By Aly Kamadia, Editor-In-Chief, iDose
From local to global, allow me to use today’s iDose newsletter to pen a brief comment on an election and the emerging new Cold War.
We begin with the local.
While many of you may not concern yourselves with Ontario’s provincial election (e.g., you might not live in the province or country), for those who need a five-second update, it looks like Doug Ford is about to feast on another victory. Insofar as we can glance into the future through polling, the nature of that victory will likely involve a majority government.
Isn’t Ford’s record for the past few years sufficient for voters to simply fire him, critics ask?
I’ve posted a piece this week that does a good job at partially explaining Ford’s likely re-election.
That said, let’s turn to the chaos that we find on the global chessboard.
Recall that in the previous iDose issue (back in mid-March), I explicitly disagreed with George Soros’ claim (in an article that we featured by him) that we had entered a third World War. Even if Russia’s invasion of Ukraine did end up marking the beginning of a third World War, declaring so was excessively premature.
Given the drama that we’ve witnessed in the interim, has my view changed?
Yes, but I wouldn’t diagnose the situation as World War 3.
While I initially applauded the Biden administration’s intelligent reluctance to get deeply involved in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, US policy has shifted. America’s official policy, which is also playing out on the ground, is to use the conflict to weaken Russia. Put differently, Ukraine is now a stage for a proxy war between the United States and Russia, hence the beginnings of a new Cold War.
And while I’m not optimistic, hope can be discovered by efforts to stop the war. In this spirit, iDose features a piece by Jeffrey Sachs, whose analysis of the current situation and pleas for diplomacy are timely.
Oh and, on a side note, even if Covid is declining once again wherever you live, keep staying smart. Countless people keep telling me that the pandemic is over. But a radical group of people known as ‘scientists’ often beg to differ. As do various statistics, such as the increase in US hospitalizations that the CDC pointed out yesterday.
Stay safe,
