There has been much political hand-wringing – expected by Republicans but also among Democrats - concerning President Biden’s “full and unconditional” pardon of his son, Hunter.  Precedent-setting, perhaps, but certainly consistent with the recent Supreme Court decision to grant the American presidency absolute immunity from prosecution for all official acts.  In my view, we need to assess the net effects of such a move: Hunter Biden gets to live a a life not consumed by personal and legal troubles and away from the dubious intentions of the incoming Trump presidency.  Compare t ..read more

Nepotism: Originally derived from the Italian nepote, meaning NEPHEW, the term nepotism is a “reference to popes with illegitimate sons called nephews”.[1] Exhibit A:  Trump named Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to serve as ambassador to France.  Thus, Charles Kusher joins the esteemed ranks of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, who served as the first and second American ambassadors to France, respectively. Note: In 2004, Mr. Kushner “admitted to hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, a witness in a federal campaign finance investigation ..read more

Trump’s vote share at 49.9% is a fraction below the 50% mark.  My guess is, if Covid-19 hadn’t killed so many anti-vaxxer Republican supporters in the previous two administrations (Trump's followed by Biden's), then Trump would have passed the 50% threshold at the November 2024 elections. See: James Fitzgerald, “Just how big was Donald Trump's election victory?”  BBC News online, 22 Nov. 2024 ..read more

To fabricate imaginary experiences as compensation for the loss of memory.   Source: Canadian Oxford Dictionary, 2nd edition (2004 ..read more

Months ago, in an earlier post this year, I drew attention to the saga of Samsung and Delilah as an allegory to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  The recent decision by the International Criminal court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, invites us to revisit this Old Testament parable.  Israel has lost its way under Netanyahu.  Is it in the process of self-destruction?  In the words of Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, Netanyahu “risks turning Israel into a pariah state.”  In ..read more

War crimes War crimes include torture, mutilation, corporal punishment, hostage taking and acts of terrorism. This category also covers violations of human dignity such as rape and forced prostitution, looting and execution without trial. War crimes, unlike crimes against humanity, are always committed in times of war. Genocide This includes all acts committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic or religious group. Crimes against humanityCrimes against humanity are acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, such as murder, d ..read more

Are we witnessing the recasting of the Middle East as the nexus of East and West?  Henceforth it will simply be The Middle or perhaps even The Centre...  The Israeli Prime Minister and government dream of the Middle East as an obligatory point of passage that connects Europe and India, two old centres. This is depicted as a land bridge between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean.  But standing in the way are those who might also benefit and even contribute to this recasting of the Middle East as a neoliberal, planetary middle: Iran and all those who share a different historie ..read more

The Sentry We’d found an old Boche dug out, and he knew And gave us hell: for shell on frantic shell Lit full on top, but never quite burst through. Rain guttering down in waterfalls of slime, Kept slush waist-high and rising hour by hour, And choked the steps too thick with clay to climb. What mark of air remained stank old, and sour With fumes from whizbangs, and the smell of men Who’d lived there years, and left their curse in the den, If not their corpses …                       &n ..read more

The study of history offers many lessons, as do pandemics, and if we look to pandemics of the past. we may begin to see some patterns.  The period of the Spanish Influenza (circa. 1919), that of the Black Death (or bubonic plague) from 1350 to 1450, and more recently the Covid-19 pandemic, were all followed by a significant increase in political authoritarianism.  Trump’s triumph at the polls in America, and the rise of Right everywhere across today’s globe, can be attributed in some part to the impact of the Covid pandemic. However, the rise of “fascism” in the early twentieth centu ..read more

  Liberalism died on November 5th, 2024. At its core is the belief in rational human autonomy.  Among the major issues on the ballot in the US election, from the Harris perspective, was the right of half the population to control their own bodies - and their reproductive rights.  This went out the window.  Maybe it never really mattered. Instead, it was American men who have found for themselves a form of voluntary servitude, a return to feudalism even though America was never feudal, save for the slave-owning states in the ante-bellum South.  In today’s revival of th ..read more