This week's list of articles, news items and opinion pieces that I see as must reads if you are looking for a roundup that should be of interest to The Left Chapter readers.
This list covers the week of January 1 - January 8. It is in order of date of the article's release.
1) Basic Income: Progressive Dreams Meet Neoliberal Realities
John Clarke, Socialist Project
Up until now, the concept of Basic Income (BI) has enjoyed a greater history of being proposed than of being implemented. We may well be approaching a period, however, when this changes. The Ontario Government is holding consultations on setting up a BI pilot project. The Legislature in another Canadian Province, Prince Edward Island, has agreed to test out a version of BI. Pilot projects are also impending in Finland, the Netherlands and Scotland.
Read the full article.
2) Israeli officials back shoot-to-kill policy of Palestinian suspects, says Human Rights Watch
Harriet Agerholm, Independent
Leading Israeli officials have been encouraging soldiers and police officers to kill Palestinians suspected of attacks regardless of whether lethal force is necessary, according to a new report by a leading human rights organisation.
Read the full article.
3) Jason Kenney to climate change denier: “the climate’s been changing since the beginning of time”
Press Progress
What does Jason Kenney really think about climate change?
He proposes to do nothing about controlling greenhouse gas emissions, his campaign manager is a prolific climate change denier (an opinion shaped, in part, by the planet Neptune) plus Kenney has his own creative opinions about carbon dioxide
Read the full article.
4) Why to take hate seriously
Errol Louis, New York Daily News
I note with great sadness and alarm that a band of Nazi thugs has announced plans to hold an “armed protest” this month with the explicit goal of harassing and intimidating the Jewish community of Whitefish, Mont.
Read the full article.
5) I’ve left Twitter. It is unusable for anyone but trolls, robots and dictators
Lindy West, The Guardian
I deactivated my Twitter account today. It was more of a spontaneous impulse than a New Year resolution, although it does feel like a juice cleanse, a moulting, a polar-bear plunge, a clean slate (except the opposite – like throwing your slate into a volcano and running). One moment I was brains-deep in the usual way, half-heartedly arguing with strangers about whether or not it’s “OK” to suggest to Steve Martin that calling Carrie Fisher a “beautiful creature” who “turned out” to be “witty and bright as well” veered just a hair beyond Fisher’s stated boundaries regarding objectification (if you have opinions on this, don’t tweet me – oh, wait, you can’t); and the next moment the US president-elect was using the selfsame platform to taunt North Korea about the size and tumescence of its nuclear program. And I realised: eh, I’m done. I could be swimming right now. Or flossing. Or digging a big, pointless pit. Anything else.
Read the full article.
6) Carrie Fisher's last Harrison Ford story isn't romantic, it's tragic
Tasha Robinson, The Verge
In the wake of Carrie Fisher’s unexpected death at age 60, her new memoir, The Princess Diarist, is an unexpectedly emotional read. But the emotions aren’t grief and nostalgia so much as alarm and sympathy. Early in the book, she tells a thoroughly appalling story that she presents as a cheery little romp. In London for the filming of 1977’s Star Wars: A New Hope, Fisher attends George Lucas’ birthday party, where she’s “essentially the only girl” in a room full of hard-drinking crew who are loudly whinging that they’d rather shoot in “a nice remote location… where there’s no bloody shortage of strange but friendly quim.”
Read the full article.
7) Obama’s Administration Sold More Weapons Than Any Other Since World War II
Farid Farid, Motherboard
President Barack Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, will leave office in a few weeks with the dubious honor of having sold more weapons than any other American president since World War II. And experts say President-Elect Donald Trump will most likely sell even more.
Read the full article.
8) Grande Prairie, Alta. Allowed To Reject Graphic Anti-Abortion Bus Ads: Judge
The Canadian Press
An abortion rights group is hailing a court ruling that says a city in northwest Alberta has the legal right to refuse to run a graphic anti-abortion ad on its transit buses.
Read the full article.
9) Why we still need John Berger’s Ways of Seeing
Emma Hope Allwood, Dazed
“A woman is always accompanied, except when quite alone, and perhaps even then, by her own image of herself. While she is walking across a room or weeping at the death of her father, she cannot avoid envisioning herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she is taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does, because how she appears to others – and particularly how she appears to men – is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life.”
Read the full article.
10) 5 Ways Modern Disney Is Even More Sexist Than The Classics
Vicki Veritas & Matt Cowan, Cracked
A new crop of revamped Disney films want to reverse those old "princess in distress" stories through female characters who are strong, independent, and unique. Or ... are they? Now, we haven't seen Moana yet. Maybe that totally reverses every bit of unintentional damage those other films did. But, uh ... it doesn't sound likely.
Read the full article.
11) Judge rules doctors can refuse trans patients and women who have had abortions
Marie Solis, News Mic
On Saturday, a United States district judge ruled that doctors may turn away women who have had abortions and transgender patients on the basis of religious freedom.
Read the full article.
12) Leitch tells Fox she agrees with critique of 'socialized medicine'
Janice Dickson, iPolitics
Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch told Fox News’ Business Network on Tuesday that elites, insiders, and left-wing media, are doing everything they can to stop her and also suggested she doesn’t agree with universal healthcare.
Read the full article.
13) Colin Kaepernick’s Teammates Give Him an Award for Courage
Dave Zirin, The Nation
The San Francisco 49ers announced on Friday that the team has voted to give Colin Kaepernick the Len Eshmont Award, a prize given to the player who “best exemplifies the inspirational and courageous play of Len Eshmont—a Navy vet—an original member of the 1946 49ers team.”
Read the full article.
14) Mental Health Issues Shouldn't Overshadow Victims Of Men's Violence
Isabelle Cote, Huffington Post
A few days following New Year celebrations, a tragedy has occurred in Big Tracadie, a rural community in Nova Scotia. Lionel Desmond, a retired corporal of the Canadian Armed Forces, had allegedly murdered his wife, Shanna Desmond, their 10-year-old daughter, Aaliyah, and his mother Brenda Desmond shortly before taking his own life.
Read the full article.
15) Women killed by their spouses are not casualties in someone else’s story
Elizabeth Renzetti, The Globe and Mail
Will we ever know any more about what Shanna Desmond was like as a person, or does her story stop with her violent death? So far, the details are few, but they point to someone who was lovely and dedicated to her job. She was “empathetic,” according to a colleague who worked with her at St. Martha’s Regional Hospital in Nova Scotia, where Ms. Desmond was a registered nurse. She would drive through bad weather to get to work. Her Facebook profile picture is a funny, playful shot of her at work sticking her tongue out alongside a patient.
Read the full article.
16) Get the flu shot: Editorial
Toronto Star Editorial Board
Every year about 70 per cent of Torontonians roll the dice and choose not to get a flu vaccine, according to Statistics Canada, even though it’s their best shot at avoiding the life-threatening disease and of passing it on to others.
Read the full article.
17) Netanyahu Caught on Tape Negotiating Mutual Benefits With Businessman
Gidi Weitz, Haaretz
At the heart of Case 2000 is an attempt at an unambiguous deal between money and government. Sources who spoke with Netanyahu said he was surprised by evidence against him.
Read the full article.
See also: Netanyahu, Children of Men, Cheetahs & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List December 25 - January 1
See also: Car Culture, the CIA, Pope Francis & more -- The Left Chapter Holiday Reading List December 18 - 25
No comments:
Post a Comment