India’s Maoist uprising morphs into women’s armed insurgency

  JONATHAN MANTHORPE: International Affairs May 20, 2017 Women guerrilla fighters are at the forefront of an emerging insurgent war in India aimed at protecting women from sexual violence and human rights abuse. On April 24, about 300 guerrillas, half of them

Trump-Kim smackdown leaves South Koreans cold

JONATHAN MANTHORPE: International Affairs May 13, 2017 For a while it looked as though Donald Trump was the white horse on a cresting wave of right-wing demagogy rushing to break over liberal democracies world-wide. But the defeat of Trump’s neo-Nazi fellow travellers

Venezuela spins at the rim of a black hole

JONATHAN MANTHORPE: International Affairs May 5, 2017 Venezuela is being sucked into a political and social vacuum because neither its local leaders nor regional players have the slightest idea where the country of 30 million people should be heading or how to

Trump ain’t seen nothing yet, Iran to top agenda

JONATHAN MANTHORPE: International Affairs April 22, 2017 Donald Trump’s first rounds on the international putting green have not been a great success. His firing of 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield after telling the Russians – and therefore the Syrians –

Demands grow for South Africa’s Zuma to go

JONATHAN MANTHORPE: International Affairs April 15, 2017 It is fitting symbolism that one of the most intense of the many mass demonstrations in recent days, demanding the removal of South African President Jacob Zuma, was in the square in front of Cape

France, Canada leaders mark centenary of Vimy Ridge

By Miranda Alexander-Webber April 9, 2017 ARRAS, France (Reuters) – French President Francois Hollande and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau led commemorations on Sunday marking the centenary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge in northern France in which over 3,500 Canadian soldiers

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

“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

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

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.