Sunday, October 29, 2006

The Land of the Free

The links to Electoral-Vote.com on the right-hand side will alert you to the fact that the People's Republic takes a keen interest in major elections on the other side of the pond. As part of Britain, it usually decides our foreign policy. Despite their break with an unelected head-of-state however, you cannot help feeling the American's just do not get democracy.

Take this link. It reminds me off the story of the Bush campaign using pictures of John McCain with his adopted Vietnamese daughter to the same effect in the primaries of 1999 when things were going bad for the President-in-waiting. As the writer of electoral-votes.com points out, normally elections are decided on taxation, education, health and foreign policy - but not in America.

Meanwhile on YouTube VideotheVote.com are among the featured links on the front page. They operated in 2004 with some interesting stories but received little coverage from the mainstream media, leaving it to sites like michaelmoore.com to cover their reports. It will be interesting to see whether YouTube could follow blogs and set the agenda rather than just report it. YouTube has democratised the media, allowing the average man in the street with a camcorder to take on the big corporations whose news fits their agenda. Will it finally break the story of the state-sponsored polling bias in America?

Which brings me onto another link on the right-hand side, 18 Doughty Street. Fed-up with the dumbed down news we receive on the mainstream channels in the UK, a group of bloggers have taken it upon themselves to start their own free internet news channel. I've never watched it (I doubt my computer could take much video streaming) but the People's Republic wishes them well. As far as we are concerned, the more independent sources of news we have, the better.

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