Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Brigid Delaney writes about the significance of the truth about climate breakdown. Graham Readfearn reports on the risk of outright firestorms as bush fires burn out of control. And Geoff Dembicki writes about a case from the Philippines seeing oil companies held responsible for the damage they've caused from a human rights perspective.

- Linda McQuaig highlights the absurdity of the financial sector whining about having been handed $15 billion in bonuses:

(D)espite their privileged perch, Canada’s big six banks have gotten away with paying extremely low taxes — the lowest in the G7. Partly by using tax havens, our wildly profitable banks have managed to reduce their taxes to a rate that is about one-third of the rate paid by other Canadian businesses, according to a 2017 Toronto Star investigation.

Some Canadians might wonder whether we are well served by our banks. In recent years, they’ve shut down branches across the country, leaving hundreds of rural and remote communities without a local branch. They’ve also declined to offer banking services to many low-income people, obliging almost two million Canadians a year to pay the hair-raising interest rates charged by payday loan operators.

Yet, proposals that Canada Post offer banking services at its 6,200 outlets across the country have been opposed by the big banks, which insist that they serve Canadians well.

Certainly they serve themselves well, with even a “bleak” year leaving bankers divvying up $15 billion in compensation, on top of their base salaries.

- Meanwhile, Jack Lakey writes that Doug Ford's campaign for corporate impunity includes an "ag gag" law seeking to criminalize anybody exposing the mistreatment of animals.

- Finally, PressProgress traces the third-party money used for Jason Kenney's benefit back to just two wealthy donors who attempted to route it through nearly 20 entities to avoid attention, while also offering an introduction to the corporate elites behind the Cons' party fund. And Alvin Finkel writes that "western alienation" is mostly a matter of elites seeking to provide an alternate enemy to the people they're exploiting.