Astonishing fact number one: Last year, gamblers in Nova Scotia pumped more than $708 million into Video Lottery Terminals, the equivalent of nearly $2 million a day. That info comes from the Nova Scotia Gaming Corporation’s annual report released last week. It shows that in the 2008/2009 financial year which ended in March, VLT betting […]
Bruce Wark
Posted inNews + Opinion
Health report fails to analyze root causes
If Freddie Mercury were alive, I’d ask his opinion of the Nova Scotia government’s 51-page report on suicide that was finally released last week. The Queen singer, who died of AIDS in 1991, might thrust out his hairy chest, give me his trademark, buck-toothed smile, and belt out “Don’t Try Suicide”: “So you think it’s […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Bogs and frogs lose as suburbia expands
In HRM’s vanishing wildlands, excavators rumble relentlessly across scarred landscapes. The destruction of natural habitat in and around HRM’s sprawling suburbs is so routine it’s rarely even newsworthy. Yet once in a blue moon, a determined citizen can make a big difference. On the weekend of June 6, Sackville resident Marilyn Challis spotted one of […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Expecting privacy in public places
Michael Jackson’s passing last week at the tender age of 50 shocked me right down to my shoes. “It’s getting deadlier and deadlier for celebrities like us,” I was overheard to remark. The King of Pop’s demise was likely brought on by the stress of rehearsing for 50 concerts starting this summer in London. In […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Immigration lessons from spirit of the St Louis
It’s been called the “Voyage of the Damned”—907 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution set sail in 1939 from Hamburg, Germany for Havana, Cuba on the ocean liner St. Louis. One of them was four-year-old Lisa Avedon, who told her story in Halifax last week at a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the voyage. “The […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
NDP government: Real change for a change?
Originally published at The Halifax Media Co-op, a project of the Dominion News Co-operative. Republished with consent. Darrell Dexter seemed to be enjoying himself Thursday as he addressed his newly expanded NDP caucus. “This frivolity has got to stop,” the smiling premier-designate told caucus members who only moments before had been laughing, shaking hands and […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Objector accounts pay for peace
American war vets from Iraq and Afghanistan were testifying before the Congressional Progressive Caucus last month when Barbara Lee, a Democrat from California, wondered how the US military dehumanizes the “enemy,” making it easier for soldiers to kill. Kristofer Goldsmith, a former US Army sergeant who fought in Iraq, replied that in basic training, recruits […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Greater racial diversity needed in humanities
Picture this. Three white graduate students are earnestly discussing the future of post-colonial studies. It’s happening at a symposium to honour a white English professor—a pioneer in studying the work of non-white writers from former colonies such as Jamaica, Kenya and India. During the question period, a black PhD student points out he’s the only […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Karlheinz Schreiber’s kickback bonanza
Schmiergelder. It’s a lovely sounding German word, isn’t it? Schmiergelder literally means “grease money” and it’s at the heart of the federal inquiry into why former Tory PM Brian Mulroney received three envelopes stuffed with $1,000 bills back in 1993-94. Karlheinz Schreiber, the German-Canadian wheeler-dealer who handed Mulroney the cash, spent four days testifying before […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Taliban in transition
Protesters took to the streets of London last week as suits from the world’s richest countries pondered the economic meltdown. Demonstrators held up four big horse puppets to represent greed, war, climate chaos and poverty—the four faces of a world crisis brought on by a corrupt political and economic system driven by money, media, militarism […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Local CBC cuts announced
CBC listeners and viewers in the Maritimes will soon notice big changes in local programming. The CBC is cutting a total of 31 jobs in the Maritimes, eleven percent of its regional workforce. One of the hardest hit programs will be Maritime Noon, a two-hour regional show that focuses on consumer and resource issues. The […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Double the CBC’s budget
Ma phoned last week panicking about her tiny pension, which gets topped up every month with money I earn from these editorials. “Look Bubbie,” she commanded, “stop writing tedious shit. The Coast’s gonna cancel your ass.” Her prescription? “Stir readers up. Tell ’em you were raped by a ghost. No, Duffy’s done that already. OK, […]
