Journalism

Refugees are big business for the UN

The Bursting of our 'Kabubble' Fantasies

This article was first published in the June issue of Standpoint. Until Donald Trump dropped the $16 million, 21,600-pound GBU-43 Mother of all Bombs on rural Afghanistan, there was no indication that the country was even on the President’s radar...

Exodus: Turkey's Brain Drain

Originally published by Byline Investigations on 12 May 2017. As President Erdogan's Clampdown Bites, the Young, the Talented and The Fearful are Getting Off in Droves. Millennials join Yuppies and Dissidents in Exile in Search of a Better Life. ...

Blitz Spirit

This article was first published in the April 2017 issue of Standpoint.  The irony wasn’t lost on any of the 12 high-powered women who had gathered in the House of Lords at 2.30 pm on March 22. The Afghan Women’s Support Forum was holding one of ...

Afghanistan in the Balance

The article was first published in the January 2017 edition of Live Encounters Magazine.  Afghanistan may no longer command the front page but somehow our fascination with the country is like an addiction to heroin, and we keep going back for one...

Afghanistan: Myth of the Splendid Sisterhood

First published by Mantraya on 14 October 2016 Stories of abuse and the mutilation of women in Afghanistan are so common we are almost desensitised to it. Violence against women and particularly domestic violence has fed the headlines certainly s...

Whatever Happened to Olga?

By Heidi Kingstone Do you find yourself, like me, longing for the days of the Soviet Union and dreaming that sometime in the not too distant future the Iron Curtain will once again descend?  While communism holds no special appeal for me, the wom...

Do Svidaniya, Olga!

This article was first published in the September 2016 issue of Standpoint. Walking around the old Soviet factory in Narva, Estonia, recently, yards from the border with Russia, I saw her. Stuck on a pillar, Olga gazed out from an old propaganda ...

Dating Dilemma

This article was first published in the July/August 2016 issue of Standpoint. Could the greatest dilemma faced by men and women today come at the end of a meal when the waiter appears with the bill? Hamlet’s quandary pales into insignificance as ...

Canada’s First Nations come last

The Keewaywin community carried the lifeless body of a ten-yearold boy into Cathy Wright’s small clinic early one evening in April. The boy had hanged himself, the first suicide in that community, but an all-too-common occurrence across Canada’s F...