Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
I joined the chorus of those heralding the birth of South Sudan as a new nation in Africa – fathered not by colonial masters but by Africans themselves. But I felt constrained to sound this cautionary note: What looms, however, may cause the southerners’ Independence Day, which they will mark on July 9, to turn… Read more.
We are extremely disappointed to have read Phil Robertson’s comments in GQ, which are based on his own personal beliefs and are not reflected in the series Duck Dynasty. His personal views in no way reflect those of A+E Networks, who have always been strong supporters and champions of the LGBT community. (Variety, December 1,… Read more.
Have you ever noticed that financial analysts talking about markets often sound like anxious mothers talking about kids? They seem to have more reasons for markets behaving badly than mothers have for two-year olds throwing temper tantrums. How often, for example, have you heard analysts trying to explain market volatility by citing the never-ending conflict… Read more.
Evidently, despite reports to the contrary, Indians remain very proud and protective of their caste system. Only this explains why they are still venting anti-American outrage over the NYPD daring to arrest a high-caste Indian diplomat on December 13 “just because” she was treating her low-caste Indian housekeeper like an indentured slave. But you’d think even Indians… Read more.
You’d be hard-pressed to find another commentator who warned, at the height of the Arab Spring nearly three years ago, that today Egyptians would be hailing as their savior a military dictator who makes Mubarak look positively Jeffersonian. Or one who warned that the world would be witnessing Mubarak’s imprisoned-kleptomaniac kids acquitted on corruption charges,… Read more.
A federal judge ruled last week that a Utah law “forbidding cohabitation with another person violated the 1st and 14th amendments” of the Constitution. The ruling, which distinguishes between polygamy and bigamy, was the result of a lawsuit filed in 2011 by Kody Brown, star of the reality series ‘Sister Wives,’ now in its fourth… Read more.
A heretofore-obscure federal judge ruled on Monday that the National Security Agency’s program of collecting phone and email metadata from millions of Americans is “probably illegal.” Yet to listen to news reporters and legal pundits frothing at the mouth over his “powerful rebuke of mass surveillance,” you’d think it had the legal force of the… Read more.
Long Walk to Freedom is Nelson Mandela’s compelling autobiography, in which he highlights his 50-year struggle (1944-94) to liberate Black South Africa from White Apartheid oppression. The irony, of course, is that Mandela spent 27 of those years in prison, where his walking was clearly limited. Freedom in Exile is the Dalai Lama’s equally compelling autobiography,… Read more.
The hysterical concerns Miami Cubans vented about a simple handshake detracted far too much from the rapturous tribute President Obama paid to Nelson Mandela at last week’s memorial service in South Africa. Unsurprisingly, the selfie, tweets, freak show-obsessed media were all too happy to oblige by devoting almost as much coverage to the Miami Cubans’ sideshow as… Read more.
I am fond of saying that I have as much love and admiration for Mandela as any non-South African could. But my record of political activism and published commentaries (dating back decades) bears this out. This is why I am so seized with contempt for those who appear to have acquired more love and admiration… Read more.
