This list covers the week of August 27 - September 3. It is generally in order of the date of the article's release.
1) Should the rich be taxed more? A new paper shows unequivocally yes
Larry Elliot, The Guardian
Measuring tax paid against share of income earned and wealth owned reveals the US tax system has become less progressive – and in Britain it is a similar picture.
Read the full article.
2) SOUL SNATCHERS: Countering the State Sponsored Conspiracy to Destroy Pedro Hernandez (Part 3)
Shaun King, Medium
Have you ever been arrested by the police and charged with a crime you didn’t commit? I don’t mean pulled over for a speeding ticket. I don’t mean harassed or ridiculed. I don’t mean treated like a suspect.
Read the full article.
3) 'Deeply regretful' Susur Lee to reimburse workers after illegally docking tips at his eateries
Amara McLaughlin, CBC News
World-renowned chef and reality TV star Susur Lee has told his employees he has changed a system at his restaurants that illegally forced them to hand over a portion of their tips to pay for common mistakes, and he has promised to reimburse staff after workers at his eateries blasted the policy.
Read the full article.
4) Fines for catcalling would recognize street harassment as serious problem
Emma Teitel, The Toronto Star
A policy to punish catcallers wouldn’t just acknowledge the practice as a legitimate problem, but it would also dissuade possible perpetrators.
Read the full article.
5) Dr. Robert Bullard: Houston’s “Unrestrained Capitalism” Made Harvey “Catastrophe Waiting to Happen”
Democracy Now
The death toll continues to rise as massive amounts of rain from Hurricane Harvey flood Houston and other parts of Texas and Louisiana. The Houston police and Coast Guard have rescued over 6,000 people from their homes, but many remain stranded. Meteorologists forecast another foot of rain could fall on the region in the coming days. While the National Hurricane Center is now calling Harvey the biggest rainstorm on record, scientists have been predicting for years that climate change would result in massive storms like Harvey. We speak with Dr. Robert Bullard, known as the “father of environmental justice.” He is currently a distinguished professor at Texas Southern University. Dr. Bullard speaks to us from his home in Houston, which he needs to evacuate later this morning due to the rising Brazos River.
See or read the full interview.
6) Trump removed Obama's flood protection laws just days before Hurricane Harvey hit
Ben Kentish, Emily Shugerman - The Independent
Donald Trump signed an executive order just days before Hurricane Harvey that scrapped many of the flood protections introduced by Barack Obama.
Read the full article.
7) Everyone’s a Socialist After a Natural Disaster
Joan Walsh, The Nation
You know the old saying: There are no atheists in foxholes. I’ve got a new one: We’re all socialists after a natural disaster. Even Texas Senator Ted Cruz. The hypocrite who tried to block Hurricane Sandy aid to the East Coast in 2012 is now demanding the federal government expedite emergency funds for the survivors of Hurricane Harvey along the Gulf Coast of Texas, and in Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city. East Coast Democrats are happy to help, though New Jersey Governor Chris Christie tried to renew his relevance by beefing with his party mate over his Sandy selfishness. The Washington Post gave Cruz three Pinocchios for claiming on Monday that he blocked Sandy aid only because it was larded with pork. It was not. But even in a disaster, Cruz can’t help lying.
Read the full article.
8) We're Nowhere Near Prepared for the Ecological Disaster That Harvey Is Becoming
Charles P. Pierce, Esquire
It is the Christian thing to do in the middle of tragedies like the one currently unfolding along the Texas-Louisiana Gulf coast not to politicize human suffering and, certainly, the stories of people rescuing their fellow citizens from this calamity deserve to be told and they deserve to be spread as widely as possible. But there is nothing I can find in the Gospels that would forbid us from politicizing politics. So let us summon the ghost of Walter Winchell and review some of the events of the past few days.
Read the full article.
10) Why are the crucial questions about Hurricane Harvey not being asked?
George Monbiot, The Guardian
It is not only Donald Trump’s government that censors the discussion of climate change; it is the entire body of polite opinion. This is why, though the links are clear and obvious, most reports on Hurricane Harvey have made no mention of the human contribution to it.
Read the full article.
11) REVEALED: Burning Houston chemical plant successfully lobbied Trump to strike down safety rules
Brad Reed, Raw Story
Arkema, the company that owns the chemical plant in Crosby, Texas, that suffered at least two separate explosions on Thursday, successfully lobbied the Trump administration to delay new safety rules for chemical plants that were due to take effect this year.
Read the full article.
12) Floods in India, Bangladesh and Nepal kill 1,200 and leave millions homeless
Chloe Farand, The Independent
At least 1,200 people have been killed and millions have been left homeless following devastating floods that have hit India, Bangladesh and Nepal, in one of the worst flooding disasters to have affected the region in years.
Read the full article.
13) Andrew Scheer Names Anti-Abortion Conservative MP as New Status of Women ‘Shadow Minister’
Press Progress
Conservative leader Andrew Scheer's pick for Status of Women "Shadow Minister" is a vocal supporter of legislation restricting women's access to abortions.
Shanifa Nasser, CBC News
One in every 19 maternal deaths in Ontario is attributable to suicide.
That's the troubling finding of a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal earlier this week that shines a light on a topic often seen as taboo: suicide among new mothers and mothers to be.
"Despite high-profile media attention and calls to increase knowledge, with the goal of encouraging policy change, little is known about the true extent of the problem in Canada or the steps that can be taken to prevent it," write the authors of the study, published August 28.
Anti-Fasciste Montreal
This morning, August 29, Montreal activist Jaggi Singh was arrested and charged with resisting arrest and taking another person’s identity, for having jokingly given his name to police as former Nordiques’ player Michel Goulet on August 20. He is being transferred to Quebec City, where he is to appear Wednesday morning at 9 am in Municipal Court. This arrest came in the context of a far right hate campaign targeting Jaggi, including a petition promoted by the notorious racist group La Meute, demanding his arrest; a campaign that has been taken up by right-leaning political figures and members of the media over the past week.
Urooba Jamal, Telesur
Nearly 150 people have joined a protest in Toronto, Canada in front of the offices of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the country’s national public radio and television broadcaster, demanding that “CBC tell the truth about Venezuela.”
Les Perreaux, The Globe and Mail
The firebombing of a Muslim leader's car in his Quebec City driveway as his family slept at home has his community demanding action and provincial political leaders wondering what they must do to clamp down on emboldened right-wing zealots.
Andrea Freeman, The Conversation
The U.S.-based white supremacist movement that calls itself the “alt-right” has recently embraced milk as a symbol. In February, shirtless neo-Nazi protesters danced outside Shia LaBeouf’s anti-Trump art installation, He Will Not Divide Us, chugging gallons of milk that dripped messily down their chins.
Matt Agorist, The Free Thought Project
The taxpayers of Fredericksburg will shell out an unknown amount of money this week in a settlement for one of the most gruesomely excessive force claims ever caught on camera. As an innocent man lay unconscious during a stroke, he was pepper sprayed, tasered in his face, and held without medical care causing him to suffer permanent damage—all thanks to untrained cops needlessly escalating violence.
Guardian Sports
Aaron Rodgers, arguably the best player in the NFL, believes his fellow quarterback Colin Kaepernick deserves to be playing in the league and his continued absence is due to his protest over racial injustice in the US.
People's Voice
Tenants of Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood have won important concessions from their landlord, MetCap Living Management, after a rent strike that began May 1.
Rob Shaw, Vancouver Sun
The B.C. NDP government has altered an election promise to implement a $15 minimum wage by 2021, and will instead give an independent review panel free rein to suggest a new, possibly longer, timeline.
Larry Haiven, The Nova Scotia Advocate
On Tuesday, August 22, the provincial government enforced the Public Services Sustainability Act (Bill 148), imposing a four-year wage package on 75,000 public employees. Even at current low rates of inflation, this could result in a real wage cut of about 7%. In addition, the Act peremptorily removes a long service award scheme that the unions accepted many years ago in lieu of up-front wage increases. That approximately a further 2% pay cut for new employees. Together, the two measures shrink the standard of living our public service workers, which is among the lowest in the country.
Tori Cress, CBC News
When a school is named after a person, that honour, ideally, should not include a major disclaimer or sidenote.
But when it comes to schools named for Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister, that sidenote ends up being several pages long, detailing a legacy of residential schools, racism, colonialism and genocide.
Glen Greenwald, The Intercept
THE NEWFOUND FREE SPEECH crusaders borne of the January 2015 murders of 10 Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in Paris sought to promulgate a new and quite dangerous standard. It was no longer enough to defend someone’s right to express their ideas while being free to condemn those ideas themselves — long the central tenet of the free speech movement (I defend their right to free speech even while finding them and their ideas repugnant). In the wake of the Hebdo killings, one had to go much further than that: It was a moral imperative to embrace and celebrate the ideas under attack and to glorify those who were expressing them, even to declare ourselves to be them (#JeSuisCharlie).
Michael McBride, Traci Blackmon, Frank Reid and Barbara Williams Skinner, The New York Times
Media outlets and commentators representing a range of political persuasions have called attention to recent outbreaks of violence in Berkeley, Calif., Boston and other locations where anti-racist and anti-fascist demonstrators have gathered. Intentionally or not, they have often promoted a false equivalency between groups that advocate white supremacy and those that seek to eliminate it.
Meghan Murphy, Feminist Current
National chairperson of AF3IRM, Jollene Levid, speaks with Meghan Murphy about rise of white nationalism in the US, how the alt-right is connected to male supremacy, and what movements can do to better address violence against women of colour.
Pamela Manson, The Salt Lake Tribune
A nurse says she was assaulted and illegally arrested by a Salt Lake City police detective for following a hospital policy that does not allow blood draws from unconscious patients.
Carla Herreria, The Huffington Post
The police officer seen in a viral video arresting a nurse in Salt Lake City is now under criminal investigation, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.
Éric Grenier, CBC News
To put himself into serious contention in the NDP leadership race, Jagmeet Singh, a member of the Ontario legislature, needed to sign up thousands more members than his three rivals to make up for his apparent deficit among the party's existing membership base.
Figures released this week suggest he has done just that.
The Canadian Press
Premier John Horgan says British Columbia has waived tuition at all 25 of its post-secondary institutions for former youth in care to give them a chance to succeed.
Telesur
Vietnam celebrated its independence day, with Vietnamese Prime Minister Xuan Phuc welcoming diplomats in the capital of Hanoi to mark the occasion.
Steven Tufts, Socialist Project Bullet
As Labour Day approaches, we are often reminded of the large strikes that defined Canada’s labour movement. The 30,000 workers in the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike or 11,000 autoworkers in the Windsor Ford strike of 1945 that established formal industrial relations in Canada. But little strikes also matter.
Julie Bindel, The Independent
It is no secret that the sex trade is riven with misogyny. The liberal left and other so-called “progressives” often take leave of their principles in order to support a global, multibillion-dollar trade built on the pain and oppression of women and girls. This is not surprising bearing in mind the sexism of the left, but the same apologists often also remain silent about the indisputable fact that black, brown and indigenous women and girls all over the world are first in line to be bought and sold into prostitution.
See also: Colin Kaepernick, Susur Lee, Trump and more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List August 20 - 27
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