Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Nate Holdren calls out the people in power who have chosen nihilism and social murder over taking any responsibility to limit the harm from an ongoing pandemic, while Stephen Maher notes that months of talking points about COVID being over will only make it more difficult to change course if the need for public health protections becomes inescapable. Eleanor Hamilton examines some of the readily-available options to improve indoor air quality - which have unfortunately mostly been ignored in favour of doing nothing. And Mary Kekatos reports on the CDC's recent findings about the large number of long COVID patients who face long-term difficulty in maintaining their daily lives.

- Andreas Karelas writes about our lack of preparation for the readily-foreseeable effects of a climate breakdown. And Kit Stolz reports on the growing recognition that what was previously considered a "normal" climate has already been destroyed by carbon pollution. 

- Meanwhile, Pete Evans reports on the latest instance of the fossil fuel industry extracting windfall profits by hiking gas prices even while the price of oil has fallen. 

- Damian Carrington reports on new research showing that toxic air pollution finds its way into fetuses' brains, livers and lungs long before they have any direct exposure to the outside world. And Diane Peters writes about the efforts of some Ontarians to escape from constant noise pollution. 

- Joanne Hussey discusses how reliance on developers to determine housing is available has led to a gross lack of stable and secure homes for the people who most need them. And Zak Vescera reports on the effect of union-based cost-of-living adjustments as a key factor in protecting workers from corporate price gouging. 

- Finally, Yanis Varoufakis takes note of the IMF backlash against Liz Truss' round of handouts to the wealthy in the midst of multiple crises - but warns that we shouldn't treat an institution which has deliberately exacerbated inequality for decades as doing anything more than trying to prop up existing financial structures. 

Monday Morning Links

Assorted material to start your week.

- Jeremy Faust laments the removal of the few remaining COVID public health recommendations when we've had ample opportunity to learn about the costs of letting the coronavnirus run rampant. Dave Sherwood and Marc Frank report that Cuba has set an example for other countries in reducing the harm of COVID through widespread vaccination and a focus on children, while Nina Notman highlights how we have the means to clear the air around us to reduce the spread of multiple diseases. Ed Yong discusses how widespread long COVID is forcing health care system to reckon with the realities of chronic fatigue syndrome more generally. 

- Danielle Barnsley writes about the grim choices facing people whose existing poverty is being exacerbated by corporate price gouging. And Anna Fazackerley reports on the heartbreaking number of UK children going hungry as underfunded schools and overworked food banks try desperately to keep up with the deprivation being inflicted on them. 

- Meanwhile, Umair Haque writes about the UK's continuing self-destruction under a Conservative government which is undermining any semblance of a functional state in order to hand still more money to the corporate sector. And Pippa Crerar reports on revelations that a large amount of announced public procurement is being promptly sent to offshore tax havens  

- Finally, John Cochrane, Daniel Litvin, Yanis Varoufakis and Isabella Weber discuss the case for windfall taxes to ensure fossil fuel companies don't rake in undeserved profits while shirking any responsibility for the harm they're doing both to consumers and to our living environment. 

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- David Shield reports on the development of a new COVID-19 variant which is becoming dominant in Saskatchewan, while Zak Vescera highlights how public health experts are refuting the Moe government's spin about not being provided reasonable options to limit the catastrophic fourth wave. And Shannon Proudfoot discusses how the pandemic (and the decision to treat it as over for the purposes of people without real family responsibilities) has been breaking parents left to navigate it on their own. 

- Bruce Arthur writes that booster shots will help the effort to contain COVID, but won't represent a panacea any more than the first round of vaccinations. And Vidya Krishnan reminds us of the need to stop prioritizing big pharma's profits over global access to vaccines if we want to get the pandemic under control. 

- Mary Annaïse Heglar and Amy Westervelt write that climate activists have been waiting politely and playing nice far too long while rapacious fossil fuel barons and their political lackeys set our planet on fire. Kate Aronoff responds to Barack Obama as he tries to put the onus for climate action on the activists he ignored - or even implicitly treated as his adversaries - while in power. Yanis Varoufakis argues that the Glasgow climate summit has failed due to a focus on distant and empty "net zero" targets. 

- Karl Nerenberg reports on Oxfam's push to tax the rich in the interest of both economic and environmental justice. 

- Armine Yalnizyan, Laurell Ritchie, Marjorie Griffin Cohen and Pat Armstrong discuss the work that needs to be done at the federal level to build a functional and effective care economy. And the CCPA's alternative federal budget reminds us again how the federal government could develop a just and equitable society if it wanted to make the effort. 

- Finally, Anastasia French, Craig Pickthorne and Christine Saulnier write that a living wage is an essential element of any genuine economic recovery. 

Monday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Labour Day reading.

- Gregory Beatty discusses the class struggle as it's playing out in the time of COVID. Jim Stanford offers a reminder as to how collective action is more important than ever, while Jerry Dias discusses how the labour movement is exercising its strength. Megan Brenan writes about the combination of high approval for unions on a historical scale, combined with a low number of workers actually putting the desire for unionization into effect. The Philadelphia Inquirer's editorial board comments on the realities of a Labour Day in which millions are out of work due to the poorly-managed coronavirus pandemic. And Gil McGowan writes about the fight to ensure Alberta doesn't fall into full-blown Trumpist authoritarianism and kleptocracy.

- Meanwhile Hadeel Abdel-Nabi discusses the removal of Sandeep Lalli as president and CEO of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce for the crime of insufficient fealty to Jason Kenney and climate change denial. And Derek Craddock reports on the Kenney UCP's choice not to bother passing a federally-funded top-up along to essential health care workers.

- Pairs Marx reminds us that there's nothing inevitable or inescapable about a capitalist economy. And Yanis Varoufakis proposes true economic democracy as an alternative to a capitalist system which has manifestly failed to sustainably meet people's needs.

- Kim Siever writes that it's top-end tax cuts - not taxes themselves - that we should treat as a theft from our common wealth.

- Finally, Meara Conway and Dan LeBlanc write about the Saskatchewan Party's use of the power of the state to silence Tristen Durocher and other Indigenous voices, while Jeremy Simes reports on a petition to ensure space in Wascana Park is available for Indigenous ceremonies. Murray Mandryk writes about the Cons' embarrassing attempt to demonstrate in favour of genocide. And Angel Moore reports on the continued and flagrant racism in private RCMP social media groups.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Mitchell Anderson writes that personal debt may be the most important hidden issue in Canada's federal election:

The reason Canada cannot act in a more moral manner might lie in ballooning amounts of household debt. Canadians now owe an eye-watering $2.2 trillion or 178 per cent of disposable income — a measure that has doubled in the last 20 years. Personal bills now amount to more than our entire GDP, making us the most indebted citizenry in the G20 and fourth highest in the world.

Over half of Canadians report they are only $200 per month away from insolvency.

How can you care about climate change or global stability when your credit cards are maxed out or you are dodging debt collectors? Owing vast amounts of money seems now a defining Canadian characteristic and is increasingly enabled by indulgent political leaders.
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If Canada has a financial moral injury, it is largely self-inflicted. No one forced consumers to incur such massive personal debts for the trappings of a detached house and everything that goes in it. Canadians spend $2 billion every year on lawn mowers and $85 billion on new vehicles.

What is non-consensual, however, is the pervasive pressure to borrow. Consumers are bombarded with ads from financial institutions and credit card companies encouraging them to borrow ever more. Aggressive marketing by mainstream and B-list lenders targets those least able to carry more credit. If civilization collapses due to inaction on climate change, the marketing departments of major banks should reflect on their contribution to that apocalyptic outcome.

All this debt might seem more rational if it made people happy, but evidence suggests the opposite is true. Forty-eight per cent of Canadians fret that they are on the edge on insolvency. Financial worries are the number one source of stress.

Personal debt is the elephant in the room of Canadian public policy. Decades of cheap money have undermined our national character and now prevents us from being a more principled nation. Canada remains an incredibly compassionate country but in order to meet the moral challenges of the coming century, we need to ditch our debt.

- And while Aaron Wherry takes note of the atmosphere of anxiety around the election campaign, Ed Finn rightly challenges the claim that Canada lacks the resources to address the most prominent stressors facing voters.

- Meanwhile, Health Providers Against Poverty offers (PDF) its assessment of the health platforms of Canada's federal parties.

- Larissa Atkinson examines the impact of secretive privatization schemes in building and renovating health infrastructure. And David Robertson offers ten reasons to oppose the development of Toronto's eastern waterfront as a corporate-controlled, privacy-free "smart city".

 - Finally, Yanis Varoufakis and David Alder argue that a foreseeable recession should be treated as the impetus for a Green New Deal.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- James Whittingham argues that the time for climate action measured in small household tweaks has long since passed. And Yanis Varoufakis and David Adler discuss the need for an International Green New Deal, while Stephen Buhler writes that oil industry workers recognize the importance of a Canadian version while worrying about being left behind in a transition process.

- Meanwhile, Kori Sidaway highlights how refineries are capitalizing on the right-wing carbon tax hysteria by taking far more in windfall profits than any increase attributable to new taxes (including in provinces where the federal carbon tax doesn't apply).

- Global Witness points out how trillions of dollars are being dumped into developing new fossil fuel projects which are entirely incompatible with averting climate breakdown. And Phil Willon reports that California may be joining Norway and other forward-thinking jurisdictions by defying Justin Trudeau's blinkered spin and taking action to limit any additional dirty energy development.

- The Canadian Press reports on Canada's painfully slow progress in catching up to the developed world on combating corporate corruption. And Ed Finn offers a reminder that our financial system has been set up to ensure that public projects are funded so as to produce private bank profits.

- Finally, Robert Benzie reports on the billion-dollar public price tag attached to Doug Ford's belief that beer is the only thing that matters. And Randy Robinson notes that Ford is slashing funding for flood protection just as rising waters threaten numerous Ontario communities.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Yanis Varoufakis writes that the tendency of capitalism toward stagnation signals the need for greater public input into economic decisions. And Branko Milanovic discusses how the attitude that politics should be governed by greed has undermined the trust between citizens and governments necessary for either to thrive.

- Meanwhile, Ed Broadbent writes about the need to take back the concept of populism from the right-wing bigots who seek to use at a means of exclusion rather than a basis for public empowerment:

(I)t is important to remember that populism also has a democratic and pluralist provenance. It also speaks directly to the concerns of those threatened by inequality, democratic decline and the perceived indifference of political leadership. The most recent example of this is the kind of politics championed by Senator Bernie Sanders in the United States. Like those on the right, he, too, takes aim at elites and their self-serving use of power and claims the status quo is broken. But in place of xenophobia and exclusionary nationalism, he supports pluralism and calls for a diverse popular front with the explicit goal of strengthening and reinvigorating democracy, and uniting movements for social, racial, economic and environmental justice in a common struggle.
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The key difference between right-wing populism and the populism of the progressive left – not just today but historically – is that the former is authoritarian and anti-pluralist, whereas the latter is democratic and inclusive. Projecting the imagined interests of the “real people” for whom they claim to speak, right-wing populists frequently pursue the vilification of vulnerable groups, fostering a political identity founded on exclusion. The treatment of non-Christians by Hungary’s Mr. Orban or the demonization of Latinos by Mr. Trump come to mind, as does his condemnation of immigrants from, as he put it, “shithole” countries.

Once in control of government, these authoritarian populists stack the institutions of state with their own allies, supporters and patrons – political corruption in its most naked form. Waging war on social movements and civil society, many also attack and demonize the free media. For Mr. Trump, all critical media is “fake news,” which he has described as being “the enemy of the people.” For Vladimir Putin and Mr. Orban, meanwhile, NGOs are frequently demonized and denounced as actors under foreign control.

Leftist populists, by contrast, challenge powerful systems by championing the social and material interests of ordinary people. While they also are critical of elites, they do not make them enemies. They attempt to bring all people together into the fight against inequality, racism and climate change. Far from being the left-wing equivalent of the authoritarian right as some centrists have insisted, the populist left is, in actuality, its democratic antithesis – and its worst nightmare.

- And George Monbiot discusses how the media in the UK and elsewhere is increasingly setting itself up to provide a platform for the worst possible voices.

- Arthur Neslen reports on growing warnings from the insurance sector that the extreme weather events caused by climate breakdown will soon make insurance unaffordable.

- Finally, Emma Paling reports on Doug Ford's move to stop the tracking of toxic chemicals and air pollutants to ensure that what people don't know can continue to hurt them.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Charles Smith and Larry Savage write that Justin Trudeau's use of back-to-work legislation against postal workers may have far more significant consequences than he seems to have anticipated. And Christo Aivalis examines the next steps for Canada's labour movement - as well as their importance for the country as a whole:

...In a time of growing inequality, all Canadians need to think about the questions unions face: At what point does the concentration of economic power in the hands of massive multinational corporations limit workers’ ability to respond through the traditional means of collective bargaining? At what point does this power threaten to control the destinies of entire communities and regions, rendering the democratic will of Canadians, if not irrelevant, then certainly compromised? And will endemic automation – even if it’s farther away than some people fear – only serve to disenfranchise the masses in favour of an ever-consolidating elite with more control than ever? These were the essential forces that led to these setbacks for UNIFOR – after all, how could an American company unilaterally decide to gut a Canadian town, leaving both workers and government holding the bag? – but those issues will come to workplaces and communities everywhere before long.
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When it comes down to it, we need economic systems that reflect the democratic principles we so cherish, the ones through which we define so much of our Canadian identity. Unions have been a force for generations, giving workers at least some input into the operation of their workplaces, and organized labour will always have an irreplaceable role in building and preserving a democratic spirit that goes beyond the ballot box. It is in all our interests that unions succeed in organizing the workplaces of the present and future, that our governments enact policies that assist in this process, and that we as citizens retain a skeptical eye towards the further concentration of economic power in unaccountable private hands.

If unions fail, our democracy may well be at stake.

- Helia Ebrahimi discusses the connection between economic stressors and a hundred thousand suicide attempts in the UK in the last year alone. And Kwame McKenzie points out how it's only the people already facing the most challenges who are being asked to sacrifice by Doug Ford's government.

- Henry Grabar writes about Minneapolis' decision to end single-family zoning which has long served as a major source of housing segregation. And Douglas Todd comments on the complex relationship between immigration and housing in Vancouver - including the reality that more for-profit development does nothing to ease the lack of housing availability for the people who most need it, regardless of their place of origin.

- Roberta Lexier and Avi Lewis argue that it's long past time for Canada's corporate welfare bums to start paying their fair share for a country that serves the best interests of its citizens. And Yanis Varoufakis and David Adler highlight the need to fundamentally reshape and empower sources of collective decision-making - including international institutions - in order to be able to respond to our common problems.

- Finally, Peggy Nash and Tracey Raney point out how more equitable representation and power-sharing is a necessary component of any plan to end gender-based violence.

Sunday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Vanmala Subramaniam reports on the move by real estate developers to push tenants out of desperately-needed housing in Canada's largest cities to chase after short-term profits.

- David Wallace Wells asks how the rapidly-materializing worst-case climate change scenarios are being met with shrugs rather than recognition of the urgent need for action. And Denise Balkissoon comments on the connection between a heating planet and the increased threat of wildfires, while Yanis Varoufakis points out that both climate change and austerity have severely exacerbated Greece's outbreak of fires in particular.

- Meanwhile, Emma Davie reports on the risks to a Nova Scotia tidal power project after its private-sector participant pulled out - with no government apparently willing to invest in the development of stable renewable energy even as the federal government pumps billions into subsidizing oil infrastructure.

- Tom Parkin argues that Canada can be far safer if it minimizes the presence of handguns which are available to be put to malicious purposes.

- Finally, Jerry Dias makes the case for long-overdue anti-scab legislation to ensure that workers and unions are able to effectively exercise their right to strike for improved workplace fairness.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Andrew O'Hehir talks to Yanis Varoufakis about the impossibility of building shared prosperity on a foundation of consumer debt and financialization. And the Institute for Public Policy Research offers a discussion paper on the important equalizing role of organized labour - and the need for government to ensure that unions can serve the public interest.

- Meanwhile, Patrick Butler reports on the woeful state of adult social care in the wake of brutal cuts and an ideological insistence on the survival of only the fittest and luckiest.

- Elisabetta Bianchini reports on some of the Ontario voters lamenting the first-past-the-post system which has allowed Doug Ford to take an effectively unaccountable majority government over the objection of most of the province. And Mitch Potter muses that the result might open the door to electoral reform elsewhere.

- The Star discusses the need for Canada to start learning from - and reversing - its failures in respecting Indigenous people. And Emma Paling reports that some of the chiefs regularly used as props in support of the Trans Mountain expansion were coerced into signing on, rather than having any meaningful choice in the matter.

- Finally, Marc Lee points out that British Columbians paying more than ever for gas should trace the problem to oil-sector profit-taking, not modest steps to rein in greenhouse gas emissions and protect the environment.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Yanis Varoufakis discusses the loss of freedom when one's whole life needs to be planned around corporate wishes and sensitivities:

A capacity to fence off a part of one’s life, and to remain sovereign and self-driven within those boundaries, was paramount to the liberal conception of the free agent and his or her relationship with the public sphere. To exercise freedom, individuals needed a safe haven within which to develop as genuine persons before relating – and transacting – with others. Once constituted, our personhood was to be enhanced by commerce and industry – networks of collaboration across our personal havens, constructed and revised to satisfy our material and spiritual needs.

But the dividing line between personhood and the external world upon which liberal individualism based its concepts of autonomy, self-ownership, and, ultimately, freedom could not be maintained. The first breach appeared as industrial products became passé and were replaced by brands that captured the public’s attention, admiration, and desire. Before long, branding took a radical new turn, imparting “personality” to objects. 

Once brands acquired personalities (boosting consumer loyalty immensely and profits accordingly), individuals felt compelled to re-imagine themselves as brands. And today, with colleagues, employers, clients, detractors, and “friends” constantly surveying our online life, we are under incessant pressure to evolve into a bundle of activities, images, and dispositions that amounts to an attractive, sellable brand. The personal space essential to the autonomous development of an authentic self – the condition that makes inalienable self-ownership possible – is now almost gone. The habitat of liberalism is disappearing.
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The irony is that liberal individualism seems to have been defeated by a totalitarianism that is neither fascist nor communist, but which grew out of its own success at legitimizing the encroachment of branding and commodification into our personal space. To defeat it, and thus rescue the liberal idea of freedom as self-ownership, may require a comprehensive reconfiguration of property rights over the increasingly digitized instruments of production, distribution, collaboration, and communication.

Would it not be a splendid paradox if, 200 years after the birth of Karl Marx, we decided that, in order to save liberalism, we must return to the idea that freedom demands the end of unfettered commodification and the socialization of property rights over capital goods?

- Meanwhile, Noah Smith points out that any dogma about "efficient markets" is rapidly being refuted by economic experience.

- D.C. Fraser reports on Scott Moe's insistence that Saskatchewan's low-income workers survive on the lowest minimum wage in Canada.

- David Roberts writes about the importance of supply-side policies as part of a full strategy to rein in climate change - with the particularly important advantage of avoiding infrastructure lock-in. And Michael Harris notes that Justin Trudeau's determination to instead tie Canada to a dying fossil fuel industry may represent his political undoing.

- Finally, the Globe and Mail's editorial board makes the case for Alberta to join the rest of the country in funding public services through a sales tax.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Darlene O'Leary sets out the results from public consultations for a national anti-poverty strategy. And Dennis Howlett writes that our tax system could (and should) be set up to build a far more fair and supportive society.

- Meanwhile, Ryan Cooper makes the case for public services which are simple to use, rather than imposing avoidable stress on the people who are supposed to be benefiting.

- Jeff Minerd discusses how NAFTA has affected Canada's food supply by vastly increasing the quantity of unhealthy food imported from the U.S. And Scott Sinclair weighs in on the Trade in Services Agreement as the next threat to democratic control over public services.

- Didier Jacobs argues that the U.S. needs to rein in the use of shell corporations to facilitate corruption and tax evasion.

- But the CP reports that SNC-Lavalin is reorganizing itself to avoid taxes on income derived from Canadian P3 projects. And Dermod Travis notes that the B.C. Libs instead provided tax breaks to scam artists through their AdvantageBC crony support system. 

- Finally, Yanis Varoufakis comments on the false choice between the corporate establishment and the reactionary right - while appropriately labeling the latter the "Nationalist International". 

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Yanis Varoufakis makes the case for an international progressive political system to ensure that social progress doesn't stop at national borders:

(T)raditional political parties are fading into irrelevance, supplanted by the emergence of two new political blocs.

One bloc represents the old troika of liberalization, globalization, and financialization. It may still be in power, but its stock is falling fast, as David Cameron, Europe’s social democrats, Hillary Clinton, the European Commission, and even Greece’s post-capitulation Syriza government can attest. 

Trump, Le Pen, Britain’s right-wing Brexiteers, Poland’s and Hungary’s illiberal governments, and Russian President Vladimir Putin are forming the second bloc. Theirs is a nationalist international – a classic creature of a deflationary period – united by contempt for liberal democracy and the ability to mobilize those who would crush it. 

The clash between these two blocs is both real and misleading. Clinton vs. Trump constitutes a genuine battle, for example, as does the European Union vs. the Brexiteers; but the two combatants are accomplices, not foes, in perpetuating an endless loop of mutual reinforcement, with each side defined by – and mobilizing its supporters on the basis of – what it opposes. 

The only way out of this political trap is progressive internationalism, based on solidarity among large majorities around the world who are prepared to rekindle democratic politics on a planetary scale. If this sounds Utopian, it is worth emphasizing that the raw materials are already available. 

Bernie Sanders’s “political revolution” in the US, Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the UK’s Labour Party, DiEM25 (the Democracy in Europe Movement) on the continent: these are the harbingers of an international progressive movement that can define the intellectual terrain upon which democratic politics must build.

- Katie Allen reports on a new study estimating the cost of public services arising out of poverty in the UK at $78 billion every year.

- Ross Finnie, Kaveh Afshar, Eda Bozkurt, Masashi Miyairi and Dejan Pavlic examine (PDF) the earnings of Canadian post-secondary education graduates, and find a gender gap in every single field studied. And Sarah Kliff discusses how the gap can be traced in substantial part to the existence of inflexible or uncertain hours of work.

- Lawrence Martin comments on the Libs' broken promise to do anything at all to ameliorate the attack on civil rights found in Bill C-51, while noting that the inaction may arise out of pure political cowardice. And the Toronto Star's editorial board makes a strong case for immediate action to rein in the excesses of the surveillance and disruption state.

- Finally, Tom Parkin points out that the Greens' cynical spreading of misleading poll information represents just one more example of the warped incentives created by a first-past-the-post electoral system.