On my last visit to Cairo in March, I was hit by a post-revolutionary reality when I arrived at the airport. The planes coming from Europe are much smaller now, as if proving the country’s stature has somehow diminished. I was through passport control in under five minutes, an unheard phenomenon in the past. I’m … Read more

What follows is a compaction of an interview with Dror Moreh, director of the Israeli documentary, The Gatekeepers. The full text is available at Director Talk website: In The Gatekeepers, Dror Moreh speaks with former directors of Israel’s secret service, the Shin Bet, about Israel’s war on terror, Rabin’s murder, targeted assassinations, and the Jewish … Read more

The “Cool Britannia” of the noughties has now become Cruel Britannia – a country ruled by a coalition of parties, one as bad as the other for dividing its population into “skivers” and “strivers.” We are not all mooning over a new royal due to be born in the summer. We are at each others’ … Read more

In 2008 J.M. Shaw published a well-reviewed first novel, The Illumination of Merton Browne, an enthralling and at times harrowing story narrated by a whilom middle class fifteen year old boy. Merton, Shaw’s narrator, was on the eve of either catastrophe or liberation, either of which could be achieved in his extremely bleak British comprehensive … Read more

Watching the movie Zero Dark Thirty, I kept thinking about my own time with bin Laden, in 1994. It involved no torture. No drama. The hunt was not yet on. Instead, like him at the time, I was searching for answers in Khartoum from the preeminent enabler of Radical Islam, Hassan Al-Turabi. Through his writings … Read more

Rev. Thomas Reese Woodstock Center Georgetown University Washington, D.C. Dear Thomas Reese: Your comments on CNN to Piers Morgan (February 25th, 2013) regarding allegations of gay sexual activity in the Vatican are a perfect example of the casuistry I learned to reject – though the lesson wasn’t always carefully taught – during my 12 years … Read more

The author is a physician and priest who has been working in Haiti for a generation, running hospitals and social programs in Port au Prince as well as a Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos orphanage on the outskirts of the capital. Fr. Frechette was awarded this year’s $1,000,000 Opus Prize. Once upon a time, in fact more … Read more