Polls, polls, polls: Slowly I turn, "Niagara Falls"
2012
Unaligned N.H. vote a test for Mitt Romney- Independents could change the momentum in GOP (By Sarah Schweitzer, Boston Globe) Undeclared voters - who are commonly called independents, and who account for more than 40 percent of New Hampshire’s registered voters - don’t appear poised to derail Romney’s longtime lead over his rivals in New Hampshire. With 39 percent of the overall vote in the UNH Survey Center/Boston Globe poll released Sunday, he had a comfortable margin, and significant support among the independents. Among those independents who have declared their allegiance, 32 percent say they back Romney.
Youth vote won't return for Obama in 2012, report says (By Perry Bacon Jr., the Grio) In a report on Wednesday, Curtis Gans, director of the Washington-based Center for the American Electorate, predicted voter turnout overall (as a percentage of the eligible voting population) would be lower than in 2008 or 2004. He argued those two elections fired up voters, particularly Democrats, in a way neither party will in 2012.
New Iowa Poll May Understate Paul’s Support (By NATE SILVER, NY Times/ FiveThirtyEight) The recent Public Policy Polling survey, for instance, estimated that 24 percent of Iowa caucus participants are currently registered as independents or Democrats and will re-register as Republicans at the caucuses. This month’s Washington Post/ABC News poll put the fraction at 18 percent. There is room to debate what the right number is but it will certainly not be zero, as the CNN poll assumes.
Democrats Lag in Voter Registration (By LAURA MECKLER, Wall Street Journal) Today, far fewer people are registering, and the enormous Democratic advantage among new voters in North Carolina has vanished, according to new data from Catalist, a group with Democratic ties that studies voter rolls. That illustrates a broader challenge for the president's party. Democrats still hold an overall registration advantage in many states, but Obama campaign officials and other Democrats say it is important to bring new Obama voters onto the rolls—both to replenish voters who drop off and offset possible losses among independent voters, who have been skeptical of Mr. Obama's job performance.
The electoral system has morphed to the point where the vast majority of congressional general elections are no longer relevant
OPEN PRIMARIES
Linbeck: Holding Congress accountable through primary elections (By Leo Linbeck III, Alliance for Self-Governance, Special to the Star-Telegram) Today, voting in the general election is not enough. The electoral system has morphed to the point where the vast majority of congressional general elections are no longer relevant. Because more than 80 percent of congressional seats are in one-party districts, the decision is not made in the general election -- it is made in the primary of the party that controls that district.
Libertarians and Greens seek to intervene in top two open primary lawsuit (Posted By Damon Eris, IVN) Two candidates and two voters from the Green and Libertarian parties are seeking to intervene on the side of the plaintiffs in Chamness v. Bowen, one of three lawsuits pending against California’s top two open primary system. In their motion to intervene, filed with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month, the Greens and Libertarians argue that unless the top two primary system is struck down, they will be deprived of their rights to participate in the June primary election (of their respective parties), as well as the November general election.
Political reform 'godfather' ignites career in Bakersfield (BY DIANNE HARDISTY, Bakersfield.com) Portrait of Robert Stern, Center for Governmental Studies at Stanford: Primary elections will now see all candidates for an office on a single ballot, regardless of political affiliation. The top two vote-getters (even if from the same party) will advance to the general election. "I started out as a big proponent. But after I studied it, I was undecided. I barely voted for it," said Stern, who believes the "jury is still out" on the affect the top-two primary system will have on reforming the political process. "The affect is likely to be more on Democrats than Republicans."
Unaligned N.H. vote a test for Mitt Romney - Independents could change the momentum in GOP (By Sarah Schweitzer, Boston Globe) Undeclared voters - who are commonly called independents, and who account for more than 40 percent of New Hampshire’s registered voters - don’t appear poised to derail Romney’s longtime lead over his rivals in New Hampshire. With 39 percent of the overall vote in the UNH Survey Center/Boston Globe poll released Sunday, he had a comfortable margin, and significant support among the independents. Among those independents who have declared their allegiance, 32 percent say they back Romney.
Youth vote won't return for Obama in 2012, report says (By Perry Bacon Jr., the Grio) In a report on Wednesday, Curtis Gans, director of the Washington-based Center for the American Electorate, predicted voter turnout overall (as a percentage of the eligible voting population) would be lower than in 2008 or 2004. He argued those two elections fired up voters, particularly Democrats, in a way neither party will in 2012.
New Iowa Poll May Understate Paul’s Support (By NATE SILVER, NY Times/ FiveThirtyEight) The recent Public Policy Polling survey, for instance, estimated that 24 percent of Iowa caucus participants are currently registered as independents or Democrats and will re-register as Republicans at the caucuses. This month’s Washington Post/ABC News poll put the fraction at 18 percent. There is room to debate what the right number is but it will certainly not be zero, as the CNN poll assumes.
Democrats Lag in Voter Registration (By LAURA MECKLER, Wall Street Journal) Today, far fewer people are registering, and the enormous Democratic advantage among new voters in North Carolina has vanished, according to new data from Catalist, a group with Democratic ties that studies voter rolls. That illustrates a broader challenge for the president's party. Democrats still hold an overall registration advantage in many states, but Obama campaign officials and other Democrats say it is important to bring new Obama voters onto the rolls—both to replenish voters who drop off and offset possible losses among independent voters, who have been skeptical of Mr. Obama's job performance.
NY Times Invitation to Dialogue: Time for a Third Party?
THIRD PARTY
Invitation to a Dialogue: Time for a Third Party? (LETTER NY Times) A centrist third party could prosper in today’s political environment and end the stalemate in Washington. There is a large body of moderate Republicans, disaffected Democrats and dissatisfied independents looking for the kind of political home that this party could provide.
Is California Ready for a Third Party? (By Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, NBC Southern California) The implementation of California’s new “top-two” primary could allow an early test. Will candidates filing for legislative and Congressional offices choose to list Americans Elect as their “party preference” on the ballot?” Can these candidates, unlike those of California’s long-established third parties, overcome the major parties’ massive registration edge and make it into the November run-off?
Third Party Hazy as California Smog (By Larry Gerston, NBC Southern California) The unfortunate aspect of this charade is that someone will actually appear as a candidate in states where the "party" has qualified--someone who has not gone through the public vetting process known as primaries and caucuses. In a state with a closely fought race, that person could get enough votes to sway the outcome one way or another.
Sameh Abdelaziz: After Spring, any thing can happen!
by Sameh Abdelaziz
After Spring, any thing can happen!
Even optimists are starting to have second thoughts about the Arab Spring, which is quickly turning into blood showers. The numbers of dead and injured are astounding and the prize so far is confined to three bad possibilities. An extension of a dictatorial corrupt regime such as the case in Egypt, the election of an Islamist party that the West don’t understand nor trust, as the case is in Tunisia, or an endless insane killing as the case seem to be in Syria, Libya, and Yemen. This bleak picture is unfortunately true.
Consecutive American administrations based its policy in the Arab World, on the need for stable regimes that can maintain the critical oil supply, while ensuring the safety of Israel. The American partners in this policy have been corrupted and autocratic regimes that control their countries with iron fists.
The premise of stability was shattered on September 11. However, instead of reassessing our policies and trying to understand the cause and effect we started an endless debate about an imaginary clash of civilization. None of our think tanks stopped to argue that in the age of the internet there is only one civilization with different levels of restrictions imposed on its inhabitants.
This year, our politicians were shocked, as usual, to discover that the people of the Arab World, wearing headscarfs or jeans and sometimes both, demanded freedom and were willing to die for democracy. The so-called Arab Spring surprised the world and especially America.
In the case of Egypt, after a few days of confusion, the American government supported at least publicly handing Mubarak’s power to the second in command, a junta of Egyptian generals. In Libya, our government participated in the physical removal of Gaddafi. In Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria Obama’s administration shut in different degrees their eyes on the ongoing brutality.
Ten months after the initial spark, demonstrations are igniting once again in Cairo's Tahrir Square. The Syrian revolution that started peaceful is sliding slowly into an armed conflict, and Yemen is disintegrating. The Arab revolutions are moving to a next phase that is impossible to defined, but will clearly reshape the region and impact American interests for years to come.
The first step to deal with this challenging environment is to understand that stability built on autocracy is over, because the genie is already out of the bottle. The options left for America in the Middle East are either to stand idle, which will definitely elongate people’s struggles, or to support the revolutionary movements to the dismay of some old allies.
In such turning points, history can provide NO guarantees. But, logically an elongated struggle will most likely bring extreme religious factions. These extremists are already presenting themselves as the alternative to the secular institutional corruption supported by America and the West. On the other hand, a shorter struggle can enable the real actors of the revolution, mostly liberals and moderate Islamists, to provide a reliable alternative.
It is in America’s interest to support a peaceful and speedy power transfer.
America has developed the Egyptian military apparatus over the last forty years and even handpicked their leadership. This influence is the result of 1.3 billion dollars in military aid that goes mainly to buy loyalty through fancy long training engagements and huge commissions permissible by Egyptian laws. This is the time to use this capital.
I’m quite confident that the American administration is able, if not so willing, to advise/ pressure the Egyptian generals in private to share power with a civilian leadership representing all the major political factions. Such a move will bring immediate calm to the explosive situation in Egypt and should be a first step towards a complete and real power transfer to elected civilians. The new Egyptian administration might be less loyal to America than Mubarak and his cronies, but the people of Egypt and the rest of the Arab world can and will support America if the American administration is smart enough to support freedom and democracy.
A resolution to the Egyptian crisis will serve as a model to bring back stability to other countries within the region. America should support the Arab revolution because of principles, but it is also good for business.
Sameh Abdelaziz is an Egyptian American born in Alexandria. He immigrated to the US in the late eighties, and works as an IT manager. He blogs on OpEd News.
LETTER by Evelyn Dougherty: Thoughts on what is going on in Washington (Taunton Gazette) (Also in Jewish Journal North Shore) In the course of an hour, dozens signed postcards. Among them were a political science student, a mom, a grandfather and several peace activists. Members of our group, MA Coalition of Independent Voters, have already met with Congressman Michael Capuano to ask for his help in bringing about hearings and have requested a meeting with Scott Brown.
The Unity of Independent Voters: Not a Partisan Pleasure
Randy Schultz, writing for the editorial page of the Palm Beach Post, doesn't see dissatisfaction with the major parties as a uniter of independent voters. He's got some interesting observations here about the need for organization -- the "volunteers who staff phone banks, stuff envelopes and drive voters to the polls," the stuff of electoral politics in America.
But unity? In my opinion, unity is not a declaration of belief in some abstract principle. Unity gets built person by person, partnership by partnership, challenge by challenge. That's how organization gets built and what organization is. That's the very (revolutionary) foundation of our country. Our founding fathers (and mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, cousins, and neighbors and their mothers, etc.) did not come together over a neat programmatic issued by an established authority on July 4, 1776.
But the naysayers never tire of saying that independents don't stand for anything and Mr. Schultz is dead wrong when he says "nothing really unites them."
What unites independents - now (at least) 40% of the electorate - is, well, their independence. But if that isn't enough for you, for starters there's also the visceral distaste for partisanship that has clear partisans, according to USA Today, leaving the parties to the tune of 2.5 million since 2008.
And what's organizing independents right now is the fight for a nonpartisan level playing field for anti-party voters to participate in our political system. That's a big cultural change for America, one that is badly needed if we are to continue to progress as a people and as a nation.
And it just might not mean a third party.
Jackie Salit and independentvoting.org have been organizing independents on the ground since the implosion of the Reform Party. And they are having success. They have affiliates in 40 states, a small but very committed staff that raises around a million dollars a year to train activists all over the country, conduct grassroots campaigns such as the current push to get Congress to hold hearings on the second class citizenship of independent voters who are denied ballots in primaries in 33 states, and generally seeks to "diminish the regressive influence of parties and partisanship by opening up the democratic process."
Ultimately Mr. Schultz's message is: stay in the party system.
If people vote with their feet, the message is: We beg to differ!
THIRD PARTY
Schultz: Forget third party. Demand major change from major parties (Opinion blog, By Randy Schultz, Editor of the Editorial Page, Palm Beach Post) One big problem is that all those No Party Affiliation voters became disaffected for different reasons. Some think that the Democrats are too liberal. Some think that the Republicans are too conservative. Some would register with the Cynics Party, if one existed, because they can't stand either major party. Some are younger voters who, because the parties' old identities have shifted, don't identify with Republicans or Democrats. In other words, nothing really unites them.
INDEPENDENT VOTERS
Voters leaving Republican, Democratic parties in droves (By Richard Wolf, USA TODAY) A USA TODAY analysis of state voter registration statistics shows registered Democrats declined in 25 of the 28 states that register voters by party. Republicans dipped in 21 states, while independents increased in 18 states. The trend is acute in states that are key to next year's presidential race. In the eight swing states that register voters by party, Democrats' registration is down by 800,000 and Republicans' by 350,000. Independents have gained 325,000.
New York election law makes the term 'byzantine' seem like a good thing. The Empire State has what's called a "lock box," which is a rule that requires voters to register in a party almost a year before the next primary election -- actually the rule sets registration time by the general election, but in fact the biggest impact in on the ability of voters to vote in a primary election. If you change parties, you must wait until after the next general election to be recognized as a member of your new party.
Trump leaving the GOP?...not in a New York minute (By Kerry Picket, Washington Times) Trump could run as an independent, even if he was still a registered Republican. He would just need that party's permission and meet that state's particular requirements from whatever line he chooses to run on. For example, if he wanted to run on the Independence Party line in New York state, he would need a Wilson-Pekula (a New York legal term granting permission to run on a party's line that you are not a member of) from that party.
Clooney's Ides of March: How we elect our officials, not who we elect
I have not yet seen 'The Ides of March' -- the George Clooney movie that captures the corruption of today's political system. Hoping to see it this weekend or next. In the meantime, here's a nice quote from Clooney: "I think the secret to the film has been the fact that Republican and Democrats who work within the political system who have seen the film have all felt that it's really a discussion about how we elect our officials, not who we elect. I think that's why it's had the success it's had."
I live in a medium sized town in the north of England. One much depressed by a succession of recessions which have seen the heart slowly sucked out of the town until, in the local government ward I live in, two areas register in the most poverty stricken categories possible by EU standard measures. It is also a town that has a large population of Asian Muslims living in particular parts, with strongly white communities elsewhere - a fact that has been seized upon by the BNP who briefly flourished in the town before collapsing amid internecine bickering. Now one of the local papers publishes a weekly column that dwells on highlighting the faith divisions in the town.
The basic rhetoric draws week after week on the same story over and over along the lines of "I'm not allowed to criticise Muslims - crikey, I just have, now I'll be in trouble".
This is no isolated instance- much of the media, local and national, take a similar line. Newspapers regularly lament how in Britain we are no longer apparently allowed to say all sorts of things because of the Political Correctness Police. This is stated at the same time as saying the things they claim are not allowed to be said. Sadly, of course, some people buy into this bizarre nonsense because they still trust what they see in newspapers as conforming to some standard of accuracy.
Except schools continue to put on nativity plays, as they always have - though I have a colleague who still thinks that her grandson's school was breaking some non-existent law when it put one on. And likewise, there are no instances of Christmas trees removed at the behest of Muslim complainants - granted, there have been a truly small handful of times where oversensitive non-Muslims have stopped Christmas decorations for such reasons but they are few and far between and actually betray a dreadful ignorance of Islam and its historic relationship with Christianity - and Judaism.
These three Semitic faiths are of course deeply linked to each other - Judaism, originally a polytheistic faith, coalesced around the idea of a single god, exclusive to the Chosen People of Israel, the Jews, as short a time ago as 300 BC; Christianity claimed to be the fulfilment of the Judaistic belief in a messiah, a Saviour, and initially was a sect within Judaism, exploring beyond that racial faith almost three decades after the death of Jesus when Paul of Tarsus, a non-Jew, became its leading proponent and was responsible for formalising much Christian thinking. Ultimately, Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire, the superpower of Europe and the Near East of its day and from this, its beliefs were carried through the trade routes into Arabia, where some Arabs adopted it as their faith.
In the sixth century after Jesus, however, Mohamed, an Arabian trader, began to formulate new beliefs with which he forged both a political and faith union in the Arabian peninsula - Islam - which held him to be the last Prophet of God (Allah is simply the Arabic word for God), in direct succession from the Christians Jesus (Isau in Islam), and the Jews Moses (Musa) and Abraham (Ibrahim). Given this pedigree, Islam from the outset had to identify its view in relation to its predecessor faiths and in its holy book, the Koran, Mohamed set out the need to both respect and protect the Jews and Christians as People of the (holy) Book.
Consequently, through much of its history, Islam has not only tolerated Christianity and Judaism, but for centuries Islamic states provided havens of refuge for Christians and Jews persecuted by the totalitarianism of the Catholic Church in western Europe. When the Jews were told to leave Spain or die, it was the Muslim Ottomans who sent ships to rescue them and carry them to new lives in the Middle East and the Maghreb. And even today, millions of Christians live and worship freely and generally peacefully in Muslim states which, in the West, are portrayed as brutal theocracies.
You can find more about Middle Eastern Christians in a previous blog here, but suffice to say that whether you look at Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Syria or Lebanon, or Iraq in Saddam's days or Libya under Gadaffi, you will find Christian people and Christian churches, established for centuries and respected by their Muslim neighbours. In many instances, people of all faiths mark each others festivals - even Ayatollah Khomeini issued Christmas messages to Christiansand just last week the head of the Iranian Church met the Pope - notably and discreditably to the surprise of Benedict, who amazingly confessed his ignorance of its existence, although it numbers over 100,000 people and has been in existence for nearly two millenia..
And so we return to Britain, with the bizarre and surreal situations that arise among a white community that is both socially divided between rich and poor and also effectively no longer Christian in terms of any genuine religious beliefs - indeed, there are many times more Christians at church on a Sunday morning in Pakistan than in Britain. And perhaps it is this combination that creates the divisions we face.
Because, coming back to my town, the two poverty stricken areas I mentioned at the start are split - one is predominantly white, one predominantly Asian. Their socio-economic problems are very similar and in effect both are badly let down by the system and feel isolated and neglected, with high unemployment and bad housing and all the attendant problems. In this sense, as the white community for want of a better word like people in any community don't all share the same values to begin with, then the next best thing for those seeking to foment division is to create a shared threat - hence the invention of Winterval and the attendant mythology of the subversion of a "native" culture that has never existed in any unified form in any case.
At their core though, monotheistic religions, even ones linked as intimately as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, by their exclusive theologies carry within them the seeds of conflict. If there is only One God and that god is an interventionist god with a set of revealed beliefs, it is not a big step to find believers in all of these faiths who take such thinking to its logical conclusion, which is if my God is right, then yours must be wrong. And so you can find small minorities of people in each of these faith communities who do hold destructive and even violent viewpoints towards each other and, yes, only a fantasist would suggest there is never problems or violence - but in truth most of the time most people of all faiths have actually lived in peace if not always harmony.
And so faiths are both more intertwined than popular belief and the mass media would have it; though non-faith issues and the manipulation of half-truths or the exaggeration of threat mean that there is plenty of potential for real conflict. The obvious strategy for those who wish to keep any potential socio-economic change in check, is of course to stigmatise and scapegoat one particular minority to explain away the failures and poverty of others, deflecting challenges from the real problem - the obscenely unjust distribution of wealth and resources.
This was precisely Hitler's tack in his rise to power - stigmatising the Jews and claiming that there was secret plot to subvert German society and turn it into Israel. The Winterval Myth may be small beer by comparison, but the intent of stigmatising and scapegoating a section of society with false ill-intent is just as dangerous now as it was all those decades ago and so the need to challenge and spike the falsehoods has rarely been as important as it is now.
Tomorrow, Christians will celebrate Christmas. It won't be Winterval anywhere - nor has it ever been.
For me, as a follower of the Hellenic Dodekatheon, yesterday was the end of Saturnalia, the Roman winter festival of what was originally the Hellenic Cronia (held in summer) which marked the Golden Age when humans were equal and shared the bounty of the world in harmony with nature. Many religions have a winter festival and aspects of Saturnalia were assimilated into Christmas by Christianity sixteen centuries ago.
But even there, there is a tenuous unity of sorts. For, just as the Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem, now cut off by the "security wall" erected around them by the Israeli army, will tomorrow praise God the Father by singing to Allah, I will thank the gods for my own life and the wonders of the universe by praying in thanks (not in making requests) to Zeus Pater, Father God. Unrevealed natural religions like the Hellenic religion hold that there are many paths to the divine and we each find our route in our own way; so we accept all who will accept each other; we deny and feel threatened by none. And the gods are not individuals hanging around the top of Mount Olympus plucking harps and farting thunderbolts - rather they are metaphorical aspects of the divinity of creation, the wonder of existence, that we can all find within each of us. We only have to look.
So, whatever your belief, your philosophy, your doubts or non-belief, may you have a peaceful weekend and let us hope for a year of peace, justice and progress ahead rather than the one of division and bloodshed that is drawing to a close.
The head of the HMRC meantime, has enjoyed on average of one meal per week with the owners of the very businesses he is meant to be chasing up to pay their tax. I'm sure it was always a very tense soup course. We should be thankful that the activist group UKuncut is pursuing legal action to make big business pay its taxes - though it looks like it will be in for a long haul.
So far, so tasteless, but Burley is far from the first Conservative activist to have a more than passing fascination with things Nazi and a strange desire to dress up in the clobber Hugo Boss designed and supplied (latterly using slave labour) for the Hitler Gang back in the inter-war years.
Anyone involved in student politics in the 1980s, the heyday of Thatcherite triumphalism, will recall the rumours and the real sightings of members of the Federation of Conservative Students enthusiastically sieg-heiling each other after a few beers and the (particularly) odd ones who seized any opportunity at all to don alleged "fancy dress" with some sort of Nazi theme. But this is hardly surprising when you look at the actual politics of these people.
So in spite of David Cameron's claims to have transformed the Tories from the nasty party of the past to one that represents the allegedly Christian values of the country, it seems if you scratch the surface, the putrid odour of racism, violence and repression is not far away at all.
British values? Fighting moral decay? I hope not.
2010 General Election debate in Hammersmith - the Tory candidate defends Cameron's alliance with European neo-Nazis. In the election, Hammersmith was one of only two seats where there was a swing towards the Labour Party.
I think Utah may have found it's own Abel Maldonado. Sheryl Allen who appears in this KCPW radio program was a Republican representative in the Utah legislature. She did not run for re-election in 2010 but instead ran as a Republican Lt. Governor with Democrat Peter Corroon for Governor. Corroon did not support open primaries and predictably lost. In this program Allen indicates that just like the 17th amendment allows the people to directly elect US Senators, the voters now are plentifully informed and grown up enough to vote directly on who will appear on the general election ballot.
"Free Market" - free for whom? (Amnesty International)
Yesterday, the British National Union of Students highlighted cases where students in England are increasingly turning to prostitution to make ends meet as their course fees and living costs rocket. The Government suitably wrung its grasping hands, claiming all sorts of measures of support are in place, but the evidence seems pretty incontrovertible. And, regardless of your views on prostitution itself, how surprising is it? In any recession in history, desperate people have turned to desperate means to survive.
The evidence of this and other research on prostitution does show that it is rarely a voluntary choice and it is a dangerous field to work in for all manner of reasons - violent clients, health risks, persecution by the police, and exploitation by pimps.
But it is the ultimate and logical outcome of free market capitalism. An economy that commodifies, prices and profits from any resource at all is hardly likely to stop at the exploitation of the human body. It very happily harvests the brainpower and physical abilities of employees in every walk of working life - capitalism rests on creaming off as large a premium on the value of employee labour over the cost of paying for it. So, if you are ready to squeeze excess value from people's brains, why would you refrain when it comes to the sex organs?
Angela Merkel's Germany, which in spite of its EU-philia remains an example to all neoliberal right wingers around the world, has taken this view of profit before people a step further.
Back in 2005, a woman sent for interview by the local Job Centre faceshas her unemployment benefit after she refused a job providing sexual services in what turned out to be a brothel - although German legislators originally considered exempting prostitution from the benefit rules, they apparently concluded that it would be too difficult to determine the difference between brothels and pubs. Similarly, women who have worked in call centres in the past are being pressured into working on sex chat lines as some twisted form of suitable alternative employment.
How far are we from this German scenario in the UK?
Not far really - as noted above, every other part of the body is used economically, so it is only the legal status and practices around prostitution that stops this scenario arising in Britain. But things often just short of or even a cover for prostitution, like the chance to be a pole dancer or an escort, are already used as evidence for people proving whether or not they are genuinely looking for work while on benefits.
Prostitution itself remains in a legal tangle which frequently leads to already victimised women being victimised even further while their clients and pimps are ignored by the authorities. But the libertarian right wing are among the most ardent proponents of legalising prostitution - for precisely the argument that sex workers should be able to use their assets - their bodies - to earn profit. In their world, any resource, service or product should be able to be exchanged for money.
What it often means in practice with prostitution is that it legitimises a sector which remains one of coercion, both physical and economic. As many surveys have shown, it is at the heart of the modern slave trade and legalising it does little if anything to protect the workers - arguably it can make their lot even worse. After all, if the Government is keen to deregulate safety laws for factories and shops, it is doubtful brothels will even get a look-in. Perhaps one answer might be some form of licencing through a body like the English Collective of Prostitutes, which would give sex workers more ability to have some small degree of control over their lives as well as safer working conditions.
The capitalist economy sees humans as just one other factor of production, bought and owned by the holders of capital, and exploited for every last copper of profit possible. Women especially, but often men too, are commodified and objectified in thousands of ways by the media and the advertising industry: whether from selling the right clothes, the right perfume, the right size, through to the blatant exploitation to be found in increasingly "hard porn" on the internet and elsewhere. So why, in capitalist thinking, would you eschew the opportunity to be had from selling sexual intercourse?
The sad tales from Germany, while shocking, are not in the least surprising. By one stream of capitalist thought, our unique personalities, our amazing skills and our hard labour make us nothing more than "Human capital" - just one other segment of the system, one more cog in the wheel. No job is too degrading, no work too demanding, no wage too low, when there's money to be made - and you, your flesh and blood, are just one more commodity to be bought and sold.
Independent voters should not be silenced in primary elections
INDEPENDENT VOTERS
Independent voters should not be silenced in primary elections (Jeremy R. Stinson, Gazette.Net Maryland Community News Online) Independent voters in the IndependentVoting.org network — a national association of independents with organization in 40 states — are spearheading a campaign to persuade Congress to hold hearings on the second-class status of Independents and to shed light on the ways that partisanship has become so hard-wired into the political process, the American people can’t be heard.
Poll: Independents Are Angry, Despairing (By Steven Shepard, National Journal) Twenty-nine percent of respondents have “a lot” or “some confidence” that the federal government will make progress over the next year on the most important problems facing the country. But among independents, just 18 percent express that level of confidence. A whopping 80 percent of independents say they have “not much confidence” or “no confidence at all” in the federal government to make progress next year.
Anger With Congress Reaching New Levels (By Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic) In recent decades, the closest America has come to a true "throw the bums out" election was the scandal-shrouded, recession-colored redistricting year of 1992, when 13 Republican and 30 Democratic House incumbents were ousted and another 65 members retired. This survey highlights the possibility that incumbents in both parties could face similar risks in 2012, another redistricting year shaped by economic and political discontent.
Captain Pepper - the last refuge of the ruling class?
Western democracy in action - 84 year old woman pepper-sprayed by the police in Seattle protest.
Remember the London riots? A week of smashed glass and free shopping across the big cities of England (Scotland was notably free of any trouble), coupled with assaults on passersby and the looting of peoples flats and cars. The Guardian has just run a fascinating series of reports into the motives of the rioters, many of whom clearly saw themselves at least justified in their actions by a political environment that permits politicians to survive their great expenses swindle with a handful of token sacrificial lambs, and bankers to be rewarded for greed, failure and deceit. As an earlier blog asked, what separated our rulers and rioters beyond a few shards of broken glass?
Yet how did this all start? Well, you should remember the shooting dead of Mark Duggan. He was killed by police who claimed that he had fired at them from a car and they had no option but to return fire and kill him. The police failure to inform his family of his death and subsequent refusal to talk to them led to a demonstration which many see as the trigger for the riots.
We will need to see how the inquest and any further investigations pan out. But it is bizarre, though unsurprising, how this aspect of the riots has become so downplayed. Instead, the riots have passed into the myth that the rioters were all young people involved in gangs - when in truth very few were gang members; there was a wide range of age groups involved; and most who took part did not have previous convictions.
What the statistics do show is that most were from poor backgrounds, many unemployed or in low wage jobs. And as any historian will tell you, throughout history, deprive people of any hope of a genuine stake in society, add grossly excessive inequality, and while your riots will not be spearheaded by the Vanguard of the Revolution, they will be prompted and justified by the ruling class' exploitation of those around them.
We have heard a lot from the Occupy Movement about the 1% and the 99%. And it is very true that a tiny, tiny elite control the bulk of the world's wealth. But while going for the 1% is pretty attractive - after all, by default, hardly anyone is one of them! Hell, we are nearly all part of the 99%. The implication then is that it is all the fault of the 1% - everyone else is clear.
And yet- consider this: to be in the top 10% of the income bracket in the UK, you need to earn slightly over £54,000 p.a. And the top 10% - some six million people- now own twelve times more than the bottom six million,a huge disparity, and around double the ratios to be found in France and Germany, who have a more socially oriented political settlement. British inequality has doubled in the last generation. In the times of plenty under neoliberal New Labour, the rising prosperity of the average person meant that the exponential rise in the wealth of the richest went unnoticed - Peter Mandelson was able to trumpet that Labour were "supremely relaxed about people who get filthy rich" (to be fair to Mandy, he did add "..as long as they pay their taxes" - though of course, New Labour made certain they had fewer and fewer taxes to pay).
But under the neoliberal austerity economics of the Con Dems in recessionary Britain, the excessive disparities in wealth are becoming more and more evident, especially as the richest continue to award themselves massive pay increases in spite of their telling everyone else to tighten their belts. In the USA, similarly with its full-on liberal capitalist ethic, the disparities are even worse - and the response, including the widespread deployment of vicious pepper spray against perfectly peaceful protesters (see the video below and the photo above), does not bear any explanation other than that the authorities are actively suppressing dissent of even the most mildly social democratic type.
And so, without a stake in society, what impulse is there to support and obey the rules of society? And what then is left to protect the rulers but the increasingly naked brutality of a police force that is being given more and more powers to intrude and intervene in people's lives - new laws, for example, will allow them to enter peoples homes to remove political window posters deemed to be inappropriate if, for example, the leader of China is passing nearby and someone puts up a Free Tibet notice. We wouldn't want to threaten the terms of the trade, after all - the rich might be upset.
The recourse to increasingly militaristic police tactics in pseudo-democratic capitalist states around the world is deeply unwelcome and a real affront to democratic debate and freedom of speech. But, as history shows from regimes as diverse as the Shah's Iran and Imperial Russia, it is nearly always also the start of the endgame for the ruling class.
Secretary of State Natalie Tennant isn't one to get bullied very often, but does admit she felt set up at a recent conference on Internet voting in New Britain, Conn.
Tennant was invited to the symposium to discuss West Virginia's pilot project to allow members of the military and others living overseas to vote in statewide elections via the Internet. She noted that 2010 tests of the system had worked flawlessly, and were well received by the participants.
After her presentation, two other panelists, MIT professor Ron Rivest and University of Michigan professor Alex Halderman, teamed up against her, blasting Internet voting, contending it is impossible to design a secure, hacker-free online voting system.
Rivest, according to news accounts, called Internet voting an oxymoron, like "safe cigarette."
Political scientist William Kelleher, who has an Internet blog "Internet Voting for All," titled his account of the exchange, "Cyber Bullying in Connecticut." Not being a computer expert, Tennant said she could defend online voting from a policy standpoint, but not on the technical issues.
Tennant said, at first, she assumed that the panel was balanced, and that there would be computer experts who could offer a positive perspective on online security, but said she quickly realized the panel was stacked against her.
Nonetheless, Tennant stands by her position that states should continue to pursue online voting as a way to assure that residents serving on active military duty overseas don't end up being disenfranchised.
Reach Phil Kabler at philk@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1220.
****************************** William J. Kelleher, Ph.D. Political Scientist, author, speaker, CEO for The Internet Voting Research and Education Fund, a CA Nonprofit Foundation Email: Internetvoting@gmail.com Blog: http://tinyurl.com/IV4All Twitter: wjkno1
Nothing invented - the real tears of a real Palestinian, under Israeli fire.
The appalling Newt Gingrich, a hopeful for the Republican nomination for US President in next year's election, has described the Palestinians as an "invented" people with no right to a state of their own. Like many a US politician before him, Gingrich is parroting a line used frequently by Zionists to excuse the dreadful treatment of the Palestinians by the Israeli state.
Gingrich tries to redesignate the millions of people in Gaza and West Bank with the generic term Arab. This would be a bit like saying there is no such thing as English people or Greek people - but rather deciding they are all Europeans! To Gingrich's ignorantly blinkered eyes of course, Arabs are all just a homogenous bunch of bearded brown guys who spend their days chomping spicy food, shouting Allah-u-akbar, and plotting against America. In truth, Arabs are tens of millions of people across the Middle east. living in diverse countries with diverse cultures and diverse religions (there are millions of Christian Arabs, as well as other faiths like the Druze). The Palestinians are as distinctive as Jordanians are from Algerians, or Libyans from Iraqis.
Palestine itself is no more or less invented than any other state - all states are on some level invented when they are created: the creation of Britain was a union, to some degree forced, between at least four distinctive ethnic groups. Germany was forged by Prussian conquest of a myriad of German city states back in 1871, while a little later Garibaldi and Vittorio Emmanuel united the state of Italy from a number of different elements. Some states are ethnically based, others emerge as an amalgam - as Britain did.
By far the most invented nationality of all, complete with the most artificially created state of all, is of course the American identity claimed by the United States. Newt did not reflect on this before his bigoted tirade - but America was created through a combination of colonisation, bribery and bloody conquest in terms of its territories and though the gradual and far from easy or completed amalgamation of scores of different ethnicities, destroying the cultural distinctiveness of its component parts far more completely than any other empire in history. And all in the last two and a bit centuries - the Palestinians, by contrast, can better that history by over a thousand years.
So, if Palestine has no right to exist, why does America have any right to exist either?
The people who calls themselves Palestinians are the same people who have lived in the area of Palestine for over fourteen centuries. For much of that time, they did not have their own state because they were part of larger empires, latterly the Ottoman Turkish Empire which collapsed at the end of the First World War. Palestine was then transferred to be a mandate of the British Empire and it was at this stage that the Balfour Declaration decided that Palestine could provide a homeland for Jewish people from other parts of the world. Many Jews had of course lived in the area for centuries alongside their Muslim and Christian neighbours, mostly in peace. But driven by the dreadful victimisation of the Nazi Holocaust, anti-semitism among Europeans, and in many cases their own religious fervour, since 1945, millions of other Jews from elsewhere in the world have emigrated to Israel, driving out Palestinian people who had lived there for centuries. And this was done on the spurious basis that their Jewish ancestors had lived there even earlier.
Quite aside from the debate about how far back in history you can go to raise grievances, there is of course a lie peddled by the West, that the blood thirsty Muslim Arabs seized Israel and drove out the Jews and that the Christian Crusaders then made common cause with the Jews to retake the Holy Lands - and that their failure to do so was only put right by the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. Many American evangelicals even send donations to Israel today in this belief.
Understanding history is vital to understand why we are where we are, but it is today that matters. The bottom line is that millions live in the huge refugee camps that are the totality of Palestinian territory. They live in some of the most difficult conditions in the world - confined in small areas; shelled and bombed by a superior Israeli army and air force; deprived of many goods; deprived of life chances; and with the highest rate of depressive illness measured anywhere in the world. These people are not invented. They are not made up or artificial. They are real, flesh and blood, like you and me. And they are where they are because they lived in Palestine and the Israeli state pushed them out forcibly; and unlike Gingrich's weasel words, they had and have nowhere to go.
The problem is real and the solution has to be found - a real one, not the dangerous fantasy with which Newt Gingrich, in his bizarre little brain, seeks to dismiss the existence of millions and so excuse the violence and degradation to which they are constantly subjected. If Americans vote for this man, with his very much invented artificial reality, they will do so at great peril to themselves and to the peace of the world.
The area of the current USA in 1830 - only the red part was American then; the rest was invented later.
In response to the failure of COP 17 the Bolivian Ambassador has said that "only a movement from below can save us now" and this speech brings that movement from below (in the form of Occupy) into Durban and toward action on climate change.
I've been struggling to find anything I wanted to post about COP 17 - The expectations were low, the outcome was in line with those expectations - But this speech 'got me', reminiscent perhaps of the young Canadian Severn Cullis-Suzuki speaking at the earth summit in Rio in 1992 - Anjali Appadurai ends by mic-checking occupy style ' Get it Done, Get it Done ' and this is the moment that for me lifts the gloom.
So with great fanfare David Cameron claims he has stood up for Britain's national interests by opposing every single one of the other European Union member states as they attempt to claw their way out of the Euro-crisis. With everyone now acknowledging the arrival of a two-speed Europe - 26 states going at one speed and Britain at the other - the chances of a General Election in the New Year have to have increased. Hoping to ride a wave of mindless xenophobia, "Bulldog" Dave will be watching the polls closely for his hoped-for bigot-bounce over the next few months so that he can call a snap election, pose as John Bull reborn and free himself of the pro-EU Lib Dems, who face oblivion at any polls. Given the long-term economic prognosis, it could be his only-ever chance of forming a majority regime.
And yet, how tragically confused the public mood will be - because the supposed national interests he claims to have stood up for are nothing to do with the interests of ordinary people. What he has vetoed is not any of the daft (though in total relatively few) regulations that emanate from Brussels on standardised food weights or what constitutes Wensleydale cheese, or not. Nor have his efforts done anything the tackle the corruption to be found in the workings of much of the Union's institutions. He has done nothing to stop the EU's ludicrous and damaging pursuit of biofuels, nor anything to challenge the wasteful transportation of goods over huge distances of the Continent. And there is nothing to stop the dislocation of local communities caused by the single European market (unsurprisingly, that last is the bit that the rich backers of the Eurosceptics are very, very keen to keep as it is).
Indeed, for ordinary British people, his actions may make things much worse - as Europe faces financial disaster, any economic meltdown across the Channel will inevitably shaft Britain as much as anywhere else, creating unemployment, inflation and misery for millions. By vetoing the proposed international financial regulations, Cameron has at least delayed and probably damaged longer term the struggle to restore economic stability to our key trading partners. Why risk that?
Simple - because for Dave it is worth it.
What Cameron has done is make sure that the City of London remains free of any effective scrutiny. Yep, Bulldog Dave has been out fighting on behalf of the bankers. He has used Britain's veto on this historic occasion to strike a blow against proposed internationally binding regulation of the international finance trade that flows in and out of London banks and City brokers' accounts, fleecing hardworking people of billions in thieved commission and forcing public service cuts through their myriad means of tax avoidance and tax dodging.
He has also put paid to the so-called Robin Hood tax - a tiny levy on bankers transactions that could raise tens of billions of pounds a year to cut deficits and fund public services. Instead, Dave sees it in Britain's interests to let the leeches keep the cash. The rest of Europe may go ahead, but given the importance of the City of London in international finance - a trade with little more than peripheral, trickle-down benefits for Britain - our decision to opt-out will blunt the impact of any transactions tax. This in turn will seriously undermine wider attempts to get the international community to tackle the excesses of the banking and finance cartel that has done so much to bring our world to its knees.
And of course by isolating Britain from absolutely everyone else, he leaves a European Union which will inevitably be dominated by Germany and France - British influence will diminish rapidly in spite (and even because of) all the jingoistic flag waving.
So, I hope Dave is proud of himself. The challenge will be for progressives to expose his claims of fighting for our national interests as a lie and cover for protecting his party financiers and former school chums; yet at the same time to keep advocating for a better, social Europe. The new, more integrated arrangements that every other country seems to be signing up to may not be the right answer either, but at least at its core is an attempt to create some international public control over the currently pretty much unregulated international finance markets which play games with ordinary people's jobs, communities and life chances.
Bulldog Dave? Not likely. Just Bull**** Dave, batting for the bankers.
1946- and the Eurosceptics mascot calls for a Union of Europe: Winston Churchill's Zurich Speech.
