While Trump was busy hearkening back to segregationist-era maxims and militarising against the eruption of protests in the wake of George Floyd’s callous death, his foreign adversaries adopted a different tact. From Iran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei tweeted that “A human… has no reassurance to live in society, if…a police officer can beat him to … Read more
Today, neoimperialist powers often undermine the autonomy of Latin American politics and economics, especially on environmental issues. Although it is usually not perceived in such a way, environmental degradation is essentially a site of neocolonial conquest through the exploitation of natural resources and marginalization of disenfranchised communities. The longstanding legal battle between Chevron and some … Read more
Sometimes it is the tiniest spark that lights the largest fires. Small pocketbook items have become the catalysts for large-scale protest movements around the globe in the past months. A four-cent raise in metro fares in Chile, fluctuations in the price of onions in India, and a twenty-cent tax on the use of the messaging … Read more
Healthcare workers wearing personal protective equipment (PPE). The COVID-19 pandemic will not be contained without international solidarity and coordination, but not all high-level cooperation is productive — in fact, the politicization of some responses has critically compromised them. A particularly high-stakes example of this trend is the distortion of the personal protective equipment (PPE) supply … Read more
Adrienne Clarkson was born in Hong Kong but arrived in Canada at the age of 2, a refugee escaping the horrors of the Second World War. In an interview, Clarkson remembers finding a city “full of white people, white bread and white snow” and her journey in broadcasting, journalism, and public service was not an … Read more
As the novel coronavirus spread through Europe, heads of government quickly began to close their national borders in an attempt to reduce movement and the spread of the disease. These hasty measures threatened one of the fundamental tenets of the European Union: the freedom of movement, and the Schengen Zone, which guarantees visa and border-free … Read more
Half a year ago, a broad-based anti-government protest movement swept across Lebanon, igniting the most sustained political unrest in recent memory. Incited by a proposed tax on internet messaging services in the midst of a fiscal crisis, and building on the agitation of periodic protests in past years, over one million citizens took to the … Read more
Empty plane during pandemic. While scrolling through Twitter amidst a quarantine-induced boredom spell, I came across a tweet describing someone who had recently returned from a societal sabbatical in which he had left everything behind, including technology, to spend time in nature and recharge. He had left in late January. It has only been a … Read more
Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull broke confidence earlier this week, spilling on his previously private engagements with both Presidents Obama and Trump. Throughout the tome entitled “A Bigger Picture,” Turnbull offers character assessments of various world leaders, and perhaps none were more eyebrow-raising than his disclosure of President Barack Obama’s own appraisal of then-candidate … Read more
Australian Parliament building in aftermath of wildfire. This past summer, Australia experienced one of the most devastating fire seasons on record. Over a period of 80 days, forty-six million acres of bushland were razed (an area larger than Portugal), an estimated one billion animals were lost, including endangered species, and 2,500 homes were destroyed. Tragically, … Read more