignation as a good thing. “Now we have democracy!” well, actually, you don’t. Instead you have just masked your shameful resignation with the happy buzzword “democratic reform”. This word also serves to ease the social unrest which leadership fears may result in another Cultural Revolution. This is a politician being a politician. He has the reputation of being the ‘nice guy’ within the leadership, and desperately wants to retain this image as he emotionally exits stage right; a sacrifice on the altar of democratic reform. I hope nobody buys it.

This weekend I watched a documentary which really made me sick. I am one of those people who firmly believe that the election of George W. Bush was the worst thing to happen to the United States since the depression. This documentary I watched made me realize just how close the election was, and the sinister forces which allowed Bush to prevail in Florida.

Here is the documentary, I highly reccomend it:

I’ll briefly outline what happened. Florida has a very old law which states that convicted felons can not vote, but hasn’t cleaned up its voter registry in a long time. Jeb Bush, the governor at the time decided that the upcoming election was the best time. So he handed over a list of convicted felons and registered voters to a data company, and asked them to remove any names that appeared as both convicts and voters. This was legal. What wasn’t legal is that the company was intentionally asked to be as lenient as possible in matching names. For instance a Patrick Smith would be removed from the voter list if a Pat Smith was a convict. Sometimes a matching first initial was enough. What ended up happening was a huge amount of unwarranted disenfranchisement. Because most of the Flordia convicts were ethnic minorities, anyone with a similar enough name was removed from the voter list. Estimates of 15% of the removals were people who were completely innocent. And because minorities tend to vote Democrat, this meant a huge number of registered Democrat voters were turned away at the polls! 

The media, (and by that I mean Republican Rupert Murdoch) focused entirely on the faulty ballot sheets as the main cause of controversy when in fact the manipulation of the voter list was the real problem.

We often criticise other countries for not having transparent, free and fair elections. But with this and the Robocall scandal, who are we to judge. Can you imagine the world today if 534 of the tens of thousands of disenfranchised voters had been able to vote for Gore?

Democracy, at its purest form means a system of governance which allows the people to decide their own fate. This is done through choice of representatives but this method can run into issues such as the principal agent problem or corruption. The opposite stance is direct democracy where literally everyone participates in deciding every issue. This one, however, is costly and not all people want to concern themselves with all matters of politics. The dawn of the internet age brings an exciting new opportunity for direct democracy. The costs are lower, both in time and money, and it is instant, finally making pure direct democracy possible. Take a look at this site votetocracy.com. It is a site which tracks and displays bills in Congress and allows users to vote on them. These amount to nothing more than polls, but the information is very direct and useful indicators of public opinion to legislators.

“What if 10million Americans voted no on a bill and Congress voted yes” – “Its time for a new mode of civic engagement”

“Votetocracy was created by regular citizens who decided it was time for Americans to have a better, actionable and measurable way to interact with Congress. This is not just a blog with commenting forums. We are about action. By providing Americans the ability to vote on bills in Congress we create a measurable repository of citizens sentiment towards each bill. That’s good for all Americans and good for Congress. Truth is – Congress wants to hear from you.”

This website is cool. No doubt about it. It allows you to feel as if you are actually making a contribution to politics. There’s even a scoreboard which shows how well the American government conforms to public opinion, http://www.votetocracy.com/scoreboard.html

If sites like this were launched with official legislative intent, then direct democracy would be achieved. As of right now, the American government is performing pretty poorly compared to the people’s preferences (perhaps choosing corporate ones instead), but sites like this highlight this fact and push for a change.

 “When Zack Taylor of the University of Toronto Cities Centre did a little number crunching recently, his worst suspicions were confirmed: It seems some parts of the city are a whole lot more democratic than others” – thestar.com

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1140794–fixing-toronto-s-democratic-deficit

This news article calls into question democracy as it is practiced in Toronto, and then by extension the rest of Canada. Its main concern is that some city electoral wards vary wildly in the number of people that constitute them.  For example, Ward 29 in Toronto has double the population of Ward 23. The consequence of this is that some people are over-represented while other are underrepresented. When competing with the votes of 50,000 people as opposed to 25,000, your vote carries less weight and is not as directly involved in choosing a representative. This makes the article go on the conclude that;

“There’s nothing especially democratic about any of this, of course. If one person/one vote is your measure, clearly Canada and Toronto fail badly.” -thestar.com

Should this be our measure? surely this is a noble ideal, but it often isn’t as practical as one would imagine. Even in Canada we circumvent this logic. Our senators are appointed in a purposefully disproportionate way, so as to guarantee equal representation from each province. Often to correct social and geographical injustices, some small communities deserve their own representative to cater to their specific needs regardless of how few voters there are. Contrast that with a city where wards are often divided along inconsequential lines, two representatives being more or less indistinguishable from each other. From a personal perspective, yes, this is unfair, it makes some votes worth more than others. At a systemic level, however, one can use this type of restructuring to achieve a goal which pure democracy itself can. Equality doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing for everyone, it can also mean different things for everyone to ensure that all are given an adequate voice.

 

To do this assignment, I poked around mostly Canadian political blogs, but the thing that struck me the most was the amount of American politics which permeated them. For most, the ratio between Canadian and American issues was nearly 50/50! Why is this? Is it because American politics are more important, or simply because they are more interesting to write about? If I were to guess, I would say the latter. The posts on viewing American politics from the outside were far more cynical and humorous, presumably because as Canadians, we can laugh at the state of American politics without having to be subject to it. Schadenfreude! 

As a reader, i tend to prefer to look at a bunch of different sources instead of having one single source tell me everything I need to know. I often get lost in long readings or posts, and stop caring after the first little while because I want a change in scenery. I also enjoy humor and something that doesn’t shy away from political incorrectness. Something that will likely offend someone else makes me very interested. I don’t want to offend people, per se, but I think it stimulates better debate.

The first blog I looked at I really did enjoy. It was short, sweet, and snappy. The title says all, small dead animals, was the name of the blog. An award winner for best conservative blog in Canada apparently. Here a link: http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/ . I particularly enjoyed the post about Rush Limbaugh’s verbal attack on a college student for wanting insurance provided contraceptives. He called her a slut and prostitute on the radio and the writer of small dead animals was having none of it. In a post cleverly titled God’s Gift to Democrats she makes fun of the fact that Limbaugh had just made every contraceptive taking woman vote democrat. “idiot“. The woman being called a slut wasn’t spared either, questioning her motives for attending a university with the express purpose of battling its insurance policy. this type of post makes me want to look at this topic more, and i’m able to do it elsewhere because small dead animals makes me laugh and doesn’t waste my time.

Canadian Cynic on the other hand turned me off almost instantly. http://canadiancynic.blogspot.com/ Looked at the title of their first post, The hunt for Patrick Ross, Yeah its On. and i didn’t know who he was and didnt really care. next post. well, i tried to go to the next post by scrolling down but it took me forever. the partick ross post was over 5,000 words long!!! so i read a bit of the post and find out this is a personal vendetta against this man from the blog writer himself!! If you’re going to write a political blog, keep your own personal legal affairs out of it because i don’t care. and especially don’t make it 5,000 words long. The writing is snappy enough, it attacks this Patrick Ross character in a pretty funny way, but again. I don’t care about your personal life. talk about the stuff that would bring me to a blog called ‘canadian cynic’.

So i realize i’ve broken my own rules and wrote a beast of a post. almost 1/10th as long as Canadian cynic’s! so ill put an abridged version for any readers who are as ADD on the internet as i am.

Small dead animals = short posts, funny and clever, makes me read more about a topic elsewhere

Canadian cynic = don’t care about your personal vendetta against some random guy, way way too long

Egyptian pro-democracy workers wait in a holding cell before the hearing.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/02/27/egypt.html

 

This article shows pretty starkly how democracy assistance can be viewed by its recipient nations. Despite the fact that Egypt has undergone a liberation from the tyranny of Mubarak, it is still resentful of those who “stirred unrest” in the regime. These people, most of whom are members of various democracy promoting NGOs who were operating in the area, are on trial for the use of illegal foreign funds to foment unrest.

This shows how democracy assistance and promotion efforts are often resented by those who receive it. It can often seem like a sort of ethical/political paternalism, where the foreign powers are trying the effect the moral revolution to pluralism because the locals obviously can’t do it themselves. But this got me thinking….

Just because Mubarak is gone, and there is a semblance of parliament doesn’t mean that this is a democracy. Military rulers still have power. Perhaps the negative reaction towards the democracy promoters isn’t because of their success at inciting the revolution which ousted Mubarak. Perhaps the military rulers wish to crack down on these NGOs because of the fact they are demonstrably well situated to pressure the current rulers to enact a more democratic form of governance. Civil society groups tend to agree.

“they are part of an orchestrated effort by the generals to silence critics and cripple pro-democracy organizations critical of their handling of what was supposed to be a transition to democracy.”

As most news followers know, Greece is in a democratic pickle. The Greek government views austerity as being the way to tackle the nation’s economic woes, but the people overwhelmingly reject this strategy. How does the government proceed democratically? How does the government proceed intelligently?

I guess this boils down to a debate between the representative and agent views of democracy. Are our elected officials supposed to represent the people, and act as their constituents would act in parliament? Or are our officials supposed to be agents, deciding for us what is the best course of action?

I would say that in this case, the agent definition holds much more water. The fact that Greeks don’t want austerity measures is preposterous. Greeks should consider that politicians should not act on their behalf, but rather for their benefit. This is definitely true in a case where the popular sentiment is economically foolish. Government officials are elected because they have more knowledge and experience in running the country. Let them use it. This is no less democratic.

This is where my academic time and leisure time collide. I have recently started watching the HBO show ‘Rome’ which chronicles Gaius Julius Caesar and his rise to power via the overthrow of the Roman Republic. Unlike alot of the HBO offerings, this one focuses on more than just gore and nudity (although much is present) and instead turns to the political realm, often tackling issues of democracy.

Once Caesar had secured his place as leader of the Roman Republic (or whatever republican elements were left of it), he began a process of reform, all aimed to better suit the needs to the people. It is important to note that throughout his decidedly illegal military coup of Rome, he had the support of the people, and more importantly, their protected representative, the People’s Tribune. This was because the previous Republican government, which was democratic to a point, had sustained a reign of terror to preserve their power, and thus the typical Roman was poor and oppressed. Once firmly in power, land reforms, anti-corruption measures, and public works projects all accompanied his self appointment for life.

The show tells a narrative that few others do. This is one where the general who embarks on a military coup and takeover of civilian democratic government is praised by both the people, and more importantly the script. As far as the tone of the drama goes, Caesar is on the correct moral path, despite the elected politicians who cry over the death of Roman democracy. Unlike the pro-western democratic values and plots which permeate most of today’s pop-culture offerings, it is refreshing to see one which portrays a dictatorship as a good thing. Not necessarily because it is, but rather because it is good to express a multiplicity of views.