Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Diane Coyle offers a preview of Thomas Piketty’s upcoming book on inequality – featuring a prediction that absent some significant public policy intervention, we may see a return to 19th-century levels of concentration of wealth. – Meanwhile, Murray Dobbin calls for 2014 to
Continue readingTag: Consumerism
Politics and its Discontents: Boxing Day Shopping
It’s never enough, is it? Recommend this Post
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: ACTION: Illegal Israeli Settlement Goods Sold at London Drugs
SodaStream boycott informational picket Saturday, Dec. 21, 2:00 – 3:00 p.m. London Drugs, Broadway @ Cambie, Vancouver Below is a notice of an important event happening on Saturday in Vancouver. If something is labelled as “Made in Israel” but is really made in an illegal Israeli settlement in the West
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Fixing Cyncial Corporate Media
How to inoculate yourself against cynical corporate media. Corporate news media is not on our side. It is on the side of stoking fear, cynically eroding possibilities of a better, more robust democracy, and scaring us into obedience to corporations and government through sensational stories that undermine our happiness. But
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Facebook Is the New AOL/Compuserve Big Brother
The evolution of the decay of Facebook privacy. The late, great Neil Postman once wrote that we’d more likely voluntarily embrace the fascism of Huxley’s Brave New World than Orwell’s 1984. The corporate version of this is the crack-like addiction a billion people have to the Facebook. But it’s worse
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Practice CrimeStop: You Are the New Terrorist
Balloons are a threat to civil order. The police must protect themselves from you with riot gear. You are a bad person. You. You enemy of the state. You radical environmentalist. Or worker rights advocate. Or whatever cause you are promoting. You. You are a threat to order. When you
Continue readingIn This Corner: Hello, Black Friday. Goodbye, Boxing Day.
It’s not very often that you see a full-blown change in the landscape happen right before your eyes, but I think we’ve just seen one. The future, I think, is black … as in Black Friday. You may have noticed that Black Friday shopping arrived with a vengeance in Canada
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Men: Never 100% Responsible for Rape?
I have no words, at least I thought I didn’t. It’s bad enough that men rape women, then modern culture shames women for wearing anything but a burlap sack. I do not condone rape or sexual assault, but I think the male teens often so accused are not wholly to
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Chemical Weapons in Syria? Merely a Pretext [Iran, Shhh.]
” It’s the Economy, Stupid.” [Or oil, or gas, or energy…] If you think you know why Syria is happening [and happening NOW], you’re probably missing a number of the elements at play. Don’t expect western governments or the corporate media to enumerate these. Sure, chemical weapons are horrible, but
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: You Aren’t Sufficiently Critical of the #Media
You need to trust the media less. Almost a year ago, and before the last US presidential election, Gallup determined that there has been a stunning decline in citizens’ mistrust of the media [see below]. It crossed over from mostly trust to not so much trust around 2004-2005. If you
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Labour Day 2013: Say Hello to the Pavement!
Workers in Canada and around the world have been under assault for decades, but most of our recent tactics to stop the bleeding have been ineffective. Are we lazy, complacent, overworked, obedient, compliant, subdued, afraid, docile, or fully tamed and intimidated by the one per cent? If we don’t get
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: The First Day of School, 2013: Beware!
Well, a new school year is about to begin, so it’s time to analyze just how much destruction the 1% will visit upon public education this year. Defunding, corporatization of curriculum, standardization of curriculum and experience, high-stakes testing, homogenization of experience…you know, the same old nonsense that drove me from
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Are You Just Too Tired? We’ve Known Why for Decades
You actually do deserve a break today. What ails us? A large proportion of the total produce goes to a small minority of the population, many of whom do no work at all. Owing to the absence of any central control over production, we produce hosts of things that are
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Ice Crisis at the Poles: Ice, Ice, Baby
What continent is this, anyway? And why does it matter? The arctic ice cap will be fully melting in the next few summers, likely. There is a lake on top of the ice at the North Pole. Santa is getting worried. “On August 26, 2012, the Arctic sea ice extent
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Is It Really That Hard to Imagine Cities Without Cars?
A blissful infographic of imaginative paradigm mechanics! Probably. That’s why really creative paradigm mechanics are thinking outside the box-y sedans to figure out how we could reorient cities and movement in cities with a changed premise: no cars. Imagine how much parking space we’d free up for human pursuits? Imagine
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: What Young People Are Teaching Us About Empathy
Click the chart to see more inspiring charts! Descending/increasing lines indicate less/more concern among different generations of high school graduates for the various ideas. I have so much hope for the future. Sometimes I get bogged down by negativity, but that’s usually just circumstantial. It passes. Much of my hope
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Ikea’s Union-Busting Lockout in Richmond, BC Reaches Two Months
Is Walmart Ikea’s labour relations mentor? Ikea, that family-friendly darling of home decor and Swedish innocence is trying to break its union, Teamsters Local 213. They have locked out their Richmond, BC workers for two months now, while deciding to bargain in reverse: Start with a pathetic offer, then as
Continue readingArt Threat: The Art & Money Project
It’s no secret that money rules our lives. I think what we’re now seeing is really the final and most ruthless stage of the integration of art and creativity into the capitalist market or, in other words, the final stages of art’s subordination to money. But I think that almost
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Profits Before People: Richmond Ikea Lockout Enters Day 17
Generating enough media spin to rival a jet engine at take off, the management and PR folks at Ikea Canada want you to believe that their poor little corporation is being held hostage by greedy, soulless union workers in Richmond. Woe. Pity poor Ikea. It’s tough being a multi-national
Continue readingIn This Corner: Gas prices soar! Media yawns.
The price of gasoline has soared in Edmonton in the past week, beginning with the traditional holiday weekend gouging, and continuing with another outrageous 6-cent a litre hike on Wednesday. Gas in Edmonton is now at $1.29 a litre; one month ago, it was at $1.04. That means a 50-litre
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