PR for Canada

I've been spending a fair bit of personal energy advocating Canadian electoral reform. Currently Canada is still burdened with the archaic First Past the Post electoral system, which New Zealand scrapped in 1993.

Canada has a multiplicity of ethnic and migrant voices which are simply not being represented under the current system. There is a substantial concentration of indigenous population in the the Western and Northern provinces, an enormous Ukrainian settlement in Edmonton and rural Alberta which has been there for around 100 years, but is constantly pushed aside by the Conservative vote, and the most multicultural city in the world, Toronto.

Numerous parliaments have collapsed in recent years. The FPP system is struggling to function as coalition governments are pieced together - something the system is not designed for. The Canadian vote is demanding fair representation, the current system is no longer working, and Canada now faces the prospect of a potential fourth general election in five years. Canada is to benefit from Proportional Representation.

If you're keen to support Canadian's in their struggle to get their votes heard, a simple start would be to join the Fair Vote Canada facebook group, and visit their website.

Kia Ora Helen

In a great piece of propaganda, Liberian officials have glowing things to say about the work UNDP Helen Clark is doing on her first visit to their nation:

It's refreshing to hear positive things about Clark after her months of bashing by New Zealand media during her final term as Prime Minister. Unsure about the dramatic music though.

A System Fighting Itself?

In the United States seven Democrats have written a letter to the Director of the C.I.A, Leon Panetta accusing the agency of knowingly 'deceiving' Congress (on classified matters) since 2001 until June 2009. If true, this wouldn't be surprising.

My knowledge of American Politics is limited, but I can say this much:

The Post-Bush American bureaucracy is vast, enormous in fact with the C.I.A. and Department for Homeland Security two of it's biggest institutions/departments. There are so many institutions now within the American bureaucratic machine struggling and fighting for stronger political influence that it is to be expected by a cynic (such as myself) that agencies act autonomously against others.

This has been used as a bit of a gag in pop culture. For instance, how many Hollywood cop movies have we seen where the likeable but hard-nosed detective curses the F.B.I. for overtaking his crime scene, before the F.B.I. curse the C.I.A. for confiscating the case off them? How many war films where the Army has scoffed at the Navy's authority? Institutional conflict and autonomy can be a fun tool for entertainment, but it's somewhat darker when applied to real life... when the C.I.A. uses its autonomy to deceive Congress.

I think the matter is a valuable opportunity to ask some questions about the American bureaucracy, the shape of which has changed little since Obama became President in January:

• Is this what the American forefathers intended as 'checks and balances' in the system?

• If government agencies can willfully withold information from the legislature for eight years, how can we believe that - for example - the leader of the executive has the power to influence government institutions to act according to the agenda of the administration, if that insitution is a) as powerful as the C.I.A. and b) has interests that conflict with those of the administrations?
  
  
• To boil it down: With these two questions in mind, is the American bureaucracy efficient and - more importantly - cooperative enough to be trusted to act in a consistently responsible and Democratic manner?
  

If the seven Democrats who are so adament that the C.I.A. has been shamelessly lying to Congress for practically the entire two terms of the Bush Administration are indeed correct, it seems the answer to these questions are cynical.

And the consequences are real life... An agency that supposedly allows Waterboarding of Terror Suspects without Congressional consent comes to mind.

Two Interesting Ideas

I have finally got around to watching two of the most discussed documentaries of recent times: Ross Kemp on Gangs: New Zealand, and Loose Change: An American Coup.

Some quick conclusions :

Ross Kemp

Kemp provides a valuable introduction and mild insights into gang (namely Mongrel Mob) culture in New Zealand. But I couldn't help but conclude that his personal approach contained all of the character of TV3's Money Man. The fact that the documentary was made with an eye on the *gasp* factor for it's British audience was horribly transparent. Kemp does well in his investigations, but is too uneducated in both New Zealand and Maori culture and history to ever really venture beyond the 'introduction' stage. And I very much disliked his conclusion, during which he describes his shock at 'discovering pockets of such savagery in such a civilised nation' (to paraphrase). It seems some discourse doesn't even change in four hundred years. However, having said this he manages to handle the subject with integrity and from an appropriate and (for the most part) objective angle. I would like to see the same subject approached similarly from a New Zealand journalist with an education on New Zealand and Maori culture, for a New Zealand public. The documentary had real merit.

Loose Change

A believable bundle of ideas delivered in an unconvincing package. The documentary attempts to argue that the US Government has lied about all the events of September 11th, 2001, and it was infact the Government which planned and executed the attacks on the WTC, Pentagon, and the 'crash' of Flight 93. The documantry provides evidence that both the North and South Towers of the WTC were brough down from explosions originating in the basement; the Pentagon was struck not by a plane, but by a cruise missile; and that Flight 93 never crashed but landed safetly in Cleveland. It does so with media analysis, scientific invesitgation, and exploiting inconsistencies with supposedly hard evidence that the attacks were executed by terrorists. Once such example of this is an argument that phone calls made from passengers on all four aeroplanes to their loved ones were faked, and constructed by the government using voice-morphing technology.

As I said, much of this evidence is believable. But it is thrown together in such a rag-tag way that it looks as though the producers were glossing over noticable holes in their arguments. Namely, they don't take into consideration any alternatives, which is highly detrimental to the credibility of their argument. The compilation of evidence for their argument consisted of practically anything and everything they could find thrown together, sometimes without explanation for it's inclusion in the debate. So much time is spent trying to draw links between the events and the government, that they never focus enough on what they're actually talking about to concrete their arguments, and thus making the arguments appear silly. Perhaps the filmmakers fell victim for their passion about the subject. Overall, I would suggest this documentary for anyone who has a spare 120 minutes and can't be bothered doing their own research.