That Time Vice Paid A “Hacker” $5,000 For A Fake Rob Ford Story

“A hush fell over the reporters gathered outside the mayor’s office. Everyone appeared to be skimming the story at once, another astonishing branch of the Ford saga seeming to sprout before our eyes. It was exactly as plausible as everything that had come before it and everything that would come after. Except that it was false. Just completely bogus. And Vice had paid $5,000 in cash for the privilege of running it.”

Jonathan Goldsbie – Canadaland – April 2020

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Before Trudeau, Gerald Butts Abandoned Tar Sands Action As Head Of WWF

“When veteran climate analyst Keith Stewart arrived at his office at the Toronto headquarters of the World Wildlife Fund Canada in the spring of 2010, he was in for a shock. Turning on his computer, he realized that the campaign he had been directing and working on for years — raising the alarm about the unsustainable exploitation of Alberta’s tar sands — had disappeared from the organization’s website.”

Martin Lukacs – Canadaland – September 2019

The Shock Absorber

“In June of 2012 Raif Badawi was arrested and I went to the Griffin Prize Gala. He and I were 29. But because I was born in Canada and Mr. Badawi was born in Saudi Arabia, our convictions, however similar, have had diametric consequences on our lives. According to the Economist’s Democracy Index for that year, I lived in the eighth freest country in the world and Badawi lived in the eighth least free, barely ahead of Equatorial Guinea, Turkmenistan, Chad, and North Korea. Badawi risked his life for his writing, while I made a living from mine.”

 

Michael Lista – Canadaland – September 2015

When Your Psychologist Goes Viral

“‘You know,’ Jordan Peterson said, to a large audience at the University of British Columbia this past February 15, ‘I’ve also been accused, three times in my career, of sexual impropriety. Baseless accusations. And the last one really tangled me up for a whole year. It’s not entertaining.’ When Samantha, a former patient of Peterson’s who does not want her real name used in this story, saw a video of those remarks on YouTube, she wondered if Peterson was talking about her.”

 

Jonathan Goldsbie – Canadaland – June 2018