Dispatches
Paul Kagame: Rwanda’s despot?
Luring Paul Rusesabagina, the hero of Hotel Rwanda, to Kigali to be tried for “treason” for opposing the regime of President Paul Kagame is hardly the first “clever” Lukashenko-like entrapment of Rwandans who dare to criticize the tight-fisted manner in which Kagame has run his otherwise oft-praised African government. Much earlier, thugs sent by Kagame […]
Hope and despair coexist in Niger
Niger is a country of 22 million people in Africa’s Sahel — a region that stretches for thousands of miles south of the Sahara across several countries. One of the poorest countries in the world, it has for decades provided refuge to people forced to flee their homes to escape devastating violence. The Sahel is […]
China’s options to seize Taiwan
There is much in the news lately about an increase in tensions between China and Taiwan. Beijing sees Taiwan as a renegade province that must be reunited with the mainland. This has been a cornerstone of Chinese national security policy since Mao’s Communist Party’s victory over the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-Shek in 1949 and […]
Iran’s starring role in the May 2021 conflict
The very recent fighting between Israel and the terrorist organizations Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) — both banned in Canada as foreign terrorist entities — is not about age-old grievances between Israel and Palestinians. It is about Iran. During Quds celebrations last year, according to the Associated Press, Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei called […]
Quelling Africa’s apocalypse
The horsemen of the apocalypse are galloping through Africa. There is abundant war, in Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Libya, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria and Somalia. There is pestilence and plague, with locusts swarming across northeastern and eastern Africa and the coronavirus, with its dangerous variants, […]
The Quad: A new NATO?
The “Quad,” short for Quadrilateral Security Dialogue of India, Australia, Japan and the United States, recently held its first major summit to address mutual concerns about Beijing’s behaviour in the Indo-Pacific. The summit’s result could set the stage for a future mutual defence alliance, perhaps akin to NATO. The Quad first met in 2004 to […]
Five gains COVID has conferred
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Since then, we’ve endured lockdowns, restrictions, fear-mongering and business failures. Approximately 140 million people worldwide have had COVID and more than 3 million have died from it. While it may seem unlikely that anything good could come from the pandemic, there are changes […]
Food trade: Who’s buying, who’s selling
As COVID further impacts the problems of malnutrition and hunger worldwide, Diplomat takes a look at what countries export the most agricultural products and what countries import the biggest number. Mid 18th-Century France witnessed the emergence of an eclectic group of economists. They sought to challenge the prevailing mercantilism, favouring high tariffs, subsidies and physical […]
Canada and the corruption court
2020 was like no other in living memory. No one envisioned starting the decade with a pandemic. Well before the virus washed over us like a poison tsunami, sweeping unpredictability and uncertainty already existed in many aspects of our lives. In addition to responding to COVID-19, I suggest we use this moment to shape our […]
It’s time for an IACC
The World Bank estimates that each year between US $20 billion and US $40 billion in development assistance is stolen by corrupt officials. Such grand corruption undermines support in the West for foreign aid, while at the same time defeating its very purpose. Those who steal the money cheat the intended beneficiaries out of the […]
Recent Comments