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 feel obliged to begin by confessing that, when it came to reading the works of white authors in Apartheid South Africa, my interest did not extend much beyond those of Athol Fugard. No doubt this is because Fugard didn’t just write provocative anti-Apartheid plays (like his pioneering Blood Knot in 1961); he also defied… Read more.
Mikhail Prokhorov became the Russian oligarch Americans could love when he bought the Brooklyn Nets in 2010. He endeared himself further by hiring (Black) Avery Johnson as head coach, and even bought a little street cred by allowing Jay Z to front as co-owner. What’s more, political pundits began hailing him as a pro-democracy dissident… Read more.
iPINIONS argued in a July 2013 commentary on boycotting the Olympics over Snowden that Putin clearly had no use for Snowden and seemed certain to hand him over to his American partner well ahead of the Sochi Opening Ceremony. Well, such a handover now seems like a pipe dream. Far from using Snowden as a bargaining… Read more.
As I noted years ago, Europeans once chided Americans with righteous indignation for their treatment of undesirable migrants. Now African migrants are posing the same challenges for Europe that Haitian migrants have been posing for the United States for decades.” With fecund immigrants creating an increasingly diverse continent and migrants swarming in from all over… Read more.
In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman. This was how the UK Evening News quoted Margaret Thatcher, then the Conservative MP for Finchley, turning male chauvinism on its head. No doubt it delighted her audience at the National Council of the Townwomen’s Guilds in… Read more.
I am among those who have been agitating for years for the United States to lift its hypocritical, unconscionable, and demonstrably misguided embargo against Cuba. Not least because the people who have been (and are being) harmed most by it are poor Cubans, the majority of whom are Black. That’s why I’ve argued since 2005… Read more.
President Obama led a chorus of world leaders hurling patently meaningless condemnation at North Korea yesterday after it launched a long-range missile/satellite into space. Never mind that the only thing newsworthy about this launch is that (after the fifth, brazen attempt) it appears to have been successful. Moreover, all indications are that the only danger… Read more.
The world is reacting with shock (and some derision) today at the sight of Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard being dragged to her motorcade by a scrum of bodyguards and riot police who were protecting her from jeering Aborigines. In fact, they whisked her through such a frantic, chaotic, and jostled path to safety that… Read more.
Won’t these brutal dictators ever learn? Think what you will of the cowardly path Tunisia’s Ben Ali took by fleeing into exile. At least he was smart enough to avoid the humiliation Egypt’s Mubarak is now suffering. Mubarak’s being wheeled into court on his deathbed to face trial, which will surely end in his Saddam-like… Read more.
I am acutely mindful that my commentaries on the growing pains of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are taking on the aspect of flogging a dead horse. This is why I am loath to write yet another one on the following regressive phenomenon that is now unfolding there: African leaders once personified unbridled despotism. Now they’re… Read more.
