January 2012
3 posts
1 tag
How Arabs Entered a 'Post-Islamist' Age -- By...
London
A year ago this week, as he watched the great uprisings in Tunis and Cairo, the French scholar Olivier Roy declared that they marked the end of Islamist politics. “If you look at the people who launched these revolts,” he wrote, “it is clear that they represent a post-Islamist generation. … The new revolutionaries are perhaps practising or even devout Muslims, but...
1 tag
Scotland's Secession Crisis as a Quebecois Chess...
Itâs not a constitutional crisis yet, but Britain and Scotland are inching toward one. At stake is not just the future of a nation, but the political careers of two powerful men. We should watch their chess moves carefully.
Alex Salmond began with the Modified Lévesque Opening. The Scottish separatist premier said he will produce a referendum ballot in late 2014, shortly before the next...
1 tag
How Canada Went Straight to Kandahar
What on earth were we doing in Kandahar? Now that it’s all over, that question hangs in the air. Decades hence, students will be stumped by that question in much the same way I was when my high-school textbook opened to Canada’s place in the Boer War. It was full of sound and fury, but signifying exactly what? How did we pour five years, more than $18-billion and 158 lives into something so large...
