Thoughts on BC Politics and More

Powerful nations are undermining international law, leading to global injustice and the erosion of human rights enforcement ~~ by Gerry Chidiac   The years between 1945 and 1949 were a golden age for human rights. As people reflected on the Holocaust and the devastation of the Second World War, they recognized the importance of a system of international law to prevent such catastrophes from happening again. This period saw the adoption of the Genocide Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, along with updates to the Geneva Conventions defining war crimes. It soon became clear, however, that powerful countries and individuals had no intention of being held accountable to these ideals. They continued to act with impunity, and millions of people were killed. There was another moment of hope as the Cold War ended in the early 1990s. But again, world leaders—especially those in the so-called First World—failed to seize the opportunity to build a peaceful world. Instea...

  At the author’s request, this commentary is shared anonymously ...     Not in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would say something like this. But I feel I must. Even though I know full well that it will achieve nothing.    I am an unashamed peacenik. I have spoken out against war my whole life. My prayer is, “ Lord, make me an instrument of your peace .” My favourite saying from my youth is “ Suppose they gave a war, and nobody came .”   But I am also the son of a Canadian farm boy who left his home and family to lay down his blood in the fields of France to liberate Europe and rid the world of a tyrant. He quietly suffered from his wounds the rest of his life. It was as a price he was willing to pay so that his children would never have to face a similar horror. It was his hope that this would never happen again. Yet, it has. And, we all have skin in this game; our peace was purchased with our father’s blood.    " Take up ...

  I can’t help but feel I am not alone in worrying, and wondering, about what the world can do following the rolling of Russia’s military in to the sovereign and independent country of Ukraine.   Just 39 years old when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) collapsed at the end of 1991, former military intelligence officer Vladimir Putin seems, by all appearances ready to once again use the hammer of military force to overpower any resistance to his aspirations.   While crushing resistance at home to a war which many everyday Russians oppose strongly, and indiscriminate bombing going on in the Ukraine, it seems that the megalomaniac President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, will not counter any resistance to his imperialistic intents. But now, what should western democratic countries do? In addition to actual military targets, Putin has unleashed the targeted bombing of schools, kindergartens, hospitals, and homes – with the end result of innocent civilians bei...

The Economist ~~ July 4, 2019 VLADIMIR PUTIN, Russia’s president, has declared the liberal idea “obsolete”. It will not surprise you to learn that we disagree. Not just because he told the Financial Times that liberalism was all about immigration, multiculturalism and gender politics—a travesty—but also because he picked the wrong target. The idea most under threat in the West is conservatism. And you do not have to be a conservative to find that deeply troubling. In two-party systems, like the United States and (broadly) Britain, the right is in power, but only by jettisoning the values that used to define it. In countries with many parties the centre-right is being eroded, as in Germany and Spain, or eviscerated, as in France and Italy. And in other places, like Hungary, with a shorter democratic tradition, the right has gone straight to populism without even trying conservatism. “To be conservative…is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the ...