Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Kat Eschner interviews John Peters about the growing inequality in wealth, income and influence. And Scott Martin offers a reminder not to conflate the gross disparity in pay between CEOs and workers with anything that's actually been earned.

- Mitchell Thompson discusses how privatized surgeries are a threat to the fundamentals of Canadian health care. And John Bell writes about the human consequences of putting profits before caring for people.

- Peter Reina's review of a book on project failure includes a handy chart showing the level of cost overruns for different types of infrastructure - with renewable energy ranking as having by far the lowest level of overruns, while nuclear operations are joined only by the Olympic Games as the absolute worst.  And Nojoud Al Mallees reports on the refusal by oilsands giants to spend a nickel of their windfall projects on their much-hyped claim to decarbonization. 

- Jonathan Chait writes about the John Durham investigation as a prime example of the right looking to its own paranoid fantasies about perceived enemies as a model for its own plans. And Asawin Suebsaeng and Patrick Reis offer a look inside Donald Trump's end-of-term killing spree as a particularly cruel and violent example. 

- Finally, Meghan Krausch discusses what's been lost from the ongoing collapse of Twitter, while noting that the ultimate purpose of allowing for connections with other people can be met in new and less-corporatized ways.

Musical interlude

Jamie Woon - Shoulda (Samy Chelly Remix)

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- George Monbiot discusses how everybody is being forced to play COVID roulette due to the choice not to work toward clean and safe air. Sophie Peterson offers a personal perspective on the damage being done by the failure of governments to take long COVID seriously. And Sharon Kirkey reports on the finding by a panel led by Alex Himelfarb that even using conservative assumptions, thousands of deaths in Canada have been caused by COVID disinformation. 

- Linda McQuaig writes that Doug Ford owes Ontarians an explanation for his refusal to fund public services (concurrent with his willingness to throw money at private profiteers). Bea Bruske warns that Canadian workers can't be expected to accept an economic system which is rigged against them by allowing for price increases but not corresponding wage boosts. And Christopher Olk, Colleen Schneider and Jason Hickel discuss how universal public services help to protect people against inflation and deprivation alike - while also helping to rein in windfall corporate profits and concentration of wealth.  

- Unfortunately, Anna Clark points out how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is instead treating its mandate as being the protection of corporate profits rather than the public - including in failing to regulate vital screening tests. And Cory Doctorow is rightly outraged that Moderna is planning to gorge itself on obscene markups being applied to vaccines researched and developed through public resources. 

- Finally, David Wallace-Wells writes about the continued fallout from the Brexit debacle which has seen standards of living plummet - even as the alt-right everywhere continues to push blinkered nationalism with no regard for its obvious self-sabotage which results. 

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Rachel Brazil discusses the effect of the "imprinting" from a first COVID-19 infection on subsequent immune responses which makes the spread of highly-mutated variants all the more dangerous. And Andrew Stokes et al. highlight how the U.S. (like other countries) is likely continuing to undercount the number of deaths caused by COVID. 

- David Moscrop discusses how Doug Ford's plan to starve the public health care system and throw money at corporate profiteers is exactly the opposite of what people need to stay healthy. And Mitchell Thompson reports on Ford's meeting with lobbyists seeking to turn medical care into gig work.  

- Zak Vescera reports on a workplace death caused by a predictable elevator malfunction which prevented medical assistance from reaching an employee atop a port crane. And Kim de Laat, Carmina Ravanera and Sarah Kaplan write that remote work should help to promote employment equity for women - rather than instead being used to dump even larger burdens on them in the absence of clear boundaries between work and home life. 

- Kingsmill Bond et al. examine how we've reached peak demand for fossil fuel-based power production. 

- Finally, Armine Yalnizyan writes that there's no reason to be applying a 1990s playbook - including its attacks on workers and wages - to inflation which is caused by entirely different factors. 

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Cuddled cats.

Tuesday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Anne Sosin and Martha Lincoln discuss the war on empathy embodied by the flurry of media attacks against anybody with the temerity to point out we're still in the middle of a pandemic where a lack of care for others is directly responsible for widespread illness and disability. And Pam Belluck reports on the large numbers of people whose affliction with long COVID has kept them from working for extended periods of time. 

- Damian Carrington reports on Mark Jacobson's work showing how a world fully powered by renewable energy is well within reach if we make it a priority, while Angele Alook, Emily Eaton, David Gray-Donald, Joël Laforest, Crystal Lameman and Bronwen Tucker note that Canada isn't lacking for viable options to fund a just transition. Marc Lee calls out the Trudeau Libs for instead throwing billions of federal dollars into pipeline expansion with the effect of gratuitously subsidizing pollution from the oil sector at the expense of Canadian society at large. And Carla Delgado discusses how corporations are greenwashing their plastic pollution. 

- Katelyn Burns reports on the influx of legislative attacks against trans people in the U.S., as the first approaches based on participation in sports have given way to full denial of health care and dehumanization. 

- Finally, Charles Rusnell reports on the Calgary Police Service's willingness to pay a con man for easy but wrong answers in dealing with PTSD even in the face of direct warnings. 

Monday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Jessica Corsetti reports on Greta Thunberg's message that the wealthiest few value their own short-term profit-taking over the future of humanity. Paul Kahnert discusses how the privatization of health care is just the latest example of conservative heists from the public. And Sophia Harris reports on the lack of progress in the Competition Bureau's investigation into bread price fixing even in the face of Loblaws' confession.  

- Jordan Uhl reports on a fossil fuel tycoon's attempt to silence Beto O'Rourke from even talking about the connection between massive donations and preferential treatment from a Republican governor. And Lisa Song examines the current state of knowledge as to the dangers of gas stoves (even as the oil and gas sector tries to shout down any inquiry into their effects). 

- The Red Deer Advocate reports on a new study showing the cost of starting up new, politically-controlled police services is far higher than assumed by the UCP (as well as the Sask Party). And Ryan Little, Adam Willis and Ben Conarck report on the impact of group violence reduction strategies in reducing the homicide rate in West Baltimore. 

- Gregory Beatty writes about the attempt by private religious schools to undermine the public education system in Saskatchewan.

- Finally, Carolyn Harper talks to Eric Topol about the lack of resources being put into preventing and treating long COVID at a point when a large proportion of the population is being set up to suffer from it. 

Sunday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Matthew Agius reports on the growing body of evidence indicating that long COVID may produce lifelong aftereffects. Henna Saeed reports on  the large number of Canadians now suffering from long COVID symptoms. And Lee Han-Soo discusses new research showing that a reinfection may be twice as deadly as an original one.

- Meanwhile, Emily Leedham reports on the Manitoba PCs' choice to lie about the motives behind an event to support health workers in order to have it shut down - even as they were happy to let antivaxxers influence their own government's policy. And Jessica Wildfire weighs in on the contrast between careful testing and environmental controls at Davos and the elite consensus throwing everybody else to the wolves. 

- Patty Winsa reports that Ontario's PCs have arranged for public health lines to direct patients toward pay-for-play corporate primary care, while Norman de Bono reports on the growing backlash against the privatization of surgeries. And Thomas Walkom writes that the Ford government's idea of health care reform completely misses the point as to how medicare needs to work to keep everybody healthy.

- Justin Chandler discusses how temporary, weather alert-based shelter systems leave unhoused people in readily-avoidable risk.

- Rupert Neate reports that there are still billionaires begging for wealth taxes to limit their own destructive class hegemony. And Umair Haque discusses how perilous our future as a civilization looks if we don't achieve major progress in the present.

- Finally, Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood discusses what a just transition means - and why it's in everybody's interest to work on putting it in place (no matter how a few well-funded extractivists scream about what amounts to a desire for short-term profits). And Guy Walton points out a few of the most immediate consequences of failing to avert a climate breakdown.