Opinions

Canada’s House of Commons gave a standing ovation to Yaroslav Hunka, a member of the 14th Grenadier Division of the Waffen-SS (1st Galician Division), formed under the aegis of none other than Heinrich Himmler. This SS division was directly responsible…

It may be trivial for some but in this dramatic and confusing moment of military escalation and propaganda I believe it is important to reiterate a simple concept: Nothing can be solved with violence! This is not just my statement…

In a previous editorial (What Must Be Done TMS 11 Sep 2023), I made the point that public discourse may not manifest underlying objective facts that play a key role in causing it. For example, something that I am calling an objective…

The International Day of Nonviolence was commemorated on 2 October. The international community chose this day as a tribute to the leader and pioneer of the philosophy of nonviolence, Mahatma Gandhi, as it was the day of his birth. Violence…

I certainly join the voices of many leaders who condemned Hamas’ attack in the strongest terms. That said, I am not as surprised as many that this attack in fact has taken place and claimed the lives of so many…

The most important aspect of violence is not the act itself but its consequences. Dear Hamas: the bombing on Saturday makes it impossible for most of your friends to support your actions. The logic of “revenge justifies violence” only makes…

Many years ago, it occurred to me to try teaching foreign policy in preschool. In a typical preschool, anywhere on Earth, when children have disputes, there can be pushing, shoving, crying, screaming, and all sorts of unpleasantness. The teacher cannot…

It has been 10 years since the revelation that former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and former German head of government Angela Merkel were being spied on by the US National Security Agency (NSA). Such was the annoyance that President Rousseff,…

The past couple of years in Antarctica have been a rough and tumble affair of erratic climate change with record-high temperatures and totally unexpected ice shelf collapse. The continent is starting to reflect the impact of a warming planet that’s…

In the 20th century, different conceptions of the forms of struggle were debated, but all of them, in one way or another, were synthesised in “the seizure of power”. Whether it is taken by nonviolent means or by armed means,…