This and that for your Thursday reading. – There’s plenty of reason for concern about the departure of some of the few independent officers who have successfully held the Cons to account at times – with departing environment commissioner Scott Vaughan serving as only the latest example. – But the
Continue readingTag: advertising
wmtc: it’s time we all starved the trolls: stop reading comments on mainstream news stories
Robert Fisk has a good piece in The Independent about the incivility (to put it mildly!) that is endemic in the comment sections of online news stories: “Anonymous trolls are as pathetic as the anonymous “sources” that contaminate the gutless journalism of the New York Times, BBC, and CNN”. Fisk
Continue readingwmtc: help defend whistleblowers who defend animals: marineland suing former employees who went public on animal abuse
Company abuses animals/the environment/labour. Employee comes forward to make the abuse public. Company tries to silence employee. It’s an old story, and it repeats itself again and again, in many different contexts. You’ve seen it dramatized in movies like Silkwood and Erin Brockovich. It’s what Bradley Manning is going through
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Frank Graves’ review of the current state of Canadian politics focuses in on the growing gap between the Cons’ waning interest in listening to the public, and their growing expenditures on advertising and marketing: In Canada in 2006, the federal government spent roughly
Continue readingwmtc: naomi wolf: director kathryn bigelow is our generation’s leni riefenstahl
Naomi Wolf, in The Guardian: Zero Dark Thirty is a gorgeously-shot, two-hour ad for keeping intelligence agents who committed crimes against Guantánamo prisoners out of jail. It makes heroes and heroines out of people who committed violent crimes against other people based on their race – something that has historical
Continue readingThings Are Good: A Physician Wants to Spread Knowledge About Misleading Food Labels
A doctor has decided that he has had enough about misleading labels on food and wants to spread the word about how harmful bad labelling can be. Check out this video for exactly why this is a problem and what you can do about it. I’d been asked by the
Continue readingAlberta Diary: What’s wrong with the Alberta Medical Association’s message? A technical primer
The executive of the Alberta Medical Association, shown here, may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: the offending advertisement. With contract talks between the Alberta Medical Association and the provincial government back on again, after a fashion, a polling firm is out there now trolling to see how voters are
Continue readingwmtc: anti-choice group advertises on… hangers. yes, hangers.
Apparently this is not a story from The Onion. From Reproductive Health Reality Check: There is a branch of anti-choice activists that will use pretty much anything as a medium for their message: newspaper ads, graphic signs displayed in front of schools, bus stop benches. You would think they would
Continue readingArt Threat: Girls with guns, boys with blow dryers – Is this gender-neutral toy catalog just a holiday publicity stunt?
Designing a toy catalog — or most any mass-market consumer catalog for that matter — is usually an exercise deeply rooted in the status quo. Top-Toy, the largest toy retailer in Northern European and licensee of the Toys “R” US chain in that region, is gently disrupting some of society’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.- Peter O’Neil and Tara Carman report on the Cons’ strategy of importing temporary foreign workers to drive down wages across Canada. And Craig McInnes juxtaposes that plan against the need for viable care…
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Perfesser Dave explains negative TV advertising and the job-killing Tory carbon tax
Zap! You’re frozen! … In the dark! The Harper Tories’ latest TV advertising attack on NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair. Perfesser Dave, below, explains why Prime Minister Stephen Harper will do the same thing he’s accusing Mr. Mulcair of planning if he manages to get re-elected. Below Perfesser Dave: Robert Stanfield, the underwear guy, Allan Fotheringham …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading.- Andrew Jackson takes a look at the UK’s strong movement for a living wage, and notes that it’s long past time for a similar push in Canada.- The most remarkable part of this week’s revelations about the Cons’ cu…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the Saskatchewan Party’s unprecedented attack ads against the participants in another party’s leadership race represent an attempt to silence all political debate that isn’t pre-approved by the marketing departments of its own resource-industry backers. As an addendum to the column, I’ll note that the leadership candidates have
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Heather Scoffield reports on the Canadian Index of Wellbeing’s stunning finding that Canadian quality of life declined by a quarter between 2008 and 2010, while the Vancouver Sun and Lindor Reynolds comment on the collapse in well-being far beyond the economic damage
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Annie Lowrey reports on the evidence showing that the perpetually-increasing inequality pitched by the right as an economic plan actually serves to damage economic development: The yawning gap between the haves and the have-nots — and the political questions that gap has
Continue readingCanadian ProgressiveCanadian Progressive: The Best Reporting on Facebook and Your Privacy
by Theodoric Meyer | ProPublica Facebook hit the one-billion user mark last week, a little more than two years after it reached 500 million users. To mark the occasion, we’ve rounded up some of the best reads on Facebook and privacy. Facebook Raises Fears With Ad Tracking, The Financial Times, September 2012 Facebook has
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading. – Thomas Walkom comments on the Cons’ preference for low-wage, no-rights immigrant labour as a means of avoiding good jobs for Canadians: Theoretically, temporary work visas are supposed to be reserved for those with unique skills. But increasingly, the notion of skill has been
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Dene Moore reports on Enbridge’s efforts to turn the Northern Gateway pipeline review process into an inquisition against critics. But I’ll point out that thanks to the Harper Cons, that strategy is even more insidious than it seems at first glance: because of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On honest appraisals
For all the concerns about the Cons paying absolutely no political price for their constant dishonesty, the NDP working to change that assumption: So how effective does the new ad look to be, particularly compared to past efforts to develop the theme that the Cons can’t be trusted? Well, the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Ed Broadbent and the Broadbent Institute are putting together a strong public push on the problem of growing inequality – featuring a video, op-ed and research paper (PDF). For more, see coverage from Rachel Mendleson, Natalie Stechyson, and CBC News. – Today’s
Continue reading