I’ll put this back to you this way: is Likud also a terrorist organization? Is the IDF? Because they do a lot of the same stuff.
There are definitely terrorists associated with Hamas, and Hamas definitely carries water for them, but they’re also the duly elected government in Gaza and if I were Israel I’d be asking why Gazans feel like they were so wronged that the only option seems to be a political movement that’s sympathetic to terrorist tactics.
Saying “they’re terrorists” without acknowledging how we got here is a lot like calling the ANC in South Africa “terrorist” in the 1980s. It’s stupidly reductionist and ignores complexity for the sake of jingoism.
For many Jews, Zionism signifies a connection to Israel. But a large number of student protesters see the violence in Gaza as a logical conclusion of the late 19th century ideology...
Nationalism is almost always bad, why should Israeli Nationalism be any different?
Ask yourself: if it was any other country or ethnicity, would it be “good” nationalism? Would an American or Russian Nationalist worry you? How about a Rwandan or Serbian nationalist?
Chances are the answer is “yes” (unless you’re a fascist), so why does Israeli nationalism get a free pass?
A “Groceries and Essentials Benefit” is basically a wage subsidy, and you can bet the grocery chains would raise prices by just a little less than the benefit, and if it’s like food stamps in the US, it’ll be chipped away at and rendered humiliating and useless.
We’ve seen this play out with gas tax reductions: resellers know a lot about price elasticity, and any savings from a tax cut gets quickly eaten up by price increases.
Here’s what we could do:
Tax the rich until we can afford to pay for services again
Raise marginal and corporate rates, forcing companies to re-invest instead of hoarding profits
Make stock buybacks illegal
Significantly raise capital gains taxes
(this is tricky) find a way to tax net worth as income
In seriousness, this is the problem: capital won’t take a haircut because line must go up, and labour is absolutely tapped out. There’s no more easy debt to leverage, and thanks to inflation, and more thanks to rampant profiteering and an immigration policy designed to suppress wages and strip-mine new Canadians, no new wealth generated.
The game of musical chairs that is the real estate market was always going to stop, it was only a question of who was going to be left standing at the end. What will be interesting is, is this the first domino in the chain, as the dearth of condo-to-home buyers in the pipeline blows up everything else?
My hope is that this whipsaws through the economy and hurts so many people so badly that a) we learn to never let it happen again, and b) that it emboldens governments to finally tax the shit out of the rich.
Have they tried building average, affordable condos instead of luxury condos?
They don’t want to, because that would mean less money. If they slap some cheap faux marble and an extra sink in the bathroom, they can charge tens of thousands of dollars more for the same space.
The rich will not accept making the same or less money for a year or so. They have to have more. A lot more.
Marathon, via Aleph One, has been free for at least a two decades at this point, hasn’t it? Bungie open sourced it before 2000 and Aleph has been a thing since at least 2004, I think.
Ah, got it. I was confused because Aleph has been a thing for a very long time. I didn’t click that it was “…on Steam” that’s the important part.
I loved Marathon back in the day; played the hell out of it on an LC475, and it was a key reason why a) I stuck with Macs in my post-Amiga era, b) made me a fan of Bungie in general, c) broke my heart when Halo became an XBox exclusive, and c) resulted in my buying an XBox anyway because Halo is/was basically Marathon 4.
Students and academics at the University of Alberta reacted with outrage on Saturday after Edmonton police dismantled a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus, describing the operation as violent and contesting assertions that demonstrators were breaking the law....
This undercover warranty investigation is a one-year follow-up from our series that investigated ASUS for motherboards incinerating AMD CPUs, at the end of which ASUS promised a number of improvements to its then-anti-consumer warranty processes. Spoiler alert: They’re still anti-consumer. We sent our ASUS ROG Ally Z1 Extreme...
Nurse practitioners could help fill the void, advocates for the profession say, if more provinces would adopt policies to integrate them into primary care and pay them fairly for their work. Some physicians’ organizations have pushed back against that approach, arguing that NPs don’t have as much training or education as...
Could nurse practitioners fill the primary care gap?
Oh look, another way to avoid funding the healthcare system!
I don’t mean to demean NPs, but this is like saying “Can EAs fill the teaching gap?”. Sure, they could, in theory, but they won’t because the government doesn’t see NPs as a solution per se; instead, they’re a way to avoid spending money and create a two-tiered system where if you want to see a doctor you have to pay, but if you want to try and see an overworked, undercompensated NP you might be able to, if we actually had any.
Conservative politicians want to be elected. And the way they want to do this is by stoking meaningless (and mean) culture war issues to keep their base a)angry and b) not focused on economic inequality caused by their donors.
In Ontario, the average wait time for the thousands of prospective patients on the province’s list looking to be connected to a family doctor is, according to the government, around 90 days....
In Ontario, the average wait time for the thousands of prospective patients on the province’s list looking to be connected to a family doctor is, according to the government, around 90 days.
Wow, so I must be much younger than I think, because it’s been eight fucking years since I’ve had a GP, in a city (not a town, a city) with no walk-in clinics and no NPs taking patients.
This was terrible under McGuinty & Wynne, and Ford’s response was basically “hold my (buck a) beer!”
I bet if the kind of things happening in the US happened in China, I wouldn’t be able to stop hearing about it. I mean, people are still criticizing the Tiananmen Square massacre, and hasn’t anything happened since then? It’s like still making conspiracy theories about Kennedy’s assassination or 9/11, those are old news.
China being authoritarian is a “Dog bites man” story. It’s expected.
Same with police misconduct in the US: it’s also dog-bites-man.
Trump and his team realized that outrage fatigue is a thing: fuck up daily and with such magnitude that being a corrupt fuckup becomes a non-story and then you can get away with anything.
Steve Bannon even had a term for it: “flood the zone”.
If I were leading the NDP, I would be banging this drum constantly. Instead, we have the fucking Conservatives acting as the party of the working class, which is insane.
It seems to work for Sanders in the US, but the NDP parties in Canada seem afraid to be called socialists, having been stung during the Rae era in Ontario.
The one social media network the amplified left-wing radicalism–Twitter–got bought and tanked by a billionaire.
I can barely recall the last time I saw real left-wing content on Youtube, and the others (Facebook, Reddit) are fine with overt Naziism, but say “eat the rich and pass the ketchup!” and you’re looking at suspension.
So you’re all on-board with funding Ukraine, right? Right?
I wasn’t aware Israel was an American state. I mean, the US acts like it is, and I suspect, in my darker moments, that Republicans would be more upset at an attack on Israel than of, eg, San Francisco was bombed.
I mean, if they didn’t actively cheer a bombing of SF.
When Housing First fails landlords and tenants (www.youtube.com)
Article
Criticizing Israel? Nonprofit Media Could Lose Tax-Exempt Status Without Due Process (theintercept.com)
Donald Trump rally video shows mass "walking out" during speech (www.newsweek.com)
David Cameron urges BBC to describe Hamas as terrorist organisation (www.theguardian.com)
Foreign secretary’s call comes after group releases video of British-Israeli hostage it says died after being wounded in Israeli airstrike...
How ‘Zionist’ became a slur on the US left (www.theguardian.com)
For many Jews, Zionism signifies a connection to Israel. But a large number of student protesters see the violence in Gaza as a logical conclusion of the late 19th century ideology...
Growing food bank lines are a sign that society has lost its way, a Groceries and Essentials Benefit would help the most vulnerable citizens (www.thestar.com)
Nine million Canadians worry about where their next meal will come from.
Toronto developers are getting desperate as no one is buying condos anymore (www.blogto.com)
Condo sales numbers in and around Toronto have taken a drastic tumble so far this year, and now that the market is starting to lean towards buyers …
Bungie's first big hit, Marathon, is now free on Steam thanks to a fan revival that has Bungie's blessing (www.pcgamer.com)
Police crackdown on Gaza protest encampments [at the University of Alberta] campus sparks outcry (montrealgazette.com)
Students and academics at the University of Alberta reacted with outrage on Saturday after Edmonton police dismantled a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus, describing the operation as violent and contesting assertions that demonstrators were breaking the law....
ASUS Scammed Us (www.youtube.com)
This undercover warranty investigation is a one-year follow-up from our series that investigated ASUS for motherboards incinerating AMD CPUs, at the end of which ASUS promised a number of improvements to its then-anti-consumer warranty processes. Spoiler alert: They’re still anti-consumer. We sent our ASUS ROG Ally Z1 Extreme...
Could nurse practitioners fill the primary care gap? (www.theglobeandmail.com)
Nurse practitioners could help fill the void, advocates for the profession say, if more provinces would adopt policies to integrate them into primary care and pay them fairly for their work. Some physicians’ organizations have pushed back against that approach, arguing that NPs don’t have as much training or education as...
Conservatives want to bring back the smoking rooms in Tim Hortons ultimately, and fuck the planet. (lemmy.world)
Thousands of Canadians are on doctor wait-lists. Are they effective? (www.cbc.ca)
In Ontario, the average wait time for the thousands of prospective patients on the province’s list looking to be connected to a family doctor is, according to the government, around 90 days....
I'm so tired of hearing about US police brutality and China being authoritarian. Why does it feel like everyone is a hypocrite here? Where are the posts about Chinese protests and police brutality?
I bet if the kind of things happening in the US happened in China, I wouldn’t be able to stop hearing about it. I mean, people are still criticizing the Tiananmen Square massacre, and hasn’t anything happened since then? It’s like still making conspiracy theories about Kennedy’s assassination or 9/11, those are old news.
Rex Murphy, the sharp-witted intellectual who loved Canada, dies at 77 (nationalpost.com)
As he battled cancer, Murphy continued to file, writing about Hamas and Christmas and interviewing Pierre Poilievre with his usual panache
Israel's far-right lashes out at Biden over Gaza war stance as Netanyahu vows Rafah offensive will happen (www.cbsnews.com)
Grocery giants paid for friendly Liberal, Tory policy with decades of donations (breachmedia.ca)
Republicans Funded by Arms Industry Fume Over Biden Threat to Withhold Bombs From Israel (www.commondreams.org)
“What did we do after we were attacked in Pearl Harbor?” asked Sen. Lindsey Graham. “We dropped two nuclear weapons on two Japanese cities.”
Canada's foreign student push 'mismatched' job market, data shows (www.cbc.ca)