Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Not long ago, it was heretical to even question the miracle of China’s everlasting economic growth. Nothing testified to this quite like corporations lobbying to get into its market like Evangelicals praying to get into Heaven. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find any Western economist, politician, CEO, or pundit who raised any doubt about… Read more.
In a last-ditch effort to stop Donald Trump’s likely nomination as the Republican Party’s candidate for president, more than 50 conservative foreign policy experts have signed an open letter condemning the real estate magnate as unfit for the office. From stating that he’ll make Japan — a close U.S. ally — pay for its longstanding American support, to vowing to… Read more.
I have been advocating for years for college athletes to not only get paid, but “go pro” at the earliest opportunity. I did so in “The Categorical Imperative to Pay Student Athletes Just Got Stronger,” March 28, 2014, “Student Athletes Make Billions (for Colleges) but Most Graduate Poor … and Dumb,” January 16, 2014, and… Read more.
In my February 13 obit on U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, I scoffed at the way millions rushed to eulogize him. I noted that, if Scalia were the transformative jurist they were hailing, he would not have been known more for petty and pugnacious dissents than wise and precedential decisions. I noted further that… Read more.
I’m on record stating how much I dislike the annual Academy Awards show (the Oscars). Because I have little regard for preening, pampered poseurs showing off their borrowed frocks and bling-bling as a prelude to a three-hour show — only six minutes of which anyone really cares about (i.e., the time it takes to present… Read more.
Apple’s compliance with the Chinese government makes a mockery of its defiance against the American government. Not least because this betrays the fact that Apple is all too willing to sacrifice customer privacy for corporate profit… And if you believe the Chinese government used Apple to protect the privacy of its citizens, your naiveté is matched only by Apple’s hypocrisy.… Read more.
With all due respect to critics and members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Academy), how much a film makes, not whether it wins an Oscar, is the generally recognized measure of its success. Especially considering that winning an Oscar is more the result of crass political campaigning than any assessment of… Read more.
I have been lamenting Uganda’s floundering democracy all my adult life. With respect to elections, here is what I wrote years ago in “Where’s the Outrage?! Opposition Leaders Doing Hard Time During Elections,” December 30, 2006. ____________________ Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni is no more a democratic pioneer in Africa than Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak is in… Read more.
Three years ago, Edward Snowden made defying government mass surveillance a cause celebre. Ever since, tech companies have been in the vanguard of those championing this cause. From day one, however, I’ve been decrying their hypocrisy and the ignorance of their customers. This excerpt – from “Complaints about NSA Spying Are Schizophrenic … and Misguided,”… Read more.
Inserting himself into the Republican presidential race, Pope Francis on Wednesday suggested that Donald J. Trump ‘is not Christian’ because of the harshness of his campaign promises to deport more immigrants and force Mexico to pay for a wall along the border. [Trump responded immediately, denouncing the pope’s remarks as ‘disgraceful’ and warning that] ‘If… Read more.
