Jocelyn McLean's POLI333 Blog

As a pop-culture maniac, one of my favourite things to do is go to midnight premieres. This year will likely be full of them: The Dark Knight Rises, The Avengers, The Amazing Spider-Man, the list goes on. Last Thursday/Friday was the midnight premiere of the Hunger Games, the movie I was probably most excited for this year.

My friends and I showed up at 9:30 and there were already hundreds of people in front of us. Luckily they had just opened another theatre so we swapped our tickets and get prime seats for that. I’m not sure how many of you have read The Hunger Games, or how many of you have seen the film – but it was great, and followed the book to a T. Even though I’ve read the book, I was clinging to my seat the entire time.

Anyways, without going into a boring, detailed review, especially for those of you who haven’t read the book and have no interest in it – I’ll just say that it was great, I enjoyed it, and go see it. It might even be better for those who haven’t read it because you’ll have no idea what’s going to happen.

After a (painfully) long four-ballot race at the NDP convention yesterday, Mr. Thomas Mulcair has won the leadership. His win creates an interesting discussion for Canadian politics. After the embarrassing turnout for the Liberal party last summer, and the defeat of Michael Ignatieff in his own seat, there were questions about whether or not a merger between the NDP and the Liberals was on the horizon. This certainly caused some heated debate in my family, which is mostly split between Liberals and NDPs. My parents, who are die-hard and long-time Liberals, felt a little shocked and betrayed that their own children thought it might be the best option for the left to merge, and stop splitting the vote.

While that conversation seems to have been put on the backburner for a little while, yesterday’s convention brought those issues to the forefront. Mulcair is notoriously centrist in comparison to many of the other candidates for the NDP leadership – that was both his downfall and his saving grace at the convention. Today’s editorial in the Globe & Mail discusses this in relation to Mulcair’s future as leader of the party. The author argues that Mulcair will have to toe a fine line, by pleasing the moderates without alienating the left.

It will be interesting to see how a three-party race will play out in three years with the NDP potentially catering to a larger portion of the public.

A recent poll shows that 8% of Russians see their country as democratic, with another 40% labeling Russia as “partly democratic”.

The article to which I am referring is written by Forbes, and seems to discuss these designations of citizen-identified democracy (or lack thereof) to what the author refers to as “Western style democracy”; that is, free press, freedom of speech, and religious freedoms. This was an interesting description to me as I suppose I assumed that a democracy is a democracy regardless of geographic location.

One specific part of the article of note is the fact that this 8% who see Russia as democratic is increased from 4% in 2010; this number may seem insignificant, but comparatively, it’s double. The article gives credit to Vladimir Putin, who “is still seen as the best man for the job” according to a provided poll. (I would like to criticize the article in this regard, as the article provides results for a poll but does not seem to state anywhere what was actually asked. My best guess is “job approval”.)

As far as I can tell, this significant change in public perception isn’t due to any empirically observed changes in the democratic system according to Freedom House, which states that Russia is not free. Unfortunately the 2011 country reports for Polity IV are not yet available; interestingly, however, the popular measure for democracy has described Russia as democratic since the fall of the Soviet Union.

In what way do new technologies affect democracy? A quick google search on the topic (ah, technology) turned up this article: “Social Media. Good for Revolution. Bad for Democracy?” My issues with the use of punctuation in the title aside, the article raises some interesting points, particularly in distinguishing between technology’s effect on revolutions in comparison to its effect on the creation, or the maintenance, of democratic structures.

There is no doubt that it does have an effect on revolution. Social media websites such as Twitter offer a global platform with which people can come together – internationally – to raise awareness and lobby support for a specific cause. Twitter has been so influential in this regard that in a Wikipedia search of “Twitter Revolution”, four possible options come up. A more recent example can be see with Kony 2012, a campaign that sparked the support – and the outraged, dissenting opinions – of people using Twitter and Facebook. Was the revolution successful? Well, I don’t think many people will forget about Joseph Kony for awhile. On the other hand, it gained massive momentum in its first 24 hours and then halted substantially.

One part of the article sticks out to me in particular, regarding the timing of revolutions in social media. This is particularly important when discussing the development and stability of democracies. As has been discussed in this class, there are a wide variety of competing theories regarding both what a democracy is, and how it came about. This is something of particular interest to me not only in political science (though it’s certainly an important discussion), but in popular culture and in various research topics. Malcolm Gladwell discusses this in his book The Tipping Point; that is, maybe the successful establishment of democracy is due to a variety of factors, the most important of which is timing. The dangers of technology may be their ability to instigate revolution, and potential intervention, before these factors are aligned. As the article argues, this accelerated process may cause instability in development of new governing principles.

After re-reading all of my old blog posts, I’ve decided to re-write this post, mostly because I didn’t go into much depth on the subject. This can be seen based on the fact that is significantly shorter than most of my other posts on the blog. So, here goes:

Recently, I’ve made the decision to change my dietary habits: specifically when it comes to food-consumerism. When I was 6 years old, I became a vegetarian for four years, much to my parents’ horror. In the end I went back to my meat-eating ways, because my doctor told me I was low in iron and I imagine my animal-saving will crumbled in the face of spinach and legumes.

Years later, even after going back to meat, my diet has never really gone back. Don’t get me wrong, I love eating meat. Prime Rib might be my favourite meal of all time. Still, I noticed that I would regularly order vegetarian pizzas, sandwiches, and even veggie burgers when I went out to eat. One day, I ordered a real burger and ate it in front of a friend of mine who was vegetarian. I only finished half of it before offering it to the people I was with. Shockingly, my vegetarian friend took it and ate it.

She explained to me, at this point, that she did not purchase meat for herself because she did not want to contribute to the meat industry. In a case like this, when the meat was going to be put in the garbage, she would rather eat it than see it be put to waste.

I’ve decided to adopt a similar philosophy. There are several reasons to cut meat out of your diet. For me, it’s based on health, financial, and ethical reasons. My new dietary philosophy is that I will not purchase meat, whether it’s from the grocery store or a restaurant. However, I would similarly like to adopt the “no-waste” attitude my friend has. For example, when I visit my aunt and uncle for dinner, I will eat the meat on my plate. If a friend buys a delicious burger and offers me a bite, I will try it.

My last post was for the purpose of finding a term for it. I still haven’t really come up with one. Generally, when people ask, I tell them “I don’t purchase meat” and explain further if I feel the need. I have noticed really positive results since making the change, though, both for my health and my pocketbook. I should note that I still purchase fish: I imagine I would have trouble maintaining a health amount of protein without it.

It’s amazing how creating a Google News category (in this case “democracy”) – and simply paying more attention – can make you feel like the world is revolving around the subject material you’re covering. This week, pro-democracy protests escalated in Bahrain to what has been “the biggest demonstration in the past year” (source). According to the news report, Bahrainis are denouncing dictatorship and protesting to demand democratic reforms.

I don’t know much about the political situation in Bahrain (and by “not much”, I mean I know nothing about the political situation in Bahrain), so if any students in the class are particularly enlightened on the topic I would love to learn more about it. But using some of the handy tools in the class, I checked out its current rating from Freedom House. With a rating of 6 for political rights, and 5 for civil liberties, its current status is “Not free”. According to the Freedom House website, there has been a downward trend in recent years due to a variety of reasons, including assaults and arrests of members of the press and political activists.

According to the article, the government of Bahrain has made recent changes (“pressed by its Western allies”) to allow for peaceful protest. If this is the case, it will be interesting to see how the protests unfold, and in a year’s time, what assessment is given to Bahrain in Freedom House’s 2012 Country Reports.

I guess anyone who doesn’t live in a vaccuum has heard about Limbaugh’s comments by now. A quick rundown anyways:

Several weeks ago, the debate on birth control legislation erupted in the U.S. and became so controversial that even hockey players stepped in with their commentary. This sparked a huge debate on religious freedoms and the separation of church and state, etcetera, which resulted in a hearing called by the House Oversight and Government Reform committee. The hearing was newsworthy due to the fact that there were no women invited to participate in the first panel of witnesses. For a quality and comedic reaction to this “oversight” (pun intended), I encourage all of you to look up Seth Meyers’ and Amy Poehler’s Really?! skit on Saturday Night Live the following weekend.

Finally, in a second panel created for the purpose of including more women (which at this point was any women at all), Sandra Fluke gave testimony, in which she supported birth control coverage being required even by religious organizations. On February 29th, Rush Limbaugh publicly commented on her testimony using some terms I’d prefer not to use in this blog post. His comments resulted in public uproar, but far from apologizing, Limbaugh continued his public attack on Fluke for the following week. On March 3rd, several advertisers pulled their business from his show (source). It was under this pressure it seems that he provided an “apology”, if it can be called that.

This incident brings the topics of public debate and free speech into an interesting light. There was certainly a way for Limbaugh to disagree with Fluke’s comments without attacking her character. It’s easy to advocate for free speech when you’re supporting those who agree with you, but in the end, we all have to learn to tolerate the other side.

With that being said, I refer you all to this epic speech from The American President.