Category World Affairs

No Clinton This Time

On this Flashback Friday we return to a post from June 28, 2016. Remember Brexit? It seems like so long ago. In the USA Donald Trump was challenging Hillary Clinton for the presidency, and all the experts said Clinton would win. She should have, but her team and party got complacent. Can you see that […]

Will It End Tonight?

They aren’t even officially nominated by their parties as presidential candidates, but you could argue that tonight’s U.S. presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is make or break time for both men. For Trump, it is an opportunity for a reset. His recent publicity has been mostly bad. Felony convictions really don’t help […]

Color Me Confused

When Donald Trump was convicted on felony charges a couple of weeks ago his supporters were outraged. The justice system is rigged they claimed. As they see it, Trump, despite being convicted by a jury of his peers, did nothing wrong. It the Democrats coming up with bogus charges and weaponizing the justice system for […]

The Longest Day Revisited

I was planning on a reflective piece today, to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the Normandy landings in the Second World War. I was going to reflect on my childhood, watch the veterans of the Great War age. Now, the youngest those who fought in that second global conflict are almost a century old. Soon […]

He Wants My Money

The last “guilty” verdict had barely been read out on Thursday before Donald Trump sent me an email asking me for money. He says he is a political prisoner and that his trial was rigged. Funny how everything that doesn’t go his way is rigged. He insists he did nothing wrong. The jury that heard […]

Weasel Words

I had CNN in the background while I was making dinner (I haven’t yet figured out how to change TV channels where I’m staying this week.) and was struck by the wording of one of the stories. The anchor referred to the paying of hush money by Donald Trump to a porn star with whom […]

Food For Thought

“But supposing that the world has become “filled up,” so to speak, with liberal democracies, such that there exist no tyranny and oppression worthy of the name against which to struggle? Experience suggests that if men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, then […]

November Is Coming

Yes, it is seven months away, but I have ben thinking about the American presidential election. Mostly I have been wondering what can be done to fix a broken system. Technically there is nothing wrong with the way Americans elect a president. The system has worked for more than 200 years, with a peaceful transition […]

Two Years and Counting

I haven’t been writing much about the wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and elsewhere. There’s enough news coverage that I doubt you really need to hear what I have to say. Still, today marks the two-year anniversary of what the experts expected to be a four-day war. Russia with all its military might, has […]

Still True

Even if Trump’s ideology were not noxious, his incompetence is a threat to all around him. To say that it is amateur hour at the White House is to slander amateurs.              – David Brooks, The New York Times, January 31, 2017. It is Flashback Friday, and this quote, which was the entire post from […]