Queen Elizabeth longer may she reign on August 15, 2016Should Elizabeth II — by the grace of God, of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland and of her other realms and territories, QUEEN — resign? Akihito, “His Imperial Majesty,” emperor of Japan, has said he’d like to. He’s 82, “beginning to feel his age” and has made a couple of minor but elderly slips […]
Britains left pays the price for flirting with anti-Semitism on May 29, 2016The charge of anti-Semitism has roiled the British Labour Party, once one of Israel’s staunchest supporters. Party members tended to think anti-Semitism was a disease of the right. Now, it’s become the reverse. Both prominent figures and ordinary members have been suspended from membership and from posts on suspicion of this form of racism, as […]
Ignore the handwringing: Israels shift to the right wont change its Palestinian policy on May 23, 2016Israel is about to have “its most right-wing government, ever. Avigdor Lieberman, head of the far-right party Yisrael Beitenu (Israel is Our Home) has accepted Benjamin Netanyahu’s offer of the defense ministry. The Israeli prime minister’s offer returns to the cabinet a man who is a past foreign minister and whose vision for the future […]
Mandela, Trump and the sins of the past on May 15, 2016Donald Trump is on to something. As he marches on to his prize of the Republican nomination — and perhaps leader of the free world — he’s positioned himself as the one who will “make America great again.” The insurgent’s challenges are many. And his ascension comes as a diverse movement takes hold in many […]
As challenges mount, the centre cannot hold on May 1, 2016Two politicians, an academic and a bunch of nosey reporters are making socialism sing again. One can almost hear the strains of “The Internationale” rising in the global background. From the bottom: the reporters are those now pawing their way through the 11 million documents leaked from Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca. They gave a […]
Europes got its own Donald Trumps on December 20, 2015 As an assailant, reportedly shouting, “this is for Syria” stabbed a fellow traveller in a London metro station last weekend, an as-yet unidentified onlooker shouted — “You ain’t no Muslim, bruv!” In the way of today, it became a hash tag almost instantly, and was used by Prime Minister David Cameron when asked about the […]