2021: A pandemic year in books
The New Year is just around the corner, and I love to review the books I have read during the year: my favourites, the ones I would recommend, and the titles that shined during a difficult time.
CPress end of 2021 message
An end of year message and look to the future.
Open letter to New Brunswick Premier Higgs
New Brunswick health services I need have been affected by the strike, but the premier is to blame. We need fair wages for our public sector workers to get things back on track.
10 things for socialists to keep in mind on climate change policies
Some areas of debate exist even within progressive circles of how best to deal with climate change. Investing in and reorganizing current production processes to drastically reduce carbon emissions and build mitigation programs all takes time, energy, overlapping processes, and a heck of a lot of money. But, when we bring all this together, the programs announced are insufficient to get us where we need to be. Here are 10 areas we need to work on.
Immunization compliance, vaccine passport control, and campus surveillance
Some universities in Ontario are implementing systems of pretty egregious levels of digital surveillance in the name of immunization compliance.
We need way better than a return to normal
The lesson of the concurrent global crises is that the techno-utopian dreams of San Francisco bros are not going to save us. We cannot individually buy our way out of the crisis. As the saying goes, we are not safe until everyone is safe. The new realization that we are -- literally -- in this together is like everyone becoming a socialist overnight without fully understanding the implications. Yes, we are in this together and there are solutions.
Fixing Long-term Care
The current long-term care model is designed to squeeze costs using a private delivery process. It is the state that sets the terms of spending and care delivery. The private system is being used to limit costs through obscuring the state's role in under-funding the service.
Palestinian Trade Unions call for immediate and urgent action from international Trade Unions
Palestinian trade unions and workers' organisations across historic Palestine are calling on our brothers and sisters in the global trade union movement to take immediate action in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom and justice.
Pine64 development box fun: welcome to the wonderful world of software freedom
As part of my evangelism around free software, I have provided several of my friends and comrades with one of two Pine64 devices with Linux pre-installed. These boxes are to introduce people to this world of free software (and the freedom it brings) and to provide a useful and (hopefully) a little fun computer/server/gaming platform to tinker with. While you may not be on my list of people who get one of these, you can always buy one from Pine64 (or another single board computer company) and take them out for a spin.
Ontario Tories destroy Laurentian University and the Northern communities it supports
The news out of Laurentian is devastating. Unfortunately, the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) process that Laurentian was forced into by the government -- with an all too willing administration -- was always going to result in this kind of destruction. The CCAA process has been entirely inappropriate in its application to this public institution.