Assorted content for your Labour Day reading. – Gregory Beatty discusses the class struggle as it’s playing out in the time of COVID. Jim Stanford offers a reminder as to how collective action is more important than ever, while Jerry Dias discusses how the labour movement is exercising its strength.
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Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Ed Finn writes about the need to shift away from capitalist domination before the next major crisis strikes. And Larry Elliott laments the top-heavy recovery that’s seen trillions of dollars pumped into inflating stock bubbles to further enrich the wealthiest few, while
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – As the Libs continue to stall on announcing a promised transition from an expiring CERB to a revised employment insurance system, David Macdonald details who stands to lose out if EI simply operates as it has in the past. – Leslie Young reports
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On McQuaig’s Sport and Prey
Linda McQuaig’s newest book, The Sport and Prey of Capitalists: How the Rich are Stealing Canada’s Public Wealth, is a fast read full of local history and written as history should be written, as colourful stories about fascinating people! But, in order to try to remember any of it, I’ve whittled
Continue readingNorthern Currents: Workers deserve a 32 hour work week with no loss of pay
Share this: Since the industrialization of the world, workers organized in unions have fought for many key rights Canadians enjoy today. In the early days of Capitalism, it was not uncommon for a worker to spend 80 hours per week at their job in strenuous working conditions. Thanks to organized
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Christine Berry offers a reminder that protecting public health is absolutely necessary for us to see any economic recovery in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. And Mike Moffitt reports on the prospect that widespread mask use could prevent future waves of
Continue readingKersplebedeb: Don Hamerquist: Distinguishing The Possible From The Probable: Contending strategic approaches within and against transnational capitalism
Brief Explanatory Note: This was written in the last days of 2019 and the first days of the current year. In early March, before doing an initial private circulation, I made a few additions to relate some of the argument to the emerging Pandemic which was clearly a very relevant
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: Why #DeleteFacebook
Not because Mark Zuckerberg is a self-entitled white-privileged frat boy who based Facebook on an app he developed called Facemash to rate students “hotness”. Not because of Facebook’s Predatory Business Model that leverages users and their friends personal information to maximize profits. Not because Facebook wants to replace the open
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: We’re Getting Re-opened in the Morning!
I’m picturing Alfred Doolittle singing that title. Here’s a rundown of my facebook page, where information mainly comes in images, saved here for the memories of what it was like the day before Ontario re-opened for business. Remember, just because you CAN go shopping again, doesn’t mean you SHOULD! According
Continue readingCowichan Conversations: NORMAL is Cancelled Due To COVID Pandemic
“Capitalism’s shield has been breached — we can now see its soul,” writes Brad Zarett in a recent article first published in Medium. Brad writes about avoiding the trap of getting ‘back to normal’ once Read more…
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Inequality Poisons the Roots of Democracy – Paul Street
We need to flatten the wealth curve for our society to continue to move forward and prosper. The out of balance economic shakedown that has been the status quo for so long needs to change. Paul Street writing for Counterpunch lays out the grim details: “+ 23. Capitalist Inequality
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Atlas Failed.
The Pandemic is debunking cherished capitalism mythos one weary chestnut at time.
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Efficiency Versus Resilience
One of the many calculations going on in the background within varied historical contexts is the relationship between efficiency and resilience. Consider arch construction from Roman times and now. The Roman arch has a distinct set of design principles that focus on the utilitarian principles of usefulness and longevity in
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Guest Blog: Prof. Harry Glasbeek on Coronavirus and capitalism
The legendary Prof. Harry Glasbeek of Osgoode Hall Law School at York University has penned the following commentary on how the COVID-19 pandemic is revealing and reinforcing the deep flaws in our economic and social order. It ends on a hopeful note: the people will demand better, when the immediate
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Mike Konczal offers (PDF) a framework for responding to the coronavirus pandemic from a U.S. perspective. And the CCPA is providing ample analysis of the economic and social impacts of COVID-19. – Dakshana Bascaramurty discusses how the pandemic is revealing and exacerbating Canada’s
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: The Central Challenge Of Our Time
What is the central challenge of our time? It is not what most people think it is. It is not race or gender, or climate change, or the environment broadly, or issues of war and peace, or poverty, or justice, or equality, or fighting terrorism, crime or violence, WMDs and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Benjamin Israel, Jan Gorski, Nina Lothian, Chris Severson-Baker and Nikki Way highlight the reality that increased extraction from the tar sands is fundamentally incompatible with any attempt to meet reasonable greenhouse gas emission targets. And Jonathan Watts reports on new research from the
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: And This, Kids, Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
It’s not just that governments don’t tax enough. It’s that they don’t tax big incomes and big wealth nearly enough. Economist and professor Richard Wolff argues that modern global capitalism is theft on a massive scale. In modern capitalism, governments routinely borrow money. They do this to finance budget deficits
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Not So Fast, Capitalism
The triumphalism of capitalism can sometimes be hard to take. Platitudes such as “A rising tide lifts all boats” abound, rarely questioned except by the most astute among us, thereby excluding much of the MSM. Fortunately, there are still people like Linda McQuaig to set the record straight on a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Andray Domise highlights the importance of fighting back against the excesses and harms of capitalism, rather than accepting it as being necessary or inescapable: There’s no way around a simple reality for people who consider themselves to be on the left side of
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