Petro-states tend to become lap dogs for the fossil fuel giants that feed them revenues. They wind up, to some degree, in bed together. Canada is no exception. The federal government is so in thrall to the fossil fuel industry that it has bought a multi-billion dollar pipeline just to
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Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Ploy Achakulwisat writes about the health emergencies emanating from an ongoing climate breakdown. And Andy Kroll points out that even in the U.S., a concerted effort of corporate spinmeisters and anti-environment politicians hasn’t been able to override the public’s concern about climate change.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Lana Payne offers a reminder (with reference to Lars Osberg’s new book) that extreme and growing inequality is a choice rather than an inevitability – but that it also represents a self-reinforcing trend: “The Age of Increasing Inequality: The Astonishing Rise Of
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: A Question Worth Asking – Has Canada Been Captured?
As analysis and reports stack up laying bare how much we know and everything we don’t know about dilbit and Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline, it is looking like this has nothing to do with the “national interest” as claimed by prime minister Trudeau. Instead it looks as though Trudeau
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Elizabeth Piper reports on Jeremy Corbyn’s much-needed declaration that under a Labour government, the financial sector will serve the public rather than the other way around. And George Monbiot comments on the role the left needs to play in reversing the accumulation
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: An Increasingly Tattered Cloak
That would be the one Justin Trudeau wraps himself in with such rectitude whenever he attempts to convince the public of his climate-change bona fides. Increasingly, both his cloak and his rhetoric are wearing thin. The latest example of the hollowness of his public persona comes with news that his
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Approval of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline was based on faulty assumptions
One of the key faulty assumptions underlying Canada’s approval of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline is that Alberta’s bitumen is being unfairly discounted by U.S. buyers and that its price can be maximized by getting it to Asian markets. The post Approval of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline was based
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Binyamin Appelbaum highlights the strong consensus view that Donald Trump’s planned tax giveaways to the rich will do nothing for overall economic development. And John Buell points out that Trump’s plan for privatized infrastructure – much like Justin Trudeau’s – will serve only
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Naomi Klein writes about the racism and dehumanization behind climate change denialism and inaction. And George Monbiot reminds us of the dangers of overheating oceans, while Michael Wines interviews Todd Halih…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Erika Hayasaki surveys the developing body of research on how poverty and deprivation affect a child’s long-term brain development:Early results show a troubling trend: Kids who grow up with higher levels of…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.
– Erika Hayasaki surveys the developing body of research on how poverty and deprivation affect a child’s long-term brain development:
Early results show a troubling trend: Kids who grow up with higher levels of violence as a backdrop in their lives, based on MRI scans, have weaker real-time neural connections and interaction in parts of the brain involved in awareness, judgment, and ethical and emotional processing.
…Though it’s still largely based on correlations between brain patterns and particular environments, the research points to a disturbing conclusion: Poverty and the conditions that often accompany it—violence, excessive noise, chaos at home, pollution, malnutrition, abuse and parents without jobs—can affect the interactions, formation and pruning of connections in the young brain.
Two recent influential reports cracked open a public conversation on the matter. In one, researchers found that impoverished children had less gray matter—brain tissue that supports information processing and executive behavior—in their hippocampus (involved in memory), frontal lobe (involved in decision making, problem solving, impulse control, judgment, and social and emotional behavior) and temporal lobe (involved in language, visual and auditory processing and self-awareness). Working together, these brain areas are crucial for following instructions, paying attention and overall learning—some of the keys to academic success.
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The second key study, published in Nature Neuroscience , also in 2015 , looked at 1,099 people between ages 3 and 20, and found that children with parents who had lower incomes had reduced brain surface areas in comparison to children from families bringing home $150,000 or more a year.“We have [long] known about the social class differences in health and learning outcomes,” says Dr. Jack Shonkoff, director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. But neuroscience has now linked the environment, behavior and brain activity—and that could lead to a stunning overhaul of both educational and social policies, like rethinking Head Start–style programs that have traditionally emphasized early literacy. New approaches, he says, could focus on social and emotional development as well, since science now tells us that relationships and interactions with the environment sculpt the areas of the brain that control behavior (like the ability to concentrate), which also can affect academic achievement (like learning to read).
– Adria Vasil discusses the worldwide trend of water being made available first (and for inexplicably low prices) to for-profit bottlers over citizens who need it. And Martin Regg Cohn examines how the story is playing out in Ontario in particular.
– Mike De Souza reports on how the National Energy Board, rather than acting as a neutral regulator, misled Denis Coderre to try to take free PR for both the NEB itself and fossil fuel development in general. And Carrie Tait points out how the Husky oil spill is raising questions about Saskatchewan’s fully captured regulatory system.
– Ian MacLeod reports on a sudden and unexplained increase in CSE interception of private communications.
– Finally, Andray Domise discusses what Colten Boushie’s shooting and its aftermath say about the blight of racism in Canada.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on a new Ontario study recommending a strong investment in child care to reduce the gender wage gap. – Allan Moscovitch, Nick Falvo and David Macdonald offer a useful primer on social suppo…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on a new Ontario study recommending a strong investment in child care to reduce the gender wage gap. – Allan Moscovitch, Nick Falvo and David Macdonald offer a useful primer on social suppo…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Owen Jones interviews Ha-Joon Chang about the foreseeable harm caused by the UK’s austerity, as well as the false claims used to push it. – The Stoney Creek News rightly argues that Canada Post should move toward pos…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Faith no more
Shorter Catherine McKenna on the Libs’ response to the National Energy Board misleading the public about its insider dealings with lobbyists on Energy East:Clap sunnier! Clap sunnier!
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Rachel West charts how higher wages and improved social supports can reduce crime rates and their resulting costs.- Lana Payne comments on the glass ceiling still limiting the wages and opportunities availabl…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Melisa Foster points out why millennials should be strongly interested in a national pharmacare program:Today, young Canadians are searching for jobs in an economy with high levels of precarious employment, unemploym…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- Lucy Shaddock offers a response to the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ report on poverty and inequality in the UK, while McKinsey finds that hundreds of millions of people in advanced economies are seein…
Continue readingCowichan Conversations: Rafe to Justin: Kinder Morgan approval makes mockery of democracy
My Nova Scotia pen pal, the voice of common sense in this country, Silver Donald Cameron, is fond of saying “laws are made by those who have the power to enforce them.” My own variation Read more…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Friends In High Places: The NEB Continues Its Bromance With Enbridge
Last week I posted a story about the National Energy Board taking pity on Enbridge, reducing a fine levied against the energy delivery giant for the damage it caused to private property in Manitoba. Unfortunately, we now learn that this was just the st…
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