In one of his most significant works, Death of the Liberal Class, Chris Hedges argues that the traditional bulwarks against corporate power no longer fulfill that role. He asserts that the liberal class has failed to confront the rise of the corporate state and argues that the five parts of
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Accidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Patricia Treble discusses how the rise of the Delta COVID-19 variant is making it vital to hit higher vaccine targets than previously set. And the Star’s editorial board argues that any responsible government should be laying out a plan to get children
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Anya Zoledziowski discusses how we’re only facing a third wave of COVID-19 due to avoidable political choices, while the Globe and Mail’s editorial board laments the epidemic of political negligence which has resulted in severe consequences for public health and welfare. Elizabeth
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Owen Jones points out how attempts to primarily blame the public for the spread of COVID serve primarily to distract from unsafe workplace and other systemic risks which have been left in place to serve corporate interests. And Jolson Lim reports on the
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Imagining A New World
Having the underpinnings of our daily lives so radically altered is immensely unsettling. The things we have always taken for granted, be it a daily walk, a quick trip to the store, a handshake with a friend, a rubbing of the eye, all of these and many more now come
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Words, Words, And More Words
I haven’t been writing much these days, in part due to a stubborn bug I’ve been battling, and in part because I often wonder if there really is much more to say that I haven’t already said over the years. However, today I read an article that seems particularly germane
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your year. – Armine Yalnizyan writes about the ongoing struggle for workers’ rights a century after the Winnipeg General Strike: Most workers have no channels for acting, or even talking, collectively. That may be changing. Here in Canada, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers launched a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – The Canadian Press reports on the Libs’ desire to approve massive tar sands expansions no matter how the resulting production – to say nothing of the consumption left uncounted – would affect Canada’s role in exacerbating a climate breakdown. And Janyce McGregor
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – George Monbiot makes the case for popular sovereignty mechanisms to supplement systems of representative government which fail to reflect the will of the people. And Ian Bremmer reports on Chile’s mass protest seeking a public voice to end economic unfairness. – Katrina
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Rick Salutin writes that Canada’s lack of accessible housing arises primarily as the result of general inequality. Derek Thompson notes that youth athletics are just one more sphere of activity in which concentrated wealth is driving out participation by people who don’t have
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Aditya Chakrabortty writes about the consequences of the UK’s choice not to fund its or social infrastructure: We are right in the middle of an infrastructure breakdown – we just haven’t named it yet. You’ll know what I mean when we list
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Erika Beauchesne discusses the benefits of a wealth tax as both a means of reducing inequality, and a source of revenue for public priorities: Canada’s NDP has proposed a one per cent tax on wealth over $20 million as part of its
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Whither Goest The NDP?
In his column today, Rick Salutin offers a withering assessment of the NDP that I fear is all too accurate. In a phrase, what most ails the party is what might be termed ideological abandonment: You start noticing what they’re not, and haven’t been for a while. At their start,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
This and that for your mid-week reading. – Rick Salutin discusses the needed rise of left-wing populism in the U.S.’ presidential campaign (and elsewhere). – Ed Finn highlights how policies designed around austerity and competition are designed to prevent people from cooperating toward the common good. And Erlend Kvitrud points
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Eric Holthaus writes that the Green New Deal which looks to be at the centre of Democratic policy development offers an important opportunity for the U.S. to make amends with a world bearing the brunt of its past pollution. But Rick Salutin discusses
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Democracy’s Fragility
To be sure, the elevation of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario to government redounds to everyone’s shame. Led by a buffoonish thug, Doug Ford, it is a party that seems intent on debasing not only its proud history, but also all citizens of the province, whether they voted for
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Martha Friendly, Susan Prentice and Morna Ballantyne discuss how universal child care is a necessary element of any serious push toward equality for women. Dennis Grunding notes that it will take a concerted public effort to secure the universal pharmacare program Canadians want
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Rick Salutin writes that Ontario’s provincial election shows that nobody is prepared to defend neoliberal ideas on their merits – which should provide an opening to start challenging them in practice. And Alice Ollstein examines how Donald Trump’s corporate giveaway looks like an
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Not A Dirty Word
In his column the other day, Rick Salutin wrote a stout defence of taxes, making it very clear that for him and many others, the word and the concept are hardly obscenities. Public programs need to be adequately funded and expanded, the opposite of the American mentality: Take tax reform.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – George Lakey describes how Denmark has built the world’s happiest society by building a political movement and an economic model centred around providing for everybody: Using the crisis as an opportunity, the Social Democrats secured the foundation of the Nordic model, the
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