The novel tells the story of a Roman Catholic priest who is tasked with keeping his colleagues in line and stamping out sex abuse scandals before they go public.
MacIntyre, who is best known for his work with the CBC's "The Fifth Estate," beat out Kim Echlin, Annabel Lyon, Colin McAdam and Anne Michaels to take home the $50,000 prize.
Read more...http://scotiabankgillerprize.ca
A must listen program tonight...CBC Ideas- John Ralston Saul
Originally aired in April
Embargo until July
New Arrival in September
This lecture 'We are a Metis Nation' at UBC this year was perhaps the most articulate interpretation of Canada's relationship with arboriginal people. Incredible!
In this startlingly original vision of Canada, thinker John Ralston Saul unveils 3 founding myths. Saul argues that the famous "peace, order, and good government" that supposedly defines Canada is a distortion of the country's true nature. Every single document before the BNA Act, he points out, used the phrase "peace, welfare, and good government," demonstrating that the well-being of its citizenry was paramount. He also argues that Canada is a Métis nation, heavily influenced and shaped by aboriginal ideas: egalitarianism, a proper balance between individual and group, and a penchant for negotiation over violence are all aboriginal values that Canada absorbed. Another obstacle to progress, Saul argues, is that Canada has an increasingly ineffective elite, a colonial non-intellectual business elite that doesn't believe in Canada. It is critical that we recognize these aspects of the country in order to rethink its future.(Mosaicbooks.ca)
KSS Catalogue
Study more at Novelist>login 'ksslibrary' 'owls'
BORIGINALS AND NEW CANADIANS: THE MISSING CONVERSATION CD
The words, "We are a Metis nation" John Ralston Saul's recent book, A Fair Country.
In the 2009 UBC-Laurier Institution Multiculturalism Lecture, he argues that aboriginal values have fundamentally shaped the character of Canadian society.
Watch TVO Video of another recent lecture JRS. or Listen to Audio
____________
Download and listen to podcast from KSS Library in July
Embargo CBC Podcast July 13 - Aboriginals and New Canadians: The Missing Conversation by John Ralston Saul
Subscribe to CBC Ideas on iTunes
"Canada is the oldest continuous federation democracy in the world"-JRS
If you read any of his books, we'd love to hear your views. Blog his writing...post a comment below
Joseph Boyden is a one-time punk-rocker and street kid who grew up in
suburban Toronto, but he also spent time on reserves in northern Ontario. Boyden
is part Metis, with family in the Ojibwa tribe. His roots have had a huge impact
on his work - especially his critically acclaimed novels: 'Three Day Road' and
the Giller-winning 'Through Black Spruce.' Today, Boyden splits his time between
Northern Ontario and the University of New Orleans, where he teaches writing. Up
next from Boyden is a biography of Louis Riel and he continues the story from
'Three Day Road' and 'Through Black Spruce' in a third novel, due out in
2012.(CBC)
Growing up in Willowdale, Ontario, in the 1970s, Joseph Boyden was a typical little boy. He loved the outdoors, and along with his seven siblings would play war games and cowboys and Indians and roughhouse in the schoolyard next door. They would chase the goats that their father, an old-fashioned doctor, occasionally accepted as payment for his medical services. Joseph Boyden is 38 years old. He teaches Canadian literature and creative writing at the University of New Orleans and splits his time between Louisiana and Canada, which remains home to his mother and most of his siblings, as well as his 14-year-old son Jacob, who lives in Toronto with his mother. Boyden has been married for nine years to an American who’s also a writer; Amanda Boyden’s first novel, Pretty Little Dirty, will be released by Vintage U.S. next year.
Boyden has published one previous book, the 2001 short-story collection Born with a Tooth.
Most of the stories unfold on reserves and examine the joys and
tribulations of native life. (Boyden’s ancestry is partly native.) The
book was well received, but readers may not be prepared for the
transformative, history-shaping power of Three-Day Road, which
hits bookstores next month. The novel was inspired by the life of
Ojibwa Francis Pegahmagabow, the legendary First World War sniper. It’s
told partly from the perspective of Xavier Bird, a Cree soldier who
returns to Northern Ontario after the war, wounded in body, crushed in
spirit, and addicted to morphine. Xavier is met in Moose Factory,
Ontario, by his aunt Niska, and as she paddles him back to her home in
the bush, he recalls the bloody experiences of the war. Meanwhile Niska
attempts to keep him alive by narrating her own life story. The novel
encompasses a myriad of themes, the motif of death being foremost, and
it parallels the brutal massacre known as the first modern war and the
destruction of native culture with subtle poignancy.( Quill-Quire)
Note: Nest Book: Biography of Louis Riel
Twilight breaks movie box office but not before her novels were being consumed by teens like ice-caps in summer. The movie sub-head tells it all. 'When You Can Live Forever, What Do You Live For?' The mystery of vampire mythology meets contemporary romance. Meyers has found a potent blend for her fictional themes.
From Publisher's Weekly's starred review: "The main draw here is Bella's infatuation with outsider Edward, the sense of danger inherent in their love, and Edward's inner struggle—a perfect metaphor for the sexual tension that accompanies adolescence. These will be familiar to nearly every teen, and will keep readers madly flipping the pages of Meyer's tantalizing debut."
"Twilight is one of the most moving books I have read in a long time. It kept me thinking about it long after I read the last page. Its heartbreaking romance and suspenseful twists made it hard for me to put the book down. Twilight allows the reader to experience a whole new outlook on vampires and how they interact around mankind. After reading this book I recommend it to anyone who would enjoy reading about an incredibly suspenseful romance."
Katie, age 16
"Wow! I must admit, that when I heard about Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer, I was very intrigued. A book about a regular teenage girl— just like you and me— falling in love with a gorgeous vampire? Who wouldn't want to read it? I was hooked from the first page, and as I read it, it only got better. Twilight is great because it seems so ordinary; is it possible for this situation to happen in your life? Imagine seeing a guy, more handsome than any you've ever seen, and not being able to tear you eyes away from him. Imagine that the force of your mutual chemistry feels like electricity. I promise you that every girl will want to be Isabella Swan. Throw in a little danger, a sticky situation, and a love more powerful than either character has ever known, and what do you get? Stephenie Meyer's Twilight. It is definitely a book worth reading."
Rachel, 16 ( http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/twilight_reviews.html)
Love at First Bite.
How would you describe the story?
I have a hard time with that. Because if I say to someone, “You know, it's about vampires,” then immediately they have this mental image of what the book is like. And it's so not like the other vampire books out there—Anne Rice's and the few that I've read. It isn't that kind of dark and dreary and blood-thirsty world. Then when you say, “It's set in high school,” a lot of people immediately put it in another pool. It's easy to pigeonhole with different descriptions.
This is the first vampire book I've ever read, and I couldn't put it down.
I do like to say it's a vampire book for people who don't like vampire books.
How did the story come to you?
It feels kind of funny, but I had this dream. I even remember which day it was, because I had swim lessons starting that day and all kinds of other stuff going on. It was early in the morning. I woke up and it was just so vivid. (SLJ) http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6260602.html
Robwert Pattison talks Twilight:(Amazon eclusive)
CBC with Shelagh Rogers:
http://www.cbc.ca/thenextchapter/podcast.html
What do sex, death, and Pierre Trudeau have in common? Find out this week on The Next Chapter, when Governor General Award-winner Nino Ricco takes a look at good and evil in the Darwinian world of his novel, The Origin of the Species.
| CBC Radio One | : Saturday | 3 pm |
| Sirius 137: | Saturday | 6 am & 1 pm |
Toronto writer Nino Ricci has won the Governor General's Literary Award for English fiction for his novel The Origin of Species.
Ricci was one of 14 winners of the $25,000 award announced Tuesday in Montreal.
It is the second win for Ricci, who earned the award in 1990 for Lives of the Saints, his debut novel.
"The young searching protagonist of Nino Ricci's The Origin of Species takes us into the now distant world of the post-Trudeau 1980s," the jury said in its citation. "Set mostly in Montreal, with an illuminating voyage to the Galapagos at its centre, this exquisite novel is both tough and tender and, in the end, confirms our belief in the resilience of the human heart."
"It's a thrill and it's certainly a boost for my morale," Ricci said Tuesday in an interview with CBC News.
Lives of the Saints was an auspicious debut and ensured the attention and generosity of critics and readers as Ricci wrote more difficult books, including Testament, a controversial take on the life of Jesus, he said.
Lives "was a more likeable book — and it had broader appeal — and some of my other books were not as likeable. They were darker in tone or more dangerous in content," Ricci said.
With The Origin of Species, Ricci is dealing with both the evolutionary view of the world, the subject of a floundering dissertation by the protagonist Alex Fratarcangeli, and the less clearly defined world of human relationships.
"I always wanted to explore that world view and how we can understand people differently if we look at them in more evolutionary terms. I know people are doing that through the sciences, but I haven't seen it done in fiction," Ricci said.
The storyline involving a relationship with a woman who has MS is based on a real woman Ricci once knew, whose vitality in the face of disease forced him to confront questions of how to live. The character Esther is an homage to her.
"That was taken from own experience and it was something I knew I would have to at some point deal with in my writing — it's such a strong element in my own life," he said.
Ricci has three more novels on the go, including one young adult work, and just completed a 40,000-word exploration of Pierre Trudeau for the Extraordinary Lives series.
Ricci won over a field that included veteran writers Fred Stenson for The Great Karoo and David Adams Richards for The Lost Highway, as well as the debut novel Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen and Cockroach, the second book by Rawi Hage.
Montreal's Hage had been a favourite to win after being nominated for the Giller, the Writers Trust Award and the Governor General's Award, but ended up winning none of them. Earlier this year, he won the IMPAC prize for his first book, De Niro's Game.
Two Globe and Mail writers won Governor-General's Literary Awards on Tuesday — Christie Blatchford of Toronto took the non-fiction award for Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army and John Ibbitson, now based in Washington, won the children's literature prize for The Landing.
Fifteen Days collects the stories of Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan, while The Landing is a coming-of-age story set in the Muskoka of the 1930s...more. ( CBC )
The section comes from Chapter 2, immediately after a list of the seventy-five richest people in history. Do you know what's interesting about that list? Of the 75 names, an astonishing 14 are Americans born within nine years of each other in the mid 19th century. Think about that for a moment. Historians start with Cleopatra and the Pharaohs and comb through every year in human history every since, looking in every corner of the world for evidence of extraordinary wealth, and almost 20 percent of the names they end up with come from a single generation in a single country.
Here's the list:
01. John Rockefeller, 1839.
02. Andrew Carnegie, 1835.
28.Frederick Weyerhaeuser, 1834.
33. Jay Gould, 1836.
34. Marshall Field, 1834.
35. George Baker, 1840.
36. Hetty Green, 1834.
44. James G. Fair, 1831.
54. Henry H. Rogers, 1840.
57. J.P. Morgan, 1837.
58. Oliver Payne, 1839.
62. George Pullman, 1831.
64. Peter Widener, 1834.
65. Philip Armor, 1832.
What's going on here? The answer is obvious, if you think about it. ( Gladwelldotcom)
Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers: The Story Of Success,(Amazon video) due out later this month. The piece introduces the idea that a key to becoming extraordinarily successful in a field is achieving early expertise and that to become an expert in a discipline requires on the order of 10,000 hours of practice. The 10K figure comes from the research of Anders Ericsson who in the early 1990s studied violinists at the Berlin Academy of Music.
Malcolm Gladwell books: view at MosaicBooks
“The curious thing about Ericsson’s study is that he and his colleagues couldn’t find any “naturals” - musicians who could float effortlessly to the top while practising a fraction of the time that their peers did. Nor could they find “grinds”, people who worked harder than everyone else and yet just didn’t have what it takes to break into the top ranks. Their research suggested that once you have enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That’s it. What’s more, the people at the very top don’t just work much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.” ( ebuiquity )
The extract focuses on some of the most successful people in the computer industry — Bill Joy, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and others — and argues that another part of their success was being born at the right time, in 1954 or 1955. This made them about 20 years old when the first person computers became available.
http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/outliers_excerpt1.html
(CNN)
Amazon.ca
Now that he's gotten us talking about the viral life of ideas and the power of gut reactions, Malcolm Gladwell poses a more provocative question in Outliers: why do some people succeed, living remarkably productive and impactful lives, while so many more never reach their potential? Challenging our cherished belief of the "self-made man," he makes the democratic assertion that superstars don't arise out of nowhere, propelled by genius and talent: "they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot." Examining the lives of outliers from Mozart to Bill Gates, he builds a convincing case for how successful people rise on a tide of advantages, "some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky."
Outliers can be enjoyed for its bits of trivia, like why most pro hockey players were born in January, how many hours of practice it takes to master a skill, why the descendents of Jewish immigrant garment workers became the most powerful lawyers in New York, how a pilots' culture impacts their crash record, how a centuries-old culture of rice farming helps Asian kids master math. But there's more to it than that. Throughout all of these examples--and in more that delve into the social benefits of lighter skin color, and the reasons for school achievement gaps--Gladwell invites conversations about the complex ways privilege manifests in our culture. He leaves us pondering the gifts of our own history, and how the world could benefit if more of our kids were granted the opportunities to fulfill their remarkable potential. --Mari Malcolm ( Amazon)
A controversial documentary that questions the existence of the historical Jesus. (Part 1 of 5) http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/doczone/2008/paganchrist/
Author: CBCtv
Keywords: Doc Zone Jesus Christ documentary christianity
There are 2.1 billion Christians on the planet - roughly one third of the entire human population. At the heart of their religion is the New Testament and the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. To Christianity, the written word is the glue that binds the faith of its followers.
So, what if it could be proven that Jesus never existed? What if there was evidence that every word of the New Testament - the cornerstone of Christianity - is based on myth and metaphor?
Based on Tom Harpur's national bestseller, The Pagan Christ examines these very questions. During his research, Harpur discovered that the New Testament is wholly based on Egyptian mythology, that Jesus Christ never lived, and that - indeed - the text was always meant to be read allegorically. It was the founders of the Church who duped the world into taking a literal approach to the scriptures. And, according to Harpur, this was their fatal error - and the very reason Christianity is struggling today.
The mission of The Pagan Christ is not to accelerate Christianity's slow demise, but to breathe new life into its holy book and, in the process, bring the world a richer, more spiritual faith.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7StcxGM5KcA&eurl=http://www.google.com/ig&feature=player_embedded
Celebrating canadian fiction writing but perhaps celebrating canadians love of reading. Everyone should read at least one! Enjoy..
Joseph Boyden
THROUGH BLACK SPRUCE
Viking Canada
Through Black Spruce is a novel of contemporary aboriginal life, full of the dangers and harsh beauty of both forest and city. When beautiful Suzanne Bird disappears, her sister Annie, a loner and hunter, is compelled to search for her, leaving behind their uncle Will, a man haunted by loss. While Annie travels from Toronto to New York, from modeling studios to A-list parties, Will encounters dire troubles at home. Both eventually come to painful discoveries about the inescapable ties of family.
Joseph Boyden is a Canadian with Irish, Scottish and Métis roots. His first novel, Three Day Road, has been published in 10 languages. The book was selected for The Today Show book club, won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the CBA Libris Award’s Fiction Book of the Year, the Amazon.ca/Books in Print First Novel Award, the 2005 McNally Robinson Aboriginal Book of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction. Boyden is the author of Born with a Tooth, a collection of stories that was shortlisted for the Upper Canada Writer’s Craft Award. Boyden divides his time between Northern Ontario and Louisiana, where he teaches writing at the University of New Orleans.
Anthony De Sa
BARNACLE LOVE
Doubleday Canada
In stories brimming with life, the innocent dreams and bitter disappointments of the immigrant experience are captured. A young fisherman washes up nearly dead on the shores of Newfoundland. It is Manuel Rebelo who has tried to escape the suffocating smallness of his Portuguese village and the crushing weight of his mother’s expectations to build a future for himself in a terra nova. Manuel’s son, Antonio, is born into Toronto’s little Portugal, a world of colourful houses and labyrinthine back alleys. In the Rebelo home the Church looms large, men and women inhabit sharply divided space, pigs are slaughtered in the garage, and a family lives in the shadow cast by a father’s failures.
Anthony De Sa grew up in Toronto’s Portuguese community. His short fiction has been published in several North American literary magazines. He attended The Humber School for Writers and now heads the English department and directs the creative writing program at a high school for the arts. Barnacle Love is his first book and he is currently at work on a novel. He lives in Toronto with his wife and three sons.
Marina Endicott
GOOD TO A FAULT
Freehand Books/Broadview Press
Absorbed in her own failings, Clara Purdy crashes her life into a sharp left turn, taking the young family in the other car along with her. When bruises on the mother, Lorraine, prove to be late-stage cancer, Clara – against all habit and comfort – moves the three children and their terrible grandmother into her own house. In Good to a Fault, Clara decides to give it a try, and then has to cope with the consequences: exhaustion, fury, hilarity, and unexpected love. But she must question her own motives. Is she acting out of true goodness, or out of guilt?
Marina Endicott was born in Golden, BC and grew up in Nova Scotia and Toronto. She worked as an actor and director before moving to London, England, where she began to write fiction. Since returning to Canada in 1984, Endicott has worked as Dramaturge at the Saskatchewan Playwrights Centre and Associate Dramaturge at the Banff Centre’s Playwrights Colony. She now teaches creative writing at the University of Alberta. Endicott’s first novel, Open Arms, was nominated for the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel award in 2002 and serialized on CBC Radio’s Between the Covers. Her stories have been shortlisted for both the Journey Prize and the Western Magazine Awards. She is currently at work on a novel about the Bell Auroras, a sister-trio vaudeville act that toured the Canadian prairies in 1909.
Rawi Hage
COCKROACH
House of Anasi Press
The novel takes place during one month of a bitterly cold winter in Montreal's restless immigrant community, where a self-described "thief" has just tried but failed to commit suicide by hanging himself from a tree in a local park. Rescued against his will, the narrator is obliged to attend sessions with a well-intentioned but naïve therapist. This sets the story in motion, leading us back to the narrator's violent childhood in a war-torn country, forward into his current life in the smoky émigré cafés where everyone has a tale, and out into the frozen night-time streets of Montreal, where the thief survives on the edge, imagining himself to be a cockroach invading the lives of the privileged, but wilfully blind, citizens who surround him.
Rawi Hage was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived through nine years of the Lebanese civil war during the 1970’s. He immigrated to Canada in 1992. Hage is a writer, visual artist and a curator. His first book, De Niro’s Game, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award, and won numerous awards, including the Prix des libraires du Québec and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for the best English-language book. De Niro’s Game is now published in 15 countries and several languages. Rawi Hage lives in Montreal.
Mary Swan
THE BOYS IN THE TREES
Henry Holt/H.B. Fenn
Newly arrived to the countryside, William Heath, his wife, and two daughters appear the picture of a devoted family. But when accusations of embezzlement spur William to commit an unthinkable crime, those who witnessed this affectionate, attentive father go about his routine of work and family must reconcile action with character. A doctor who has cared for one daughter, encouraging her trust, examines the finer details of his brief interactions with William, searching for clues that might penetrate the mystery of his motivation. Meanwhile the other daughter's teacher grapples with guilt over a moment when fate wove her into a succession of events that will haunt her dreams.
Mary Swan is the winner of the 2001 O. Henry Award for short fiction and is the author of the collection The Deep and Other Stories published by Random House. Her work has appeared in several Canadian literary magazines, including the Malahat Review and Best Canadian Stories, as well as American publications such as Harper’s. She lives with her husband and daughter near Toronto.
Free Market Ideology is Far from Finished
By Naomi Klein - September 19th, 2008
Whatever the events of this week mean, nobody should believe the overblown claims that the market crisis signals the death of "free market" ideology. Free market ideology has always been a servant to the interests of capital, and its presence ebbs and flows depending on its usefulness to those interests.
During boom times, it's profitable to preach laissez faire, because an absentee government allows speculative bubbles to inflate. When those bubbles burst, the ideology becomes a hindrance, and it goes dormant while big government rides to the rescue. But rest assured: the ideology will come roaring back when the bailouts are done. The massive debts the public is accumulating to bail out the speculators will then become part of a global budget crisis that will be the rationalization for deep cuts to social programs, and for a renewed push to privatize what is left of the public sector. We will also be told that our hopes for a green future are, sadly, too costly.
What we don't know is how the public will respond. Consider that in North America, everybody under the age of 40 grew up being told that the government can't intervene to improve our lives, that government is the problem not the solution, that laissez faire was the only option. Now, we are suddenly seeing an extremely activist, intensely interventionist government, seemingly willing to do whatever it takes to save investors from themselves.
This spectacle necessarily raises the question: if the state can intervene to save corporations that took reckless risks in the housing markets, why can't it intervene to prevent millions of Americans from imminent foreclosure? By the same token, if $85bn can be made instantly available to buy the insurance giant AIG, why is single-payer health care – which would protect Americans from the predatory practices of health-care insurance companies – seemingly such an unattainable dream? And if ever more corporations need taxpayer funds to stay afloat, why can't taxpayers make demands in return – like caps on executive pay, and a guarantee against more job losses?
More.... https://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2008/09/free-market-ideology-far-finished
Also read Klein's response to her critics one year after the publication.
Free Market Ideology is Far from Finished
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By Naomi Klein - September 19th, 2008
Whatever the events of this week mean, nobody should believe the overblown claims that the market crisis signals the death of "free market" ideology. Free market ideology has always been a servant to the interests of capital, and its presence ebbs and flows depending on its usefulness to those interests.
During boom times, it's profitable to preach laissez faire, because an absentee government allows speculative bubbles to inflate. When those bubbles burst, the ideology becomes a hindrance, and it goes dormant while big government rides to the rescue. But rest assured: the ideology will come roaring back when the bailouts are done. The massive debts the public is accumulating to bail out the speculators will then become part of a global budget crisis that will be the rationalization for deep cuts to social programs, and for a renewed push to privatize what is left of the public sector. We will also be told that our hopes for a green future are, sadly, too costly.
What we don't know is how the public will respond. Consider that in North America, everybody under the age of 40 grew up being told that the government can't intervene to improve our lives, that government is the problem not the solution, that laissez faire was the only option. Now, we are suddenly seeing an extremely activist, intensely interventionist government, seemingly willing to do whatever it takes to save investors from themselves.
This spectacle necessarily raises the question: if the state can intervene to save corporations that took reckless risks in the housing markets, why can't it intervene to prevent millions of Americans from imminent foreclosure? By the same token, if $85bn can be made instantly available to buy the insurance giant AIG, why is single-payer health care – which would protect Americans from the predatory practices of health-care insurance companies – seemingly such an unattainable dream? And if ever more corporations need taxpayer funds to stay afloat, why can't taxpayers make demands in return – like caps on executive pay, and a guarantee against more job losses?
Now that it's clear that governments can indeed act in times of crises, it will become much harder for them to plead powerlessness in the future. Another potential shift has to do with market hopes for future privatizations. For years, the global investment banks have been lobbying politicians for two new markets: one that would come from privatizing public pensions and the other that would come from a new wave of privatized or partially privatized roads, bridges and water systems. Both of these dreams have just become much harder to sell: Americans are in no mood to trust more of their individual and collective assets to the reckless gamblers on Wall Street, especially because it seems more than likely that taxpayers will have to pay to buy back their own assets when the next bubble bursts.
With the World Trade Organization talks off the rails, this crisis could also be a catalyst for a radically alternative approach to regulating world markets and financial systems. Already, we are seeing a move towards "food sovereignty" in the developing world, rather than leaving access to food to the whims of commodity traders. The time may finally have come for ideas like taxing trading, which would slow speculative investment, as well as other global capital controls.
And now that nationalization is not a dirty word, the oil and gas companies should watch out: someone needs to pay for the shift to a greener future, and it makes most sense for the bulk of the funds to come from the highly profitable sector that is most responsible for our climate crisis. It certainly makes more sense than creating another dangerous bubble in carbon trading.
But the crisis we are seeing calls for even deeper changes than that. The reason these junk loans were allowed to proliferate was not just because the regulators didn't understand the risk. It is because we have an economic system that measures our collective health based exclusively on GDP growth. So long as the junk loans were fuelling economic growth, our governments actively supported them. So what is really being called into question by the crisis is the unquestioned commitment to growth at all costs. Where this crisis should lead us is to a radically different way for our societies to measure health and progress.
None of this, however, will happen without huge public pressure placed on politicians in this key period. And not polite lobbying but a return to the streets and the kind of direct action that ushered in the New Deal in the 1930s. Without it, there will be superficial changes and a return, as quickly as possible, to business as usual.
https://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2008/09/free-market-ideology-far-finished
Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and author of the New York Times and international bestseller, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Published worldwide in September 2007, The Shock Doctrine is set to be translated into 25 languages to date. The six minute companion film, created by Alfonso Cuaron, director of Children of Men, was an Official Selection of the 2007 Venice and Toronto International Film Festivals and was a viral phenomenon, downloaded over a million times
