
Foreign Minister John Baird’s speech to the UN General Assembly in September was widely reported for the forceful manner in which he condemned the Palestinians’ ’unilateral’ bid for UN membership. Largely unremarked upon, however, was the Minister’s emphasis on human rights—apparently the new lodestar of Canadian foreign policy. Echoing remarks made by Prime Minister Harper
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In the aftermath of 9/11, we entered a moment of political exceptionalism: we were told that in normal times, certain basic civil rights applied, but these were exceptional times and the normal rules didn’t apply. Suddenly, practices like torture, detention without charge, and the denial of the basic rights of prisoners of war were deemed
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October 10, 2011, marks the centennial anniversary of the Hsinhai Revolution and the subsequent establishment of the Republic of China (ROC). The revolution’s political philosophy, developed by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, was the “Three Principles of the People.” Principles of minzu (nationalism, “government of the people”), minquan (democracy, “government by the people”) and minsheng (peoples’ livelihood,
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This post first appeared on the CIC’s Roundtable blog at opencanada.org. Coptic Christians have good reason to be worried in the new Egypt. The popular revolution, led by secular young democrats who successfully overthrew the regime of Hosni Mubarak, also unleashed the darker prejudices of some Muslim Egyptians against their Christian compatriots, who represent about 10 percent of
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