By Josiah Mortimer: Proposals sneaked out during the reshuffle last month represent a big step backwards for voter choice and democracy in England and Wales.
The plans, revealed exclusively in the PM’s former employer, the Telegraph, would see the current preference-based Supplementary Vote method used to elect Mayors and Police and Crime Commissioners removed and First Past the Post imposed.
Continue reading
26 May 2020 — Electoral Reform Society
The government wants to force all voters to ‘show their papers’ at the polling station. But an assessment by the Electoral Commission of electoral offences in the UK shows the minuscule state of ‘personation’ fraud – the type that voter ID is meant to prevent.
2 August 2018 — TRNN
An extensive new Oxford University study shows that governments, political parties, and NGOs spend well over half a billion dollars around the world to influence elections and public opinion, most of it in a completely unregulated and secretive manner. We speak to the study’s co-author, Samantha Bradshaw (inc. transcript) Continue reading
31 May 2014 — New Eastern Outlook
Early polls began for Syria’s presidential election, as the country begins turning the tide against foreign-backed terrorists and restoring order throughout much of the country. It was impossible for the Western media to cover up tens of thousands of Syrians around the world queuing up in impressive numbers to cast their votes in support of both President Bashar al-Assad and other candidates participating in the election. Despite eagerness to vote, the US, UK, EU, and others have decided to condemn the elections and even go as far as obstructing overseas polling.
14 March 2014 — OurNHS
The public will not fall for the government’s deception over the hospital closure clause – even if MPs have.
When it comes to voting in May 2015, there are three dates voters who care about the NHS should keep in mind.
3 March 2014 — Daily Maverick
So it has finally happened. The militant metalworkers union Numsa is now actively campaigning against the ANC government and has issued a call to South Africans to join its “United Front” – a mass movement for socialism and radical economic change. Numsa will soon be hosting provincial consultative conferences to bring together left-leaning organisations and social movements, and this will culminate in a national summit. Numsa will also ratchet up the pressure on the ANC government through a national strike on 19 March. If you read through Numsa’s demands and objectives and somehow hear the echo of Julius Malema’s voice, you are not alone. By RANJENI MUNUSAMY. Continue reading
17 February 2014 — WSWS
The Wythenshawe and Sale East by-election held Thursday was a lacklustre affair marked by widespread abstention and the absence of any popular base for all the competing parties–the coalition government in particular.
20 September 2011 — German Foreign Policy
FRANKFURT/BERLIN
(Own report) – A recently published book, by one of the most influential German newspaper publishers, is pleading for a transition toward “less democracy.” The “voice of the people” and the “emancipatory Zeitgeist, putting everything into question,” has a too “paralyzing influence” on current governance, writes the publishing house in its blurb for the book. The author therefore demands to “correct the system” for “more efficient policy making.” These “corrections” must include the dismantlement of democratic participation. Continue reading
6 July 2013 — RT
On Friday Nicaragua also said that it would “gladly receive” Snowden, who is still holed up in a transit section of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport since fleeing Hong Kong twelve days ago, and give him asylum, “if circumstances permit.”
5 July 2013 — FAIR Blog
David Brooks
“Islamists…lack the mental equipment to govern,” New York Times columnist David Brooks writes today (7/5/13). “Incompetence is built into the intellectual DNA of radical Islam.”
Now, Brooks has been known to cite eugenicist Steve Sailer on “white fertility rates” (12/7/04;Extra!, 4/05). But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that rather than making a racist argument, he’s simply appearing to be racist as a metaphor (as when he wrote recently that interracial marriage was producing a “nation of mutts”–6/27/13).
5 July 2013 — Eric Walberg
During the past few months, dozens of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB) members have been murdered and their offices sacked and burned. The police openly refuse to protect them. Rather than ordering the opposition to drop their demand that Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, resign, and negotiate reasonably with his government, the army gave him a Hobson’s Choice: resign or be ousted. Continue reading
3 July 2013 — Pambazuka News Issue 637
The only real hope for Egypt is the formation of a government of national unity where the progressive forces are at the centre of the emerging political dispensation
STOP PRESS: Following mass protests, Egypt’s army has ousted President Mohammed Morsi from power, placed him under house arrest, suspended the constitution and pledged to hold early elections. The top judge of Egypt’s Constitutional Court, Adly Mahmud Mansour, has been sworn in as interim leader.
25 June 2013 — Truthout
Replaces Voting Rights Act with Katherine Harris Acts
They might as well have burned a cross on Dr. King’s grave. The Jim Crow majority on the Supreme Court just took away the vote of millions of Hispanic and African–American voters by wiping away Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
22 June 2013 — Falkvinge on Infopolicy
The Whitehouse petition to pre-emptively pardon NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden for “crimes he may have committed while blowing the whistle” has reached its goal of 100,000 signatures. This means that the U.S. Administration, by its own rules, need to take it seriously enough to craft a response to it. While that response is unlikely to be anything else than “we politely disagree and intend to impolitely hunt this man down”, it is still an important signal of dissent.
20 June, 2013 — Socialist Resistance
Phil Hearse reports on the first meeting of Left Unity’s National Co-ordinating group which took place in Doncaster on Saturday June 15.
18 April 2013
Any decent democracy requires a viable opposition. But the 21 million living in local One Party States don’t have that luxury. These authorities enjoy power without real accountability – and council taxpayers deserve better.
21 March 2013 — Asia Times
Uncle Marx never thought about this one: history repeating itself as double tragedy after already being a farce in the first place. Let’s examine the case in hand. First of all, take a close look at this Wall Street Journal op-ed from September 2002, in the hysterical run-up towards the invasion of Iraq.
19 March, 2013 — Global Research
On March 9, 1995 Edward Bernays died at the age of 103. His professional endeavors involved seeking to change popular attitudes and behavior by fundamentally altering social reality.[1] Since he laid the modern groundwork for deceiving the public we are for better or worse living out his legacy today.
Several years ago Project Censored directors Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff identified and explained the “truth emergency” that is among the greatest threats to civil society and human existence. This crisis is manifest in flawed (or non-existent) investigations into 9/11 and other potential false flag events, fraudulent elections, and illegal wars vis-à-vis a corporate-controlled news media that fail to adequately inform the public on such matters. While neglecting or obscuring inquiry into such events and phenomena major media disparage independent and often uncredentialed researchers as “conspiracy theorists” or, more revealingly, “truthers.”[2]
8 March 2013 — SolidarityEconomy.net
When Hugo Chávez triumphed in the 1998 presidential elections, the neoliberal capitalist model was already floundering. The choice then was none other than whether to re-establish the neoliberal capitalist model — clearly with some changes including greater concern for social issues, but still motivated by the same logic of profit seeking — or to go ahead and try to build another model.
2 March 2013 — Strategic Culture Foundation
Any illusions about a possible change in direction for American foreign policy were blown away this week with Kerry’s visit to Europe. And it was Kerry himself who blew away such illusions with his own words. The US secretary of state may have sounded multi-lingual and looked urbane in his pinstripe suit, with all its hints of diplomacy, but what he had to say on the issues of Iran and Syria, and by extension Russia, revealed Kerry to be a consistent operator of the same openly militarist agenda that has become such a hallmark of post-9/11 Washington…
The New Dark Age 