January 7, 2012

Getting in bed with David Cameron has been very costly for the Lib Dems (UK)

from the Independent UK:



Only one in four people who voted Liberal Democrat at the last election still supports the party, according to new research.

The YouGov survey of 4,300 who voted Liberal Democrat in 2010 suggests that the party's predicament may be even worse than the headline polling figures show. A quarter of those who backed Nick Clegg's party now support Labour, while another quarter are "don't knows" and the remaining quarter back other parties.

Worryingly for the Liberal Democrats, there are fewer signs than after previous elections of the party winning new supporters to replace the voters it has lost. Only 1 per cent of Labour and Conservative voters in 2010 has switched to the Liberal Democrats.

The one ray of hope is that one in four of their backers is now a "don't know" and could potentially be won back. The party's other target groups before the next election will be lost tactical voters and "missing new converts". Strategists say the party will aim to woo low to middle income families and women. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/lib-dems-lose-three-out-of-four-of-their-voters-6285640.html

January 7, 2012

Independent UK: Harry's heading to Jamaica, but grandma is not welcome

Harry's heading to Jamaica, but grandma is not welcome
Caribbean island's Prime Minister says time has come to remove the Queen as head of State

Tom Peck
Saturday 07 January 2012


A visit by Prince Harry to Jamaica this summer has suddenly become political, after the country's new Prime Minister, Portia Simpson Miller, used her swearing in speech to announce her intention to remove the Queen as head of state and make the Caribbean island country a republic.

"I love the Queen; she is a beautiful lady," said Simpson Miller, as she became Jamaican Prime Minister for the second time. "But I think the time has come."

A Jamaican government spokesman confirmed that it would begin the process of "removing all ties with the British monarchy, thereby becoming a truly independent nation".

......(snip)......

Ms Simpson Miller also vowed to replace arguably an even more curious anachronism in her country's governance – that of the Privy Council in London serving as Jamaica's highest court of appeal, a system she described as "judicial surveillance from London". .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/harrys-heading-to-jamaica-but-grandma-is-not-welcome-6286315.html

January 7, 2012

Clash of Cultures: Ancient people desperate to keep identity

Uploaded by RussiaToday on Jan 6, 2012

RT's team continues to explore Russia - and bring its most spectacular corners closer. This week we have ventured to part of the country's Far East - the Khabarovsk region. This is Russia's melting pot of cultures, with all sorts of customs and traditions mixed into an amazing blend. But as RT's Tom Barton discovered, sometimes it's hard to adapt old habits to the pace of modern day life.

January 7, 2012

How Cities and States are Sticking It to Citizens United

from YES! Magazine:



How Cities and States are Sticking It to Citizens United
From courthouses to statehouses, the pro-corporate ruling is under pressure.

by Brooke Jarvis
posted Jan 05, 2012


The Supreme Court may have declared in Citizens United v. the FEC that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections, but that doesn’t mean cities and states have to be happy about it.

They’re expressing their disagreement on an increasing number of battlegrounds, with Citizens United under challenge in courts, in city council meetings, in state legislatures, on ballots, and in the streets.

Dissension in the Courts

Some of the most interesting recent action has been in the courts, with lower courts—including a state Supreme Court and a federal appeals court—taking on Citizens United.

In Montana, the state Supreme Court upheld a longstanding law limiting corporate spending in politics. A lower court had held that Citizens United invalidated the Corrupt Practices Act, a law passed by citizens’ ballot initiative in 1912, when it was common practice for the copper industry to bribe state politicians. Unwilling to lose a basic, century-old protection against corruption, the state appealed the issue to the Montana Supreme Court, which on Dec. 30 allowed the law to stand. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/brooke-jarvis/how-cities-and-states-are-sticking-it-to-citizens-united

January 6, 2012

Canada Jobless Rate Rose for Third Month in December to 7.5%

(Bloomberg) Canada’s unemployment rate (CANLXEMR) rose for a third month in December, the longest advance in two years, as a gain in jobs trailed growth of the labor force.

The jobless rate increased to 7.5 percent from November’s 7.4 percent and the recent low of 7.1 percent in September, Statistics Canada said today in Ottawa. Employment (CANLNETJ) rose by 17,500, the first gain in three months. Over the past six months, the number of jobs has grown by 7,400, compared with a gain of 191,800 in the first half of 2011.

The labor market may stay stalled in 2012 with unemployment averaging 7.4 percent, according to a Bloomberg News survey of economists taken last month. Prime Minister Stephen Harper said “the news isn’t all good” in today’s report, speaking to reporters in Edmonton, Alberta.

“Job growth has cooled,” said Doug Porter, deputy chief economist with BMO Capital Markets in Toronto, by telephone. “I wouldn’t at all be surprised if we are averaging 10,000 jobs a month, which won’t cut into the unemployment rate at all” over the next six months, he said. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-06/canada-s-jobless-rate-rose-for-third-month-in-december-to-7-5-.html

January 6, 2012

David Sirota: 10 American ABCs We May Soon Forget

from truthdig:



10 American ABCs We May Soon Forget

Posted on Jan 5, 2012
By David Sirota


By far, the laziest, most vapid articles annually published during this post-holiday season are lists of the past year’s top 10 words and aphorisms. Admittedly, the sloth of such an endeavor tempts me. But as a new dad obsessed with my 1-year-old son’s future, I think I’ve got a more worthy list to add to the pile—one of current words and phrases that my kid may never know because they might end up as relics of a lost vernacular.

Here are those harrowing 10. I hope I’m wrong but fear I’m not.

10. “Civil liberties”

My son will surely read the U.S. Constitution in civics class, and he’ll see stuff about rights to jury trials, due process and protection from unreasonable searches. But these freedoms have been extinguished by presidents successively claiming powers of indefinite detention, warrantless surveillance and assassination of American citizens without charge. Assuming there’s still an ACLU that sends me mail and assuming my son sees the mail, he might ask, “What are civil liberties, Dad?” My response: “Good question.”

9. “Public school”

With the for-profit education industry successfully pushing to privatize public education, I pray there’s a decent public school left for my son to attend—at least then there’s a chance he’ll know what one is. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/10_american_abcs_we_may_soon_forget_20120105/

January 6, 2012

US Political News Is a Fool’s Game

from Consortium News:



US Political News Is a Fool’s Game
January 5, 2012

U.S. political journalists love to cover the horse race of presidential politics – focused on polls and gaffes – while usually obscuring the nation’s actual problems and how the candidates and their proposals relate to this real world, as Danny Schechter notes.

By Danny Schechter


“Game On” was Rick Santorum’s first comment after his “surge” was considered successful with a mere 30,000 votes in Iowa. He inadvertently gave the game away by calling it a game — which is what it is.

Only this game is not just about politics but about the media. Pseudo-events like this are what the media lives for: it provides something for them to do, and to feel important while doing it. It creates airtime for endless punditry, and a spectacle to liven up a dull Iowa winter.

For Iowans, it’s a chance to “participate” in something that sounds important; for media heads, it’s a routine of the news, a ritual. The media, in effect, provides an infomercial posing as real news.

Yet throughout the weeks of endless around the clock “coverage,” including polling and analyzing TV ads, there’s barely a mention about how the media benefits by creating a phony sense of excitement while generating revenues from the money spent on the endless ads, like the $17 million Texas Gov. Rick Perry invested in his run to nowhere. (How much do you think each vote cost.) .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2012/01/05/us-political-news-is-a-fools-game/

January 6, 2012

NOW Toronto: Transit City Code Red

Transit City Code Red
Campaign that saved port lands aims to resurrect Transit City

By Ben Spurr


If the Code Blue T.O. campaign saved Toronto’s waterfront, can Code Red (coderedto.com) rescue Transit City from oblivion?

That’s the hope behind a burgeoning movement spearheaded by some of the same folks who did in Doug Ford’s port lands fantasy. That battle dealt the mayor his most dramatic council defeat to date, and transit activists now hope to stage a repeat.

“It would be amazing to emulate the success of Code Blue,” says Laurence Lui, a transportation planner and one of a core of urban experts who set the Blue campaign in motion. Now he’s working to kick-start, Code Red, a movement to resurrect Transit City.

The mayor has promised to ditch Transit City’s multiple light rail lines and replace them with a Sheppard subway and an underground Eglinton Crosstown LRT, both of which are prohibitively expensive and would serve fewer people than David Miller’s extensive light rail network. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=184596

January 6, 2012

David Sirota: 10 American ABCs We May Soon Forget

from truthdig:



10 American ABCs We May Soon Forget

Posted on Jan 5, 2012
By David Sirota


By far, the laziest, most vapid articles annually published during this post-holiday season are lists of the past year’s top 10 words and aphorisms. Admittedly, the sloth of such an endeavor tempts me. But as a new dad obsessed with my 1-year-old son’s future, I think I’ve got a more worthy list to add to the pile—one of current words and phrases that my kid may never know because they might end up as relics of a lost vernacular.

Here are those harrowing 10. I hope I’m wrong but fear I’m not.

10. “Civil liberties”

My son will surely read the U.S. Constitution in civics class, and he’ll see stuff about rights to jury trials, due process and protection from unreasonable searches. But these freedoms have been extinguished by presidents successively claiming powers of indefinite detention, warrantless surveillance and assassination of American citizens without charge. Assuming there’s still an ACLU that sends me mail and assuming my son sees the mail, he might ask, “What are civil liberties, Dad?” My response: “Good question.”

9. “Public school”

With the for-profit education industry successfully pushing to privatize public education, I pray there’s a decent public school left for my son to attend—at least then there’s a chance he’ll know what one is. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/10_american_abcs_we_may_soon_forget_20120105/

January 6, 2012

America Beyond Capitalism: Is It Possible?

Dollars and Sense / By Gar Alperovitz

America Beyond Capitalism: Is It Possible?
Thousands of co-ops, worker-owned businesses, land trusts, and municipal enterprises are quietly beginning to democratize the deep substructure of the American economic system.

January 3, 2012 |


“Black Monday,” September 19, 1977, was the day 34 years ago when the shuttering of the Youngstown Sheet and Tube steel mill threw 5,000 steelworkers onto the streets of their decaying Midwestern hometown. No local, state or federal programs offered significant help. Steelworkers called training programs “funeral insurance”: they led nowhere since there were no other jobs available. Inspired by a young steelworker, an ecumenical religious coalition put forward a plan for community-worker ownership of the giant mill. The plan captured widespread media attention, the support of numerous Democrats and Republicans (including the conservative governor of the state at the time), and an initial $200 million in loan guarantees from the Carter administration.

Corporate and other political maneuvering in the end undercut the Youngstown initiative. Nonetheless, the effort had ongoing impact, especially in Ohio, where the idea of worker-ownership became widespread in significant part as the result of publicity and educational efforts traceable to the Youngstown effort—and because of the depth of policy failures and the continuing pain of deindustrialization throughout the state. In the more than three decades since that effott, numerous employee-owned companies—inspired directly and indirectly by the effort to save the Youngstown mill—have been developed in Ohio. Individual lives were also changed, among them that of the late John Logue, a professor at Kent State University who established the Ohio Employee Ownership Center, an organization that provides technical and other assistance to help firms across the state become worker-owned.

There has also been an evolution in the position of the United Steelworkers union. In the late 1970s the union saw worker-ownership as a threat to organizing, and it opposed efforts by local steelworkers to explore employee-owned institution-building in cities like Youngstown. Over the decades, however, the union changed its position as its leaders saw the need to supplement traditional forms of labor organizing with other strategies. The union has now become a strong advocate of worker ownership, and is actively working to develop new models based upon the Mondragón Cooperative Corporation in the Basque country of Spain. This highly successful grouping of worker-owned cooperatives employs 85,000 people in fields ranging from sophisticated medical technology and the production of appliances to large supermarkets and a credit union with over 21 billion euros in assets. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/153646/america_beyond_capitalism%3A_is_it_possible/