“I think that there’s a strategy to divide and conquer and to create a very contrived confusion,” said Samuel Okuzeto Ablakwan, Ghana’s foreign minster. “We denounce and totally reject those claims that Africans are as guilty and complicit as those who masterminded this whole atrocity.”

He’s wrong, of course, but it’s still a common delusion.

Ablakwan has been given special responsibility by the African Union to be ‘champion for reparatory justice’ for three centuries of the transatlantic slave trade, and claims that “Ghana was the crime scene.” (An estimated 15 per cent of the African slaves sent west came from Ghana.)

Some of the ‘reparations’ demanded are easy to make. An apology is always welcome, even if it’s only for the deeds of your ancestors. It’s not really your fault, and apologies are free.

The war between the U.S. and Iran has put some of us in an uncomfortable position.

On the one hand, we can feel like cheering on the Iranians as we watch them stand up to the American bully. It’s like the enemy of my enemy is my friend, as the old saying goes.

On the other hand, Iran doesn’t feel like much of a friend because of its terrible human rights record — including its treatment of religious minorities in that country such as Christians, Jews and Baha’is.

Those abuses only seem to be increasing due to the war. The United Nations has condemned the Iranian government for how it is treating religious minorities during this time, saying it is using the war as “a smokescreen to deepen their machinery of repression and carry out crimes under international law with impunity.”

I add my voice to Erna Buffie’s Think Tank piece “Democracy is a civic election issue” (Aug. 13) by asserting that democracy is a public education issue. Put another way, this fall’s municipal and school board elections are a test of public education — educating democratic citizens who appreciate our democratic inheritance enough to take responsibility for renewing it.

The Manitoba government recently held public forums to discuss regulations for Bill 51, the Public Sector Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity Governance Act. I was able to participate in the meeting in Brandon and there was also a session in Winnipeg.

I was a bit fired up, ready to rail about data centres and phone terms and conditions and generally give it to big tech. The discussion, however, was focused on what the public sector responses should be regarding cybersecurity, data and privacy protections, and AI usage in government.

With all the recent attention on social media bans, the harms of AI, misinformation and the like, I was somewhat disappointed that these would not be tackled directly in this meeting. Those issues may be discussed at future forums.

At this event, as focus groups developed responses, the discussion between private companies and public governance kept getting mixed in, pointing out the reliance of government services on private companies in running their digital operations. As government operations become more dependent on digital infrastructure and towards AI agency and control, rethinking how technology is implemented may be crucial to our democracy.

As a non-Jewish Canadian, I have watched our public conversation about Israel and Palestine become increasingly polarized. One feature of that debate has particularly caught my attention—not the disagreements themselves, but the moral courage required of Jewish Canadians who publicly dissent from influential voices within their own community.

Ironically, many non-Jewish Canadians who may have little familiarity with Jewish history assume that disagreement is somehow un-Jewish. The opposite is true. Debate has been central to Jewish intellectual life for centuries. The Talmud itself preserves arguments rather than erasing them.

To outsiders, minority communities can easily appear to speak with one voice. In Canada, organizations such as the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), Jewish Federations of Canada (UIA) and B’nai Brith are often perceived as representing the Jewish perspective on Israel and antisemitism. They undoubtedly represent many Canadian Jews. But they do not represent them all.

There are also Jewish organizations and individuals — including Independent Jewish Voices Canada, the United Jewish People’s Order, the recently formed Jewish Faculty Network and others — who reject the notion that any single institution or political perspective can define what it means to speak as a Jew in Canada. They frequently offer perspectives that differ from those advanced by many established Jewish organizations about Israel; defend the importance of free expression on university campuses; and argue that criticism of the actions of the Israeli government should not automatically be equated with antisemitism.

The prospect of a Super El Nino on the horizon has figured prominently in the media, but its impact on farmers depends on which side of the world they live.

As the harvest equipment starts chewing through the first fields of the season here, the phenomenon ranks low on farmers’ worry list.

If anything, warming sea-surface temperatures in the central Pacific could support higher crop prices due to its impact on production in export competitors such as Australia.

While not a key driver behind the recent rallies that have brightened the price outlook for this year’s harvest, the Super El Nino one of the underlying fundamentals that could help keep prices buoyant through the winter months, says Bruce Burnett, a weather and markets analyst with Glacier Farm Media.