Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
[T]he US and EU have been effectively checkmated. Because, despite Saakashvili’s bellicose rhetoric about dire consequences if Putin does not retreat from his “large-scale military aggression” in Georgia, he knows that neither he nor his Western allies dares lift a finger to back up their words with action. And this fact is only reinforced by the U.S.… Read more.
Over the next 16 days, Olympic competition will be held in 34 sports, including the wholly anachronistic sports of badminton and fencing. And I’m sure all of them will be fun to watch. Moreover, with network TV and internet coverage, it will be possible to watch all events for the first time in Olympic history. Nevertheless,… Read more.
Isaac Hayes was as much the personification of everything cool during the 1970s and 80s as any rap star is today. In fact, I doubt there’s a single man over forty (black or white) who in his youth did not attempt to emulate Hayes’ baritone refrain “right On” – from his Grammy and Academy-Award winning hit “Theme From Shaft.” But even though… Read more.
I cannot recall ever sitting in front of the television for more than two hours to watch anything without a book, magazine or my laptop computer competing for my attention – until last night. Because the technological wizardry, choreographed precision and sheer grandeur of everything on display during last night’s Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics kept me so mesmerized – in… Read more.
I fear EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana going on a mission now to talk peace with Putin (and his puppet Russian President Demitry Medvedev) is rather like British PM Neville Chamberlain going on a mission in 1938 to talk peace with Adolf Hitler. Because, as I have documented in a series of articles over… Read more.
It’s a sad commentary on the state of world affairs that the diplomatic initiatives of a rock star or Hollywood actress are taken more seriously than those of a seasoned statesman. But that is the perverse reality…. Alas, worshiping celebrities is not merely the avocation of giddy teenage girls; because world leaders seem equally enthralled… Read more.
The Guantanamo Bay trial of Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s driver, was billed as the most important in the annals of international military justice since the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals over 60 years ago. Yet, with all of the media focus on the US presidential campaign (complete with this week’s surreal cameo by Paris Hilton), you can be… Read more.
During a dinner conversation with professional colleagues last night, I asked what they thought about Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who died on Sunday at the age of 89. But when one of them responded reflexively by asking “Who was he?“, I simply could not disguise my stupefaction. And it did not enlighten the conversation when another of them tried to excuse this colleague’s ignorance… Read more.
No doubt you’ve heard the indignant whining by Western reporters covering the Olympics about the number of Internet sites (related to Tibet and other embarrassing political matters) that have been blocked by the Chinese government. But I find most of their complaints in this respect impudent and patently disingenuous. After all, these Western reporters accepted their coveted assignments knowing full… Read more.
