Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Walden Bello discusses the need for our political system to include constant citizen engagement, not merely periodic elections to determine who will be responsible to implement the wishes of the elite: Even more than dictatorships, Western-style democracies are, we are forced to conclude,
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Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Monica Pohlmann interviews Armine Yalnizyan about the undue influence of our corporate overlords in setting public policy: What’s your sense of the state of our democracy? We have a troubled relationship with our democratic institutions. We need to get over the idea
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Martin O’Neill and Rick Pearce interview Thomas Piketty about possible policy responses to growing inequality: [Martin O’Neill]…(D)o you think that the response to the increase in inequality might be one that explores the sorts of avenues that Meade opened up, and doesn’t
Continue readingwmtc: #walmartstrikers + international buy nothing day = don’t shop at walmart
I don’t know when people starting calling the day after US Thanksgiving “Black Friday,” but the expression has become synonymous with over-consumption, empty consumer culture, and the bizarre importance assigned to hunting for bargains. And what a bargain it is: a multibillion-dollar corporation sells a piece of crappy future landfill
Continue readingArt Threat: Activist pasts, austere presents, queered futures: An interview with Emily Davidson
“Imagine a new relationship to every aspect of everything.” “Capitalism has fallen; Art must be redefined.” “You get to pick your gender when you come of age, but feel free to change your mind.” “Living together is still hard; Art makes it better.” These missives from the Inner City Artists’
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood discusses the close connection between the energy sector and inequality in Canada – with the obvious implication that policies dedicated to unduly favouring the former will inevitably produce the latter: (T)he real story from last week’s Stats Can report isn’t that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Daniel Tencer reports on a couple of important recent warnings that Canada is in danger of following the U.S. down the path of extreme corporatism and inequality: Speaking at a fundraiser for the left-leaning Broadbent Institute, Reich said Canada is facing the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Lynn Stuart Parramore writes about our increasingly traumatic social and political culture, along with the response which can help to overcome it: A 2012 study of hospital patients in Atlanta’s inner-city communities showed that rates of post-traumatic stress are now on par with those
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – George Monbiot comments on the far more important values we’re endangering in the name of constant financial and material growth: To try to stabilise this system, governments behave like soldiers billeted in an ancient manor, burning the furniture, the paintings and the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Slavery is freedom
Shorter Brianna Heinrichs: Oh sure, you soft-hearted progressives think you’re helping workers with your “employment standards” and your “occupational health and safety”. But have you ever considered some people might prefer to have serfdom as an option?
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Dining Out in Dinkytown
Available in the holdings of the National Archives and Records Administration If you are in Minneapolis, after a hard day’s night, the place to go for a morning pick-me-up is Al’s Breakfast. Or so I was informed. Being in the Twin Cities in mid-July, I made my way to the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jonas Fossli Gherso discusses the unfortunate (and unnecessary) acceptance of burgeoning inequality even by the people who suffer most from its presence. And Ryan Meili interviews Gabor Mate about the ill health effects of an economic system designed to keep people under stress:
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Shannon Gormley points out that human rights are meaningless in the face of a government which claims the entitlement to strip people of their humanity – which is exactly what the Cons are setting out to do: (W)hen Canada’s Citizenship and Immigration
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Barrie McKenna looks to Norway as an example of how an oil-rich country can both ensure long-term benefits from its non-renewable resources, and be far more environmentally responsible than Canada has been to date. – Michal Rozworski discusses how the devaluing of work
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – The Globe and Mail reminds us why we should demand the restoration of an effective census, while Evidence for Democracy is making a public push toward that goal. And Tavia Grant discusses how the destruction of effective data collection is affecting Canadian workplace:
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jessica McCormick and Jerry Dias respond to Stephen Poloz’ view that young workers should be happy to work for free, and note that he of all people shouldn’t be pointing the finger at individuals to address problems with systemic unemployment: The most infuriating
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Heather Mallick and Linda McQuaig both weigh in on the connection between income splitting and the Cons’ plans for social engineering. And Scott Clark and Peter DeVries point out that a giveaway to wealthy families is as indefensible from an economic standpoint
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, arguing that while Stephen Poloz is indeed thoroughly out of touch in suggesting that people entering the workforce should take on unpaid internships as matters stand now, we should in fact make sure that unpaid work (or study, or other activity) is a viable option for young workers. For
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Can We Defend Our Pensions Without Challenging Financialized Capitalism?
Photo from Public Domain Unrelenting employer attacks on workplace based pension plans are intensifying, and the struggle to defend them is becoming more challenging right across the country. One recent development appears to be an important partial victory. Some 900 workers at Bombardier’s Thunder Bay production facility, represented by Unifor,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Jim Stanford points out that the choice to leave drug development to the market resulted in a promising ebola vaccine going unused – and indeed untested – for years until the disease threatened a wealthy enough target population: Canada’s outstanding work to invent
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