This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Kamran Abbasi makes the case to treat the avoidable deaths resulting from the mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic as a form of social murder. And Jonathan Goodman writes that inequality has spread in tandem with COVID-19 and its variants. – Gary Mason
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Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – As we lay the groundwork for a COVID recovery and energy transition, Heather Scoffield comments on the importance of making sure resources go where they’re needed (rather than serving only to further distance the richest from the rest of us). And Yves Engler
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Duncan Cameron writes about the fundamental choice between austerity and full employment in developing the 2021 federal budget. And Noah Smith points out that while pipeline cancellations signal the imminent end of fossil fuels, they don’t need to have any impact on job
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Joe Vipond, Malgorzata Gasperowicz and Christine Gibson discuss how it’s entirely feasible for Alberta (or any other province) to be COVID-free if its leadership bothers to pursue that goal. And Alex Ballingall and Tonda MacCharles look into the history behind our inability to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Caroline Chen discusses why opening restaurants and other indoor venues which involve prolonged contact is the worst possible choice if one wants to contain the spread of COVID-19. – Michal Rozworski argues that we shouldn’t see the relief efforts needed in the wake
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Bill Blaikie discusses how our growing inequality and precarity is the direct result of harmful policy choices: By 1985 we were five years into the neo-liberal era brought on by the election of Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Andrew Nikiforuk takes a look at two proposals to get to COVID Zero – including one from Canada and one from Germany. – Mickey Djuric reports on Saskatchewan’s deceptive COVID-19 reporting – which results in a public announcement that people have “recovered” no
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This and that for your Sunday reading. – Linda Geddes discusses the problem with people approaching COVID-19 restrictions based on the question of what’s permitted (or worse yet what they can get away with), rather than what choices are most likely to limit the spread of the virus. – Richard
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – George Monbiot writes about the COVID disinformation which is so dangerous as to need to be suppressed. Maggie Keresteci, Nili Kaplan-Myrth and Naheed Dosani highlight the need for equity to figure into our plans and messaging about vaccine distribution. And Dakshana Bascaramurty discusses
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Jim Brumby writes about the multiple growing disruptions to economic health and security which could be addressed by a wealth tax. – Kim Siever highlights how the oil industry continues to scam Alberta while pretending that its interest is that of the province
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Grace Blakeley comments on the connection between neoliberal ideology, and the replacement of even the possibility of collective action with an assumption that we’re only in it for ourselves. – Aditya Chakrabortty writes about the need to eliminate poverty in all of
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Assorted content to end your week. – David Brancaccio and Rose Conlon write about the tendency for people involved in deliberately-rigged contests to believe their success is the result of skill rather than manipulation – offering an important comparison to wealthy people who can’t sort out luck from merit in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On privileged positions
It’s bad enough that Saskatchewan is governed by a party whose foundational principle is that a wealthy person’ vacation home is more important that your life. But it certainly takes a step toward a Kenneyian level of absurdity for the likes of Joe Hargrave to now be whining that it’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – David Macdonald examines (PDF) the continued pay gap which sees CEOs rake in more money the morning of the first day of work than their employees will earn all year. Canadians for Tax Fairness highlights how that signals the need to eliminate
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – In the absence of any leadership from governments, a group of experts has put together a “Canadian Shield” strategy (PDF) to rein in the spread of COVID-19 – featuring the seemingly indisputable ideas that the starting point needs to be controlling and ultimately
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Don Braid calls out Jason Kenney for allowing his government’s MLAs and officials to gallivant around the world on vacation while demanding that the rest of Alberta stay home to stop the spread of COVID-19. James Keller reports on new research showing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to start your year. – Shawn Micallef highlights how the coronavirus pandemic has exposed the refusal by far too many people to follow a social contract – including anti-social leaders elected to shape and apply it. – Owen Jones writes about the dangerous disinformation – spread with far
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: Happy New Years
Community My New Years Resolution for our society is to no longer worship at the twin altars of individualism and technology but rather to embrace the saviour of community. From the industrial revolution to the high tech revolution we have deluded ourselves that technology would solve all our problems. While
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Noah Smith examines how even leaving aside such trifling considerations as human welfare, it’s a better economic proposition to provide money to people with less money than those with more. And Matt McGrath highlights how any hope of averting a climate breakdown requires
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Emma Ladds, Alex Rushforth, Sietse Wieringa, Sharon Taylor, Clare Rayner, Laiba Husain and Trisha Greenhalgh study the wade-ranging and severe symptoms resulting from “long COVID”, while Jennifer Lutz and Richard Carmona point out how a health care system dependent on individual funding
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