Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Joseph Stiglitz writes that while we should expect natural resources to result in broad-based prosperity, Australia (much like Canada) is now turning toward the U.S. model of instead directing as much shared wealth as possible toward the privileged few: There is something deeply
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Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – George Monbiot criticizes the UK Cons’ latest effort to outlaw any form of individual action or expression which might intrude upon the corporate bubble: The existing rules are bad enough. Introduced by the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act, antisocial behaviour orders (asbos)
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Dan Leger and Leslie MacKinnon both theorize that 2013 represented a new low in Canadian politics. But while the Cons may have taken some new steps in petty scandals and cover-ups (and Rob Ford’s clown show managed to attract an unusual amount
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: NAFTA at 20: State of the North American Worker
Twenty years since its passage, NAFTA has displaced workers on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, depressed wages, weakened unions, and set the terms of the neoliberal global economy. By Jeff Faux, December 13, 2013. Foreign Policy In Focus is partnering with Mexico’s La Jornada del campo magazine, where an earlier
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: NAFTA, “Free Trade” and the TPP: Fast-Track To Full Corporate Rule
“Twenty years ago, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed into law. At the time, advocates painted a rosy picture of booming U.S. exports creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs, and economic development in Mexico, which would bring the struggling country in line with its wealthier northern
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The NSA Scandal is all about Economics
Back in 1998, I wrote a lengthy investigative feature for The Financial Post about Canada’s signals intelligence agency, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), and its post-Cold War role. You can read it here: http://circ.jmellon.com/docs/pdf/trolling_for_secrets_economic_espionage.pdf The CSE and its sister signals intelligence agency in the US, the National Security Agency (NSA),
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Arbourist Casts Skeptical Eye Toward EU/Canada FTA.
Harper turns kitten eating grin to 11. The European Union/Canadian Free Trade agreement was unexpectedly foisted onto the Canadian public – like driving over a deep pothole at night, the consequences of this agreement require the public to pull over and carefully examine the damage done to our society and
Continue readingThe Ranting Canadian: Diane Francis is an imbecile and a traitor. The Chicago-born…
Diane Francis is an imbecile and a traitor. The Chicago-born conservative immigrant to Canada should be deported to her homeland, as should all foreign-born right-wing elitists who want to give away Canadians’ sovereignty as if it’s no big deal. Canadian-born traitors like Stephen J. Harper and his spineless sycophants will
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Can Canadians Really “Buy Into” Mexico?
A recent investment advice column in the Globe and Mail (by David Milstead, August 3) highlighted some surprising facts about Mexico’s economy. The bullish author suggested Mexico will be a global economic powerhouse in future years thanks to pro-business policy shifts (like the new plan to open up the petroleum
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Henry Blodget recognizes that the systematic corporate squeeze on mere workers represents a deliberate choice rather than an inevitability: One of the big reasons the U.S. economy is so lousy is the American companies are hoarding cash and “maximizing profits” instead of investing
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Idle No More And Indigenous Uprisings Guarantee A Sustainable Future
by: Kristin Moe | Article originally published by Yes! Magazine: Idle No More protest on Parliament Hill, Ottawa. Dec 2012 (Photo: Obert Madondo) There’s a remote part of northern Alberta where the Lubicon Cree have lived, it is said, since time immemorial. The Cree called the vast, pine-covered region niyanan askiy, “our
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Thousands demand Lone Pine drop its NAFTA lawsuit
By: Council of Canadians | Press Release OTTAWA – Two weeks after the launch of a public petition, organizers have received over 3,000 signatures demanding that energy company Lone Pine Resources drop its $250 million NAFTA (North America Free Trade Agreement) lawsuit against Canada for Québec’s moratorium on fracking. The petition
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: CETA: EU-Canada trade agreement threatens fracking bans
Note: CETA negotiations continue in Brussels today (May 6) through at least Wednesday. By: Council of Canadians | Press Release: Amsterdam/Brussels/Ottawa – The proposed Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the European Union (EU) and Canada would grant energy companies far-reaching rights to challenge bans and regulations of environmentally damaging shale gas
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Excessive corporate rights in Canada-EU CETA trade deal unacceptable to Canadians and Europeans
Transatlantic Statement Opposing Excessive Corporate Rights (Investor-State Dispute Settlement) in the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) By Trade Justice Network | Feb. 5, 2013: BRUSSELS, BELGIUM and OTTAWA, ONTARIO and MONTREAL, QUEBEC – Labour, environmental, Indigenous, women’s, academic, health sector and fair trade organizations from Europe, Canada and Quebec
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Foreign Investment Rights Versus Canadian Provinces
That the corporate world is ruled by only one imperative, to maximize profits, is self-evident. That it almost always gets its way, no matter what the environmental and social costs, is another truth that our current right-wing political ‘leaders’ wo…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material to end your Saturday. – Jim Stanford looks in detail at the aftereffects of free trade with the U.S., and finds rather little to cheer: In sum, the promise that free trade would induce more trade, productivity growth, and higher incomes (following traditional Heckscher-Ohlin mechanisms) is not remotely
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Jim Stanford reviews the effect of NAFTA (and associated corporatist policy choices) on Canada’s economy: Quantity of exports: In the mid-1980s, before Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan inked their deal, Canada’s exports to the United States accounted for 19 per cent of Canadian
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: NAFTA and Hebron #nlpoli
ExxonMobil and Murphy Oil have won a North American Free Trade Agreement appeal of a 2004 offshore board regulation that sets the amount of research and development money oil companies operating offshore must make in the province. They filed the appeal in 2007 That means the oil companies will have
Continue readingDavid Climenhaga's Alberta Diary: Wildrose leader openly lays out plan for privatizing health care
Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith in Promises, Promises, the Medical Comedy. The trouble is, it’s not funny. Real Alberta politicians may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: Ms. Smith as she really, really appears. There’s not much need for scare tactics by supporters of public medicare: Yesterday the Wildrose Party laid
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Evening Links
Assorted content for your evening reading.- Murray Dobbin nicely summarizes what the Cons are hoping to do in prioritizing big-money “philanthropy” over a functional state and civil society:Ideology is meaning in the service of power, and the Conservat…
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