Real Change: Trudeau’s chief fundraiser linked to Cayman Islands tax scheme. Of all the broken promises and relentless PR, this is the most insidious because it lays bare the hollowed out ideology that neoliberalism has become. Nobody is even remotely surprised at this news. It’s just business as usual. The Conservatives love to rail against government spending and taxes but are silent on offshore tax havens. The Liberals are the same old “natural ruling party” of the Paul Martin era. Both will team up against the Sikh newcomer as “inexperienced” and berate his (mildly) socialist tendencies and the Liberals will win a minority government as Scheer dog whistles his way to the balance of power.
And now we have one more reason to hate the Habs: More than 3,000 Canadian names in the Paradise Papers —
Montreal Canadiens and Loblaw among Canadian entities found in massive international offshore leak
Related tweet of the day:
Siri, show me a visual metaphor for tax avoidance#ParadisePapers pic.twitter.com/wVdSy7QtMZ
— Graham Love (@GLove39) November 6, 2017
So while the next election will undoubtedly resort to distracting binaries like pipeline or no pipeline, hijab or no hijab, and immigration or no immigration, the rest of us will continue to struggle to find stable housing and stable jobs amidst the spectre of climate change, opioid epidemics, reconciliation, a surge in right-wing fascism, and news feeds filled with mass shootings and celebrity deaths. And these tax havens will trundle along unabated. This is the “madness of economic reason”.
Out of sight, out of mind: Canada leads the developed world in per capita production of garbage. Apparently, this article in Canadian Geographic was written by Nietzsche:
What really hits the uninitiated is the flow of it all — the nightmarish relentlessness with which the waste keeps coming, keeps needing a place to go, to hide, to die, sometimes to be reborn.
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” Indeed, as Zizek reminds us, there is no nature. “Nature is not a balanced totality in which we humans disturb, nature is a big series of unimaginable catastrophes- we profit from them”: A Mutable Cloud: On “Dark Ecology” and “Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays”.
As a contemporary image of nature’s power, global warming contains elements of the Romantic sublime such as terror, magnitude, and obscurity. As we perch on this precipice, dark ecology offers some tools for facing up to it.
Supreme Court ruling removes barrier for year-round ski resort on sacred First Nation land. “‘In short, the charter protects the freedom to worship, but does not protect the spiritual focal point of worship,’ a majority of the court ruled”. Oh, so churches aren’t protected under the charter either? Does that mean they can start paying taxes now?
Loophole: Vaughn Palmer: Columbia River Treaty interesting option as NDP ponders Site C. Yeah, I mean…softwood treaty negations are going smoothly…this will be easy. I do like the fact that we have this tacit threat of unleashing so much water that they can’t produce hydro. Release the hounds!
Satire of the day: Uphill battle for Fort McMurray’s only nudist oil company.
RIP: Cardero Grocery closes its doors after more than 75 years in Vancouver’s West End.
Bonus: The Story of the Nanaimo Bar.