streetfestival

I think we as a society may have underrecognized the impacts of newspapers and traditional/smaller media companies going out of business and the consolidation of news companies. Like twitter, I don't think they're being bought for investment purposes, I think they're being bought for the sake of covertly spreading misinformation (which is a longer term investment for Big Money). I think a lot of people believe the ideas that are common in the news diet they consume, and those who wish to influence policy have found a pristine opportunity to shape that diet on a large scale for a bargain of a price (e.g., local newspapers facing bankruptcy and motivated to sell)

(Edit: here's a fitting headline from today- https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/29/x-caught-blocking-links-to-npr-claiming-the-news-site-may-be-unsafe/)

There should be a special place in hell for people who privatize public services

(Edit: And separate from abstract issues with privatization, we already know that the new healthcare administrator Smith wants to bring in specifically excludes - for religious reasons - reproductive care (for women) like birth control and abortions. That's right. We're rolling back our clocks about a 100 years on the separation of church and state. And with healthcare being a provincial mandate - will Albertans whose local healthcare is under the new Christian and/or Catholic administration be able to drive across provincial lines for birth control or an abortion? It's hard to believe these might be relevant questions IN CANADA in the next few years)

Everyday Canadians should not be expected to lead the transition to green energy while our politicians resist it: vilifying the carbon tax, expanding pipelines, levying Chinese EVs, the RCMP terrorizing Indigenous land defenders, all the pro-oil and anti-renewable stuff in Alberta (eg, windmills disrupt pristine landscapes and are prohibited while multibillion dollar oil companies are slapped on the wrist when they desecrate our environment).

We urgently need climate leadership in Canadian politics

Have we as a country ever met a climate target? In fairness to our politicians (not really), the O&G industry regulates them and not the other way around. Until that power relation changes, our targets are just greenwashing

Nice to see more Canadian news outlets owned by a US hedge fund - that is sure to serve our public and national interests well /s. It only cost them 1 million dollars too [pocket change on their scale] to buy control of the largest newspapers in Atlantic Canada. That's pretty inexpensive for the amount of control over information and opinion it will provide. Absurdly inexpensive actually

The only real news is independent news

In much of Europe and China the progress being made on renewables is awesome to see. In contrast, Canadian and American decision-makers seem hellbent on stymying this continent's transition to renewables

With an election less than 2 months away? Sounds like probable corruption to me. And boo on losing the dynamic of two conservative parties splitting the conservative vote

Both privatization of healthcare and relegation of women's reproductive healthcare. Sad and shameful

The Tyee doing important work as usual

MBFC 😒

The plutocrats only want a free market when it serves their immediate interests. Default on their loans? They lobby for a bailout funded by taxpayers, of course. Can't compete with another country and keep their profit margins high enough to their investors' liking, they cry for regulation like this right here. The interests of working Canadians are perpetually sacrificed for the plutocrats - grocery, telecomm, oil and gas, real estate/housing, now this

I never said technical solutions were crazy. I just mean to draw attention to the fact that we're reading a story published in a publication owned by the world's richest man that says we don't need to curb consumption currently causing a huge amount of greenhouse gas emissions that we know beyond all reasonable doubt are killing our planet and compromising the longevity of our species - because a sometime-in-the-future technology will rescue things, enabling us to keep consuming at levels that are unsustainable in many other areas beyond methane emissions.

We are in the midst of a great propaganda effort to undermine concern about planetary health in the masses so that the investor class' profits don't slow down as the planet turns to shit. This article is a part of that