Assorted content to end your week. – pogge offers up the definitive response to the Cons’ attempt to encourage a sell-off of First Nations reserve land: When you look past the paternalistic argument that the only way First Nations communities can possibly thrive is to be more like us, this
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Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Mitchell Anderson discusses the Ten Commandments that have ensured that Norway’s oil wealth is preserved for the benefit of citizens. But it’s particularly worth contrasting Norway’s philosophy surrounding non-renewable resources against the frenzy to extract everything today at any price (which of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – John Conway discusses the Cons’ project of destroying Canada’s social safety net. – But the good news is that Stephen Harper is running into a few roadblocks along the way. For example, the rule of law – as a Federal Court judge has
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On unscientific methods
Scott is absolutely right to be skeptical of the claim that the Cons will let science play any role in their attempt to force a pipeline through northern B.C. – particularly given their general distaste for the subject. But there’s a more direct response worth pointing out to Stephen Harper’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Moira Herbst is the latest to comment on the connection between the lack of good jobs and an excess of corporate cash hoarding: (I)t would be refreshing if the pundit-political class considered a radical but obvious idea: tapping the multitrillion-dollar stockpiles of corporate
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to end your week. – Tim Harper suggests that the Cons are running out of options to try to push the Gateway pipeline on a thoroughly-opposed public in British Columbia. But in keeping with the Cons’ general view of the world as nothing but a public relations problem
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the Gateway pipeline serves as a prime example as to why governments shouldn’t be too quick to minimize environmental assessment processes. For further reading…– Robyn Allan’s latest discussion of the Gateway pipeline is here.– Kevin Logan documents Christy Clark’s position prior to her latest desperate call for
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – The presidents of Canada’s provincial Federations of Labour highlight how the provinces need to respond to the Harper Cons’ efforts to push down wages and trample on workers’ rightst: Canadians need our country’s premiers to denounce this low-wage agenda and stand up for
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Rick Salutin discusses the link between parity of wealth and democratic participation, while pointing out why there’s reason for people to engage much more in the latter (W)hy didn’t the majority ever vote to expropriate the rich and take all their stuff? Perhaps
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Frances Russell comments on how the Harper Cons are ready to impose exactly the kind of centralized and unresponsive decision-making they’ve long loathed – but only when it comes to favouring Alberta’s interests over B.C.’s real environmental concerns. But Michael Harris notes that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Evening Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Robyn Allan notes that there’s plenty of weakness in Christy Clark’s position on the Gateway pipeline. But Barbara Yaffe writes that Clark has little choice but to stick to at least the requests she’s made so far – and Vaughn Palmer points
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Stuart Trew comments on the Cons’ utterly implausible claims to try to impose the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the EU without the slightest bit of public scrutiny: CETA will also most certainly give European firms the power to challenge and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Joe Stiglitz discusses the link between increased inequality and the U.S.’ economic frailty: Any solution to today’s problems requires addressing the economy’s underlying weakness: a deficiency in aggregate demand. Firms won’t invest if there is no demand for their products. And one of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your weekend. – Yes, the usual caveats about trying to predict future commodity prices apply. But Stephen Maher’s warning about the effect of rising fuel and food prices is still worth keeping in mind: That shift doesn’t mean that North Americans are about to take meaningful
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Lana Payne sees reason for hope in the sheer breadth of citizens who are protesting against the Harper Cons: Scientists. Doctors. Nuclear engineers. Academics. Researchers. Stephen Harper has a big problem. He has ticked them all off. And they are not suffering their
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your weekend. – Will Hutton discusses how the increasing gaps in economic equality are leading to radical differences in opportunity – with the U.S./U.K. push toward private schooling serving as a particular source of exclusion: (T)he middle class of whatever ethnic background is spending more on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Ed Broadbent discusses the connection between unions, democracy and equality: In democratic societies, there are two principal arenas of non-violent conflict over power: the state and the workplace. Just as political democracy entails the right to select or reject one’s representatives and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Sid Ryan rightly criticizes Tim Hudak’s anti-labour plans as a push toward poverty rather than prosperity. – Via Climate Progress, Steven Mufson reports on the causes of Enbridge’s Michigan oil spill – with Enbridge’s complete failure to repair known defects over a period
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Lori Wallach discusses the corporate coup underlying the Trans-Pacific Partnership which the Cons are so eager to force on Canada: (T)rade is the least of it. Only two of TPP’s 26 chapters actually have to do with trade. The rest is about new
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Cheap and dirty
Yesterday, I columnized about what seemed to be fairly unobjectionable purposes of environmental assessments: The most recent spill into the Red Deer River paired a high-volume pipeline with a pristine area where a tributary feeds into multiple sources of drinking water. And in a proper assessment process, that combination would
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