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The pandemic and capitalism’s essential workers
The pandemic has political leaders and policy-makers floundering about. They declare some areas free from restrictions, while others are to abide by varying degrees of lockdowns. Then the virus does an about-turn, and so do the so-called leaders and policy wonks. New and different restriction rules are put into place. Throughout all this reactive helter-skelter, there is one constant. Essential workers are to continue working. There are many of them.
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Is music’s crypto moment a boon for artists or a symbol of the market’s worst impulses?
With the arts facing a host of market failures, the promise of disruption and decentralization offered by 2021’s buzziest acronym—NFTs, or non-fungible tokens—seems messianic to a nascent class of techno-optimists who seem eager to come to the aid of the starving artists among us. Unfortunately, however, NFTs look to be more like an expression of venture capitalism and commodification than a salve to the world’s ailing creative industries.
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Tracking the pandemic’s toll on Canada’s largest retail network
Despite trying to “deliver a smile,” Canada Post is inadvertently adding additional stress on postal workers by making them distribute 13.5 million additional pieces of mail—all while ignoring their calls for better health and safety. What workers need from our publicly-owned postal service is economic transformation, not adding millions of pieces of mail to their pick-up points, sorting stations, and delivery routes.
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In solidarity with Ken Loach
Ken Loach is one of Britain’s most revered and successful filmmakers who has demonstrated a lifelong commitment to social justice. The character assassination campaign against him is being pursued by propagandists who have shown a consistent willingness to turn a blind eye to human rights abuses while using the charge of anti-Semitism as a cudgel to silence critics of Israeli apartheid.
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The NDP must be a party of workers, not small business
Recently, the NDP’s official Twitter account put up a post suggesting that “small businesses are the backbone of our economy.” And while one tweet’s importance should not be overstated, Alberta NDP leader Rachel Notley said the same thing recently, and it is representative of a problem that is central to the NDP and its failure to put forward a coherent message rooted in the class conflict and social relations that define Canada.
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Space neoliberalization agitates the frontiers of Canadian data privacy
Internet connectivity that relies on crossing uncharted territories inevitably brings with it new forms of colonialism. Seemingly benign infrastructure is in fact strengthening global supply chains that enrich the world’s billionaires. The future is cheap and fast, and the jostling of the private sector to claim a stake in satellite internet is just one small part of this space opera.
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It’s not too late for Canada to support a temporary waiver of COVID vaccine patents
With an upcoming meeting of the World Trade Organization’s Council on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property scheduled for next month, it is not too late for wealthy countries including Canada to do the right thing and support the temporary waiving of intellectual property rights to enable poor countries to import cheap generic versions of patented COVID-19 vaccines—and save many lives in the process.
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Racial capitalism and the betrayal of Haiti
The day after his already paper-thin constitutional legitimacy completely eroded, Haitian President Jovenel Moïse gave significant amounts of the country’s land to a light-skinned tycoon working with Coca-Cola. Why would the state offer land to a firm producing for Coca-Cola rather than invest in local food production in a country where nearly 42 percent of the population, or four million people, are experiencing acute hunger?
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Trudeau Liberals block NDP pharmacare plan in the middle of a pandemic
Liberal members of Parliament will tell you that they truly support pharmacare, but that they just don’t like the way the NDP is going about it. But, as Christo Aivalis explains, the reality is far clearer. Like with the wealth tax, the Liberals see a popular policy that their own base supports, but it is one which clashes with their core neoliberal ideology. In the end, allegiance to the latter is what matters.
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Economic justice and the limits of the Charter
As COVID pushes more people into poverty, the Charter’s limits must be recognized. But doing so requires greater care in our discussions. Civil liberty groups should continue to litigate, but they should also be more specific in what the Charter can and cannot do. This would provide space for extra-legal solutions, such as protests and mutual aid.