Dashes, Domes, Africa, and the Arctic

Letters to the editor: July/August 2026 The post Dashes, Domes, Africa, and the Arctic first appeared on The Walrus .

Africa Ignored Michelle Shephard’s “Silence over Sudan” (May) could well have been titled “Silence over Africa.” As recently as this March, at the United Nations, the United States voted against recognizing the trafficking of enslaved Africans as “the gravest crime against humanity.” This indifferent attitude is just a small example of how Africa has been ignored in epidemics, famines, and genocides, to name a few of the atrocities and humanitarian crises during the past century.

In 2024, there were over 45 million Africans displaced because of conflict; more than half of all global conflict deaths since 1989 occurred in Africa. This is not just silence. This is a public, systemic, and violent subjugation of African people all but ignored by the rest of the world.

Matthew Marosszeky Aurora, ON Base Impact I sympathize with the reaction of Greenlanders to Donald Trump’s clumsy attempts to take over Greenland—and with writer Brett Popplewell’s anti-colonial attitude in his cover story “I Went to Greenland and Saw a Warning for Canada” (June). But the 1951 agreement between Denmark and the United States allowing Americans to create or operate military bases as needed was about the defence of NATO member states. I worked at Thule Air Base (now Pituffik Space Base) in 1956 and ’57.

The shortest flight path for nuclear missiles between Russia or China and the US goes right over northern Greenland. And while Canada may be having a lot of difficulties dealing with the US right now, the US, Canada, and the Kingdom of Denmark—as well as other NATO member states—understand that Russia especially is not a friendly neighbour these days and that an integrated North American defence is still essential. George King Hudson, QC Dome Doom

In “The Emperor’s New Dome” (May), why does Peter Jones even consider Trump’s demand for Canadian participation in his proposed ballistic missile defence system? Why relinquish our sovereignty to a country that regularly rejects multilateralism when the chips are down, from the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court to the UN—a country that bullies us economically and threatens annexation? Banning ballistic missile defence is foundational to arms control because it allows nuclear antagonists to establish deterrence at the lowest mutually acceptable number of offensive weapons.

The alternative is a perpetual race to overcome opposing defences, a catastrophic acceleration of hair-trigger instability that endangers us all. Bruce Dodds Benito, MB Mad Dash In her piece “My Guilty Pleasure: The Em Dash” (May), Mihika Agarwal lauds this mark of punctuation for its “dramatic flair” and “visual audacity.”

I do appreciate the writer’s rebelliousness, but as the