Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Amy Westervelt and Kyle Pope call out five of the most insidious fossil fuel propaganda messages. Fiona Harvey reports on Todd Stern’s rightful observation that the continued pushing of fossil fuels in the name of “grownup” decision-making in fact represents a catastrophic failure
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Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Andrew Phillips offers a reminder that Canada will pay the price for a climate breakdown whether or not it partially prices emissions in the moment – though it’s worth noting that even the existing combination of taxes and regulations falls far short of
Continue readingAlberta Politics: After five years, RCMP investigation into Kamikaze Affair ends with a whimper, not a bang
After five years, Canada’s national police force has concluded no charges will be laid in the notorious Kamikaze Affair, as allegations of fraud and identity theft in Jason Kenney’s victorious 2017 campaign to lead the newly formed Alberta United Conservative Party came to be known. RCMP Superintendent Rick Jané at
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Armine Yalnizyan offers a warning about the spread of the tapeworm economy in which corporate profiteers wriggle their way into public services and siphon off resources. – Julia Velkova discusses how reliance on tech monopolists undermines the capacity to decide and deliver on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Claude Lavoie examines the problems with the far-too-rarely-questioned assumption that public policy needs to be oriented toward top-end economic growth at the expense of human well-being and environmental sustainability. – George Monbiot calls out how the wealthiest few have torqued the law to
Continue readingAlberta Politics: RCMP to stay? CPP to go? Who knows? The Dance of the Thousand Mandate Letters continues
Danielle Smith’s Dance of the Thousand Mandate Letters continues. Now you see something; now you don’t. Then again maybe you just thought you saw something, and really saw nothing at all. It’s all very confusing. It’s intended to be. And it’s rather clever, giving the impression the government is doing
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Smith to Legislature: Sorry/Not sorry!
Sounding about as sincere as the proverbial used-car salesman and not as convincing, Premier Danielle Smith whipped through an apology to the Alberta Legislature yesterday for breaking the Conflicts of Interest Act back in January when she talked to former justice minister Tyler Shandro about extremist street preacher Artur Pawlowski’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Eric Reinhart discusses the importance of approaching public health from a collective perspective, rather than presuming health is simply a matter of individual-level choices. And Michael Hiltzik highlights the usual combination of dishonesty and ignorance behind yet another set of talking points
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Zaina Hamza discusses new research showing how COVID-19 fatalities hit younger people and caused more loss of expected years of life in the second year of the pandemic than the first. Kenyon Wallace discusses why 2022 was the deadliest year of the pandemic
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Andrew Nikiforuk writes that the decision to stop doing anything to limit the spread of COVID-19 is opening the door for a forever plague. Olivia Bowden and Kenyon Wallace report on the start of a summer COVID-19 wave in Ontario, while Cindy Harnett
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Katherine Wu writes about the much-needed update to COVID-19 vaccines coming this fall – and the challenge getting people to receive them after months of false messaging about the pandemic being over. – Steven Lewis discusses how the privatization of health care
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Adeel Hassan reports on the dominance of the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron strains in the U.S. Phil Tank reminds us of the folly of the Moe government’s admonition that people should assess their own risk even while actively suppressing the data which could
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Jon Henley writes that COVID is surging across Europe as governments and people alike ignore desperate warnings not to let their guard down. And Eric Topol writes about the reality that reinfection produces even worse outcomes than initial exposure – even as governments
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Bad Driver or Hate Crime? RCMP says “impatient”
"[The driver] was shouting stuff out. He was being racist, using some racial slurs," said Garrett Dan. "We have a whole bunch of witnesses to what happened to my brothers." Please read this story, that probably should have published yesterday:https://t.co/nYF3dwaj0K — Akshay Kulkarni (@kul_akshay_) June 5, 2022 The RCMP put
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Smriti Mallapaty reports on new research indicating that a two-thirds of U.S. children short of vaccination eligibility have been infected with COVID-19. Hannah Farrow reports on the U.S.’ preparations for another wave this fall and winter (even as Congress refuses to fund
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: Small step toward police accountability
BC Civil Liberties Association is successful in their Federal Court action against the RCMP and the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Sarath Peiris discusses the Saskatchewan Party government’s utterly feckless pandemic response – which they’ve apparently decided to keep in place for the rest of the Omicron wave. And Abdullah Shihipar points out the folly of expecting individual choices to resolve a collective action
Continue readingNorthern Currents –: Sending Crisis Response Teams instead of Police will save lives
One of the responsibilities of the police that could be eliminated is the role of social work and responding to mental health crises. As we’ve seen far too often in Canada and across the world, the police are untrained and ill-equipped in social work. The success of these examples in
Continue readingNorthern Currents : While the state arrests land defenders and the press, a new report highlights government apathy toward climate change
An all-to-familiar juxtaposition has arisen with the recent arrests of Indigenous land defenders and journalists by the RCMP. On the one hand, we have politicians like Justin Trudeau and John Horgan insisting on the importance of climate change and that we must act now. On the other, these same politicians
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Jailed For Doing Their Jobs
It is an action worthy of a third-world nation. You know, the kind run by an authoritarian who takes it as a personal affront whenever someone demonstrates against or writes about human rights abuses, lashing out with incarceration or worse for the offending parties. Only this time it is happening
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