I am a South African-born US patriot. My first apartment overlooked the Iwo Jima Memorial in Washington DC. I didn’t understand the reverence with which the guards saluted the American flag. I was annoyed when people said, ‘Have a nice day!’ Americans, I decided, were overfed and under-read. Then my …
Read More »Germans vote in historic election, with Angela Merkel set to step down after 16 years in power
Polling stations opened across Germany on Sunday morning, with just over 60 million people eligible to vote. The Bundestag officially has 598 seats, and all of them are being contested on this occasion. The actual number of seats may vary, however, due to the country’s complicated parliamentary system, which also …
Read More »Occupy Wall Street had the potential 10 years ago to take activism to the next level. Instead, it may have crippled it forever
When activists began setting up tents in lower Manhattan 10 years ago, inspired in part by the Arab Spring and in part by the sheer rapacious greed of banks that had gambled with Americans’ money, lost it, and demanded to be made whole, the narrative managers fell into two camps. …
Read More »Fifteen years on, Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, the former VP’s Oscar-winning film, has proved to be largely inaccurate tripe
Fifteen years ago today, failed US presidential candidate, Al Gore, released what can be best described as a scare movie called ‘An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming And What We Can Do About It’. The movie was a global hit and Gore won an Oscar; he also …
Read More »Twenty years on from 9/11, the ‘War on Terror’ has morphed into a ‘war’ against the West’s own populations
There was a certain symmetry about the West’s withdrawal from Afghanistan considering it was almost exactly twenty years since the 9-11 attacks and the subsequent US-led invasion. That military intervention marked the start of the ‘War on Terror’. On the grounds that it was ‘sheltering terrorists’ the Taliban was targeted, …
Read More »20 years after 9/11, I no longer recognize my country. The US has become a malignant narcissist, infecting all it encounters
I was raised as a military brat – a special category of American youth imbued from an early age with the pride in being part of a collective united by a sense of duty to country and the selflessness of sacrifice when it came to fulfilling that duty. There was …
Read More »UK foiled 31 terror plots in past 4 years, Taliban takeover in Afghanistan likely ‘emboldened’ lone-wolf extremists – MI5 chief
“Even during the pandemic period we have all been enduring for most of the last two years, we have had to disrupt six late-stage attack plots,” Ken McCallum, the head of the UK’s domestic counter-intelligence and security service, told the BBC Radio 4’s Today show. McCallum said 31 late-stage attack …
Read More »Vietnamese man gets FIVE YEARS behind bars for breach of Covid-19 quarantine & spreading virus
The accused, Le Van Tri, was charged with “spreading dangerous infectious diseases to people,” a crime which carries a penalty of five to 10 years in prison if it results in the death of at least one person under Vietnam’s criminal code. Tri was found to have traveled to Ho …
Read More »American actor Michael K. Williams, best known for his role in ‘The Wire,’ dies at 54 after years of fighting drug addiction
The body of Williams, 54, was discovered by his nephew on Monday in his luxury high-rise apartment in Brooklyn. Police sources told the New York Post that drug paraphernalia was found in the home, and the actor may have overdosed on heroin or fentanyl. There was no indication of foul …
Read More »UK’s post-Brexit labour supply problems could last for ‘two years,’ business leaders warn
The group representing thousands of British businesses issued the warning as the UK government prepares to end the furlough scheme introduced to protect jobs in industries severely hampered by the Covid pandemic and amid supply shortages in the UK due to a lack of lorry drivers. Speaking in a statement …
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