The problems with First Past The Post

[andrewducker]

Here is a fascinating video which explains (some of) the problems with the First Past The Post voting system:

Currently a hot topic in the UK, and hopefully of interest to you if your country still uses FPTP.

Canadian Election: Action Canada for Population and Development Survey

[trouble]

These links all lead to pages that link to PDFs.

ACPD, in collaboration with the Canadian Federation for Sexual Health (CFSH), submitted a questionnaire to the five main political parties in the upcoming Federal election scheduled for Monday, May 2nd. I am pleased to inform you that as of today, April 19th, we have received answers from three of the five political parties; the Bloc Quebecois, the Liberal Party of Canada, and the Green Party of Canada. We are hoping to hear from the New Democratic Party of Canada and the Conservative Party of Canada within days. I will keep you posted if/when this happens.

The questionnaire is part of our election strategy and we’ll be sharing the answers with journalists who in the past have utilized the information at various party leaders’ campaign tours or during various all-party debates.

Liberal Party’s response - http://www.acpd.ca/node/241
Green Party’s response – http://www.acpd.ca/node/240
Bloc Québécois’ response - http://www.acpd.ca/node/237

Kind regards,

Dina Epale
Director, Parliamentary Affairs
Directeur, affaires parlementaires
Action Canada for Population and Development (ACPD)/ Action Canada pour la population et le développement

"Three Cups of Deceit"

[rydra_wong]

the_future_modernes suggested I cross-post this here:

Jon Krakauer has just devoted 89 pages (free for download from here until the 20th) to making the case that Greg "Three Cups of Tea" Mortenson is a lying liar who lies, whose inventions include an entirely fictional story of being abducted by the Taliban, and who's engaged in massive financial malpractice:

Many CAI schools that actually did get built, moreover, were later abandoned due to lack of CAI support. “Ghost schools,” they’re called by the disillusioned residents of Baltistan, where at least eighteen CAI buildings now stand empty. No one, not even Mortenson, knows exactly how many CAI projects exist as ghost schools, or simply never existed in the first place, because he has repeatedly subverted efforts by his Montana-based staff to track effectively how many schools have been built, how much each school actually costs, and how many schools are up and running. For the CAI staff to gather such crucial information, Mortenson would have to accurately account for how he spends CAI funds—something he has never been willing to do.

There's some dubious stuff here -- a couple of Krakauer's witnesses have histories of fraud themselves -- but a lot seems very unambiguous indeed. And there is a metric fuckton to analyse here about the degree to which the What These People Need Is A Honky narrative prevents people from taking too close a look at things.

ETA a couple of commentaries:

'Three cups of sincerity' by Nosheen Ali
'Greg Mortenson and the Business of Redemption' by Laila Lalami

ETA2, via cofax7:

Savage Minds: Three Cups of Orientalism
zunguzungu: L’Affaire Mortenson, reactions and commentary

And Good Intentions Are Not Enough seems to have taken up the linkspam banner (109 links and counting):

Collecting 'Three Cups of Tea' posts