“You’re all a bunch of feminists, and I hate feminists!” shouted Marc Lépine as he gunned down 14 female engineering students in Montreal in 1989. I first visited the city in 2012 to write about this particularly horrific, misogynistic massacre. …
The spectre of another Cuban missile crisis
When a four-ship Russian flotilla sailed into the port of Havana on Wednesday, US authorities were quick to downplay the event’s significance. We were reminded that Russia’s deployments were part of routine naval activity and that it’s not uncommon for …
Iran’s next president will be just as powerless
It took nearly 24 hours for the regime in Tehran to finally confirm that the deeply unpopular and uncharismatic Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and other prominent officials, including Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abodollahian, had died when their Seventies-era helicopter crashed in …
Ramaphosa has slain the Rainbow Nation
A disrespectful Afrikaans expression refers to a person seeing their gat or backside. It means to get one’s comeuppance. In last week’s South African 2024 general elections, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) saw its gat and the only remaining …
‘I was offered assisted dying over cancer treatment’
Two years ago, over the Thanksgiving holiday, Allison Ducluzeau started to feel pain in her stomach. At first, she assumed she had eaten too much turkey, but the pain persisted. A couple of weeks later, she saw her family doctor …
Mexico isn’t becoming a ‘dictatorship’
Surrounded by both Aztec pyramids and a monumental baroque cathedral, Mexico City’s vast central square, known as the Zocalo, is a vibrant symbol of the country’s nationhood and democracy. Formally called “La Plaza de la Constitución”, it was here that …
Rediscovering the Garden of Eden
In 1882, General Charles Gordon rediscovered the Garden of Eden. This renowned military hero, who had played a significant role in quelling the Taiping Rebellion and was later to perish at the Siege of Khartoum, had been dispatched to the …
South Africa’s young radicals are turning on Mandela
In 2021, at the age of 24, Chad Louw became South Africa’s youngest ever mayor. Then a member of the governing African National Congress party (ANC), Louw was elected in Oudtshoorn, a town in the Klein Karoo region of the …
Iran is about to double down
It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving man. Ebrahim Raisi’s presidential career represented the worst of the Islamic Republic. As Tehran’s deputy prosecutor less than a decade after the revolution, he was a member of the so-called “death commission” …
Iran is about to double down
It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving man. Ebrahim Raisi’s presidential career represented the worst of the Islamic Republic. As Tehran’s deputy prosecutor less than a decade after the revolution, he was a member of the so-called “death commission” …
There is no solution to the Gaza War
In assessing Israel’s post-October 7 military campaign in Gaza, it helps to recall Clausewitz’s dictum that war, though horrific, isn’t ultimately about killing and destruction for the sake of it but a means for states to achieve their political goals. …
More anarchy awaits in Africa
“God Loves You.” An accusing finger looms out of the billboard, pointing directly at passers-by. Lord Kitchener has been press-ganged into a different kind of national service.
Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, is a tundra of low-roofed buildings and patchy roads lined …
The Israel-Gaza war has changed everything
Analysts, journalists and strategists are all required to ignore the near-impossibility of truly understanding a war as it unfolds. Failing to do so would send us into a morass of self-doubt, and our work would become a useless succession of …
Iran needs another revolution
Iran’s attack on Israel last week was not a surprise, nor did it inflict significant damage. It was nonetheless a paradigm shift. This was the first long-distance, large-scale drone strike in history — and the first time Iran attacked Israel …
Is this the end of Israel?
So have we reached the end of the line? Do the latest failures and miscalculations — the relentless assault on the al-Shifa Hospital, the fatal airstrike on aid-workers, the targeting of an Iranian General in Damascus, while Hamas’s hostages languish …