Nutcases and psychopaths, ore real Americans?

In 2008 during the presidential election journalist and documentary filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi made a HBO documentary called Right America: Felling wronged -- Some Voices From the Campaign Trail. In the documentary Pelosi follows the John McCain campaign and interviews mostly conservatives who didn’t wanted to have Barack Obama as there president. Many of the statements in the documentary are hateful and racist. The documentary shows how ignorance and religion can encourage these hateful and racist statements.

For instance There is a young guy who carries a T-shirt where he have written “No to Socilism," When Pelosi tells him he's misspelled socialism and asks him to define it, the boy says "basically, it's like the views of Hitler. It's between like communism and -- I don't know what the other word is."

There is one clip from a church where the priest takes a political stand, and encourages the congregation to vote for the Republican Party.

If you are interest in religions role in American check out this the documentary also made by HBO and Pelosi.

After watching both documentaries I think that Pelosi has a very peculiar way to make documentaries. She almost only films short interviews with people, where they come with some short statements. Pelosi does not take us viewers too these peoples’ homes, or show us why these people think what they think. I find Pelosi’s documentaries quite superficial and I wish that she had gone more “in depth” during her work with the documentary.

However Pelosi raises many interesting issues, and she manages too show us the fact that America is a diverse country with many different citizens. And let us not forget, there are over 50 million people in America who don’t want Obama as their president. Some of them are right-wing extremists, who have meanings that are hateful and racist. An issue that I find quite scary is those right-wing extremists get more and more support here in Europe. There have never been as many right-wing extremist in the European Parliament as now. And the same politicians get more and more support in countries all over Europe.

By the way, Alexandra Pelosi is Nancy Pelosi’s daughter. Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.

Senior project - Afghanistan

This semester the whole class will write a senior project. All students are free to choose any topic from English Social studies. I have always had an interest for security and development policy.

My topic is therefore as following:

Analyse one regional ore international conflict, where one ore more English speaking country are involved.

The conflict I have chosen to analyse is a both a regional and an international conflict. The conflict is located in Afghanistan, but over 40 different countries participate in a global initiative to create stability and security in the region. This is done through the International Security Force (ISAF). ISAF was created after a request from the Security Council. ISAF is now lead by NATO, but FN is still strongly involved in the region, to improve the conditions for the Afghanistan population and create development in the country.

Over the last years FN and ISAF have been strongly criticized for their work in Afghanistan. Here in Norway one of the governing parties, SV, even wants to withdraw the Norwegian troops from the region.

My allegation to my senior project is as following:

After FN and ISAF’s work in Afghanistan, the living conditions for the Afghan people are now worse.

I will probably make my allegation more specific during my work. A part of the task during the senior project is also to evaluate the working process. I will therefore create more post later on in the working process, so stay tuned!

Elections in Britain - is it fair?

Elections in Britain - is it fair?

After the 2005 election this was the result:

Party	UK share of vote	Share of seats in the House of Commons
Labour	35.3%	55%
Conservative	32.3%	30.7%
Liberal Democrats	22.1%	9.6%

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The Labour party only got 35,3% of the total votes in the UK. This means that 64,7% of the voters didn’t vote for the Labour party and still they got majority rule in the House of Commons. This is possible in Great Britain because the voters elect one representative from their constituencies. The representative represent his ore here constituencies in The house of commons. The house of commons is almost like the Norwegian Stortinge. They are both their countries budgetary and legislative assembly.

The elected representatives are called Members of Parliament (MPs). When the constituencies elect there Mp the winner takes it all. The votes which the losing parties may get are turn down. That’s why it is possible for parties in Great Britain to get many votes and still get little influence in The House of Commons. Because of the huge difference between the parties’ votes in the national scale and their influence in the House of Commons some people think that Great Britain is undemocratic.

A way to make Great Britain more democratic can be to induce direct democracy. Another solution can be to exchange the voting system with constituencies to one national voting system. However, then it is more likely that the power would be divided onto more parties and it is also likely that parties would be forced to form a coalition government. It is harder for a coalition government to form a clear policy.

The American goverment - A lecture by Lee Ann Potter

Today Lee Ann Potter visited our class and had a lecture about how the government in America is build up. Lee Ann potter is a director of education and volunteer programs at the U.S. National Archives in Washington, DC. Thanks to the Fulbright Commission Potter is working in Norway this year as a Roving Scholar of American Studies. Click here to see here blog. This is my summary of Potters lecture:

The American form of government was written down in a Constitution which was adopted in 1787. The American Constitution is the oldest Constitution still in use and it has only been emended 17 times. The Constitution establishes some main points. They are as follow. The united states of America have a representative democracy to make sure that the powers are in the hands of the people. Every states have only given certain specific powers to a central government. This is known as Federal System ore Federalism. The power in the central government ore the federal government have been divided in three. All the branches keeps track of the other two so none of them grow to powerful ore abuse there power. This system is known as the Seperation of powers. The term Separation of powers is known as Maktfordelingsprinsippet in Norway and was inspired by the French philosopher Charles-Louis Montesquieu (1680 - 1755). Montesquieu’s theory about the Separation of powers was not only a inspiration in the making of the American Constitution , but also in the making of the Norwegian Constitution in 1814. Today, all the modern democratic societies have divided there power in different branches. In America the congress is the legislative power, the president is the executive power and the Supreme Court is judicial power.