Politics is dirty and you should be interested in it!

Let me tell you something about myself. I am not only a super nerd interested in Asian pop culture and old school Bollywood music but I am also a political science undergrad. There, I said it; I have no chances of getting a money-making job ever eh? I hear so many times that people find politics dirty and depressing. They'd rather fill their heads with stories of Lindsey Lohan's DUI's. If there is anything I feel more strongly about, it is that people should be interested in the political process of their nation state and about what's going in the rest of the world. Believe it or not, it does affect you in your everyday life and we are lucky we live in a western liberal democracy. Since, I live in Canada; here are some of my resources to make "complicated" politics uncomplicated.

For Canadians (or those who are interested in us) and most importantly Ontarians:

 TVO's got a great tool for people to understand how Provincial Government actually works. It's called Civics 101. For Canadians, who might only care about Federal politics, it's the provinces that control the Education, Health, Welfare etc. In other words, they control many things that affect you in your day to day life.

For people interested in local politics especially Vancouverites (again, they matter and control your property taxes) check out CityCaucus.com
For Torontonians, Torontoist is good.

For federal politics, check out Rabble.ca.

 Interested in International Affairs and Foreign Policy: Well, check out Foreign policy.com
Care about the war in Afghanistan and how India and Pakistan affect the region; check out the Af-Pak part of FP.
Read Pak Tea House.net to understand about Pakistan (is a liberal blog).
The Acorn is good for understanding India's national interest.

Most importantly, read news, lots of it. Here are some of my news sources:
Globe and Mail
Toronto Star
 The New York Times
The Guardian
Haaretz (for Israeli news)
Johnson's Russia List (for news about Russia)
The Huffington post
Politico.com (USA)

Well, now you have no excuses, next time there's an election (might be soon for us Canadians), I want you to make a well-informed decision and vote. Yeah, vote because every little vote counts and you can't really rant about the government if you didn't vote.