Lead is a well-known poison. Its harmful effects have been known for 2,000 years. Dioscorides wrote that “Lead makes the mind give way.” Yet 100 years ago, car manufacturers and oil companies started a mass lead poisoning. Researchers at General Motors found that by adding a lead compound, tetraethyl lead (TEL), several problems with internal […]
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On Friday November 12, the last day of COP26, a peaceful rally of several hundred for climate justice was disrupted by over-the-top action of the Vancouver Police Department. An Indigenous man, as part of a ceremony, placed red handprints, representing Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, on the building that houses Canada’s Department of […]
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With passion and anger young people denounced the failures of capitalism and politicians to deal with growing climate disaster. Socialist Alternative Youth (SAY) in Metro Vancouver organized a meeting on Saturday, November 6 in solidarity with the protests at COP26 in Glasgow. To build for the rally, held at Douglas College in New Westminster, over […]
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Climate change is real, and its impacts are clear. Increasingly the climate disaster feels apocalyptic. The real issue is not: is there climate change? What is to be done? – that is the question. Some, especially young people, feel despair worrying about the future state of the world. If the governments and corporations that dominate […]
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The long months of COVID have been brutal for many people in Canada and around the world. COVID has exposed and pressure cooked many of the pre-existing conditions and problems: inequality, run-down public health systems, utterly inadequate care for seniors, opioid pandemic and more. Repeated government failures have made COVID far worse. The delayed response […]
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A Good War outlines a path for Canada to successfully respond to the climate emergency, and in the process tackle poverty and inequality. The title refers to World War II, when all of Canada’s resources, money and labour was mobilized for victory. By way of disclosure, I know the author, Seth Klein. I’ve worked with […]
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Greyhound has closed all its services across Canada. In 2018, it announced the closure of all its services in Western Canada and the federal government did nothing. This was a criminally missed opportunity to take over the entire, already-existing, Canada-wide bus network. Will they fail again this time? The loss of Greyhound leaves hundreds of […]
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The third COVID wave is crashing over most of Canada, and much of the rest of the world. Governments are blaming new variants of the virus, but the problem lies deeper than the variants. To be hit by three waves is a failure of governments. In Britain in the autumn of 2020, the new variant, […]
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Amazon’s warehouse in Brampton, on the edge of Toronto, was ordered to close by Peel Public Health…
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“We’re all in this together” has been a constant refrain from politicians during the course of the pandemic. From the beginning, there was never any truth in this. In the same storm, yes, but the boats that became available for this storm ranged from yachts, to rowing boats, to scraps of wood. Given what’s happened […]
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