Cry, for beloved Lebanon and Syria

 ABOVE: Green Line, Beirut 1982 (PHOTO: James Case, flickr.com) My grandmother used to say the world would end in the Middle East. ISIL had that in mind when it systematically massacred villages like hers because they embraced a building with a cross on it. Her village in the southern Beqaa

The costly ‘mistakes’ of war: Neither war nor sanctions are solutions in Iran

 By Leila Alikarami I was surprised to meet Ghanimat Azdari in Geneva last June. When I was asked to speak at a gathering of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ Indigenous Fellowship Programme, I did not expect one of the fellows to be an Iranian like

Freedom and Darkness in Salman Rushdie’s Joseph Anton

 Salman Rushdie begins his brilliant new memoir Joseph Anton (Knopf Canada, 2012) by describing a phone call from a BBC journalist in February 1989 in which she asks what it’s like knowing that he’s going to be killed. Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, she went on to tell him, had issued a fatwa

Ottawa Writers Festival: One on One with Jian Ghomeshi

 Jian Ghomeshi, the host of CBC Radio Q (a national arts magazine show), was in town on October 27 to discuss his 1982 memoir. 1982 is the story of Ghomeshi's life in grade nine while living in Thornhill, a Toronto suburb. Ghomeshi tells stories of girls, concerts, school, parents and

Deception, Virulence and a Bomb: Iran Obstinately Moves Closer to the Nuclear Tipping Point

 The Canadian government’s sudden decision to sever all diplomatic ties with Iran earlier this month can be seen as a clear indication that, in the eyes of the Government of Canada, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s saber-rattling is fast-approaching the point of no return. Yet, in an attempt to avoid