Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Laura Flanders interviews Naomi Klein about the connection between the climate crisis and inequality – including her recognition that any attempt to address the former without simultaneously responding to the latter is doomed to fail: But there are a lot of people who
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Dead Wild Roses: Alberta Politics – The Populist Dismantling of Alberta
I, for one, am not looking forward to the social fabric of our province being torn asunder by the austerity crazed UCP government in 2020. “Speaking of blaming others for Alberta’s ills, 2020 will see the UCP government maintain its pugilistic approach to issues via its Fight Back Strategy that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – James Bradley writes about the range of responses to an increasingly threatening climate. And Emma Morris offers some suggestions as to how to become part of the solution to the climate crisis. – Adrienne Buller discusses why the popular and necessary prospect of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Ben Jenkins rightly calls out Australia’s right-wing government and media for caring not a whit for the people seeing their country go up in flames: If you were holding out hope that the cynical and partisan way we currently talk about climate change
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Rick Smith offers some reasons for hope in 2020 even in the face of a grim start to a new year. And Cory Doctorow writes about the need to start dreaming up, and giving effect to, alternatives to a corporate-driven economy and society
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Scott Gilmore writes about the glaring need for Canada’s politicians to show more capacity for shame – through it’s worth noting both a global pattern to the same effect, and the dangers of trying to draw “both-sides” equivalency (as Gilmore does) in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Nathan Robinson writes that there’s every reason for younger people – in the U.S. and elsewhere – to support the principle of socialism based on a desire to achieve gains for everybody rather than only a privileged few: A better definition, at
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Stephen Buranyi laments the reality that the public’s increased awareness and concern about our ongoing climate breakdown isn’t being reflected in political decisions. And Noah Smith writes that while the rapid drop in prices for renewable energy may help us avoid the worst
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Kevin Drum writes about the need to address the climate crisis as a war for the future of humanity. And Will Wade reports on new research showing that we’ll earn back more than the price of a rapid transition from fossil fuels
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Heather Scoffield writes that a genuine commitment to fighting climate change could resolve multiple major issues facing Canada – while delay serves only to exacerbate them: At the core of today’s western alienation and of today’s search for prosperity is a much larger
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: Is Kenney Costing Alberta Investment and Jobs?
Calgary Economic Development CEO Mary Moran reported recently that a tech company that had considered setting up its head office in Calgary had changed it mind. The reason? Talk of separation. “We as an organization just lost a 1,000-person company that didn’t come to Calgary, selected another city, because they’re
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Dan Hancox discusses how both work demands and consumerist force are causing people to lose sleep. And Jodi Dean writes about the need for a sense of comradeship to counter the impossible expectation of self-reliance. – Anand Giridharadas argues that the wealthy
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Rylan Higgins argues that it’s long past time to move beyond a boom-and-bust oilpatch economy. And Ryan Meili writes that workers and residents alike stand to benefit from a shift to clean energy – including through the solar industry which was so abruptly
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Michael Spence discusses how a wealth tax can work, while noting that the worst possible response to growing inequality is to refuse to do anything. And the Centre for Labour and Social Studies summarizes the current class disparity in the UK, as well
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Christopher Ingraham reports on the reality that extremely wealthy Americans are now paying lower systemic tax rates than workers. And Andrea Germanos writes that Michael Sayman is among the plutocrats calling for his own class to pay its fair share. – Heather Mallick
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Vrishti Beniwal writes about Abhijit Banerjee’s call to put concentrated wealth to better social use by taxing it. – Yutaka Dirks interviews Linda McQuaig about the corporate takeover of far more public wealth than is normally recognized. And Matt Coughlin discusses how
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee discuss the utter failure of corporate-driven “market” incentives to produce fair outcomes: If it is not financial incentives, what else might people care about? The answer is something we know in our guts: status, dignity, social connections. Chief
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: Can Trudeau Make a Future with Alberta?
Life is full of little surprises. Often pleasant ones. I encountered such a surprise this week reading the Calgary Herald, not a paper usually on my wave length. And yet here was this op-ed saying some of the most sensible things about Alberta’s aversion to anything Trudeau I’ve heard to
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 readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Greta Goes To Edmonton, Alberta Goes Nuts
If you want to read something funny about bad people, here it is. Climate activist and hero Greta Thunberg is in Calgary and on her way to Edmonton for a climate strike on Friday, and the Premier is flipping out. He’s one of the hypothetical middle age white guys threatened
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