Canadian PM Stephen Harper has 42 minutes of face time with Barack Obama in Washington today. While Canadian institutions (notably healthcare) are being compared favorably with those of the US, quite rightly, here are some other things to remember:
The much-predicted demise of newspapers can’t happen too soon, so it seems to me, if we want a well-informed citizenry. It was a 19th-century gibe that “newspapers are half advertisements — and the rest lies between them.” But the lies can be subtle — and usually lie (sorry) in the unstated assumptions (unstated, they’re harder [...]
Remarks of President Barack Obama – As Prepared for Delivery Address to Joint Session of Congress Wednesday, September 9, 2009 Madame Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, and the First Lady of the United States: I come before you tonight in a spirit of remorse — which, I find, requires more audacity than hope [...]
The Lincoln birthday celebrations seem to have included little attempt to learn from the past. Lincoln is celebrated — by few more than the current president, who insists upon a resemblance — but there’s little critique of the devastation over which Lincoln presided. The end of chattel slavery is taken to be a retrospective justification [...]
David Green writes to recommend “How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe” by Avi Shlaim in The Guardian, Wednesday 7 January 2009. (“Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli army and has never questioned the state’s legitimacy. But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating [...]
Perhaps it betrays my essentially reformist rather than revolutionary disposition to think that there is something wrong with what Eliot has Abp. Becket say in Murder in the Cathedral – The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason. However much that may be a guide for oneself, [...]
This is a sample of the new video version of News from Neptune (radio with pictures), from the studios of Urbana (IL) Public Television, with thanks to Jason Liggett. It features CGE and David Green. Topics include *elitism and contempt*, *class in America*, and *the Pareto principle*. New programs will be posted inshallah in the [...]
Don’t tax productive economic activity, tax wealth. Remove all corporate taxes (that’s practically been done) but also remove the civil rights of corporations as “legal persons.” But wealth owned by corporations should be assigned to individuals (principally shareholders) for accounting purposes and then taxed. (We do that now informally — that’s why we say Bill [...]
Friday’s NYT has an obit for an Italian anti-fascist, Vittorio Foa, who recently died at 98. Jailed by Mussolini, he led a left-wing labor union after WWII and was a socialist senator. The Times describes him delicately as “a leading intellectual of the non-Communist left [who] in the 1960s inspired some extra-parliamentary leftist groups.” La [...]
Senator Barack Obama said Wednesday he would order a surge of U.S. troops – perhaps 15,000 or more – to Afghanistan as soon as he reached the White House [Globe & Mail 20081022]. Obama’s position has been clear for some time. But it’s been expressed in such a way that he and the Democrats have [...]