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Donald Trump, Stephen McNeil, and democracy in decline

If you want to know just how quickly a flawed but functioning democracy can descend into anti-democratic demagoguery, may I direct your attention south of our border. If you want to know how close to (or far from) that less than ideal we already are in Nova Scotia, may I direct your attention to the proceedings of the Second Session of the 63rd Assembly of our own House of Assembly on Friday, December 18.

December 20, 2020 By Stephen Kimber 10 Comments

If you want to know just how quickly a flawed but functioning democracy can descend into anti-democratic demagoguery, may I direct your attention south of our border. Yes, there. If you want to know — and even if you don’t — how close to (or far from) that less than ideal we already are in […]

Filed Under: Commentary, Featured, Province House Tagged With: democracy, Donald Trump, first-past-the-post, Stephen McNeil

QAnon knows no borders

A conspiracy theory that originated in the US has become a global movement and is attracting adherents in Nova Scotia. Anti-hate activists are concerned about where it will lead.

September 13, 2020 By Joan Baxter 10 Comments

This article contains graphic descriptions of conspiracy theories about child abuse and torture that may not be suitable for all readers. The change in the Nova Scotian woman — I’ll call her Lidia — was dramatic and it happened suddenly. According to a member of her family, Lidia had always been left leaning and progressive […]

Filed Under: Featured, News Tagged With: "Q", 4chan, anti-Jewish, anti-maskers, anti-vaxxer, Bill Gates, Billy Joyce, Canadian Anti-Hate Network, Child abuse, child-trafficking, conspiracy theories, Corey Hurren, coronavirus, COVID-19, cult, Donald Trump, Evan Balgord, facebook, FBI, G5, Genocide Watch, GeorgeSoros, Gregory Stanton, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Instagram, Janet Conway, MSVU, Nazism, pandemic, People's Party of Canada, Pizzagate, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, QAnon, red pill, Satanic panic, social media, Terrorism, Twitter, US Democratic Party, US Republican Party, WWG1WGA, YouTube

Random thoughts from a random week in the middle of a random time…

On Westray and Portapique, naming names, suing Trump, making media great... someday, pressing legislature business, comparing Cuba's COVID-19 numbers to Nova Scotia's, and, oh yes, Franco is still dead...

May 3, 2020 By Stephen Kimber

Random thoughts from a random week in the middle of a random time… Just before dawn on the morning of May 9, 1992, a methane gas explosion rocketed through the underground tunnels of the Westray mine in Plymouth, NS, killing all 26 miners working underground. That’s just four more than were killed last month in...

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Filed Under: Commentary, Featured, Subscribers only Tagged With: Cuban health care, Donald Trump, Franco is still dead, legacy media bailouts, Legislative committees, Portapique

Mask, mask, who’s got the mask? And other global games from the coronavirus killing fields.

Welcome to the COVID-19 wild, wild west. Welcome to transnational economic globalism meets Trumpian political nationalism. Welcome to our post-COVID Job 1 — rethinking the way we’ve thought about the world for the last 50 years. Welcome to tomorrow. Welcome to today.

April 5, 2020 By Stephen Kimber 5 Comments

The Halifax Examiner is providing all COVID-19 coverage for free. On Friday, five unions representing workers on the coughing, spewing, life-threatened front lines of our province’s particular finger in the dike of the global coronavirus outbreak, called on the Nova Scotia government to agree to the same protections Alberta is now providing its frontline healthcare […]

Filed Under: Commentary, Featured Tagged With: 3M, coronavirus, COVID-19, Donald Trump, Dr. Robert Strang, John Feffer, masks, pandemic, World Health Organization (WHO)

Killing Patient Zero: how a 1970s-era Halifax man was blamed for the AIDS crisis

September 13, 2019 By Evelyn C. White Leave a Comment

The event pre-dated cell phones, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Who knows how the word got out?  But all of a sudden, the cavernous San Francisco Chronicle newsroom was flooded with television, radio, and print reporters. The date was February 17, 1994. The breaking story? Randy Shilts, the nation’s first “AIDS celebrity” journalist had died, at […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: AIDS, Donald Trump, Gaetan Dugas, Killing Patient Zero, Laurie Lynd, Randy Shilts, Roy Cohn

The president versus the press. Or should that be the president thanks the press?

The day after the US mid-terms, Donald Trump staged a rambling 90-minute press conference to spin the dross of Republican electoral loss into the gold of never-ending Trumpian triumph, and thus re-establish his personal ownership of the news cycle. The press made it easy for him.

November 12, 2018 By Stephen Kimber

I’ve never been a fan of press-conference journalism. It may be a marginal improvement on canned-quotes press-release journalism when it comes to public accountability, but most press conferences I’ve attended are little more than carefully staged theatre pieces designed to control and direct the flow of information and emotion in ways favourable to the presenter....

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Filed Under: Commentary, Featured, Journalism, Subscribers only Tagged With: CNN, Donald Trump, press conference journalism

Outraged about Russian meddling in the 2016 US election? What about…?

... the US role in 1948 Italy, 1953 Iran, 1954 Guatemala, 1964 Brazil, 1969 Thailand, 1973 Chile, 1980s Nicaragua, 1983 Grenada, 1989 Panama, 1996 Russia, 2002 Venezuela, 2009 Afghanistan, every year Cuba and on and on? Perhaps it's time for a little equal opportunity outrage.

July 23, 2018 By Stephen Kimber

  Americans are right to be outraged at the outrageous Russian interference in their 2016 presidential elections. They are correct to be appalled not only that their Putin-puttana-ed president continues to pretend that what happened didn’t happen, but also that their commander-in-chief and his principle-free, me-too Republican Congressional congregation refuse to act to prevent more...

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Filed Under: Commentary, Featured, Subscribers only Tagged With: 2016 US elections, CIA, Donald Trump, USAID, Vladimir Putin

Donald Trump and the border: He stands on guard for he

In the past month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection stopped 21 vessels in the Gulf of Maine “looking for illegal immigrants.” Illegal immigrants? From Canada? Or should that be to Canada?

July 7, 2018 By Stephen Kimber

“Border disputes do not go away; they fester. And when other factors push them back to the surface — the discovery of valuable resources, an assertion of national pride, a mishap at sea — the stakes can suddenly rise to a point where easy solutions become impossible.” — John Kelly Retired US diplomat who served...

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Filed Under: Commentary, Featured, Subscribers only Tagged With: Border disputes, Donald Trump, fisheries

It can happen here

Morning File, Friday, June 8, 2018

June 8, 2018 By Tim Bousquet 8 Comments

1. It can happen here President Donald Trump. Premier Doug Ford. Two years ago this would have been unthinkable. Now it’s reality. And these aren’t just some weird blips in history. There’s always been an undercurrent of nativism in North American history, and no manner of wishful thinking is going to make it go away. […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Andrew Scheer, burning down the White House, Donald Trump, Graham Steele, Haley Ryan, Halifax-rural divide, Hate Politics, Hate Radio, John Boileau, John Lohr’s planned strategy of hate, Matt Whitman is a Trump copycat, Premier Doug Ford, Robert Ross, Rush Limbaugh, Stephen Archibald and Washington DC, the Coast

Progress isn’t easy. Sometimes it just isn’t.

You know the way progress traditionally happens in politics: slowly, incrementally. And then you wake up one morning to the latest news from the Ontario provincial election campaign trail... or the White House. Progress, as Barack Obama once said, may not always be a straight line or a smooth path. But is there still a line? A path?

April 22, 2018 By Stephen Kimber

“We need to go forward, but progress isn’t always a straight line or a smooth path.” Barack Obama victory speech, November 7, 2012 How to explain our current political whipsaw? You go to sleep one night knowing 6,000 delegates to this weekend’s federal Liberal party convention will debate progressive resolutions to de-criminalize possession of small...

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Filed Under: Commentary, Featured, Subscribers only Tagged With: Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Justin Trudeau, Liberals, Progress

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PRICED OUT

A collage of various housing options in HRM, including co-ops, apartment buildings, shelters, and tents
PRICED OUT is the Examiner’s investigative reporting project focused on the housing crisis.

You can learn about the project, including how we’re asking readers to direct our reporting, our published articles, and what we’re working on, on the PRICED OUT homepage.

2020 mass murders

Nine images illustrating the locations, maps, and memorials of the mass shootings

All of the Halifax Examiner’s reporting on the mass murders of April 18/19, 2020, and recent articles on the Mass Casualty Commission and newly-released documents.

Updated regularly.

Uncover: Dead Wrong

In 1995, Brenda Way was brutally murdered behind a Dartmouth apartment building. In 1999, Glen Assoun was found guilty of the murder. He served 17 years in prison, but steadfastly maintained his innocence. In 2019, Glen Assoun was fully exonerated.

Halifax Examiner founder and investigative journalist Tim Bousquet has followed the story of Glen Assoun's wrongful conviction for over five years. Now, Bousquet tells that story as host of Season 7 of the CBC podcast series Uncover: Dead Wrong.

Click here to go to listen to the podcast, or search for CBC Uncover on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast aggregator.

The Tideline, with Tara Thorne

Two young white women, one with dark hair and one blonde, smile at the camera on a sunny spring day.

Episode 79 of The Tideline, with Tara Thorne, is published.

Grace McNutt and Linnea Swinimer are the Minute Women, two Haligonians who host a podcast of the same name about Canadian history as seen through a lens of Heritage Minutes (minutewomenpodcast.ca). In a lively celebration of the show’s second birthday, they stop by to reveal how curling brought them together in podcast — and now BFF — form, their favourite Minutes, that time they thought Jean Chretien was dead, and the impact their show has had. Plus music from brand-new ECMA winners Hillsburn and Zamani.

Listen to the episode here.

Check out some of the past episodes here.

Subscribe to the podcast to get episodes automatically downloaded to your device — there’s a great instructional article here. Email Suzanne for help.

You can reach Tara here.

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Recent posts

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  • Halifax committee recommends in favour of plan to move, restore, and add to historic Elmwood May 26, 2022
  • Retired Judge Corrine Sparks receives honorary degree from Mount Saint Vincent University May 25, 2022
  • Victims’ families: ‘trauma informed’ inquiry has ‘further traumatized’ us May 25, 2022
  • Public importance of private woodlots May 25, 2022

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