Mini-Assignment (8): Polishing an old post

March 11th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink

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.

Democracy In The News (8): Protests in Bahrain

March 10th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink

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.

Elective Post (8): Rush Limbaugh

March 4th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink

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.

Democracy In The News (7): Voter Suppression

February 27th, 2012 § 1 comment § permalink

This Democracy-In-The-News post is coming to you guys a little late – I have unfortunately been out of commission for a few weeks and have fallen behind. The good news is, it’s a good week to write three posts on Democracy in the News, as plenty seems to be happening in the world.

I figured I’d kick off my catch-up-blogging by discussing the recent voter suppression controversy that has been dominating the news. This issue is, obviously, incredibly pertinent to our class material. Voter suppression would be a serious infringement on the freedoms that are inherent to a “true democracy”, as outlined by basically every measure of democracy discussed in this class. This particular blog post will discuss this article in the Vancouver Sun. For those of you who don’t know – though I am sure you all do – voters in certain districts reported receiving phone calls sending them to incorrect (or non-existant) polling stations. In the article, MP Pat Martin is quoted discussing the fundamental freedom of free and fair elections – and, importantly within that quote, free and fair elections “without interference”. The article makes reference to the illegality of interference in the Elections Act, although (irritatingly) did not provide a link or reference a specific section of the act in which it says this.

Thank goodness for google, I found it here, under provision 281(g), stating:

No person shall, inside or outside of Canada, willfully prevent or endeavour to prevent an elector from voting at an election.

It may seem obvious enough to us in a democratic system, but pending the results of an investigation into this situation, this country may be in need of a reminder.

Elective Post (4): Dear Post-Apocalyptic Generation

February 6th, 2012 § 2 comments § permalink

This elective blog post is, in fact, a shameless promotion of a project I’m running at another blog. Last week a friend of mine mentioned how crazy it would be if, after the supposedly impending apocalypse, a post-apocalyptic generation found a copy of The Hunger Games and thought it was a document about the way things were. This started the development of this project, which I refer to as “Dear Post-Apocalyptic Generation”.

The project consists of letters to this hypothetical future generation about things that we think they should find important or interesting about the pre-apocalyptic population. I feel like this project is especially relevant to this class. This week’s mini-assignment, for example, was to describe democracy to a politically-savvy relative. Imagine trying to explain politics, or democracy, or elections to a generation of people who had never heard of it.

Anyways, I do mention this project purely for the purpose of self-promotion. The link to the blog is generationpostapocalypse.wordpress.com, if any of you would like to check it out and maybe submit your own letter.

Assignment (4): Describing Democracy

February 5th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink

“So what is democracy, anyways?”

If I were to be asked this question by a politically astute distant relative, my first reaction would be to say that seeing as how much smarter minds than me have been unable to reach a consensus on the answer to this question, it’s unlikely I’d be able to enlighten her over dinner. But I would give it a try.

First, I would explain to her the different ways to conceptualize democracy. Personally, I prefer minimalist definitions, as they allow you to move up and down the “ladder of generality”, as discussed by Collier and Levitsky. To me, the minimalist definition of democracy would be free and fair elections, and the protection of civil liberties. Ideally, these liberties would extend to all citizens equally.

In my opinion, this is the most troubling part of democracy for me. As discussed in class, surely a line has to be drawn somewhere in the extension of these democratic rights to a country’s citizens. Age is a key example of this. If we let two year olds go to the polls, we can expect that other people would be manipulating their decisions, as we can’t expect them to inform themselves. So where is this line? Why is it that we feel that an 18-year-old can make a more informed decision in the electoral process than a 17-year-old?

The purpose of democracy is both to give citizens the opportunity to choose their leaders, but also to protect them from the leaders they choose. In Canada, for example, The Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects Canadian citizens from the potential actions of elected government.

At the end of the discussion with this distant relative I would, of course, refer her to take POLI333 at UBC.

Elective Post (3): Word Search

January 29th, 2012 § 1 comment § permalink

I made the decision recently to stop purchasing meat – though I do continue to purchase fish. To a certain extent, then, I am a pescetarian, though I hesitate to call myself that because I will eat meat that I do not purchase. For example, if I go to my aunt’s house for dinner and she cooks steak, I’ll eat it; but I won’t purchase it for myself, either in a restaurant or a grocery store. At first my instinct was to call myself a freegan, but upon further research I realized that is more in-tune with a politically-motivated dumpster-diving.

Unfortunately, I was not blessed with the gift of creativity: so the purpose of this post is for people to suggest possible names for this eating practice.

Democracy In The News (3): The State of the Union

January 29th, 2012 § 1 comment § permalink

President Obama’s State of the Union address this week primarily addressed economic issues, briefly touching on foreign policy. Interestingly, with the unemployment rate still incredibly high, the president did not focus as much on an economic action plan to deal with the state of the economy, but rather addressed the significant income disparities within the state. It’s an interesting topic of choice, considering the widespread Occupy protests across not only the United States, but Canada as well. Obama stated that that those who make over $1 million a year (or as the Wall Street protesters call it, “the 1%”) should be paying a tax rate of at least 30%, and should be forgoing unneeded tax deductions.

For any of you who read my post on SOPA last week, I discuss the surprising power of protest. I never got fully on board with the Occupy protests, as I found them too vaguely targeted to understand how they would affect anything at all. While Obama’s inclusion of the idea in his speech was surely politically motivated more than ideologically so, it’s interesting to see political protest having much of an impact at all.

President Obama’s brief address of foreign policy included the plan to use $200 billion of the peace dividend to pay for the construction of much-needed infrastructure in Afghanistan and Iraq in their post-war states. I’ll be interested to follow this further for the purpose of democratic analysis, as so-called “transitioning” democracies have been argued to be incredibly unstable and dangerous.

Assignment (3):

January 29th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink

Collier and Levitsky introduce an interesting method of defining democracy through the use of adjectives, which allows for differentiation between types of democracy while “avoiding conceptual stretching”. They do so by using a minimalist definition of democracy, which will be addressed later on in the post, and placing it within Sartori’s “ladder of generality” in order to organize concepts. Theoretically speaking, if democracy is in the middle of this ladder, moving up on the ladder of generality would have less defining attributes (and therefore more generality), and moving down on the ladder would include more defining attributes. For the purpose of their analysis, they define democracy procedurally: that is, defining the necessary procedures of democracies rather than the outcomes. Their minimal definition includes the following procedural attributes: contested elections, full suffrage, and guarantee of civil liberties.

“Democracies with adjectives” are then types of democracies described with a specific adjective to differentiate between them, without stretching or changing the defining attributes of the concept of democracy itself. For example, parliamentary democracies and presidential democracies both have have the attributes necessary to be considered a democracy, but are undeniably different in structure. These would then be placed lower on the ladder of generality, as they have more specifically defining attributes. Collier and Levitsky refer to these as “classical subtypes”. The classical subtype of parliamentary democracy is discussed in this Winnipeg Free Press editorial, which is highly critical of the Canadian government’s intentions to put committee meetings “behind closed doors”. Her use of the term “parliamentary democracy” was specifically in reference to the proroguing of government in 2008.

Another level of differentiation is “diminished subtypes”. Unlike classical subtypes, these are democracies that are specifically defined by what aspect they are missing from the root concept of democracy. Illiberal democracies, for example, are characterized by missing the core attribute of civil liberties. This article in the news this week uses the diminished subtype of illiberal democracy as an example in defining where Turkey is heading. As the author argues, to a certain extent Turkey is getting more democratic (with “the power of ballots being consolidated”); on the other hand, journalists are being imprisoned, limiting civil liberties such as free speech.

Elective Post (2): Academy Awards

January 28th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink

The Golden Globe awards are often considered to be a ratings-grab. Every year, the HFPA nominates a variety of big names – some of which are deserving of nominations, some of which are not. Last year’s nomination of Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie for the critically panned The Tourist is one example; this year’s nomination (and win) for Madonna is another. On the other hand, the Globes spark a debate amongst critics, Academy members, and pop-culture enthusiasts considering who is deserving and who is not, and by the time the winners are announced, a pretty clear picture appears of who will be nominated at the Academy Awards.

Every year, though, there are a few surprises. Last year I didn’t care too much about these dark horses, since I was too focused on my devout appreciation for The Social Network to care much about the other nominees. This year, however, I found myself more confused than affirmed when I read through the nomination list.

Actor In A Leading Role: If you had asked me on Monday evening who would be nominated, I would have said the following: Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Gary Oldman, Jean Dujardin, and Michael Fassbender. If I had guessed which one might be omitted, I would have said Gary Oldman – not because he’s undeserving, but because he wasn’t considered for the Golden Globes. I never would have guessed that Michael Fassbender would be cut for Demian Bichir of A Better Life. First of all, A Better Life wasn’t on anyone’s radar for awards season – meaning that Bichir must have done an impressive, but silent, Oscar campaign behind the scenes. Second of all, Michael Fassbender has been everywhere this year, with critically acclaimed performances left, right, and centre. I love Michael Fassbender, so, needless to say – I’m disappointed.

Actress In A Leading Role: The Academy seems to make it a habit these days to nominate one young person for either Best Actor or Best Actress. This year the fight was between Shailene Woodley and Rooney Mara – though, considering the Golden Globes, Woodley seemed to have the edge. I don’t think Mara is undeserving of a nomination based on her performance. I can’t say I’ve been impressed with her attitude, though. The real fight for this award comes down to Michelle Williams and Meryl Streep.

Directing: I was hoping that David Fincher might get a nomination after he (unfairly) lost to Tom Hooper last year, but, unfortunately not.

Best Picture: A lot of changes have happened at the Academy recently in terms of Best Picture nominations. A few years ago they jumped from 5 nominations to 10 nominations; this year they changed it to “up to 10”, without nominating anything that received less than five percent. That being said, the Academy seems to be a little confused this year, because apparently more than five percent of the Academy voted for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The movie was poorly received by critics, with my favourite review stating:

“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” is the kind of movie you want to punch in the nose.

So, needless to say, it’ll be another interesting year at the Academy Awards this year. I’m ready to see some good campaigning by the nominees – including a possible engagement between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

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