Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Australia is roughly the same size as the contiguous United States. But it has a population of only 22 million people; the US has 307 million. Therefore, you’d think Australia would be solicitous about attracting new immigrants to its shores. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. For the record, over 1 million people… Read more.
Abdel Baset al-Megrahi is the notorious Libyan convicted in 2001 of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988. The explosion occurred over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people, two-thirds of them American. Megrahi was sentenced to life in prison. Nevertheless, Scottish authorities released him on compassionate grounds last Thursday after determining he was suffering… Read more.
Poor Gordon Brown. He has suffered more humiliation in the international media lately than any British prime minister in recent history. Perhaps you’ve seen the viral video of him being dressed down by British Member of the European Parliament Daniel Hannan. He ended his tongue-lashing by calling Brown “the devalued prime minister of a devalued… Read more.
I officially declare the coalition of democratic forces … in Ukraine’s parliament dissolved. This has been long expected, but for me it is extremely sad. I would not call this a political apocalypse, though it is true that it is another challenge of democracy. I hope we can overcome it. (Arseny Yatsenyuk, Speaker of the… Read more.
In 2005, the U.S. Congress hailed Viktor Yushchenko, the first democratically-elected president of Ukraine, as the George Washington of his country. However, no American politician could have anticipated the obsession fractious Ukrainians evidently developed for elections after their split from the former Soviet Union. After all, Sunday’s national poll was the third in three years,… Read more.
Yesterday, President George W. Bush of the United States and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran joined the queue of world leaders delivering canned speeches before the Annual Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. None of them said anything of any consequence. They never do. But here’s the dirty UN secret: most… Read more.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have tipped his hand unwittingly during his interview on 60 Minutes last night. Because he manifested a classic case of projection when he ascribed to President George W. Bush the intent to use the threat of attack as psychological warfare against his people. One wonders, after all, what his repeated… Read more.
Last year, I wrote a series of articles chronicling the US government’s extraterritorial prosecutions (and imprisonments) of online gambling executives who operated out of Antigua and Costa Rica. I predicted that these prosecutions, coupled with targeted congressional legislation, would spell the death throes of this once-thriving industry. For example, in the most recent of these,… Read more.
Reports that emergency surgery forced Fidel to transfer power to his brother Raúl a few days ago had Miami Cubans dancing in the streets yesterday. Their reaction did not surprise me. But I was stupefied. After all, their celebration not only betrayed their naiveté about the implications of this transfer, but also indicated how much wasted emotion and… Read more.
In November 2004, the world watched in awe as Viktor Yushchenko, scarred but unbowed by a botched assassination attempt, led Ukrainian democrats in an Orange Revolution. They were rising against the communists who had lorded over them for fifty-plus years. In April 2005, I wrote a laudatory and hopeful commentary on Yushchenko’s historic visit to… Read more.
