On January 10th, the African National Congress (ANC) officially endorsed Jacob Zuma as their candidate for the forthcoming South African elections. While Zuma is considered the front runner for the presidency, his nomination is mired by corruption charges. On January 12th, the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled in favor of the National Prosecuting Authority, allowing […] More »
Our January-February 2009 issue is now online for your reading pleasure. I’ll be highlighting a few items on the blog over the next week or so, but you can skip ahead and read the whole thing now. In the cover story, “The Case for All-Black Schools,” Andrew Wallace digs through the troubled history of Africentric […] More »
<img src=”http://i40.tinypic.com/345bi8p.jpg” alt=”solargraph” title=”solargraph” style=”float:centre” As an aspiring photographer, I understand the difficulties of taking long exposure shots with my digital slr. I’ll spend a lifetime setting up the shot until it’s just right, and then, inevitably, I’ll knock the camera just before I’m finished, rendering the whole image blurry and effectively ruining the shot. […] More »
This past Sunday was the a 7th anniversary of the arrival of prisoners to the Guantanamo Bay detention center. It also marked just over one week until President-elect Obama is inaugurated. In his campaign, Obama promised to close Guantanamo within 100 days of gaining office, but the task is looking a little more complicated than […] More »
Clinging onto the very tip of the bow on Sea Shepherd’s eco-activist ship, I stare into the fog with desperation. Looking for any shape, figure or shadow that resembles the vessel we have been waiting weeks to find. I could almost smell a ship’s diesel fumes, but not see them. The Sea Shepherd ship steamed […] More »
It’s hard to know just what to say about the most recent installment of the Israeli-Gaza conflict. The 16 days of fighting have killed 900 Palestinians and left 1.5 million in urgent need of food and medical aid. Recent reports suggest humanitarian aid is currently denied access at Gaza checkpoints. Many international agencies have pulled […] More »
Starting today, Toronto Loblaws patrons will need to stock up on canvas bags or start shopping at Metro if they want to enjoy the petroleum-based convenience of free plastic shopping bag, CityNews reports. The decision was made last month to charge five cents for each plastic bag (a la No Frills) handed out in Hogtown. […] More »
Last fall, I broke my cell phone (a.k.a., alarm clock/voice recorder/little black book/lifeline) and in the two days it took to get a new one, my life stopped. I fell behind on assignments, scrambled to find phone numbers and slept with my laptop next to me because 1) I needed it to act as a […] More »
This might be old news to some: Burger King’s “Whopper Virgins” ad campaign has been running for a while. Here’s the promo: I felt intuitively icky about the whole thing before but couldn’t quite define why. Luckily, blogger Evan Calder Williams has articulated that feeling very nicely already, so I’ll just let him take it […] More »
When I was a kid I really wanted to be a pirate (actually I was probably nearly twenty one when I first got this notion into my head…) I could live on a boat with the sea as my home and travel where ever the great winds would take me. I would have swash-buckling adventures, […] More »