Apr 17 2018 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — Robin Sears’ article, posted in Sunday’s Toronto Star, was a cogent warning on the implications of extreme populism. Titled “The Fatal Attraction of the Politics of Confrontation,” the column reminds us of what inevitably happens if we opt for leaders who would rather attack democracy as opposed to reforming it: “But the problem with those […]
Mar 27 2018 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — In 2016, some 18.2 million Canadians used Facebook, and until the platform’s seismic struggles in the past two weeks that number was expected to grow to 20 million. It has a 75% reach among Canadian internet users and has twice as high a user rate than Twitter. More than half of Facebook users are women […]
Feb 27 2018 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — The contrast was stark – and telling. En route back to Canada following a trip to South Sudan, our team was on a layover at Frankfurt. Eager for news – any news – I purchased a Time magazine, poring over its pages to see if anything significant had transpired while we were disconnected from the […]
Feb 14 2018 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — Is the world getting better or worse? It’s a ridiculous question really – not just because it depends on who you ask, but because a single answer proves impossible. The conclusion can only be that it is both. Plenty of research has been published legitimizing both arguments. As a kid growing up in Calgary in […]
Feb 6 2018 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of us, are feeling the tug to just give up. We shun giving in because we instinctively understand that the direction much of the world is travelling is inequitable and unsustainable. Yet a kind of resignation is confronting so many of us as we sense that little we do seems […]
Jan 31 2018 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — In a modern hurried-up world, they rank as some of the least understood or acknowledged forces for policy, diplomacy, human justice or humanitarianism. There are less than 200 of them in a world of billions and inevitably become the face of their country. I’m speaking of ambassadors. They are everywhere and nowhere at the same […]
Jan 9 2018 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — My wife and I leave in a few days to lead a humanitarian team into South Sudan. A trek we make every year at this time, this coming visit is occurring during a time of dramatic challenge in South Sudan specifically, and Africa in general. In various African nations, youth are increasingly coming onside for […]
Dec 26 2017 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — Journalists can be forgiven for growing jaded over time. Covering politics can prove to be a deep struggle of getting facts from those seeking to shelter them. More often than not journalists know they are being played. “The media are less a window on reality, than a stage on which officials perform self-scripted, self-serving functions,” […]
Dec 5 2017 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — As decisions go, the passing of the Republican tax cut bill could have the most profound consequences for any nation having economic relations with the United States, including, and perhaps especially, Canada. Nobel Prize winner and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote of how all the lies surrounding the initiative, “show the rot spreads […]
Nov 22 2017 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — It was 54 years ago today that the news emerged from the speaker in my Grade 7 class in Calgary that American president John F. Kennedy had been shot and killed. School was promptly cancelled, leaving us all to head home in a kind of stunned silence, only to see our devastated parents huddled around […]
Nov 18 2017 — Glen Pearson — London Free Press — Her speech was bound to raise the ire of many, but when Gov. Gen. Julie Payette spoke to the Canadian Science Policy Centre convention earlier this month, it’s likely she was unaware of the response it would generate. Yet, she’s been dealing with it ever since. I supported Payette’s selection. She is a woman of […]
Nov 9 2017 — Glen Pearson — Spark — It was bound to occur at some point, but the emergence of the group called No Label became inevitable even years ago as the hper-partisanship of Washington D.C. began to systematically tear down many of the accomplishments and hopes established in America following World War Two. No Label is a group of Republican, Democrat and […]
Oct 25 2017 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — The subject of countless articles, punditry and speeches throughout the world, the idea that democracy itself could well be in a state of decline has become a hot topic. The sinews that hold prosperous Western societies together appear more atrophied that at any time in recent memory. One of the last people we would expect […]
Oct 12 2017 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — One of the consequences of missing the mark on predicting the future is not only confusion, but disillusionment. It’s happening with democracy at this moment in time, leaving many feeling more isolated from the political process than ever. An example is what has occurred with the activities of mass media or social media. Futurists used […]
Oct 4 2017 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — Our local food bank is in the midst of its 29th annual Thanksgiving Food Drive – three decades in which use has climbed repeatedly over the ensuing years. This year some 850,000 Canadians will visit food banks each month. One wonders why it is that successive Canadian governments have proved so ineffective at seriously dealing […]