RSSDispatches

Should America fret about its northern border?

| January 5, 2015 | 0 Comments
Should America fret about its northern border?

The embers are hot yet again: In the aftermath of October’s attacks in Canada, some Americans are once again musing aloud about their northern border. Should Americans be concerned? What is the risk of lone wolves — such as Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, who killed Cpl. Nathan Cirillo at the National War Memorial, and Martin Couture-Rouleau, who […]

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Where refugees go

| January 5, 2015 | 0 Comments
Where refugees go

In June 2014, headlines marked the day: The global population of forced migrants had surpassed the 50 million mark for the first time since the Second World War. The war in Syria, along with conflicts in the Central African Republic, Ukraine and South Sudan were all major contributors to the meteoric rise of six million […]

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Ukraine and Iraq-Syria crises: A Black Sea strategy is key

| September 26, 2014 | 0 Comments
Ukraine and Iraq-Syria crises:  A Black Sea strategy is key

The United States is, at the moment, off balance. It faces challenges in the Syria-Iraq theatre as well as challenges in Ukraine. It does not have a clear response to either. It does not know what success in either theatre would look like, what resources it is prepared to devote to either, nor whether the consequences of defeat […]

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Towering Taiwan

| September 26, 2014 | 0 Comments
Towering Taiwan

The tour guide in Taiwan stops next to a tiny marker along a park path. It has a design that features a small box with hard edges inside a larger box that has rounded corners. The 20 journalists, invited from almost every continent to Taiwan by its foreign affairs department, look at the simple image […]

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Saving animals from disaster

| September 26, 2014 | 0 Comments
Saving animals from disaster

No matter where in the world disasters strike, the survival of animals can mean the difference between recovery and despair. More than one billion people depend directly on animals for food, jobs, income, transport, social status, cultural identification and financial security. For 70 percent of the world’s poorest people — those most vulnerable to the […]

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Nations and their Nobels

| September 26, 2014 | 0 Comments
Nations and their Nobels

By the middle of October of this year, it is likely we will know all of the nominees for this year’s Nobel Prizes. The announcements — and the awards themselves— have become global events, eagerly anticipated by the world’s leading media and excitedly awaited by the would-be recipients. While the Nobel Prizes are not the […]

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Africa’s captivating children

| September 26, 2014 | 0 Comments
Africa’s captivating children

Children of Africa: A Photographic Journey created itself. The idea came spontaneously, as my wife, Heather, and I perused thousands of photographs from our trips to Africa. We noticed they were predominantly of children. I also wanted to write a non-academic book and thought perhaps a photo-journal book would be an easier first attempt. Boy, was […]

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The scourge of malaria

| June 22, 2014 | 0 Comments
The scourge of malaria

Imagine a city the size of Vancouver, teeming with life, where 90-plus percent of the inhabitants are very young children. Now try to envision the horror of this place if everyone in it were dead. This mental exercise dramatises, in the first case, the striking success of global efforts over the last 12 years to […]

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Water and Sanitation: Everyone, Everywhere by 2030

| June 22, 2014 | 0 Comments
Water and Sanitation: Everyone, Everywhere by 2030

Shamefully, millions upon millions of human beings today are unable to meet one of their most fundamental needs for survival: access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. What many Canadians take for granted for themselves and their pet cats and dogs remains inaccessible to children, women and men around the globe, and with terrible […]

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Canada’s principled and firm stand on Ukraine

| June 22, 2014 | 0 Comments
Canada’s principled and firm stand on Ukraine

Vladimir Putin’s recent actions represent the greatest threat to security in Europe we have seen in some time. The Russian military occupation of Crimea and the transparent involvement of Russia in efforts to destabilise Ukraine are serious, but they represent a troubling approach to advancing Putin’s perception of Russia’s national interest. With the echoes of […]

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