Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
[Author’s Note: This commentary was originally published on March 31, 2005. Sadly, 20 years later, the more things have changed elsewhere, the more they’ve stayed the same in Haiti. So I’ve updated it — with a few new facts and, alas, the same old misery and hypocrisy.] Haitian migrants aren’t causing a crisis so much… Read more.
Capitalizing the B when referring to Black people might not seem like a big deal. However, when editors at The New York Times, USA Today, and the Columbia Journalism Review all make a big deal of their change in style, it’s certainly worthy of comment. Here is how the Times announced and rationalized its (belated)… Read more.
The migration crisis is only the latest issue threatening to blow the European Union asunder. From “Brexit” to “Grexit,” countries are shunning the benefits of economic integration to reclaim full political sovereignty. Many Europeans yearn for the days when the EU primarily functioned as a trading bloc. Even German and Hungarian Europhiles are joining British and… Read more.
For years, CARICOM leaders have been demanding billions in reparations from the British government for slavery. For just as long, I’ve been trying to disabuse them of their legally, politically and morally unsustainable demands. I tried in such commentaries as “The Fatally Flawed Demands for Reparations for Slavery,” February 16, 2007, and “CARICOM Demands for… Read more.
The media are lauding President Francois Hollande for announcing that France will finally right one of history’s greatest wrongs by forgiving what remains of Haiti’s “independence debt.” In an address at the opening of the memorial and cultural centre in Guadeloupe on Sunday, Hollande said Haiti’s debt of US$81.2 million will be cancelled… Haiti, which became the world’s… Read more.
It speaks volumes that Europeans are ascribing no blame for this Lampedusa tragedy to the African governments that have failed their people so abysmally. This failure, after all, is the only reason why so many Africans, utterly bereft of hope at home, are fleeing to Europe in desperate pursuit of peace, prosperity, and happiness. But… Read more.
I read with a mixture of dismay and bemusement about the goings-on in Haiti this week at the Twenty-Fourth Inter-Sessional Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government. This Conference is the de facto central government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and is responsible for setting its policies. Perhaps you’ve read reports on discussions the… Read more.
For a number of reasons I have been loath in recent years to comment on political developments in my mother country of the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI). I am doing so today only in response to an inordinate number of urgent entreaties for me comment on the fight between our local leaders and British… Read more.
At an extraordinary summit in Cuba this week, leaders of all countries in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) called on President-elect Barack Obama to lift America’s nearly 50-year embargo against their host country. As we gather today in Cuba, the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America is still in place…… Read more.
