Subjects Archives: Inequality

As the 21st Century’s second decade opens, the increasingly severe symptoms of climate change comprise a pivot in the struggle for hegemony, globally and within national formations. With the highest per capital carbon emissions among the G20 states, Canada is a climate laggard and, in some respects, a first-world petro-state (Nikiforuk 2010), organized as a regime of obstruction (the title of an edited collection to be published this May, Carroll 2020d).

In a repeat of the gutter journalism used to justify the 2003 Iraq War, the New York Times has had to “yellow-cake” up a foul brew of innuendo, half-truths, misrepresentations, outright lies—spiked fiercely with stereotypes, racial hatred, and red-baiting—to makes its case for a China “cover-up.”

The report released by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology raises questions about why the Organization of American States lied and who benefited.

Canada’s public media the CBC long-ago entered the ranks of yellow journalism when it comes to its reporting on Venezuela.  However, two recent reports, in particular, one on CBC radio’s “The Current” and the other a CBC News article by reporter Evan Dyer, weigh heavy on the sensationalism and light on facts. Filled with unsubstantiated claims, right-wing pundits parading as “pro-democracy” advocates and unchallenged declarations by the government of Canada officials, once again, the CBC firmly establishes their role as the mouthpiece of the government Canada.

There is an old saying “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.” That saying is relevant for the current healthcare debate in which former Vice-President Biden and elite Democrats are touting a reheated version of Obamacare with a public option. It is a case of trying to fool the American public twice.

What to do if confronted with an extremely contagious virus that medical experts say they have not seen before and don’t understand, and which is fast spreading and killing hundreds of people? a) Take precautionary measures to stop the virus spreading and prepare the health system for a potential shock? Or b) Ignore it, blithely assert – without any evidence – that it is little different from the common flu, accuse your adversaries.

We are witnessing a big crisis in the stock markets of the Wall Street, Europe, Japan and Shanghai, and many blame the coronavirus for it. In the last week of February 2020, the worst week since October 2008, the Dow Jones fell 12.4%, the S&P 500 fell 11.5% and the Nasdaq Composite fell 10.5%.

The French courts recently found the telecommunications firm Orange/France Telecom and its top managers guilty of “moral harassment” connected to a wave of worker suicides a decade ago. The former management team, including the former CEO, face jail time and fines, while the company was ordered to pay 3 million euros in damages to the victims.

The information-aware and many in the medical industry are nervously watching the news about coronavirus spread and mortality rates. What we know so far isn’t pretty.

The Supreme Court set a dangerous precedent yesterday when it ruled in favor of the U.S. Border Patrol in the cross-border murder of a young teenage boy who was shot in the face by an overzealous agent.

The Saudi-UAE war on Yemen has been going on for five years. Despite recent peace talks leading to an improvement in aid distribution, the violence has escalated in certain key districts of Yemen over the past two weeks. Since January, 35,000 Yemenis have been displaced from their homes, an indicator of the dangerous situation in the country.

t the end of January, at a time when the coronavirus outbreak that began in China was dominating international headlines, The White House announced it was forming a new task force to address the growing crisis, one headed by the secretary of health and human services, Alex Azar.

Just below the steps leading to the engraved words of George Washington “The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government”, members of the People’s MTA, Rise and Resist’s Elevator Action Group, Disabled In Action, The Peoples Power Assemblies NYC were demonstrating for their right to justice.

Chile is today in the midst of an unprecedented constituent process 30 years after the return of democracy, where the possibility of a new constitution has opened a discussion about what sort of country we want, and which rights should be enshrined in the drafting of this fundamental document.

One thing about U.S. President Donald Trump is that he can be brutally frank. Trump recently picked up the phone and called British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to convey his displeasure over the latter’s decision to allow Huawei to operate in the UK despite Washington’s repeated urgings.

‘Scientists are wrong’, the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano said with a warm smile on his face. ‘Human beings are not made of atoms; they are made of stories’. It is why we want to sing and draw, tell each other about our lives and our hopes, talk about the wonders in our lives and the wonders that we dream about. These dreams–this art–are what make us get up each day, smile, and go forward into the world.

Not long before the Twin Towers fell, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben resurrected a concept anathema to the liberal notion of progress—the idea that unrelenting crisis is not necessarily exceptional. Agamben employed the image of “the Camp” to describe the space and time “when the state of exception begins to become the rule.”

The Iowa caucuses officially began the Democratic primary, and even in this ongoing, extended battle for the White House, Iowa remains an important marker for candidates and the media. A close look at a piece by two of NPR’s leading political reporters, which aired just before the caucuses, provides a view of how journalists speak with authority on issues they seem to know very little about.

Accountability is important. But tests that tie school funding to student performance only make things worse.

Having our own media allows us to tell the stories that the millionaire press barons don’t want to engage with and it gives us a space to debate and explore issues without the toxic influence of climate deniers.