Critical Perspectives and Reflections

War of course. is a form of madness. It’s hardly a civilized pursuit. It’s amazing that we spend so much time inventing devices to kill each other and so little time working on ways to achieve peace.                                                                               -  Walter Cronkite   Wars and rumors of wars are once more (if they have ever ceased) dominating the public discourse. Our own conversations and of course the regular, and social media, are full of reports, verbal and visual, interviews not only updating us but inflaming us with propaganda on the many fronts. We are informed of military conflicts from Africa to the Middle East to Europe, the clash of our brothers and sisters, of weaponry: guns to sophisticated missiles and electronic devices that produce the...

  Last week Hamas really managed to surprise the vaunted army, protective technology (The Iron Dome) and intelligence apparatus of the State of Israel, and politicians, as well as the rest of the world, when its militant fighters stormed from the blockaded Gaza into Israel in at least 20 locations, while firing thousands of rockets into the rest of the country. Hamas, during what was an extremely vicious and bloody rampage, was even able to take over a fortress, Erez, as its fighters barged through and over checkpoints and invaded Israeli communities for the first time. While they will no doubt be driven back, they have caused havoc and made things miserable for a time, for the people and the government of the State of Israel. Around 150 Israeli citizens and dual citizens were kidnapped and “taken hostage” and hundreds of Israelis have been killed, soldiers and civilians included. The Hamas invaders had also sustained huge casualties, wounded and killed. Seven issues are becoming v...

The infernos of this summer have yet to be quenched. Commentaries that outline the enlarging scope of the challenges we face, the resultant inadequacy of many systems and the need to design and implement appropriate strategies, crowd our media. Dr Courtney Howard and colleagues, in a recent opinion piece in the Globe and Mail, highlight the impact of wildfires in Yellowknife and the hope that the lessons learned will lead to the implementation of changes that will allow us do better. These are important observations. We are learning that the climate crisis is more advanced than is commonly perceived. Forecasts will be revised in light of recent experience. But forecasts are only that. The ferocity of this fire season has surprised us, over 1% of the surface area of Canada has burned. We have produced over 4 times our annual emissions of carbon already. Can it get worse? How much worse? What will next year bring? It will be important that we do all that is possible to mitigate the ongoi...