The only way to stop people from fleeing their countries is to hold their governments' culpable for their citizen's suffering
Even when boundaries define arbitrary lines between territories, they embody deeper symbolic, cultural, historical and religious meaning that’s often contested for legitimacy. Our belief that borders are indisputable has at times led to remarkable efforts to establish permanent barriers as statements of sovereignty and against foreign intrusion. The Great Wall of China, built for defence…
How can a Christian support politics and economics that result in a world where over 700 million people live on less than $2 a day?
Larry Richards is a friend of mine from high school who has become a very popular speaker among conservative Catholics in North America. I watched one of his social media posts recently and he made a point that few would disagree with, but it’s a message many may not like. Larry pointed out that according…
Follow Australia's example and take a stand against China’s bullying and human rights violations
By Andrew Pickford and Jeffrey Collins Macdonald-Laurier Institute Last week, U.S. President Joe Biden joined his Japanese, Indian, and Australian counterparts at the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (or Quad) summit. This informal grouping remains the most powerful collection of countries focused on confronting the security, economic, and geostrategic challenges posed by China. Canada may not have…
Genocide is the outcome of nationalistic, populist movements that tolerate hate speech and discrimination and incite violence
If left unaddressed, the rising extremism and persecutions in China and India will undermine the well-being of millions of people. These acts will also set a precedent the international community will regret for generations, both in terms of the human cost and the undermining of many gains made in human rights over the past several…
His response to the Uyghur genocide motion stands out simply because it put all his hypocrisy on display at once
Political failures usually come in one of two flavours. The first are acts that expose a gap between reality and the stories politicians tell about themselves. Sometimes this occurs when a politician’s criminality is exposed. But much more often, it is the banal things that display glaring hypocrisy and enrage voters. Remember Bev Oda? I…
Portuguese court finds that the test, in itself, is unable to determine, beyond a reasonable doubt, that a person is infected
Every day, the news tells us about new COVID-19 positive test results. But are they reliable? Kary Mullis, the late inventor of the diagnostic test for SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19, explained how his test could be misused. So did a Portuguese court that ruled a positive test is an insufficient basis to isolate or…
Imagine what the Nazis would have done if they had access to today’s social media platforms
I recently showed Steven Spielberg’s classic film about the Holocaust, Schindler’s List, to a group of students. Watching Nazi soldiers terrorizing and murdering Jewish people, I thought to myself that on some level they had to have known that what they were doing was wrong. Yet they seemed to be unaffected. Were they impacted at…
Life doesn't always go well for those who challenge the powerful
American intellectual and longtime social activist Noam Chomsky has been described by a term that’s deeply offensive: a self-hating Jew. There’s nothing hateful about Chomsky. He’s a sojourner of truth and a voice of reason. In a recent interview, Chomsky talked about the roots of his activism. He was brought up in an educated Jewish…
Trump poured gasoline on the flames of misogyny and racism and put the lives of millions of people at risk
Amer Zahr, a teacher of Islamic law, points out that while eating pork is forbidden, it’s allowed out of necessity in cases of extreme hunger. Zahr is also a Palestinian-American comedian, and in a recent monologue, he stated that in the 2020 presidential election he chose ham over starvation. He has a point. Much of…
Someone said, ‘Greed is good’ and we repeated it. But the only thing that matters when you die is your legacy
I have to apologize to the youth of the world for the state we find ourselves in. Yes, great things have happened in my lifetime. We watched the fall of the Berlin Wall and we have taken some steps in the progress of human rights. But the legacy of the baby boomer generation leaves little…
Even when boundaries define arbitrary lines between territories, they embody deeper symbolic, cultural, historical and religious meaning that’s often contested for legitimacy. Our belief that borders are indisputable has at times led to remarkable efforts to establish permanent barriers as statements of sovereignty and against foreign intrusion. The Great Wall of China, built for defence…
