Veteran Israeli journalist Amira Hass received a lifetime achievement award last week in New York for her unrelenting coverage of the oppression of Palestinians in Israel’s occupied territories. During her acceptance speech to the International Women’s Media Foundation, Hass confessed that she didn’t really have a lifetime of “achievement,” only a long record of failure. […]
Editorial
Posted inNews + Opinion
John Brennan’s private obsession
John Brennan has a solution for saving Nova Scotia’s wilderness: privatize it. Brennan is the mind behind what he’s calling the Avalon Private Wilderness Reserve, a 550-acre development on the backlands above Portuguese Cove. The development is a rectangular chunk of land that stretches about five kilometres westward, roughly halfway towards Williamswood on the Old […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Obama’s no prize as peacemaker
He’s not known as Barack O’Bomber for nothing. Even as the bellicose US president snagged the Nobel Peace Prize last week, American military forces under his command were pounding Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. More than a million civilians have died and millions more have been forced to flee because of these senseless wars. Yet O’Bomber […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Should Canadian forces stay in Afghanistan?
Is this war worth fighting? I don’t know too many people who—after spending real time outside the wire in Afghanistan—come back with more certainty in their answer to that question. Still, it’s what you get asked. Earlier this summer, I made a couple of trips to Kandahar, and at the end of the last one, […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Graham’s crackers
Graham Steele, our new NDP finance minister is one fuck of a fine, funny fellow. I discovered that during the hours I spent last week at Province House poring over advance copies of his budget. Slipped in among the endless columns of tedious numbers, irksome charts and graphs and turgid bureaucratic prose, Steele’s subtle humour […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Secrecy, detailed
Former Halifax councillor Harry McInroy was arguably one of the worst councillors in the history of HRM—his repeated meeting absences became something of a running joke, and when he did bother to appear, he was ill-prepared and mumbled inane comments. His Cole Harbour constituency no doubt sighed in relief when McInroy, who opted not to […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Dexter’s duplicity
What was a peace-loving lefty like me doing at the Halifax armaments show last week? Why was I was marching with 1,300 weapons makers, military types and government bureaucrats past shiny displays of naval guns, aircraft engines, mortars and tanks? The answer can be summed up in one famous name: Darrell Dexter. I wanted to […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Another round of BS
“Study: Golf worth $650m to province,” screamed an August 22 headline in the Chronicle-Herald. “Nova Scotia’s golf industry had an economic impact of about $650 million in 2008, according to a national study released this week,” begins the article, written by business reporter Tom Peters. Six hundred and fifty million dollars is a hell of […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Let’s push for lower tuition rates
Nova Scotia has had no shortage of snake-oil get-rich-quick schemes. Consider the allegedly humungous natural gas deposits off our shores, which were supposed to turn us into Alberta East—the actual reserves are so puny that production will dry up in a few years. Some consultants made some dough, I guess. Otherwise, meh. Or, for a […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
CBC dumbs down news
These are grim days for Halifax journalists. After The Daily News shut down last year, other media cut their reporting staffs to the bone. Yet, on Monday, August 31, CBC is launching a brand new, expanded 90-minute supper-hour show. Please don’t break out the champagne. Not if you care about local news. As I point […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
How to listen to citizens
Matt Hebb, the 2009 campaign manager for the Nova Scotia New Democrats, injected some humour into his presentation last weekend at the federal NDP convention in Halifax. His talk was about how the NDP managed to pull off a majority government in the June provincial election. “One of the secrets of winning is to get […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Tax Reform Committee’s shoddy work
Halifax council was scheduled Tuesday to discuss “tax reform,” which is the attempt on some councillors’ part to switch from the time-honoured system of assessment-based property taxes to a “service-based” system that would charge residents receiving similar city services the same fee, regardless of the value of the property being serviced. Specifically, the Tax Reform […]