Congratulations, Toronto Blue Jays on another exciting season! Let’s hope that before the Atlanta B****s or Cleveland I*****s come back to Toronto they will have changed their name. And as I’ve argued in the past, the process of fixing racist team names can itself be a reconciliation moment. A moment
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Politics, Re-Spun: What the BC Premier’s Reconciliation Smells Like
Quite simply, if a politician dangles child welfare money to anyone, but makes it contingent on embracing a sick LNG plant, what does that smell like to you? I think it smells the same as when she tells a school board to close schools or else they don’t get seismic
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: David Suzuki: Confronting the crisis of violence against Indigenous women and girls in Canada
David Suzuki on the crisis of violence against Indigenous women and girls in Canada, and the “hard work and leadership of Indigenous women and communities who have spent decades calling for an inquiry.” The post David Suzuki: Confronting the crisis of violence against Indigenous women and girls in Canada appeared
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Baratunde Thurston makes the point that even beyond income and wealth inequality, there’s an obviously unfair distribution of second chances in the U.S. depending on one’s race and class. Denis Campbell reports on the link between poverty and childhood obesity, while Jen
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day!
I so hope you had a wonderful Indigenous Peoples’ Day yesterday! In “America” there is a movement to replace the systemically racist Columbus Day. It’s spreading briskly; soon it may reach the 100th Monkey and spread across Turtle Island. In Canada, we had Thanksgiving Day, for all the cornucopia reasons
Continue readingJoe Fantauzzi: Columbus is no hero of mine
Italian-North Americans — especially those of us with roots in the Mezzogiorno (and I include the Ciociaria and Abbruzzo here) — don’t need a Genoese genocidal rapist as our hero. It’s time to eliminate Columbus Day. It’s time for #IndigenousPeoplesDay Some good reading and watching: ‘All Indians Are Dead?’ At Least
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Columbus Day is Institutionalized Racism
In Canada, we celebrate Thanksgiving Day today, a slight improvement on Columbus day, which institutionalizes systemic racism. Columbus Day celebrates white supremacy. It’s time to stop that now. If you need some elaboration, read this. Seattle did it 2 years ago. Now Vermont has figured out a first step in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Cindy Blackstock offers a reminder of Canada’s long and shameful history of discrimination against First Nations children. And Donna Ferreiro takes a look at some of the faces of the Sixties Scoop which saw Indigenous children separated from their families due solely
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Alex Himelfarb and Trish Hennessy offer their take as to what we should expect out of Ontario’s basic income experiment: Critics rightly argue that basic income is no magic bullet, that indeed there are no magic bullets. The history of the idea of
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Trudeau Spins the Royals
If you’re wondering about what kind of spin cycle Trudeau [#TheNewHarper] put the Royals through to smooth over First Nations discontent with the 21st century version of settler imperialism? Read this: Justin Trudeau’s relationship with indigenous people and the politics of William and Kate’s Canadian Royal tour A cynic might question
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – David Boyle discusses how the principle of free trade – once intended to empower consumers against monopolies – is instead being used to lock in corporate control: (T)he original idea of free trade was not a simple licence to do whatever you
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Mary O’Hara notes that even a relatively modest and incomplete set of progressive policies has created some important movement toward reducing poverty. And conversely, Caroline Mortimer writes that child poverty is exploding under the Conservative majority government in the UK. – Dean
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Over 1280 archaeologists and historians denounce Dakota Access Pipeline
At least 1281 archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, students and museum directors from the US, Canada and other countries recently signed a letter condemning the destruction of Standing Rock Sioux burial grounds and sacred sites by the Dakota Access Pipeline company. The post Over 1280 archaeologists and historians denounce Dakota Access Pipeline
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how a recent spate of announcements signals that contrary to their campaign commitments in both theme and detail, there’s been little difference between the Trudeau Liberals and the Harper Conservatives in substance. For further reading…– The point is one being made by plenty of other observers as well
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: End Our Slow Motion Genocide!
Genocide can take place in slow motion, just like weapons of mass destruction. When I learned that people were calling land mines “weapons of mass destruction, in slow motion,” it became obvious that we can practice social/cultural/human genocide in slow motion too. Understanding racism and genocide is no simpler than
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – John Quiggin argues that public services and corporate control don’t mix – no matter how desperately the people seeking to exploit public money try to pretend otherwise: Market-oriented reforms, particularly in the provision of human services like health, education and public safety,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
This and that for your weekend reading.
– Naomi Klein discusses how Canada’s longstanding – if far from inevitable – identity as a resource economy is standing in the way of both needed action on climate change and reconciliation with First Nations:
In Canada, cultivation and industrialization were secondary. First and foremost, this country was built on voraciously devouring wildness. Canada was an extractive company – the Hudson’s Bay Company – before it was a country. And that has shaped us in ways we have yet to begin to confront.Because such enormous fortunes have been built purely on the extraction of wild animals, intact forest and interred metals and fossil fuels, our economic elites have grown accustomed to seeing the natural world as their God-given larder.When someone or something – like climate science – comes along and says: Actually, there are limits, we have to take less from the Earth and keep more profit for the public good, it doesn’t feel like a difficult truth. It feels like an existential attack.…The trouble isn’t just the commodity roller coaster. It’s that the stakes grow larger with each boom-bust cycle. The frenzy for cod crashed a species; the frenzy for bitumen and fracked gas is helping to crash the planet.…Today, we have federal and provincial governments that talk a lot about reconciliation. But this will remain a cruel joke if non-Indigenous Canadians do not confront the why behind those human-rights abuses. And the why, as the Truth and Reconciliation report states, is simple enough: “The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to Aboriginal people and gain control over their land and resources.”The goal, in other words, was to remove all barriers to unrestrained resource extraction. This is not ancient history. Across the country, Indigenous land rights remain the single greatest barrier to planet-destabilizing resource extraction, from pipelines to clear-cut logging.
– Meanwhile, Marc Lee signals what we might expect from a federal climate change action plan based on the working groups currently reviewing the options.
– Laurie Monsebraaten reports on a needed push to ensure that child care funding is used to create not-for-profit spaces. And Ashifa Kassam points to Wellington’s loss of water rights to Nestle as a prime example of what happens when corporate dollars trump public needs.
– Finally, Alon Weinberg discusses why now is the time to implement a proportional electoral system in Canada. And Craig Scott makes the case for mixed-member proportional over the other options under consideration.
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Water Wars and the Last Straw
The next world wars won’t be about land or oil. They’ll be about water. And Canada could be the next Iraq, invaded and decimated for the abundance of our natural resources. We have to stop corporate control over our most necessary resource now before …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.
– Branko Milanovic examines whether the U.S.’ tax system is actually progressive all the way to the top of the income spectrum – and finds that there’s not enough data about the treatment of the extremely wealthy to be sure. And Robert Cribb and Marco Chown Oved discuss the latest Panama Papers revelations showing the large-scale stashing of Canadian assets in the Bahamas.
– Laura Wright reports that Canada’s federal government has approved secret surveillance technology which leaves the public in the dark as to which of its communications are subject to eavesdropping.
– Meanwhile, the federal government is rather less interested in the public safety concerns involved in documenting the fires on the First Nations reserves within its jurisdiction – having abandoned that task in 2010.
– Ross Belot writes that there’s no point in approving and building new pipelines at the moment other than political posturing. And the CP reports on the connection between air pollution from tar sands developments and the health of residents of the area.
– Finally, Adnan Al-Daini is encouraged by Sweden’s move toward a repair-not-replace mindset, and suggests the idea should spread further:
Continue readingIf more countries followed the Swedish example, think of the impact that would have globally on our CO2 emissions. Manufacturing goods is energy intensive. The website “Fix it-Don’t replace it” gives the example of the iphone6 where 85% of its lifecycle’s carbon footprint is from manufacturing it, not using it and another 3% from shipping it.
Climate change is with us already and such measures are needed as a matter of urgency. Such a proposal should not be a party political issue. Good quality jobs would be created in the country where the appliance is used. It would save the consumer money, and it is good for the environment.
Could we do something similar in Britain? Does this have to be a political issue and parties have to have it in their manifestos before it could happen? I don’t see where disagreement between parties could arise.
Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
– Paul Wells argues that climate change and First Nations reconciliation – two of the issues which the Libs have tried to turn into signature priorities – look set to turn into areas of weakness as Justin Trudeau continues his party’s tradition of dithering. And Martin Lukacs writes that Trudeau’s handling of continuing injustice facing First Nations has involved an awful lot of flash but virtually no action:
The extractivist worldview—bent on treating everything as a commodity—that lay behind Stephen Harper’s resource agenda just as powerfully shapes Trudeau’s. In fact, the Liberals’ attempt to wrap themselves in the UN Declaration without embracing its central right may constitute a new, more subtle form of extraction: the extraction from Indigenous territory of consent itself.
Liberal moves to extract and manufacture consent and support for outdated policies are evident elsewhere: restoring funding to the Assembly of First Nations, a government-dependent organization that has since plumped frequently for them; appointing an Indigenous Justice Minister, even though Indigenous critics argue she has sided with the government agenda throughout her political career; and agreeing to call an inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women, but with a mandate far short of what impacted families wanted. As the weight of reality presses against Trudeau’s rhetoric, the ability to generate consent is crumbling.
Reconciliation is a powerful hope, an uplifting prospect, a deeply desired new relationship that Trudeau has compellingly invoked. But if reconciliation does not include the restitution of land, the recognition of real self-government, the reigning in of abusive police, the remediation of rivers and forests, it will remain a vacant notion, a cynical ploy to preserve a status quo in need not of tinkering but transformation. It will be Canada’s latest in beads and trinkets, a cheap simulation of justice.
– Guy Caron discusses the CRA’s role in Canada’s two-tier tax system. Stephen Punwasi comments on the connection between Canada’s willingness to facilitate tax avoidance, and the real estate bubbles driving housing prices far beyond what working-class Canadians can afford. And Marc Lee then highlights the connection between soaring urban real estate prices and increased inequality.
– David Ball notes that many municipalities are retaking control over their own services after learning that the promises of efficiency through privatization are entirely illusory.
– Richard Orange points out Sweden’s intriguing idea of reducing taxes on repair services to discourage people from throwing out consumer goods. But I’d wonder whether that step alone would make a dent if it isn’t paired with a concerted effort at training potential repair workers for a job which the corporate sector would prefer to eliminate.
– Finally, Paul Mason makes the case for economics to be based on real-world observations of human behaviour, rather than insular mathematical models whose assumptions about market efficiency bear no relationship to reality. And Branko Milanovic discusses the need to measure and reduce inequality as part of a global development strategy.
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