Assorted content to end your week. – Michael Harris writes that we shouldn’t expect politicians to lead the way toward the action we need to combat climate change. Katie Dangerfield reports on new research showing that the economic effects of carbon pricing are modest, while ignoring climate change will have
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Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Michael Laxer writes that Doug Ford’s attack on people who stood to be helped by a basic income demonstrates the cruelty of austerian politics. But we shouldn’t take the callousness of right-wing parties as reflecting the preferences of most voters, as the Angus
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – George Monbiot discusses the dangers of treating our natural environment solely as something to be priced and commodified. – The Mound of Sound comments on Stephen Leahy’s work in crunching the numbers on the climate change impact of a Trans Mountain expansion. And
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Julian Cribb reports on new research as to mass exposure to chemicals and pollutants: Almost every human being is now contaminated in a worldwide flood of industrial chemicals and pollutants – most of which have never been tested for safety – a
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Can You Imagine?
I have always believed, and still do, that one of the essentials for bringing about real political change is knowledge. To be aware of and informed about the key issues is, in many ways, to be engaged. However, I now also realize, after watching the George Monbiot video posted by
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Rachel Bunker writes that Equifax represents the worst of an out-of-control capitalist system, as a poorly-regulated and unreliable credit reporting operation is making profits for itself by reinforcing existing discrimination among other businesses. – Naomi Klein discusses this summer’s spate of wildfires
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Slouching Toward A City Near You
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?– W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming The man pictured above is Nick Shcherban, a Toronto resident who was arrested, hauled off to jail and is now awaiting a bail hearing for reasons I will explain later
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Naomi Klein examines how climate change has contributed to a summer of extreme weather disasters, while David Suzuki highlights how we can work with nature to respond to increased flooding. And Emily Atkin discusses the outsized damage 90 corporate behemoths have done to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Book Review: Politics Without Stories
David Ricci’s Politics Without Stories was released in the midst of an election campaign which upended many assumptions about U.S. politics. But it nonetheless offers a plausible explanation for much of the U.S.’ political environment as it’s continued to evolve – while leaving open what strike me as interesting questions
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Naomi Klein offers her take on why we need to talk about climate change when its effects are most visible: (E)very time we act as if an unprecedented weather event is hitting us out of the blue, as some sort of Act of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – David Sirota talks to Naomi Klein about the push by right-wing politicians and corporate media outlets alike to stifle any discussion of how fossil fuels contribute to the climate change fuelling Hurricane Harvey. Matt Taibbi laments how the media contributed to the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Noah Smith makes the case for the U.S. Democrats to emphasize trust-busting as a means of restoring power to people rather than the business lobby: Big companies often argue that mergers will allow increased economies of scale, whose efficiencies will more than
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Naomi Klein highlights how capital and power combine to turn disasters into profit-making opportunities – while noting that the Trump presidency is just such a disaster. And Linda McQuaig discusses why we should see the income tax and other collective funding mechanisms as
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Evening Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Katie Allen reports on Kathleen O’Grady’s look at precarious work – and how a generation of young workers is being taught to expect nothing more. Gareth Hutchens discusses Sally McManus’ call for the labour movement to seek opportunities to disrupt an economic
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Ryan Meili writes about the fundamental importance of trust in both politics and medicine – and the corrosive effects of corporate donations in both: When we talk about the problems with political donations, we’re not really talking about campaign financing. We’re talking about
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Watch Naomi Klein Explain “How to Resist Trump’s Shock Doctrine”
In the video, produced by The Intercept, the award-winning Canadian social activist and bestselling author says though Donald Trump occupies the most powerful office on earth, his shock doctrine-oriented “wildly pro-corporate policies” can be resisted. The post Watch Naomi Klein Explain “How to Resist Trump’s Shock Doctrine” appeared first on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Naomi Klein writes that Donald Trump’s cabinet represents a direct takeover of the U.S. government by the corporate oligarchy – and comments on what the progressive movement needs to do to fight back: Let us be clear: This is not a peaceful transition
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Wolfgang Munchau writes that the rise of right-wing insurrectionism can be traced largely to “centre-left” parties who have focused most of their attention on imposing austerity and catering to the corporate sector while offering little to citizens, while Naomi Klein comments on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Larry Elliott writes that the public is rightly frustrated with an economic model designed to shift money to those who already have the most – and that progressive parties in particular need to offer a meaningful alternative: The belief on the left was
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
This and that for your weekend reading.
– Naomi Klein discusses how Canada’s longstanding – if far from inevitable – identity as a resource economy is standing in the way of both needed action on climate change and reconciliation with First Nations:
In Canada, cultivation and industrialization were secondary. First and foremost, this country was built on voraciously devouring wildness. Canada was an extractive company – the Hudson’s Bay Company – before it was a country. And that has shaped us in ways we have yet to begin to confront.Because such enormous fortunes have been built purely on the extraction of wild animals, intact forest and interred metals and fossil fuels, our economic elites have grown accustomed to seeing the natural world as their God-given larder.When someone or something – like climate science – comes along and says: Actually, there are limits, we have to take less from the Earth and keep more profit for the public good, it doesn’t feel like a difficult truth. It feels like an existential attack.…The trouble isn’t just the commodity roller coaster. It’s that the stakes grow larger with each boom-bust cycle. The frenzy for cod crashed a species; the frenzy for bitumen and fracked gas is helping to crash the planet.…Today, we have federal and provincial governments that talk a lot about reconciliation. But this will remain a cruel joke if non-Indigenous Canadians do not confront the why behind those human-rights abuses. And the why, as the Truth and Reconciliation report states, is simple enough: “The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to Aboriginal people and gain control over their land and resources.”The goal, in other words, was to remove all barriers to unrestrained resource extraction. This is not ancient history. Across the country, Indigenous land rights remain the single greatest barrier to planet-destabilizing resource extraction, from pipelines to clear-cut logging.
– Meanwhile, Marc Lee signals what we might expect from a federal climate change action plan based on the working groups currently reviewing the options.
– Laurie Monsebraaten reports on a needed push to ensure that child care funding is used to create not-for-profit spaces. And Ashifa Kassam points to Wellington’s loss of water rights to Nestle as a prime example of what happens when corporate dollars trump public needs.
– Finally, Alon Weinberg discusses why now is the time to implement a proportional electoral system in Canada. And Craig Scott makes the case for mixed-member proportional over the other options under consideration.
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