Heather Mallick: Talking points for a young angry Occupy Toronto (in the Toronto Star)

"The Occupy Toronto demonstrators don’t have a coherent point? How risible. Our economic system is so skewed that they have too many to articulate easily."

Mallick: Talking points for a young angry Occupy Toronto.

John Clarke and Bryan Dawe: Continental rift (in Guy McPherson's blog)

The current world economic train-wreck in about 3 minutes flat - very funny, and perhaps even more relevant now! Thanks for posting it, Guy!

Continental rift – Guy McPherson's blog.

Thomas Walkom: Eurozone cure could be worse than disease (in the Toronto Star)

"... in Berlin or Paris there is little sympathy for the unemployed of Madrid. They are, after all, Spanish. Not Germans or French. They are deemed to be the cause of their own troubles.

"We have seen this before. The last time was in the period after 1918 when the victorious Allies insisted that Germany and Austria bear the financial cost of World War I, a war that was deemed to be their fault alone.
...

"The dictatorship that resulted was predictable, as was the devastating global war that followed. Hard times drive people to embrace hard leaders.

...

"Don’t assume such things couldn’t happen again. Sometimes, history does repeat itself."

Full article: Canada News: Walkom: Eurozone cure could be worse than disease.

J. David Hulchansky: The 99% know all about inequality (in the Toronto Star)

J. David Hulchanski is a professor of housing and community development at the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. His research on income trends in Toronto is available at www.NeighbourhoodChange.ca.

"Toronto was a middle-income city in the 1970s: two-thirds of the city’s neighbourhoods were in the middle. The proportion of middle-income neighbourhoods has since fallen to less than a third.

...

"In nominally democratic countries, the mass of the population is recognizing that it is exploited by an empowered and emboldened kleptocracy (from the ancient Greek, rule by thieves). Instead of fair rules and regulations, instead of inclusionary and democratic policies and politics (rule of all, by all, i.e., democracy), instead of addressing injustices, we have grab-all-you-can-and-run attitudes, supported by public policy.

"Inequality is both the precursor and outcome of injustice."

Full article: The 99% know all about inequality.

Linda McQuaig: How to make inequality obsolete (in the Toronto Star)

"Even Adam Smith, considered the father of capitalism, favoured higher taxes on the rich, and seemed to have people like [Canadian Finance Minister Jim] Flaherty in mind when he warned that the “disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least to neglect persons of poor and mean condition . . . is . . . the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.”"

Full article: McQuaig: How to make inequality obsolete.

Rick Salutin: Occupiers call for changing the agenda (in the Toronto Star)

"What they’re saying is: Change the agenda/change the channel. Saying anything less is inadequate because you could find a small piece mistaken for the whole. But saying that much is tricky precisely because there already is an agenda in place that keeps blocking and obscuring the demand to change it!"

Full article: Salutin: Occupiers call for changing the agenda.

Jack Quarter: Confessions of a 2 percenter (in the Toronto Star)

Jack Quarter is a professor and director of the Social Economy Centre, OISE, University of Toronto; his recent books include Understanding the Social Economy (University of Toronto Press), co-authored with Laurie Mook and Ann Armstrong.

"The Occupy Wall Street movement is located where it ought to be: the epicentre of the inequality mill. The problem is the system of those institutions and how they are allowed to function, not so much the individuals who populate them."

Full article: Confessions of a 2 percenter.