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| Toronto Climate Strike Photo via Julia Laxer |
This week's list of articles, news items, opinion pieces and videos that I see as a must if you are looking for a roundup that should be of interest to The Left Chapter readers.
This list covers the week of September 22 - 29.
For those interested in news and developments in the Canadian election this will be covered in a separate weekly roundup the third of which this past Friday was:
PPC Goes Ever Lower, Climate Fails, Brownface Aftermath and more -- The Left Chapter Canadian Election Round-up Week Three
1) 120K people pack Vancouver, Victoria streets for Climate Strike, marches held around B.C.
Simon Little, Global News
Thousands of people gathered outside Vancouver City Hall on Friday to participate in one of dozens of climate strikes across the country.
2) 'We are changing the world': Greta Thunberg addresses hundreds of thousands at Montreal climate march
Benjamin Shingler · CBC News
Organizers say 500,000 people attend protest, making it largest in province's history.
Montreal Climate Strike photo via Facebook:
3) Views from Toronto's climate strike — sights, sounds and signs from the massive event
CBC News
Tens of thousands of protesters flooded the streets of Toronto on Friday as part of a rising movement demanding swift action on climate change.
Toronto Climate Strike Photos via Julia Laxer:
Video from the massive climate strike in Australia last week.
Biggest demo in Ottawa since 1981. Photo via Ottawa New Socialists
4) Why Greta is Good
Liza Featherstone, Jacobin
Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager and climate activist, has grabbed the world’s attention and kept it focused on the threat of climate change. She's an unlikely leader of a world movement — and yet uniquely suited for that role.
5) How 'organized climate change denial' shapes public opinion on global warming
Kelly Crowe · CBC News
Climate communication researchers say climate skepticism is taking new form
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6) Indigenous teen Autumn Peltier addresses UN: ‘We can’t eat money, or drink oil’
The Canadian Press
Indigenous water activist Autumn Peltier addressed hundreds of international guests at UN headquarters in Manhattan Saturday.
7) One year after a ruling in their favour, Loblaws delivery drivers still waiting for overtime pay
Farrah Merali · CBC News
The grocery company is challenging a ruling that found it should have been paying drivers OT after 44 hours.
8) Defeating fascism: Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party is collapsing
Kevin Ovenden, People's World
Golden Dawn closed its national headquarters in Athens last Saturday.
The Tide is Turning in the UK!:
9) Labour delegates vote for plan that would abolish private schools
Richard Adams and Kate Proctor, The Guardian
Labour delegates have endorsed radical plans that would abolish private schools by removing their charitable status and redistributing their endowments, investments and properties to the state sector.
10) Labour votes for Palestinian right to return
Asa Winstanley, Electronic Intifada
Labour delegates voted overwhelmingly to recognize the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland at the UK opposition party’s annual conference on Monday.
11) Labour Party conference: McDonnell promises 32-hour working week
BBC News
The average working week in the UK would be cut to 32 hours within 10 years under a Labour government, John McDonnell has announced.
12) Egypt's Sisi Faces Growing Dissent as Protests Spread
Telesur
Egyptian President Abdul-Fattah El-Sisi is facing a growing campaign of dissent from his countrymen as protests have spread to several cities across the North African nation.
13) FBI: US soldier discussed killing activists, bombing network
Al Jazeera
A United States Army soldier shared bomb-making instructions online and also discussed killing activists and bombing a news network, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday.
14) Workers keep dying at this Toronto bakery that supplies Sobey's and Dunkin Donuts
Mira Miller, Blog TO
A tragic workplace accident has led to the death of another temporary worker at Fiera Foods, a North York industrial bakery — and this is far from the first time.
15) Italy's Mont Blanc Glacier Could Collapse As Ice Rapidly Melts, Scientists Warn
Peter O'Dowd and Serena McMahon, WBUR
The Italian side of Mont Blanc glacier is at risk of collapsing due to increased ice melt linked to climate change, scientists and local officials warn.
16) We asked 3 companies to recycle Canadian plastic and secretly tracked it. Only 1 company recycled the material
Katie Pedersen, Eric Szeto, David Common and Luke Denne · CBC News
Do you know where your recycling really goes after it's been picked up?
17) Earth's Oceans Are Getting Hotter And Higher, And It's Accelerating
Rebecca Hersher, NPR
As the world's climate changes, ocean warming is accelerating and sea levels are rising more quickly, warns a new report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
18) Evo Morales: The Root of the Problem Is the Capitalist System
Telesur
The president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, said Tuesday that the multiple problems that afflict the planet have their roots in the capitalist system, which favors the unequal distribution of wealth and the senseless accumulation of goods and money in a few people.
19) “What About China?” Is a Bad Response to the Climate Crisis
Daniel K. Gardner, The New Republic
Whenever the subject of climate policy comes up in the United States, someone in the room, sooner or later, is sure to point out that China today emits more carbon dioxide than the U.S. What is China doing to tackle the climate crisis, they ask.
20) Ontario education unions turn up pressure on Doug Ford's government
The Canadian Press
High school teachers and educational workers in Ontario turned up the pressure on the Progressive Conservative government on Tuesday as cracks continued to emerge in their contentious contract talks with the province.
21) Class size changes will mean 10,000 fewer teachers over five years: watchdog
The Canadian Press
Public schools in Ontario will lose approximately 10,000 teachers over the next five years due to an increase in class sizes, the province's fiscal watchdog said Thursday.
22) Doug Ford’s cuts to public education are benefiting for-profit private schools
North 99
Doug Ford’s decision to underfund public education is increasingly appearing like a boon to private, for-profit education in Ontario.
23) How incels fit into a global far-right ecosystem of angry young men
May Warren, The Toronto Star
On one of the worst days in Toronto’s history — as victims lay in hospital beds, and families received devastating news about loved ones who didn’t survive — they cheered.
24) Tesla violated labor laws by blocking union organizing, judge rules
Ganesh Setty, CNBC
Administrative Law Judge Amita Baman Tracy found that CEO Elon Musk violated national labor laws when he implied via tweet that Tesla workers who unionized would have to give up their company stock options.
25) Cuban FM Slams US Over Economic Blockade and Venezuela
Telesur
"I want to denounce, before this General Assembly of the United Nations, that just a few months ago the U.S. government has started to implement, criminal, non-conventional measures to prevent fuel shipments from arriving to our country from different markets, by resorting to threats and persecution against the companies that transport fuel, flag States, States of registration as well as shipping and insurance companies."
26) 'Clear the Kikes From Ukraine!' Who Will Confront Kiev's Spiraling anti-Semitism Problem?
Neil Karpenko, Haaretz
When the same vicious anti-Semitism is voiced by a far right militia leader and a Ukrainian diplomat, it's a sign how deeply Jew-hatred, and hyper-nationalist Holocaust revisionism are contaminating Ukrainian society and politics
27) Johnson's suspension of parliament unlawful, supreme court rules
Owen Bowcott, Ben Quinn and Severin Carrell, The Guardian
The supreme court has ruled that Boris Johnson’s advice to the Queen that parliament should be prorogued for five weeks at the height of the Brexit crisis was unlawful.
28) Hundreds of authors protest after Kamila Shamsie's book award is revoked
Alison Flood, The Guardian
Nelly Sachs prize was withdrawn over Shamsie’s support for boycotting Israel, prompting more than 250 fellow writers to defend her stance.
29) Israel’s excuses for shooting unarmed Palestinians don’t ring true
Hossam Shaker, Middle East Monitor
Images of Palestinians girls or women lying in the middle of the road with blood seeping from their heads have become “normal” since the autumn of 2015. Women, children and men have all become victims to be added to the growing body of statistics that the global media never stops to consider when reporting on this most asymmetric of conflicts. They are the victims of the field executions committed by the Israeli occupation forces against Palestinians — women, children and men — at the humiliating and frequently fatal military checkpoints imposed across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
30) US: Sanders Reveals Plan to Eliminate Medical Debt
Telesur
Senator and United States democrat presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders revealed Saturday his plan to cancel all past-due medical debt in the U.S., pledging an end to the "immoral and unconscionable" practice of debt collection from families who suffered illness or disease.
See also: Global Climate Strikes, Israeli Elections, Iran & more -- The Week in News, Opinion and Videos September 15 - 22
