Thursday 15 april was the tv debate sent live on tv. It was the first 90 minutes debate out of three, and was produced by ITV. The main topic of the debate was domestic politics. The debate was between three leaders; Gordon Brown, David Vameron and Nick Clegg.
All the leaders were a bit nervous in the start, but they got in line after debating or "attacking" each other. However, Clegg was the winner of the debate. He had 43% of the votes, Cameron got 26% of the votes and Gordon Brown only got 20% of the votes. This was suprising, but this is how it is.
Clegg won the debate because he had new thoughts. He gave people hope and wanted a change, just like Mr Obama. I think that was the reason why he won the debate.
Before the Easter break we saw the movie "This is England" in class. The movie is about a boy growing up in the 80's in England. The kids name is Shaun and he has a hard time at school, because he is being bullied. He lives with his mom and they are both struggling with the loss of his father. Shaun's father died in the Falklands war.
On the way home from school one day, some older boys are talking to him and that is one of the turning points in his life. Woody is the leader of their gang and he feels bad for the little boy and asks him to join them. The big boys dress him up, cut his hair and take him to parties. He even makes out with a girl, an older girl!
The other turning point in the film is when Combo shows up at a party. Combo went to jail to protect Woody and therefore Combo feel like Woody owe him something. Combo identifies with the little boy Shaun and he becomes some kind of a father figure to him. He introduces nationalistic and racist views and asks the boys to join them in the fight for England. Woody and some of his boys reject the invitation, but Shaun is manipulated by Combo. He says Shaun has to fight for his father, to make him proud. Shaun and two other guys from Woody's gang join the nationalists. They attend meetings and Shaun feels affiliation to a group. Combo has been through a lot in his life and we can tell by the way he's behaving. He is in love with Woody's girlfriend Lol, he opens himself and tell her about his feelings. She rejects him and he looses control. He starts doing drugs and when the black guy Milky (who sold him the drugs) shows up at his apartment, Combo snaps. Beating Milky unconscious and I actually thought he died. The film ends when Shaun throws his belongings which reminded him of Combo on the sea.
The movie is honest and gives us an impression of how the life in England was in the 80's. It brings up themes like bullying, being an outsider and racism. The skinheads were a pretty big subculture in England in the 1980's and they're the focus in this story.
Last English lesson we learned about the debates considering Englishness vs. Britishness and I think this movie shows us the nationalists’ way of thinking. They talk about the feeling of being English and about how the immigrants take their place in the industry.
I really enjoyed the film and felt a lot of sympathy with Shaun. I learned about the way the racist thinks, and that's very interesting.
A general election will take place in the United Kingdom, and the date for the election is expected to be on May 6th. In this election the British people will elect Members of Parliament (MPs) to sit in the House of Commons, and the number of seats in the house will rise from 646 members to 650 members. This is the first election to be faced by the leader of the Labour Party Gordon Brown as Prime Minister, and it is also the first election for his main opponent; the leader of the Conservative Party David Cameron.
This election is very important because it gives the parties an opportunity to strengthen their position if their party members are elected to the House of Commons. The governing Labour Party and their main opponent, the Conservative Party, will both seek dominance in the House of Commons. While the Labour Party wishes to secure their dominance for another period, the Conservative Party seeks to regain its dominant position. The third biggest Party in the United Kingdom, The Liberal Democrats, has more realistic ambitions than to wish for enough support to be able to form their own government. They want to balance the power in the House of Commons so they are hoping for MPs from several different parties rather than many from one of the two dominant parties. It’s not only the big parties who have ambitions to get a lot of their members elected as MPs. The Scottish National Party have a goal to get at least 20 MPs and they have ambitions to gain more political power. The election mean a great deal to other smaller parties as well because it is an opportunity for them to gain representation in the House of Commons and strengthen their political position.
The election campaign in Britain have to last at least three weeks, and during this general election campaign the media will play a much bigger part than before. The media have always covered political events like general elections before, but during this election there will be three 90-minute debates with the different party leaders on live TV. The first one will be on ITV1, the second on Sky News and the last on BBC One. This give the public an opportunity to ask the party leaders questions about everything they want to know before they make up their mind about who they want to give their vote to.
There are some rules for the debates. The first half of each debate is themed, and subjects like health, education, international matters and economy will be discussed. The last half of the debates will be “free debate”, and the audience can ask questions about whatever they want. People at home can also send in an e-mail with a question they like to get answered. In the opening of the debate each leader will make a one-minute opening statement on the theme of the debate. They get one minute to answer each question and one minute to respond to the answers.
Most people seems positive to the TV-debates and this is the response from the leaders from the three biggest parties:
“I want to set out my vision for the future of this country. I am so optimistic about this country's future that I want to debate the big issues and I want to show that we are best for jobs, for the health service, for the public services as a whole, for tackling anti-social behavior and for dealing with the economy.”(Gordon Brown, Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party)
“I think people have got a right to look at the people putting themselves forward as our next Prime Minister and to see the choice, then they can make up their own minds.”(David Cameron, leader of the Concervvative Party)
“The debates are a huge opportunity to reconnect people with politics”. (Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats)
In the United States, the media have played a huge role in political elections for several years and the media coverage of an election campaign can have huge influence on the people. The first presidential debates held on TV in USA was during the presidential election in 1960 between Republican Richard Nixon and Democrat John F. Kennedy. The TV-debates attracted great publicity, and many people thought that Kennedy looked better on television than Nixon. This might have influences the election, because Kennedy was elected to be president. The media played a big part during the last presidential election in USA as well. The party leaders showed up to debates on TV and they used internet and the media to get out to people. News papers and TV-stations wrote a lot about the different candidates, and they commented on everything the candidates said, and of course they had a big influence on their readers and viewers. Many thought that the media was more supportive of Obama than of McCain. Many were angry at the media, and they felt that the media’s representation of the two candidates was biased and unfair. In the documentary “Right America: Feeling Wronged – Some Voices from the Campaign Trial”.Republicans talk about how they felt that the media ruinedfor McCain and many of them seems angry because they feel like the media influenced a lot of people to vote for Obama rather than for McCain
Question time last for an hour every Monday to Thursday and it is the members of Parliament’s opportunity to ask the Government Ministers questions. The Ministers are obligated to answer.There are different times for the different subjects and issues, questions asked directly to the Prime Minister are asked at Wednesday between 12:00 and 12:30. Wednesday 24 February, I got the opportunity to attend Question Time and to be a part of the circus when the prime minister is answering questions from Parliament.
The tension in the room was tense, but Gordon Brown was very calm. He started by sending condolences to everybody who have lost someone in the war in Afghanistan. The people in the room calmed down and he was ready to start the questions. He talks slowly which is an intentional measure, and the people pay more attention and they are concentrating on what he is saying. There are not at all people yelling, disagreeing or agreeing, this means that he has more respect than the other politicians. Because they are shouting their opinions out whenever they feel like it, but not when Brown is talking. The man questioning him in the start is David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Party, is not at all as articulate as Brown. Cameron has an arrogant behavior and is criticizing Brown in every question and some of his questions occur to me as irrelevant. It seemed like he did not know enough about the subjects brought up and by avoiding to show that to the people, he made fun of Brown.
All questions considering the Prime Minister was answered, but Cameron had several irrelevant statements, which was not really anything for Brown to answer.
There are very heated debates, people shouted out their opinions on every subject. It is very common to shout out what you think in these debates, which might be rude in other relations. The debates have always been like this and the system is very old fashion, but it works for them. The speaker broke in some times to settle the people, but the Ministers did not show much respect for each other. They are not only interrupting each other, but are mocking their opponent.
The general election must take place before or on 3 June 2010, and different examinations say the Conservative are going to win the election. That is only popularity polls now, and we will continue on following the Labour Party during the nest months.
In class today we saw the movie "Charlie Wilson's war" and it was about Charlie Wilson's life and how he fought for Afghanistan in the Cold War.
The movie portray Charlie Wilson(played by Tom Hanks) as a man who drinks a lot of scotch, he is always up for something fun, but he is still very serious when he has to be. He is a Texas congressman and likes his job because the people of Texas doesn't really fight for much, they only wants to lower the taxes and keep their right for guns. Charlie is quite a player, but he is weak for Joanne(played by Julia Roberts). She is very engaged in Afghanistan and knows she has a big influence on Charlie. When Charlie goes to Afghanistan and see their conditions, something changes in him. The Afghanistan people are fighting the US's war, without any ammunition or training what so ever. Charlie knows that he can change this and that's what he is fighting for.
I understood a lot more about the conflict after watching the movie. In fact, I didn't even know the war in Afghanistan was going on at the time, it is very embarrassing to admit. I thought the cold war was just threats going on between the US and the Soviet Union. Now I know that the Afghanistan war that is still going on, started already back then.
I enjoyed the movie because it was entertaining and educational at the same time. Charlie Wilson is a good example on how one person can make a big difference. Charlie m
anaged to raise the amount of money supported from the US to Afghanistan from 5 million to 500 million. Without Charlie Wilson the world history would probably be very different. In the end of the movie we see Charlie Wilson talking tothe US secret service and they are complimenting him for his good work. He is proud of what he accomplished, but is aware of the challenges facing Afghanistan. They won't listen to him when he says they have to continue helping Afghanistan, and that is probably the main reason of the conditions in Afghanistan today.
This is the real Charlie Wilson who fought for Afghanistan during the cold war.
Primaries - winner - national convention - nomination - vice president/ platform - campaign - election (people) - election (electoral college) - president Primaries are held in most states and these are state wide elections to choose a state party nominee for president. The winner of each state is guaranteed a delegation in the national convention. The primaries proceed and are reduced to two or three candidates. At the national convention, the final candidate for president is elected.Thecreation of a party "platform" is the team of candidates running for President and Vice President in the fall election. The serious campaigning starts in September till the first voting day, the first Tuesday in November. The campaigns are huge and a lot of money are spend and a lot of promises are made. The President and Vice President are not elected by the popular vote. Each state has it's own election and the winner takes it all from that state. Depending on how bug the state is and how many citizens there are, they get a number of congressmen in Parliament. The congressmen represent their states in votes. There are 435 congressmen in the US, 100 senators and 3 from the District of Columbia, these people are the 538 electoral voters and a candidate must have a majority of these votes, that's 270 votes to win the election.
In school today, we were working on American politics. We worked in a different way than what we're used to. The class were collaborating and divided into the following groups: Front desk, research group, journalists, teachers and designers. I was in the research group with Karoline and Mikkel, we split the pages in the book by topics and I got the topic "Electing a president." At first I read about it and I searched on the internet to gather more information. I sent the information to the journalists, and they worked on rewriting, but they were not satisfied with our job, so I wrote a summery from the text in the book. I am going to post my summery as an individual blog post.
The front desk's job was to organize people and give deadlines and just talk to the different groups and make sure they didn't have any problems.
The research group's job was to find material and send it to the other groups.
The journalists' job was to write blogs about the material.
The teachers' job was to make a test and criteria for the test.
The designers' job was to make glogs and photostory with the material.
I think this way of working is not the most effective way to work, there are too many people involved and working on the same topics and it is kind of confusing. It has been fun to try out, but I don't think that this is a way that we will learn the most in. We were supposed to work in groups of two, but Ann changed her mind. I think we would learn more if we did work in that way, but it has been interesting and I know very well how they elect their president in the US.
This semester we are going to read a book in class. We got to choose between two books and most of us chose "The road" written by Cormac McCarthy. So far, I have only read the first 50 pages and I am still waiting for something to happen. It is about a man and his son who are walking through a burned destroyed landscape. We have not been told yet what has happened to the world. They are alone, but still afraid of meeting other desperate survivors. They are walking south, trying not to freeze to death in the snowy winter. All they have is a gun to protect themselves and a cart packed with some of their belongings and food.
The book is written in a difficult language and I did not quite understand the text until I had read a lot. Usually I would probably just have put the book away because it takes a long time to really understand what they are doing and I still don't know why they are walking. A brief explanation on why the landscape surrounding them are destroyed would make the book more interesting, I think.
When they are walking, they come to their old house and the father's home from the childhood. This gives him flashbacks from the earlier days, and these stories helps to keep my interest in the book, because they are something else than two people walking along a road. The names of the two people in the book are unknown and that makes it hard to relate to the people. That is probably an important decision made by the author, but I think the book would be easier to understand and relate to if we knew the names of the characters.
Ann has told us that the book will be more interesting once you get by the first 50 pages, and I am looking forward to read some action! I will probably write more about the book in the next weeks.
Last Tuesday we watched a documentary called Right America: Feeling Wronged - some voices from the Campaign Trail. Alexandra Polesi followed the McCain campaign and talked to the republicans who have very strong feelings about who runs the country. In the documentary we meet people who truly hate Obama.
The republicans we meet are the most extreme republicans and they are even very Christian or middle class from the country, and many of them are middle class, very Christians who live on the country. They believe that Obama doesn't have enough experience to be a president representing the entire country. They can't relate to him at all, some of them are very old-fashion and are not ready for a black president. The republicans call themselves the real Americans and Obama is not one of them. In the documentary they visited 28 states and I were surprised to see all of the people crying when they talked about Obama, small children certain that America will go under if Obama wins and churches encouraging not to vote for Obama.
Some of them have good arguments for not voting on Obama. The taxes will strike the small businesses and the middle class. Some are very Christian and are against abortion and gay rights and marriage, but most of them seem like they just don't like the person Obama and his politics is irrelevant to them.
The republicans feel like they're not heard and that everything in the media are focusing on Obama. The only channel who is objective is Fox news channel and I can see why this is frustrating. The media is especially slaughtering Sarah Palin, because she makes a lot of comments that makes her seem stupid.
"Nobama" is a slogan that is to see all over the country. I was very surprised when I was watching the documentary, how much the American engage in the election and how much feelings that are related to the subject. I can't even imagine how these people reacted when Obama won, and I don't think that these extreme feelings about politics are possible to find in Norway.
In the next weeks, we will be working on our senior project. I have chosen to write about Obama and compare his popularity in the US and in Europe. I will be answering the following questions: Why is he having problems on the popularity poll? Why do Europeans like Obama better than the Americans?
I chose this topic because I find it interesting that he is more popular outside of his own country. This will be a good opportunity for me to learn about Obama's politics and the people's reaction to his decisions.
In this semester I will work on preparing for class and pay more attention to the topics we are working on.I want to be prepared to the final exams, so that is my motivation for paying extra attention this semester. The topics we learn about in this class are all important to know something about. And it might be an advantage to studies later in my life.
When it comes to the election of a president, you'd think that they would gather the votes from all the people in the US, but that is not how it works. The different states are defined as real states. The people vote in the state they live in and the presidential candidate with the most votes wins the votes from that state. The number of electors from each state is equal to its total representation in Congress. Each state has two senators and congressmen. The states are divided into districts and the numbers of congressmen represent the number of districts in that particular state. It is like this to make sure that a state with a small number of inhabitants does not have the same influence than a bigger state. But the result doesn't always represent the majority of the US. That is because small states are overrepresented compared to the number of inhabitants in the bigger states.
The electors from each state are voting on the same candidate and that represent the majority of the people in the state they are representing. This can be compared to "the winner takes it all" that we talked about in British politics. It is like this because in 1787 when the system was made up they couldn’t gather all votes from all of America because it is such a big country. The people from each state would send a person they relied on to represent them and their votes. There are other tracks from the history in the way of voting. For example they are waiting 41 days to formally declare the winner. The 41 days gave them time to assemble, discuss the candidate and send their decision to Washington DC.
The big states are very important to the candidates because they have a bigger amount of electors. In the US there are 435 congressmen, 100 senators and 3 electors from the District of Columbia. That means there are 538 electoral votes and a candidate has to get over a half of these. The magic number of votes is 270. In 2008 Barack Obama was the first African American to be an American president. He won the election with 365 electoral votes and 52,9 % of the popular vote.
Obama won the Nobel peace prize in 2009 and we have been focusing a lot on Obama this semester, so we analyzed the speech and answered some questions about the speech. He is a very good speaker and people says that the speech he held in due to the peace prize is the best speech he ever held, so far.
What was the Marshall Plan?
The Marshall Plan was the primary program, 1948-52, of the United States for rebuilding and creating a stronger economic foundation for the countries of Western Europe, and repelling the threat of internal communism after World War 2.
Why is Obama humbled by this award?
He feel humbled because he haven’t really done anything to deserve the price yet, and the fact that he is actually the Commander in chief in two wars is also very special for a peace prize winner. He is very humbled by this award, I think, because he doesn’t feel that worthy to be in the same category as many of the peace prizes previously winners – at least not yet.
Who was Woodrow Wilson and why was he awarded the Nobel peace prize?
He was the 28th President of The United States. In the late stages of the war, Wilson took personal control of negotiations with Germany, including the armistice. He issued his Fourteen Points, his view of a post-war world that could avoid another terrible conflict. He went to Paris in 1919 to create the League of Nations and shape the Treaty of Versailles, with special attention on creating new nations out of defunct empires. Largely for his efforts to form the League, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Who are some of the previous winners that he mentions?
Nelson Mandela, Marthin Luther King, Aung Sang Suu Kyi, Schweitzer, Marshall, Henry Dunant, Dr Henry Kissinger og Mr Le Duc Tho.
According to Obama, what is a just reason for war?
That sometimes you have to fight for peace, and that even though Ghandi and King’s non-violence plan is admirable, that’s not always enough and war might in some cases be necessary to gain peace. He explains the war in Iraq and Afghanistan as a war for peace because the war against terror will provide a possible World War 3.
What are Obama’s 3 ways to avoid war and keep the peace?
- We need a common law and defend those who suffer when these laws are not obeyed.
-Human Rights have to be central in every country, and it is important that every nation is a part of it.
-Obama sais that peace is not just the absence of war - and it is important to get this complete peace. “For true peace is not just freedom for fear, but freedom from want.”
What “old architecture” is buckling?
Old kinds of threats isn’t that intimidating anymore as the new threats such as nuclear weapons facing the world today.
What does Obama mean by a “gradual evolution of human institutions”? Where is this quote from?
This quote is from President Kennedy and he means that they want to achieve peace by gradual evolution of human institutions and not by a sudden revolution.
Why can’t Obama be guided by the example of King and Gandhi alone?
Because he says that war sometimes is necessary to gain peace.
