Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Last week I published the commentary “CEO Pay Just a Reflection of America’s Economic Apartheid” (November 18), in which I sounded a clarion call for an angry populism to redress the growing gap between rich and poor. Last month I published “Bob Woodward: Republicans Are Trying to Blackmail Obama” (October 1), in which I condemned… Read more.
Do you remember the national furor a Black stripper incited in 2006 when she accused a bunch of White lacrosse players from Duke University of rape? White feminists and Black activists alike insisted that she was every bit as sympathetic as the White Central Park jogger who, arguably, remains America’s most famous rape victim. Indeed,… Read more.
Iran struck an historic agreement today with the United States and five other major nuclear powers: namely, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the UK – all represented by their respective foreign ministers. It calls for Iran to temporarily suspend developing its nuclear program in exchange for these powers (specifically the United States) temporarily suspending (only… Read more.
Given the ostentatious way the nation is marking this 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination, one could be forgiven for thinking that he was the only president assassinated in office. In fact, there were three others, most notable among them Abraham Lincoln, who seems far more worthy of this kind of national tribute than JFK. Yet… Read more.
I am too young to have any memory of President John F. Kennedy. Therefore, I shall leave it to others to provide the kind of sentimental commentary this week of national remembrance evidently warrants. I will say, however, that I see no redeeming political or historical value in propagating counterfactuals about what would have happened… Read more.
Here is the cynical note I sounded in 2006, when African businessman Mo Ibrahim announced his Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership (MIPAAL): Mo seems to think that African leaders are so congenitally corrupt, the only way ‘to remove corruption and improve governance’ in Africa is, ironically, to bribe them… And to prove… Read more.
If one buys Chávez’s sales pitch, PetroCaribe promises to ‘…contribute to the energy security, socioeconomic development and integration of the Caribbean countries, through the sovereign use of the energy resources.’ I am loath to suggest that Chávez is selling snake oil instead of the crude oil that is supposed to fuel this pact. But I have… Read more.
I wrote a college paper almost 32 years ago on the growing gap between rich and poor in America. It was replete with all kinds of warnings about the social, political and economic consequences of this gap, almost all of which have come to pass. Conspicuously missing, however, was any reference to CEO-to-worker pay. I… Read more.
These are very discouraging times for anti-monarchists like me. For watching tens of millions around the world reveling in the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations last year was dispiriting enough. But watching just as many, if not more, heralding the birth of William and Kate’s son (as the third living heir in waiting to the throne)… Read more.
