Walmart and McDonald’s Pretend They’re Great Employers!
We need to work harder to ensure everyone earns a living wage! I love when gross corporations try to spin reality to defend against criticisms. For instance: Walmart used to…
Corporations
Stephen Harper Visits Lac Megantic
Mourning the senseless tragedy. Today I was very impressed when Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, broke with his almost long-held position of not visiting Lac Megantic. While he and…
Ikea’s Union-Busting Lockout in Richmond, BC Reaches Two Months
Is Walmart Ikea’s labour relations mentor? Ikea, that family-friendly darling of home decor and Swedish innocence is trying to break its union, Teamsters Local 213. They have locked out their…
Terrace: Regulating Housing Dignity Is Far Easier Than You’d Think
How to Research a Slumlord! In this era of hyper neoliberalism, we are so used to tax-cutting governments chopping regulations off the books to allow the Blessed Free Market to…
New, Better Jobs Building a Green Energy Infrastructure
Let’s go post-carbon and transform Big Carbon jobs into green jobs! We are so addicted to carbon-based energy: oil, gas, coal, LNG plants, fracking, pipelines, tanker spills. It gets so…
Groups demand that U.S. companies reject Canadian tar sands
by: Sierra Club Canada | Press Release: Corporate Climate Campaign led by Sierra Club and ForestEthics Gains Momentum San Francisco, CA, June 2, 2013 – Fifty-eight organizations, led by the…
Canada Day +1, Our Quiet Genocide
A banner drop during last night’s Canada Day celebration in Toronto’s Mel Lastman Square. (Photo: IdleNoMore.ca) Canadians are so nice. We have such a happy, positive self-concept. This makes it…
Pro-business Harper Conservatives coddling tax havens, tax cheats
By: Obert Madondo Twitter: @Obiemad An Alberta businessman is included in a massive online database of secret tax-haven names released to the public on Friday by the International Consortium of…
Corporate Hypocrites Gone Wild: Syncrude Edition
Let’s say that you’re one of the world’s largest producers of synthetic crude and also Canada’s largest single-source producer of crude derived from oil sands. Imagine that you are also…
Top Priorities of the 21st Century
If I were asked what I felt were the top priorities facing human beings today, in the 21st century, I would have to say there are four that top the…
Profits Before People: Richmond Ikea Lockout Enters Day 17
Generating enough media spin to rival a jet engine at take off, the management and PR folks at Ikea Canada want you to believe that their poor little corporation is…
Dissent or Terror: New Report Details How Counter Terrorism Apparatus Was Used to Monitor Occupy Movement Nationwide
By: Center for Media and Democracy | Press Release: MADISON, WI – May 20 – DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy today released the results of a…
In Texas, An Activist Climbs Flagpole, Hangs Banner Denouncing Alberta Tar Sands
LyondellBasell recently announced its plans to nearly triple its tar sands refining capacity from the Keystone XL pipeline as protests escalate across the continent By: Tar Sands Blockade | Press…
The Pidgin Picket, the Housing Crisis and the State
The Role of The State in Gentrification, the Housing Crisis, and its Ability to Relieve or Maintain the Current Situation by Rachel Goodine Pidgin, a new fine-dining restaurant located on…
Free Speech and the Privatization of Public Space
Donald Smith was protesting a sign at Glenmore Landing in Calgary’s southwest Sunday that bans political demonstrations. The privately owned parking lot near the prime minister’s constituency office asserts that…
GroupThink ReSpun: The Death of Hugo Chavez
Hugo Chavez died of cancer on March 5, 2013. He represented an ideological pushback against neoliberal globalization. He pursued a progressive hemispheric trade agenda. He raised oil royalties dramatically to…
Jeremy Hammond: Aaron Swartz & the Criminalization of Digital Dissent
It is not the “crimes” Aaron (Swartz) may have committed that made him a target of federal prosecution, but his ideas – elaborated in his “Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto” –…
Excessive corporate rights in Canada-EU CETA trade deal unacceptable to Canadians and Europeans
Transatlantic Statement Opposing Excessive Corporate Rights (Investor-State Dispute Settlement) in the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) By Trade Justice Network | Feb. 5, 2013: BRUSSELS, BELGIUM and OTTAWA,…
We don’t want your dirty gold: corporate donations and the university
The following is a piece written by contributor Kevin Harding and guest contributor Natalie Gan. The piece was written in 2010, but is being published on Politics Respun for the…
Aaron Swartz, Intellectual Property and the Public Good
Should academic work be locked up like Disney artifacts? I’ve been quite inspired by this very good analysis of the context surrounding Aaron Swartz’s suicide. As news spread last week…