Archive d'auteurs: Errol Mendes

Published in the Globe and Mail, May 1, 2013  If the United States becomes convinced that Bashar al-Assad’s regime has started using chemical weapons against its own citizens, the “red line” set down by President Barack Obama will have been crossed. If the U.S. initiates military action as a consequence, it will provoke the same questions of legality that a… Read More

Published in iPolitics, April 9, 2013 A little more than two weeks ago, Canada became the only nation on the planet to walk away from the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. The decision to withdraw — making Canada the only nation outside the main global effort to combat devastating droughts in Africa and elsewhere — was taken quietly by cabinet on the re… Read More

Published in the Globe and Mail, March 5, 2013 The reputations of Canadian companies operating abroad are under serious attack. The attention of governments and the global private sector is being drawn to recent headlines such as “SNC bribery probe widens to Algeria,” “Bangladesh government accuses SNC exec of bribery,” “Griffiths Energy guilty of Chad… Read More

2013 will see the UN and many countries around the world celebrating the 65th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  It should also be the year that we celebrate a Canadian law professor, John Humphrey, who as head of the UN Human Rights Division collaborated with Eleanor Roosevelt to produce the blueprint that would result in what was te… Read More

A different version of this essay was published in the Huffington Post, September 19, 2012. The hate-mongering film produced by an extremist anti-Muslim individual in the U.S. (who is also a convicted criminal) has triggered anti-U.S. violence around the world by hate-filled Muslim extremists. Among the tragic victims so far are four dead U.S. diplomat… Read More

The critics of the Invisible Children video have argued that the viral video, which astoundingly has had more than 36 million hits on YouTube, is overstating the importance of this now much-diminished group of thugs called the Lord’s Resistance Army, led by Joseph Kony. The aim of the video is to make Kony world famous in order to lead to his capture. The criti… Read More

On February 4th, 2012, the UN Security Council witnessed what could be one of the first salvos in a new cold war focused on democracy and human rights. A double veto by Russia and China defeated the resolution drafted by the Arab League (and supported by almost all the Arab states along with all the other members of the UN Security Council) that was aimed at stopp… Read More

One of the world’s most astute financial experts and investor George Soros is warning that the debt crisis that has plagued Europe and the U.S. since 2008 reminds him of the final years and collapse of the Soviet Union. In an interview with Bloomberg Television, Soros is claiming that the financial markets in some respects did actually collapse but were kept… Read More