Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Swimming This was the last day of competition. Michael Phelps insists it was his last too. Which constrains me to reprise what I wrote in this regard on the last day of competition at London 2012: He insists that he will now rest on his laurels, and who can blame him. But I fully expect… Read more.
I was in the vanguard of those calling on the IOC to ban the entire Russia team from the Rio Olympics. I argued in “Track Officials Ban Russians from Rio Olympics for Doping,” June 18, 2016, that: I suspect Track and Field athletes are being punished for the sins of Russian athletes in every other sport.… Read more.
On June 16, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) published a damning report on state-sponsored doping among Russian Track and Field athletes. On June 18, a month ago today, I published “Track Officials Ban Russians from Rio Olympics for Doping,” in which I argued that athletes in other sports had to be doping too. ______________________ I suspect… Read more.
Last November, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) published a report, which found that Russia perpetrated state-sponsored doping to enhance the performance of Track and Field athletes. It made two major recommendations: The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the sport’s governing body, should suspend all Russian athletes from international competition. The Russian Athletic Federation (RusAF)… Read more.
No doubt Russia needed to retaliate after ISIS blew up a Russian plane, killing 224. No doubt France needed to do the same after ISIS terrorized Paris, killing 129. The problem is that both Russia and France have retaliated in a manner that will do nothing to stop ISIS from launching similar attacks … or war-stricken… Read more.
Putin and his cronies used the $51-billion Sochi Olympics as an egregious kickback scheme. Nothing betrays this fact quite like Sochi already looking like a crumbling, desolate North Korean settlement just weeks after the end of the Games. (“Prokhorov, Russian Owner of NBA Nets, Exposed,” The iPINIONS Journal, March 26, 2014) I wrote the above… Read more.
And Putin is trolling him with a coalition of his own … to do the same. American-trained Syrian fighters gave at least a quarter of their U.S.-provided equipment to al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria early this week, the U.S. Central Command said late Friday. In a statement correcting earlier assertions that reports of the turnover were… Read more.
[M]illions could be wandering through Europe, in migrant formation, before the end of the year. At that rate, Europe might end up with a majority non-White population before the United States… Germans are greeting this first wave of migrants with banners, cheers, and food. But don’t be surprised if these same Germans are hurling xenophobic epithets… Read more.
Alas, Mohammed Morsi seems fated to become a martyr for the cause of democracy in the Middle East. He became Egypt’s first democratically elected president in June 2012. But army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi deposed him in July 2013 – in a coup that was, ironically, almost as popular as the student protests that… Read more.
A Russian lawyer for Edward Snowden said on Tuesday the fugitive former U.S. spy agency contractor who leaked details of the government’s mass surveillance programs was working with American and German lawyers to return home. ‘I won’t keep it secret … he wants to return back home.’ (Reuters, March 3, 2015) Well, that didn’t take… Read more.
