Mohandas Gandhi You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind
Benjamin Franklin They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security
A week of the military commission trial in the case of the United States vs Omar Khadr has just wrapped up. And no one would have ever predicted where we’ve ended up.
When the week began, there were a multitude of doubts as to whether things were going to go ahead. It was not certain whether [...]
Nuclear disarmament is back on the international agenda where it belongs, thanks to the efforts of U.S. President Barack Obama who is determined to earn the Nobel Peace Prize he’s already received. Obama understands that nuclear warheads are a threat to that most fundamental of human rights, the right to live. Nuclear weapons are indiscriminate [...]
Since 9/11, the question of Canadian complicity in torture has bedeviled the Ottawa security intelligence community. Unlike Canada’s closest ally, the United States, Canadian officials have never been implicated directly in the use of torture, but even hints of complicity and cooperation with those who do torture – including, unfortunately, our American allies under the [...]
How wars end is as varied as war itself. Victory, defeat, cease fire, stalemate, exhaustion and stand-down have all been associated with the ending of past wars, and these mechanisms are as current today as they have been throughout history.
In the last century, the two “great wars” ended with a negotiated settlement [...]
Countries have always honoured those who fall in battle, and funeral orations have always found honoured places in ancient as well as recent history. In Athens, Pericles’ speech is remembered not only for its language honouring the dead, but also honoured as an “eulogy for Athens itself.” Twenty-two hundred years later, Abraham Lincoln, in his [...]
