Assorted content for your Saturday reading. – Henry Giroux discusses how the greatest risks arising out of the coronavirus pandemic can be traced back to neoliberal political assumptions. And Patrick Sharkey notes that the effect of the pandemic has been to reveal the U.S.’ glaring inability to address collective action
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Politics and its Discontents: The Truth Is Not Out There- It’s Right Here
Fox Mulder of the X-Files got it wrong. He believed that the truth was ‘out there;’ in fact, it is right here, but as the Mound of Sound said in a recent post, we live in “a world full of fact-resistant humans.” Our capacity for denial seems almost lim…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Distracted Thinking
I am something of a creature of routine. For example, all things being equal, my early morning ritual consists of retrieving the Toronto Star from my mailbox and reading the front section while enjoying my breakfast. It is during this reading that I often get my idea for the day’s
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Deliver Us From Evil
Why do we tolerate Saudi Arabia when the kingdom, and its Sunni state allies, seems determined to deliver Yemen into the control of ISIS and al Qaeda? Gwynne Dyer writes that, while we wage an air war against ISIS, the Saudis are undermining our effort with their war on the
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: "Wicked and Tragic Events" Do Not a War Make
The first instinct of the chickenhawk is to proclaim the existence of a state of war where none actually exists. By “chickenhawk” I mean Canada’s very own prime ministerial closet croucher, Stephen Harper, who exploited the Paris massacre as proof that radical Muslims are waging war against Canada. A Canadian
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: No, It’s the Environment, Stupid.
David Suzuki once observed that we cannot have a healthy economy without a healthy environment. It shouldn’t require a PhD to grasp that yet it’s astonishing how so many well-educated people, including our political leadership, simply don’t get it. In his year-end column, Gwynne Dyer concludes that climate change isn’t
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Gwynne Dyer – Blame the Sky Gods
Gwynne Dyer thinks it was a nasty trick. It was, after all, supposed to be the poor and vulnerable little people of the equatorial zone that were hammered by climate change, not us. Well, what did you expect? The gods of climate are almost certainly sky gods, and sky gods
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: When The Elites Aren’t Happy
I will readily admit that political perturbations abroad command much less interest from me than those that occur domestically on both the federal and provincial level. Nonetheless, the upheavals currently underway in Thailand provide a rather fascinating lesson into what can happen when the elites (aka the rich) experience a
Continue readingLeDaro: Gwynne Dyer – on Netanyahu
Gwynne Dyer is great at looking behind the headlines, providing in-depth analysis of issues in international politics. This column by Dyer provides excellent insight into the motives behind Netanyahu’s newest wave of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Settlements, the idea of which, are not so new, but rather part
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Gwynne Dyer on Our Future
I have been writing lately about environmental degradation and the bleak future that seems to await us. On that theme, (and because I have a busy morning ahead of me) I am providing a link to an article by Gwynne Dyer, who argues that because of our huge global population
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Crass Manipulation About Iran’s Nuclear Intentions
Those who believe that the public is being as crassly manipulated about Iran as it was by the lies that served as prologue to the Iraqi invasion will find two recent articles of interest. The first, entitled No defensible reasons to attack Iran, by Gwynne Dyer, pierces many of the
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