It’s election day in Canada today. The following press release from the Green Party of Canada hit my inbox overnight on Friday. The principles basically hold true elsewhere, including Australia:

1. I want to feel good about my vote. I want to vote for someone, not against someone.

2. The Green Party has the best platform. The Green Party platform has earned positive reviews in the media, has done well under analysis by non-partisan organizations.
3. My great grandchildren will be proud of me. I want them to have a sustainable future, a green economy, and better democracy.
4. I want my vote to have an impact on the legislative agenda of the next parliament. MPs will spend the next session trying to look good for the next election, so they will be looking at who they lost votes to. Vote Green and Green priorities will set the agenda.
5. People are saying good things about the Green Party.
6. I am nobody’s fool. I refuse to let Martin, Harper, Layton or Duceppe think he can scare me into “strategically” voting for him just for not being the worst among them.
7. Green Parties around the world get elected, govern countries, and make the world a better place.
8. Whoever I vote for will get $ 1.75 in public funding, per vote, per year. I feel good about the Green Party putting it to good use defending my values.
9. I am socially progressive, fiscally responsible, and committed to environmental sustainability - just like the Green Party.
10. One hundred and thirty nine years of Liberal and Conservative governments. Albert Einstein said it best: “The significant problems of our time are not going to be solved by the same level of thinking that got us into them.”

I should disclose at this point that I have been a member of the Greens since last October, the first time I have ever actually been a member of a political party. But I’ll explain more about that in a future post.

Proof copies are now online for today’s Hansard of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council. I haven’t read the whole lot, and probably won’t bother, but there was a lot of political football being played in the lower house debate, despite the bill having bipartisan support. In the upper house, where there are more minor parties represented, the debate seemed to show more literacy, with questions being raised by the Greens and Democrats as to whether, considering the police crackdown since Monday, the amending legislation is necessary at all.

And then, alas, there is David Oldfield, MLC, the former mentor of Pauline Hanson who sits in the upper house as an independent, having been elected in 1999 before the deregistration of One Nation as a political party. His speech, well, to quote the President of the Legislative Council in response to a point of order:

“…the comments of the Hon. David Oldfield about Lebanese people are racist and bordering on unparliamentary.”

Oldfield comes up for re-election in March 2007.

Before I finish tonight, a sidelight to Sunday’s displays of flag-waving nationalism of which John Winston Howard was so proud on national television the following night. Among the other Australian icons being paraded by the “We Grew Here You Flew Here” brigade was Blinky Bill. As I mentioned on Tuesday, John Huxley reported on this in that day’s SMH.

Now while the original adventures of Blinky Bill, written by Dorothy Wall, have passed into the public domain, the character himself has not. Blinky Bill is owned by Yoram Gross-EM TV, the respected and highly successful producers of films and TV programs for children whose studios are about two kilometres from here. Gross is a survivor of the Holocaust and it’s hard to imagine anything more incongruous (not to mention illegal) than using one of his properties for neo-fascist purposes.

(Acknowledgement to the anti-racist blog Fight dem back! for bringing this to my notice.)

It’s not just a great moment in parliamentary behaviour, but a great moment in understated journalism, as the Press Trust of India began a wire report on Tuesday with the following:

Shiv Sena MLA Gulabrao Gawande created commotion in Maharashtra Assembly today by pouring kerosene on his clothes and trying to consume some poisonous substance to protest against, what he called, DF Government’s “apathy” towards scores of suicides by debt-ridden farmers, an act resulting in his suspension for rest of Winter Session.

The story continues here. It all makes the state parliament in Sydney seem tame by comparison.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/15/opinion/15tonme.html

Cameroun international law consultant Jean-Claude Shanda Tonme has his say on the uselessness of Live 8.

Peter Costello is hazardous to your health! This from yesterday’s House of Reps Hansard:

Ms BIRD (Cunningham) (3.14 p.m.)—Mr Speaker, are members of this House covered by occupational health and safety legislation? Does the volume of the microphone conform to these laws when the Treasurer is screaming at the dispatch box?

The SPEAKER —I thank the member for Cunningham for her question. I will seek further information and come back to her.

I’ll keep you posted.

And you thought it was Hal Holbrook all these years!

Former understudy to J Edgar Hoover, 91 year-old W Mark Felt has been outed today as Deep Throat.

Story from the Washington Post following the revelation in the latest edition of Vanity Fair. Yes, Wikipedia has a developing page on Mr Felt, though at this stage no clues as to what the W stands for. Nothing as I write this on the website of his former employer.

C-Span has the full 45 minute testimony by George Galloway to the US Senate Committee online now. But it’s worth revisiting the UK election night. First, the declaration of the poll in Bethnall Green and Bow and Galloway’s victory speech, in which he goes on to tip the bucket on the competence of the electorate returning officer. Then, watch what is surely one of the all-time great television interviews - a classic exchange between Galloway and BBC bovver boy Jeremy Paxman. (The BBC Online election blog has a transcript.)

Today’s edition of The Guardian has an item in the book section about the launch of Galloway’s new publishing imprint, called quite appropriately, Friction.

I was prepared to give Channel 9 in Sydney the TV cockup of the year award for showing a pre-recording of Saturday’s lotto draw in place of Monday’s live lotto draw by mistake a few weeks ago, but I can’t help thinking Channel 4 in the UK has gone one-up on them.

On Thursday night, Channel 4 showed a Green Party election broadcast. The subtitles, however, were of the election broadcast for the rather right-wing UK Independent Party.

Friday’s Guardian picks up the story.

From the “It depends what the meaning of is is” shelf at the Doublespeak Shop:

Charles Hurt (Washington Times): Have you ever crossed the line of ethical behavior in terms of dealing with lobbyists, your use of government authority or with fundraising?
Tom DeLay: Ever is a very strong word.

(Here is the complete transcript of the interview that led to DeLay’s proclamation.)

DeLay is a member of GWB’s Texan Republican mafia, and the US House of Representatives Majority Leader. For now.

Imagine being asked to vote in an election where two-thirds of the candidates were not identified. What sort of democracy could give you the right to vote, but not the right to know who you are voting for?

An Iraqi democracy. Or, more to the point, a US-directed Iraqi show democracy. Much as I’d like to think that January 30, 2005 was a milestone in the democratisation of Iraq, the fact is that it’s a sham. Who knows whether it will lead to a better Iraq? It seems unlikely. Certainly not when candidates are afraid for their lives to identify themselves. Certainly not when the Sunni community declines to take part in elections. Certainly not when the US occupying forces demand that elections go ahead regardless.

The last time Iraqis went to the polls was, not fifty years ago as the corporate media would have you believe, but 15 October 2002. And on that occasion they at least knew the names of all the candidates. All three of them. Saddam Hussein was re-elected president with no opponents and 99% of the vote, and two vice-presidents were likewise elected unopposed.

At least, while we all knew that election was a joke, no one (except maybe for Saddam himself) believed otherwise.