Civil liberties encompass a broad range of human values that
bolster individual freedom and human dignity. The indispensability of vibrant
civil liberties to a healthy and well-functioning society lies in the grounds that
they provided for citizens to participate in the democratic process, criticize
their respective governments, and hold their governments accountable. Civil
liberties are not luxuries but inalienable entitlements that are essential and
imperative for human development and society's socioeconomic progress.
Consequently, civil liberties protection has emerged as the most fundamental
and cherished human aspiration in developed, developing, and
underdeveloped countries. Within the existing literature on human rights
protection, it has been the conventional wisdom that effective protection of
civil liberties requires the entrenchment of a Bill or the Charter of Rights in
the constitution. In addition to signing or ratifying the UN Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, almost all countries across the world have with
varying degree entrenched civil liberty protection mechanisms in their
respective constitutions. While constitutional protection of civil liberties is
believed to be a necessary mechanism to safeguard individual rights, it can be
argued that it is society’s political culture shaped by deeply ingrained liberal
values and principles fostering constitutionalism, not mere written words of
the constitution, that can effectively function as a bulwark against state
encroachment of civil liberties

With the return of Donald Trump to the White House, the Islamic Republic of Iran stands at a crossroads. Challenging the incoming US administration’s demands for halting uranium enrichment and regional interferences will inevitably trigger US-driven maximum economic, political, and military pressures including debilitating enforcement of the oil sanction that can drain government coffers Given the near destruction of the Islamic regime’s network of regional allies as a result of heavy Israeli military strikes which have significantly diminished Iran’s deterrence capability, and given the high level of Iranian dissatisfaction with the regime that has the potential to be translated into a full-blown political uprising in the advent of war with Israel, the ruling clerical leadership is poised to fall back on its rationality and unwillingly incline to make temporary concessions in order to deflect the impending threat on regime survival. For the Islamic regime, the concession to the incoming Trump administration’s demands may be a logical step to avoid falling from the looming precipice

Recent electoral inroads by anti-establishment political parties in Europe and around the world have led to the resurgence of the debate on populism. Within the burgeoning theoretical and analytic interpretations of the surge of populism, competing arguments have been deployed. Economic dislocation and the demographic shift within liberal democratic societies have provided fertile ground for the rise of populism. However, the success of these populist political parties, particularly the radical right populist parties, in utilizing prevailing societal resentment is to a great extent conditional upon a perceived threat to national identity. While the vestiges of political distrust and social and economic indignation can be found in Canadian society, the absence of a historically ingrained strong sense of nationhood, consolidation of multiculturalism, the eclipse of class from national political discourse, and the implausibility of resorting to Anti-Americanism as a mobilizing tactic has made it difficult for both Canadian right and left populist forces to replicate the success of their international counterparts at the national level.

It has almost become conventional wisdom among analysts and experts on Middle Eastern politics to relate the fate of the democratisation process and its failure in the region to the foreign policy platforms of the USA and its Western allies. Contrary to the prevailing interpretations of democratisation failure in the Middle East, it will be argued that the historical proclivity of leftist organisations and parties to conflate anti-imperialism with fostering hostility towards liberal values, the limited scope of industrialisation, and culturally and religiously ingrained competing loyalties are factors that have cumulatively made a significant contribution to the cultivation of a socio-political environment that is not receptive to democracy.

Despite expanding the boundary of formal equality, the Charter of
Rights and Freedoms is conducive to rationalizing liberalism's conception of
the role of the state. Contrary to the hasty expectation of social rights
advocates who hoped that they can utilize the Charter to advance social rights
in Canada, the Charter has in fact been interpreted by the courts in a manner
that justifies the subordination of the social rights to the vicissitudes in the
economic sphere, which has historically been ingrained as an overriding tenet
of liberalism. In line with a long-held liberal principle that the real threat to
individual liberty emanates from the state, not private property relations
which are indeed the basis for socio-economic inequalities, the Charter
interpretations by the courts have, in fact, reinforced a legal rationalization for
the neoliberal-motivated forces of welfare state retrenchment which are
reflected in the courts’ refusal from imposing any positive obligation on the
state to provide the basic means of subsistence for citizens as a matter of
right. Thus, judicial interpretation of the Charter reflects and reinforces the
nineteenth-century liberal tenet that the judiciary can restrain but cannot
compel the state to take positive actions.

It discusses how Afghanistan fiasco can be interpreted as an empirical testimony to the failure of implanting democratic institutions in non-liberal societies.

The tension emanated from deeply polarized socio-cultural values has found its way into the Canadian university campuses. In their endeavour to strike a balance between promoting diversity, inclusion and respecting free speech, the Canadian higher educational institutions have encountered formidable challenges. Central to the contention revolving around the free speech debate is an assertion that institutional pressures for consolidating a culture of political correctness is believed to have the potential to curtail and stifle freedom of expression which has in turn triggered governmental intervention in certain Canadian provinces. The lack of a proper balance between the quest for promoting inclusion, diversity and free speech can in the long run undermine the socially vital mission of universities, and hence corroding the public trust in the higher educational institutions. Obviously, there is no single solution that can function as panacea to surmount these pressing demands faced by the Canadian universities. However, it will be argued that the extension of constitutionally protected freedom of expression to the Canadian universities is not only geared to address the shortcomings of academic freedom, but it is also conducive to harmonizing the pursuit of promoting diversity and inclusion with upholding free speech principles.

As an organic intellectual of the emerging propertied class in 17th century England, John Locke has made an enduring contribution to the prevailing ideas shaping the socio-political order in Western societies and beyond. Through invoking the law of nature and natural rights which were nothing more than what he had abstracted from the socio-economic conditions of the seventeenth century and had projected back into the state of nature, Locke assiduously embarked on justifying the separation of civil society from the state, naturalizing class inequalities, identifying the preservation of property as the fundamental function of the state, and rationalizing the subordination of propertyless classes to the emerging liberal democratic political order geared to preserve the interests of economically hegemonic classes.

The Paradox of Universal Basic Income: Its Charms and Limits

Public Administration and Democracy: The Virtue and Limit of Participatory Democracy as a Democratic Innovation. Technium Social Sciences Journal, vol.15, no 1,pp.491-506

The appeals, challenges , and the Limits of Digital Education in the Post COVID Era

The Appeals and Limits of Digital Education in the Post-COVID Era

Politicization of responses to COVID-19 pandemic

Killing of Soleimani Presents Opportunities, Not Just Challenges.

Discusses strikes in the Canadian Education Sector

Discusses the reasons behind European appeasement policy toward the Islamic Regime of Iran

Canada Could Benefit from Trump Challenges

The Left and anti-imperialism

Highlights the flaws in Canadian Electoral System

Discusses the Interplay of Neo-liberal Project and Social Capital

Liberal Democracy, Citizenship, Class: Unresolved Contradictions of Capitalist Social Relations

Analyses the interplay of economic restructuring, class and the Canadian state