Today, 16 Afghan girls are recuperating in a hospital after they were poisoned and lost consciousness at their school.

This atrocity comes on the heels of similar incidents in April. 88 schoolgirls and teachers were poisoned in three separate incidents during that month as well.

The Taliban is the primary suspect for all these offences.

As the doctor treating the girls in one of the April incidents stated , these were "terrorist activities against education in the country."

To call these events... READ MORE

Imagine, if you will, you are standing inside a government ministry office, awaiting to be served by one of your fellow citizens behind the counter.

The person in front of you in the line up has finally reached the kiosk. The government employee about to serve this stranger is a person of colour.

The person in front of you then states, loudly and clearly to the bureaucrat, "I will not be served by you. You are a person of colour. I will only be served by someone like me."

I trust, of course, you would... READ MORE

It is easy for many of us to take our daily freedoms for granted. By and large, we can choose where we wish to live and work, whom we choose to support politically, and perhaps most fundamentally, we can choose to speak out on those issues that matter to us without fear of official reprisal or punishment. Such are the bedrock principles of any liberal democracy.

Thus it is all the more astounding, and terrifying, when we witness what can happen to someone in a totalitarian regime whose only "crime" is to... READ MORE

Thomas Jefferson, America's third President, is said to have once remarked , during the revolutionary war, that "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance." Threats to the freedoms that we in the West typically take for granted, Jefferson understood, often come in ways and by means that are deceptively alluring. Only an educated and watchful citizenry can fend off and prevent such attacks on our most fundamental values.

Such an attack is now underway at the United Nations.

Resolution 62/154 seeks to... READ MORE