Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Liz Truss became UK prime minister on September 6. Except that, she did so by channeling Margaret Thatcher so effectively, she became a meme. Here is how I chimed in on the viral ridicule in the comments section to a July 17 report on her campaign in The Guardian: Liz Truss is fashioning her campaign… Read more.
Publishers will release Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind the Crown by Valentine Low on October 6. Low is the royal correspondent for The Times of London. His book unveils the intrigue, ambition, and power players at Buckingham Palace. And Harry and Meghan are at the center of all of them. Courtiers: Intrigue, Ambition, and the Power Players Buckingham Palace launched an… Read more.
Rich whites have been using the concept of race to divide and conquer the poor since time immemorial. This has manifested over time in episodes that reflect what are arguably the insidious effects of Stockholm Syndrome. Case in point is British Labour MP Rupa Huq, of Pakistani descent, accusing British Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer… Read more.
With these referendums, the Russians are saying: We can’t beat them, so let’s claim their territory, and hope for the best. That, in effect, is what Putin is having his puppets in the Russian-back Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk do. Russian-installed leaders in occupied areas of four Ukrainian regions set out plans for referendums… Read more.
Except to him…? After all, that compass clearly guided Harry to abandon royal life in the UK for celebrity life in the US. Service and duty or trapped? What’s more, he then got on US television and hailed the godsend Meghan was for rescuing him from the gilded cage he sees his brother William and… Read more.
Ukraine finally launched its highly touted counteroffensive on August 29. But the whole world is already hailing it as a stunning success. Not least because, over the past 5 days alone, Ukrainian soldiers recaptured territory in eastern Ukraine that took Russian soldiers 5 months to capture. Ukraine’s forces have continued to press their counterattack in… Read more.
This blog is replete with my anti-monarchist views. But those views date back to my childhood. That’s when I developed an innate sense of resentment at seeing my compatriots take greater pride in the “Queen’s Honours” (like knighthoods and OBEs) than in our national independence. But I am heartened that Barbados is leading “Commonwealth countries”… Read more.
Frankly, the way the British media are hailing Meghan and Harry’s return this week, not just William but even Charles can be forgiven for feeling rather like the good son in “The Parable of the Prodigal Son”. But, even though it’s Sunday, I suspect some of you may not appreciate (or even get) that Biblical… Read more.
Their rivalry Russian President Vladimir Putin is waging a genocidal war in Ukraine that is making strange bedfellows of President Volodymyr Zelensky and his predecessor Petro Poroshenko. After all, just weeks before Putin launched it, Zelensky was accusing Poroshenko not just of treason but of attempting to flee justice to boot. Poroshenko is one of… Read more.
I love Finland. And I’m an even bigger fan of female leaders. That’s why I was so proud to proclaim that “Finland is great because women rule. But Sanna Marin, Finland’s party-girl prime minister, is making a mockery of my proclamation. Sanna Marin, Finland’s party-girl prime minister Sky News reported yesterday on her still-unfolding, party-gate… Read more.
