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Americans turn Canadian about health care

After six years with Obamacare, public opinion forces Republicans to think “expansion,” not “repeal.”  PENNEY KOME: OVER EASY April, 2017 American attitudes towards universal healthcare insurance have long baffled the rest of the world. Only in the US is serious illness a ticket to bankruptcy and the food bank.  How is this conducive to healing? The Republican party has always insisted that Americans would rather die free than depend on socialist medical care. One result is that the American infant mortality rate is a “national disgrace,” according to the Washington Post. And Americans seemed okay with that – until lately (1).

“The Rock” Caught In A Hard Place

JONATHAN MANTHORPE: International Affairs April 8, 2017 Legend has it that as long as the five troops of 300 Barbary Apes continue to live in Gibraltar, the 6.7 square kilometre peninsular on Spain’s southern tip will remain British. But as the reality of Britain’s exit from the European Union begins to bite, the future of Gibraltar, British territory since it was ceded by Spain in 1713, is now up in the air along with those of Scotland, Northern Ireland and perhaps even Wales. Gibraltar’s 32,000 people find themselves in a similar position to the Scots, Northern Irish and Welsh. While

Beijing brings order to its colonial “Savage Reservations”

JONATHAN MANTHORPE: International Affairs April 1, 2017 Beijing is reaching back into the excesses of Maoist Stalinism and forward into the high-tech social control of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” to try to contain the restive natives of its colonial outposts, Tibet and Xinjiang. And Beijing’s problems with its occupied territories don’t end there. After a farcical process to “elect” a new governor for Hong Kong, the stage is set for more grief for Beijing from the territory’s people, who increasingly feel themselves culturally and philosophically divorced from the Mainland. Beijing has beefed up its campaign of cultural genocide –

Sri Lanka’s slow shuffle to lasting peace

JONATHAN MANTHORPE: International Affairs March 25, 2017 COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — After all wars, the euphoria of peace quickly gives way to the bleak, forbidding reality of the human and physical toll that must now be rebuilt. Occasionally there is a peace dividend. The energy and optimism required to deal with physical reconstruction overshadows and makes less daunting the human and social damage that must be nursed through convalescence. For example, in retrospect it is extraordinary how quickly Europe rebounded from the Second World War. It is perhaps easier to face the challenges of peace when the causes of war were

McGill University mangles academic freedom

TOM REGAN: SUMMONING ORENDA March 25, 2017 I recently experienced a moment of cosmic irony.  I had just learned that Andrew Potter, a former editor of the Ottawa Citizen, had “resigned” as head of the Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University in Montreal, when I received an email from McGill touting that another of their own, Karina Gould, is the youngest female cabinet minister in Canadian history, as Minister of Democratic Institutions. How sad that Gould won’t be able to include her alma mater in her new area of expertise. “Resigned”  is such a polite word for Potter being forced out. It occurred after an

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