This and that for your Sunday reading.
- Edward Keenan writes that a lack of affordable child care is the crucial financial pressure facing families across the income spectrum. And Michael Wolfson discusses the dangers of talking about taxes in a vacuum without recognizing what we lose by failing to make sure everybody pays a fair share.
- Sam Thielman notes that the Trans-Pacific Partnership's crackdown on intellectual property may seriously threaten our freedom of expression, while Michael Geist highlights the potential for content-blocking and the Electronic Frontier Foundation points out how the TPP transfers massive amounts of power to rightsholders over citizens. And Doug Bolton reports on the recognition that the TPP's restrictions on access to medications will cost lives, while Scott Sinclair takes a closer look at the impact on Canada.
- Meanwhile, Aaron Gluck Thaler highlights a new student movement to fight against C-51 and other unwarranted intrusions on privacy.
- BJ Siekierski and James Munson (with Kevin Page's help) examine how the Harper Cons have trashed Canada's civil service without any idea of the consequences, then covered their tracks for a future government to try to retrace.
- Sara Jerving, Katie Jennings, Masako Melissa Hirsch and Susanne Rust write that Exxon engaged in a campaign of public climate denial even as its own researchers knew perfectly well that its business was damaging our planet - and outright welcomed that prospect to the extent it might make Arctic reserves more easily accessible.
- Finally, Karl Nerenberg offers his take on talking about the federal election around the Thanksgiving dinner table - rightly noting that the similarities between the NDP and Lib platforms on some (if not all) points don't represent a reason to ignore the parties' histories and values.
The TPP merely formalizes the continuing efforts of global neoliberal corporations to extinguish individual and societal rights that has been ongoing for over three decades. Not many notice, not many care. It's too inconvenient.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag1AKIl_2GM
Page is smart. Therein lies the problem . . . for Harper and his ilk. They are good about about working around facts rather than with them though.
Deletej a m e s
Agreed that the TPP is just one more step in the wrong direction - but I'd still think it' well worth avoiding that step given the opportunity.
DeleteAnd no question that the Cons have largely managed to avoid the reality-based community for years. If there's any saving grace, it's that in the process they may have managed to miss that even the public's general sentiments are mostly aligned against them.