950 posts by StephenKimber

From a review of What Lies Across The Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five in the Havana Times by Dawn Gable HAVANA TIMES — The endnotes of What Lies Across the Water* opens with: “The truth is — everybody lies.” But I believe author Stephen Kimber when he says that as part of […]

It’s complicated. I know who Chris Brown is, of course, in a can’t-avoid-it-if-I-tried, popular culture way. I know he and his girlfriend Rihanna skipped scheduled Grammy appearances in 2009 on the heels of an incident in which Brown “hit, bit and choked” her. I saw, without seeking out, the online photo of her battered face. […]

It’s been an unsatisfying week for the be-seen aspect of that justice-being-done-and-being-seen-to-be-done shibboleth. The more we learned the more clear it is we still don’t know all we need to know about two high-profile court cases to satisfy ourselves justice has been served. Let’s start with the report of the Commission for Public Complaints Against […]

So… did Percy really pop Keith? Is the premier going to pull the plug? Can I get back to you? I’m still in the Metro Centre. It’s fun, frenzied Friday night. “The Cup is in the House,” and the house is bursting. Ten-thousand-five-hundred-and-ninety-five fans, plus media, scouts, officials, parents, friends of friends. Expectant, ready to […]

An excerpt from What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five, to be published in August 2013 by Fernwood Publishing. Editor’s Note: One of the things we tend to forget about clandestine intelligence agents is that their world really is clandestine. They can’t even tell their families or closest friends what […]

The good news is that Nova Scotia’s four Conservative MPs say they are not going to waste taxpayer dollars sending constituents their national party’s mudroom-generated, bottom-feeding Justin Trudeau mauler-mailers. The bad news is that not one of them — Peter MacKay, Gerald Keddy, Scott Armstrong, Greg Kerr — seems prepared to denounce either their bullying […]

So federal justice minister Rob Nicholson isn’t the tiniest bit curious/concerned/appalled about what went wrong, and why, and what needs to be done to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Last week, the Supreme Court of Canada threw out Fenwick MacIntosh’s 2011 conviction on 18 charges of sexual assault and gross indecency, not because he […]

It’s complicated. The Canadian Psychiatric Society, among others, publishes guidelines for reporting on youth suicide. Don’t put the word “suicide” in the headline, it says. Don’t give such stories undue prominence. Don’t describe the method. Don’t glorify the victim. The guidelines are designed to reduce the very real risk of copycats. We know many media […]

On April 19, 1989, a 39-year-old woman named Trisha Meili went for a jog in New York’s Central Park. She was raped and violently assaulted. Partly because of the attack’s brutality, partly because of news reports the perpetrators were a gang of “wilding” black youths and partly because of who the victim was—white, a Yale […]

Did Darrell Dexter balance the budget? Is the pope Argentinian? Depends on which pope you mean. And what you mean by balance. Not to forget “the…” The perhaps more relevant pre-election questions out of last week’s legislature exercise: Would the other parties have done anything different in either the budget’s broad strokes or in its […]