This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jeet Heer writes about the class war already emerging in competing responses to the coronavirus epidemic. Ricardo Tranjan makes the case for rent forgiveness as part of COVID-19 relief based on the reality as to who owns the bulk of Canada’s private
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Canadian Dimension: Safe jobs, fair pay and income recovery more important than ever amid COVID-19
A specialist wearing a protective mask sprays disinfectant as he sanitizes an area to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Photo by Renato Gizzi (Flickr). Working people across Canada are facing an assault on their right to work safely and to receive fair pay, income recovery, and job security as
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Michael Valpy and Frank Graves take a look at public opinion in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, and conclude that Canadians are rightly eager to see our leaders do whatever is necessary to ensure our survival and health. And Laila Yuile notes
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Anton Jager and Steven Klein discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a particularly strong clash in rhetoric between people advocating for human lives and capital interests, while Siva Vaidhyanathan notes that the choice is a false one in any event
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Noam Scheiber, Nelson Schwartz and Tiffany Hsu point out how the social isolation required in response to COVID-19 is only confirming and exacerbating the U.S.’ class divide. And Shawn Micallef highlights the vast difference between social isolation in a large home as opposed
Continue readingwmtc: 10 things on my mind about covid-19
1. Wealthy urbanites are fleeing to their second homes — buying out grocery stores, expecting personal shoppers and home delivery, swelling vacation towns’ size to summer proportions. This is the epitome of the egocentric, classist arrogance that often pervades the United States. 2. In India, a planned lockdown of more
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Kenan Malik discusses how the coronavirus pandemic has exposed the fragility of the UK’s social and economic structures: The economic burden imposed by the policy of social distancing has fallen most upon the poorest and the lowest paid, many of whom cannot
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Eric Doherty, and Eric Galbraith and Ross Otto, respectively write that the response to the coronavirus shows how it’s possible to imagine and implement needed changes along the lines of a Green New Deal. And Heather Mallick theorizes that it can also
Continue readingwmtc: farmers concerned about harvest labour: improve working conditions, hire locally
I’ve read that the recent border closures, part of the effort to slow the spread of COVID-19, have raised concerns in the agricultural sector. Farmers are worried that there will be a shortage of the seasonal workers they employ — and depend on — at harvest time. Farmers normally apply
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Frances Woolley points out how the coronavirus pandemic is exposing the effects of decades of austerity on Canada’s health care system. Martin Regg Cohn discusses how the spread of the coronavirus is requiring us to seriously rethink how much of our society
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Owen Jones writes that the coronavirus is offering a stark lesson in how inequality kills: The coronavirus pandemic is about to collide with this engine of inequality. The super-rich are fleeing on private jets to luxury boltholes in foreign climes, while the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Emmanuez Saez and Gabriel Zucman call for (PDF) governments to act as buyers of last resort to minimize the economic fallout from the coronavirus. Andrew Jackson offers his take on the appropriate public policy response to ensure that workers’ incomes aren’t decimated at
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Fernanda Tomaselli and Sandeep Pal point out that the Canadian public is well ahead of its political class in recognizing that there’s far more to life and to policy than inflating GDP. And Richard Adams reports on how the UK Cons’ choice to
Continue readingwmtc: in which covid-19 accomplishes what revolution, unexplained plane crashes, and terrorism could not
I’ve never cancelled a trip because of external circumstances. Until now. In 1994 we were heading to Mexico — to travel through the country, not to stay in a resort — when revolution broke out in the state of Chiapas. We went anyway. In 2001 we were booked on a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Todd Gordon and Geoffrey McCormack write about Canada’s crisis of capitalism – which is only being laid bare by a coronavirus pandemic exposing the fragility of a system built on precarity and debt. – Kim Kelly discusses how service workers will face the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan write about the U.S.’ choice between health care for all, or the spread of disease as people can’t afford to seek medical treatment. – David Dayen highlights how the coronavirus is likely to expose the weaknesses of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Robert Reich highlights how the long-term costs of failing to invest in a just transition and a healthy society far outweigh the short-term price of providing for basic needs, while Duncan Cameron calls out the deception behind claims that we can’t afford
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Owen Jones asks why we’re not treating the existential threat of a climate breakdown with anything close to the urgency applied to the coronavirus response. And Niklas Höhne, Michel den Elzen, Joeri Rogelj, Bert Metz, Taryn Fransen, Takeshi Kuramochi, Anne Olhoff, Joseph Alcamo,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Polly Toynbee and David Walker write about the brutal social consequences of a decade of austerity in the UK. – Andrew Jackson reviews James Crotty’s Keynes Against Capitalism with a strong emphasis on Keynes’ recognition of the need for a democratically-planned economy. –
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Fernando Arce discusses how Doug Ford’s attacks on labour create public health risks. And Amanda Mull writes about the futility of telling workers with no safety net to stay home to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, while Donald McNeil Jr. points out
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