BRIAN BRENNAN: BRIEF ENCOUNTERS June, 2015 At age 18, Debbie Lori Kaye became the youngest performer in history to have her own variety special on CBC TV. A tiny singer with a big voice, her star had been rising steadily
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JONATHAN MANTHORPE June 27, 2014 The humiliating defeat of British Prime Minister David Cameron in the election for the European Union’s top bureaucrat is probably the best thing that could have happened to him. Cameron took a calculated risk in the fallout from
JONATHAN MANTHORPEJune 25, 2014 It’s easy and entirely justifiable to let loose an outraged rant at the prison sentences handed down in Egypt to three Al Jazeera journalists, including Egyptian-Canadian Mohamed Fahmy, after a piece of judicial theatre so farcical it denigrates
JONATHAN MANTHORPEJune 20, 2014 Fellow Africa hand Remer Tyson and I were huddling behind the thickest wall we could find one bad morning in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and, as one does as the bullets fly, we grew philosophical. “If Africa had
JONATHAN MANTHORPEJune 18, 2014 It is logical, but far too easy, to blame the Somali-based militant Islamic group al-Shabaab for massacres in two Kenyan coastal communities on Sunday and Monday in which close to 100 people were killed. It’s logical because the
CHRIS WOOD: NATURAL SECURITYPublished June 13, 2014 My Facts and Opinions colleague Jonathan Manthorpe writes insightfully1 about the affairs of nations. His great talent is the ability to reveal how their competition, so often ‘analysed’ as though it were the political analog
JONATHAN MANTHORPEJune 13, 2014. There has never been a satisfactory explanation why George W. Bush and his Praetorian Guard nursed such a visceral hatred of Saddam Hussein. But they came to power in 2000 intent on vendetta, and within hours of the
JONATHAN MANTHORPEJune 11, 2014 The Chinese government has confirmed what everyone has known for a long time: it was lying when it signed a treaty guaranteeing Hong Kong substantial autonomy, speedy progress to democracy and protection of the rule of law. Protesters
JONATHAN MANTHORPEJune 6, 2014. How, then, to reconcile the relaxed body language of the Americans and Taliban at the handover of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl a week ago, and a suicide bomb attack today on the election campaign convoy of Afghanistan’s likely next
JONATHAN MANTHORPEJune 4, 2014. From being the poster boy for a modernizing Middle East, the filthy rich Gulf state of Qatar has become a menace. Next month the governing body of international soccer, FIFA, will receive a stack of evidence that Qatar
CHRIS WOOD: NATURAL SECURITYPublished May 31, 2014 If you have ever spent a night under the canopy of stars undimmed by city lights, in a place where the only sounds are those unmade by man that have whispered and lapped and knocked