Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
If we are indeed facing a pandemic, we need to demonstrate global solidarity. In our interconnected world, no nation can deal with threats of such dimension on its own. This was the appropriately cautious admonition UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon issued yesterday after the World Health Organisation (WHO) raised its alert level for a global flu pandemic… Read more.
Congratulations to all South Africans on what was by all accounts “a well-run and highly successful election.” Especially since this stands in stark contrast to national elections on the continent – in places like Kenya, Congo and Zimbabwe – where post-election violence nullified results and forced untenable and unsustainable power-sharing governments on the electorate. Of course, there was… Read more.
I chastized the president of Columbia University for inviting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on campus to speak only to hurl political insults at him. I did so because, even though I agreed with everything the president said, I thought his ambush of Ahmadinejad was impolitic and impolite. Having invited him, the president should have been a gracious host and left it… Read more.
Like most TCIslanders, I am profoundly disappointed by the latest extension in the deadline (from 30 April to 31 May 2009) for the submission of Sir Robin’s final report on the Commission of Inquiry into corruption in the TCI. I believe I can assert without fear of contradiction, however, that our disappointment stems entirely from… Read more.
President Obama made an extraordinary appearance at CIA headquarters on Monday to explain why he ordered the release of secret CIA memos, which outline the Bush administration’s legal justification for “torturing” terror suspects: I acted primarily because of the exceptional circumstances that surrounded these memos, particularly the fact that so much of the information was public. He added… Read more.
I have always found it ironic, if not hypocritical, that feminists champion prostitutes but condemn beauty queens. Because I think a liberated woman should feel free to be either one. Frankly, that feminists identify more with prostitutes suggests that they may have more psycho-social and sexual issues (of repression) to deal with than women who… Read more.
Related commentaries: North Korea’s missile diplomacy… Read more.
Massacres at Virginia Tech and other institutions in recent years make deadly violence at school seem almost routine today. Therefore, it’s hard to imagine the impact the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, which killed 13 and injured many others, had on the nation 10 years ago today. But instead of trying to conjure up grief… Read more.
Told you so! In fact you’d be hard-pressed to find another regional leader who has gone out of his way to orchestrate such self-serving photo ops with President Obama…. Related commentaries: Fifth Summit of the Americas: managing expectations Read more.
Just days after Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, I previewed what this portended for the Caribbean as follows: I feel constrained to note that, racial pride aside, those in the Caribbean who are heralding Obama’s election as the dawn of a new day in our relations with the United States are… Read more.
