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
Read More →
JONATHAN MANTHORPEApril 8, 2014 As talks resume in Vienna today for a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program, it is increasingly apparent that only political and social reform will deliver the ultimate guarantee that Tehran does not build atomic weapons. And that
CHRIS WOOD: NATURAL SECURITYPublished April 8, 2014 The 1,000-gun salute in the realm of natural security these past weeks has been for the Fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report. So let me talk (mostly) about something else instead. The IPCC’s latest
JONATHAN MANTHORPEApril 4, 2014 It was only a matter of time before the efforts by Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou to improve relations with Beijing came up against the brutal truth that the vast majority of the island’s 23 million people do not
JONATHAN MANTHORPEApril 2, 2014 In authoritarian states there is always a fine line between campaigns against social cancers such as corruption, disposing of political rivals in the process, and riding the upheaval to unchallenged personal power. In China the anti-corruption drive of
JONATHAN MANTHORPEMarch 28, 2014 It may have slipped the memory of United States President Barack Obama, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and the 28 European Union leaders, but 15 years ago it was decided that the G-8 club of the world’s leading economies
JONATHAN MANTHORPEMarch 26, 2014 A bitter feud among Arab states over relations with radical Islamic groups and how to confront regional rival Iran is threatening to bring new volatility to the already raging insecurity in the Middle East. The feud pits the
JONATHAN MANTHORPEMarch 21, 2014 It was always foreseeable that after the death of Nelson Mandela the unlikely alliance of forces drawn together by opposition to apartheid in South Africa would unravel. Even before Mandela’s death early in December there was plenty of
CHRIS WOOD: NATURAL SECURITYPublished March 21, 2014 Rube Goldberg is long dead, but the figurative machine to which he gave his name lives on. It’s that whimsical confection where a rolling marble tips a lever that sends a toy plane whizzing down
JONATHAN MANTHORPEMarch 19, 2014 In the heat of the moment, the hundreds of students who have occupied Taiwan’s parliament in defence of their country’s independence are probably not wondering how their actions will be viewed in Western capitals. But perhaps they should.
JONATHAN MANTHORPEMarch 14, 2014 The first thought in many minds when Malaysia Airways’ flight MH370 disappeared a week ago was that the plane had been bombed or hijacked by Uigher separatists from the Chinese-occupied Xinjiang region of Central Asia. It was a