Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Eric Cadesky writes about the psychology behind adherence to – and deviation from – the social distancing rules needed to keep us all safe. – Nora Loreto discusses how COVID-19 has exposed the lethal problems with Canada’s long-term care system. Karl Belanger points
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Alberta Politics: Coronavirus has U.S. physicians eyeing politics — will COVID-19 and the UCP’s War on Doctors spur the same thing here?
The New York Times reported yesterday how the coronavirus crisis is prodding a wave of mostly progressive American physicians to enter politics. Many are women and most have connected the dots between the United States’ appalling Third World health care system and the disastrous rate of COVID-19 infection and death
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Justin Trudeau needs to do something bold to fix the long-term-care disaster: here’s a suggestion
Surging deaths in Canadian long-term care facilities have blown Canada’s COVID-19 death projections to smithereens. Last night, the CBC reported the number of deaths from COVID-19 is already double what Ottawa thought it would be only a week ago. “As more deaths are reported and counted over the next day,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Carson Hammond and Rob Rousseau each make the case that Canada needs a left movement for change comparable to the wave of U.S. activism propelling Bernie Sanders toward a presidential nomination. – Brigid Delaney argues that we need to stop settling for
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Sarah Schulman discusses the importance of sleep as a determinant of health, arguing that a safe bed is the first step toward addressing all kinds of social ills. – Laura Lynch interviews Adria Vasil about the massive amount of avoidable waste generated
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Abby Innes writes that the UK’s general election reflects a decision point as to whether to discard neoliberalism to serve the public, or democracy for the benefit of plutocrats. And Trish Hennessy looks at Cleveland’s move to ensure a democratic economic system, including
Continue readingAlberta Politics: 30 years after the tragedy at l’École Polytechnique, politicians and media are making things worse
Today is the 30th anniversary of the terrible massacre of 14 young women students at l’École Polytechnique de Montréal, apparently shot down for the imagined crime of daring study to be engineers. One would have thought three decades ago as the raw horror of that story unfolded through the evening
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your election day reading. – Jagmeet Singh makes his case for Canadians to vote for what we believe in. Don Martin discusses how Justin Trudeau and Andrew Scheer have hurt their own causes as well as each others’ by focusing on negative messages. And Nora Loreto discusses
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, discussing how Justin Trudeau is campaign entirely according to the formula so thoroughly documented by Martin Lukacs – and why voters seeking change need to reject politicians committed to the preservation of power and privilege. For further reading…– Others have also discussed Lukacs’ The Trudeau Formula, including Nora Loreto
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – George Monbiot writes that the fossil fuel companies most responsible for endangering our living environment are also polluting our politics: …What counts, in seeking to prevent runaway global heating, is not the good things we start to do, but the bad things we
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Derrick O’Keefe writes that our federal election should be focusing on the growing climate crisis, not being sidetracked by such trivialities as chocolate milk. (Though I’ll argue that the two issues may sometimes point to the same key structural problems.) Cam Fenton
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Alastair Campbell discusses how the latest group of right-wing demagogues has progressed from being post-truth to being post-shame. – IMFBlog examines how the perpetual slashing of corporate tax rates has eliminated needed public revenue – particularly in lower-income countries – without producing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Tom Parkin writes about the need for workers to be at the centre of a Green New Deal for Canada: Those determined to reverse austerity, inequality and environmental damage need to help Canadians be clear that there’s a huge difference between a Green
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – George Monbiot contrasts the message of neoliberalism as freedom against the reality that it imposes severe corporate control on anybody short of the billionaire class: (N)eoliberal theology, as well as seeking to roll back the state, insists that collective bargaining and other forms
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Linda Givetash discusses how the consequences of climate breakdown include impending water shortages in the UK. But rather than recognizing and acting on that danger, Theresa May’s Conservatives are looking at Brexit as an excuse to do even less to protect the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jemima Kelly highlights the massive amounts of revenue lost to tax evasion and tax avoidance in the EU – while pointing out the importance of recognizing the larger scale of the former. And PIPSC makes the case for e-commerce titans to pay their
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Linda McQuaig writes that Canada’s federal government should look at buying the soon-to-be-vacated GM plant in Oshawa to begin production of electric vehicles. But Nav Persaud notes that even when the Trudeau Libs make promises about using government power and resources for the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Jerry Dias writes that the holiday season will be a difficult one for far too many Canadian workers facing precarious employment and hostile governments. And the Economist discusses the long hours expected of workers in the U.S. and the UK. – PressProgress highlights
Continue readingAlberta Politics: With friends like these … it’s sure depressing to compare Canada in 1979 to the U.S. in 2018
Canadians of a certain vintage will clearly remember “the Canadian Caper,” that dangerous moment in 1979 when our diplomats put their lives on the line to smuggle six of their American colleagues out of revolutionary Iran. Given the situation in Iran – revolutionaries storming the U.S. Embassy, diplomats held hostage,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on the fundamental need for governments to provide a secure source of income and benefits – and the choice of the Trudeau Libs and Moe Sask Party alike to instead make citizens bear the brunt of political choices. For further reading…– The National Post offered a backgrounder on the
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