Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Gillian White highlights Peter Temin’s work on poverty and inequality – including the standard which a person trapped in poverty needs to meet…
April 2017
Musical interlude
Wild Strawberries – Everybody Loves you When You’re Dead
Garbage Floats in with the Tide: For Autonomous Antifascism
In his “Notes on Trump,” Bromma posits that the election of Trump and the accompanying rise of the far right are not simple accidents of history, nor the result of…
Militant Tactics in Anti-Fascist Organizing–Interview Transcript (repost)
“I think some folks, many folks… try to divide the concept of a mass response with a militant response. That it’s only possible to do one or the other. I…
Saturday Photo: Shameless Self-Promotion Department
This is what the book looked like at the launch a week ago. Since then I’ve talked about writing it at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival and am now…
The noose tightens
If the Department of Justice is involved, it means even more sleepless, fear-filled nights for the Unpresident. Get prepared, ipso facto, for a war in the Korean peninsula to commence…
100 Days And Counting
Peter Wehner, in the New York Times, has an instructive evaluation of Donald Trump’s first one hundred days in office: The early days of the Trump presidency have been marked…
On being bullish on Brown.
There is lots of laughter at the current argument among Ontario Conservatives about whether their leader Patrick Brown has policies. Some Conservatives think it would be nice if they knew…
What the “Walk on the Wild Side” controversy says about trans* awareness and a changing social movement
A little over a week ago, a University of Guelph student union drew international ire for condemning Lou Reed’s 1972 song “Walk on the Wild Side” as transphobic. This occurred…
In support of the Parks Board position Re: Vancouver Aquarium
Dear Commissioners, My field of expertise is animal behaviour; especially, cetaceans. For 10 years I worked closely with killer whales at an aquarium. For nine of those years I was…
The Damned this weekend
It’s their fortieth anniversary tour, or something, and Lisa and I will be going – under protest. The tickets were a very un-punk sixty bucks each. What a joke. Anyway,…
Why are we subsidizing landlords to keep commercial buildings vacant?
How is this even a thing? A 30 or 35 per cent refund on property taxes for vacant commercial or industrial properties. What purpose does that serve? It doesn’t seem…
The far right goes on a rampage in Berkeley
The liberal San Francisco Bay Area city of Berkeley has become the prime target for violent far-right individuals and organizations emboldened by the reign of Donald Trump. Their latest provocation…
5 Steps to Creating Something Universal
As is the purpose of the Political Road Map, the goal is to always question your government, politics and the overall direction of society with regards to both. In questioning,…
Think North Korea is Scary? Not As Scary As This.
You don’t ever want to hear somebody with serious psychological issues and his finger on the nuclear trigger say this about his new job: “I thought it would be easier.“…
WHAT? Not Again!
I wanted to write “who can forget the El Nino of 2015-2016?” until I thought of today’s dreaded Memory Hole. Let’s start again. Do you remember the devastating El Nino…
Has Equality Become a Quaint, Obsolete Vestige of the Past?
I know, I know, you’re probably saying “what equality?” When did we ever live in a world of equality? We didn’t but we did at least once treat equality in…
Not the Reichstag Fire, But…
German authorities have arrested a German officer accused of plotting a “false flag” terrorist attack to stir up anti-migrant unrest. The officer, a lieutenant-colonel, is said to have passed himself…
Neoliberalism restructures work and pensions
On today’s show, two sociologists talk about aspects of neoliberal restructuring. First, Nicole Aschoff, sociologist, author of The New Prophets of Capital and until very recently managing editor of Jacobin…
Ontario Budget: Shallow Election Bid or Deep Election Bid?
A thousand years from now, in present day Ontario, after the fallout from a Trump temper tantrum, future survivors will begin to reclaim the land. Upon doing so, they will…