Category: Journalism
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First vote
In next Tuesday’s midterm elections I’ll be voting for the first time as an American citizen. I’ll have a lot of choices to make — governor, senator, member of congress, representative in the state legislature, county commissioners and a lot more besides. Under normal circumstances, I’d expect my picks to include both Democrats and Republicans. […]
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Cold War II
Cold War One was no picnic Africa for as the superpowers duked it out by proxy. On October 4, Vice President Mike Pence declared what sounded very much like Cold War Two. This one, with China, should work out better for the continent. Pence’s declaration came in a speech he gave to the Hudson Institute, […]
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Bag Lady
If you covet a new $20 000 handbag, face it, you’re not going through the eye of the needle. If, on the other hand, you can seduce others into parting with that kind of cash for fripperies, yours may be a useful talent. That is how I look at Lana Marks’ nomination to be the […]
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Fear
Here are three takeaways from Bob Woodward’s “Fear: Trump in the White House”. One, special counsel Robert Mueller may not have the goods on the president, at least for colluding with the Russians to get himself elected. Two, Trump may have an appalling temperament, but there is, as the equally insufferable Boris Johnson has said, […]
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Wanted: credible explainers
Not long after Al Qaeda took down the twin towers in New York and with them, colaterally, the rand, the great Peter Bruce, then editor of this newspaper, informed me he could no longer afford a correspondent in Washington. So I went to work for Thabo Mbeki. It happened like this. The 2002 World Economic […]
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Impeachable?
I seldom agree with Joel Pollack, the former Democratic Alliance speechwriter turned fanatical Trumpslainer, but sometimes he can be quite astute. His take on his hero’s terrible Tuesday: “In a weird way, today’s events could help @realDonaldTrump,” he tweeted. “Democrats will be unable to resist impeaching him if they take Congress. So Republicans will have […]
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Not censorship
At the heart of the Trump cult are devotees of Alex Jones, a classic American snake oil salesman who uses paranoia to peddle patent medicines over the internet while posing as a revealer of truths concealed by the secret cabals that really run the world with their creatures in the mainstream media. On Monday, Google’s […]
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Minority Rule
America is subject to minority rule, by no means as cruel or despotic as that under which the majority of South Africans suffered until 1994, but unrepresentative of most citizens’ wishes nonetheless, sticking us with a president we tell pollsters we consider a national embarrassment. On issue after issue, from gun control to abortion to […]
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Trump Doctrine?
Donald Trump’s boastful ramblings and glaring deficiencies as a human being should not blind us to the possibility that he has a coherent, if ruthless, foreign policy doctrine, knows what he wants and may succeed in getting it. What he’s doing is not normal, of course, but that’s the point. Normal, he’s convinced, has been […]
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Citizen
Last week I became an American citizen. It took me nearly 40 years to make the leap. I’d had a green card allowing me to live and work in the US since 1979 when I was made a hereditary resident alien on the coattails of my father. He was invited to join the club as […]
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