What's Left

The Citizens’ Press email newsletter archive.

Public debate, public governance: what's missing from the Sidewalk Labs project | What's Left Issue 110

Public debate, public governance: what's missing from the Sidewalk Labs project | What's Left Issue 110

The dog days of summer saw a new development in what some are calling a new world-historical event, and not in a good way. It is the creation of Sidewalk Labs on the Toronto waterfront through an *innovative* (one hears this word a lot) and perhaps unholy alliance between the Alphabet subsidiary (Alphabet is both Google's and Sidewalk Labs' parent company) and an odd bird of municipal governance, Waterfront Toronto.

Apologists, failure, and always being wrong about privatization | What's Left 2018-01-21 Volume 104

The fight against privatization is framed by liberals and the right-wing as a clear and unsubstantiated ideological position of the left. And, no matter how much research is presented exposing how privatization of state services and programs costs more and has no positive (but, in many cases negative) impacts on quality of services, the dominant narrative is privatization works. But, at this point, believing that privatization leads to increased efficiency and lower costs is akin to the denial of climate change and thinking vaccines cause Autism. Decades of real life examples, economic analysis, and trial and error policy show that there are so many ways that do not work when it comes to privatization. So, why do people still believe this nonsense?

What's Left 2017-12-11 Volume 101

For the republican Arab world, the past twelve years have been defined by foreign invasion, civil and proxy wars, revolution and counter-revolution. It has been devastating. However, it should be remembered that, within the republican Arab world, the twenty-first century began with the American backed crushing of the second Palestinian uprising (intifada).

What's Left 2017-11-11 Volume 100

Reading the news today is like living through a poorly written dystopian novel, but without any of the exciting grittiness that comes with a real apocalypse or the fun of Zombieland. And, the current contradictions make it difficult to focus on a topic to write about. We have economic growth with rising inequality. Right-wing populism without a populist left-wing response. The decline of social democratic parties, but with a rising acceptance of democratic socialist values. Increased access to knowledge, but less real understanding. Increased politicization, but no clear path to political power. It makes one's head spin.