Marjorie Taylor Greene is not only addicted to offensive, over-heated rhetoric but also to a warped Trumpian cum Nazi tactic of turning herself and her ilk into victims. She recently was forced to apologize for suggesting that mask mandates were similar to the Holocaust; and promptly went on to compare medical personnel offering vaccinations to … Read more
Haitian president Jovenel Moise has been shot dead in an attack in his home which left his wife wounded. His time in office since 2017 has seen him face accusations of corruption and money laundering ($3 million) and there have been violent anti-government protests recently, including a previous attempt to kill him. His election … Read more
The Dictator’s Muse is a new novel about Leni Riefenstahl, the film director known variously as the greatest female film director of the 20th century and a Nazi propagandist. Her two 1930s films “Triumph of the Will” about the 1934 Nuremberg Rally and Olympia were highly effective in giving artistic expression to the “Hitler myth”, … Read more
Mitch McConnell, the GOP Senate Minority Leader, has stirred up outrage with his comment that if there is a Republican-controlled senate after the 2022 midterms, he would refuse to consider a Biden nominee for the Supreme Court. Such behaviour is regarded as an anti-democratic power grab and “constitutional hardball” — behaviour that isn’t technically forbidden … Read more
Sarah Palin has popped her head above the parapet to announce she may run against Lisa Murkowksi, the Republican senator for Alaska since 2002, a Trump critic who voted for his impeachment. Others have said they’ll throw their hats into the ring as well. Palin has faded from view after a flurry of several … Read more
Edward de Bono, a self-styled genius who invented the term lateral thinking, has died. His 60 plus books and relentless stream of out-of-the-box ideas brought riches and withering criticism. One reviewer said he had “the great salesman’s gift of being fluent in the international language of gibberish. If his life and career teach us anything, … Read more
Naomi Wolf is in a full-on anti-vaxxer rant round the US at the moment. Although she garnered a respectable reputation initially as leader of the third wave of feminism, her scaremongering in recent years about government-led plots to establish a dictatorship and other conspiracy theories, has been described as “unhinged, damaging, and dangerous.” Born … Read more
Hungary has lost its attempt in the European Court of Justice to reverse the outcome of a vote by MEPs that could lead to a country being stripped of voting rights in Brussels. Red flags have been raised over recent anti-democratic reforms curbing the independence of Hungary’s judiciary, central bank and media. In reality, the … Read more
Syria is about to hold elections described in Europe as a farce which will undoubtedly return Bashar Assad on an unassailable and risible majority. The country battered by a savage war for a decade, with Russia and Iran as military backstops, has disappeared from the headlines but Bashar Assad has been ruthlessly consolidating his family’s … Read more
Savage ironies are writ large in the intractable, never-ending Dante’s Inferno of the Israel/Palestine saga. The Jewish people never forgot the homeland they had been ejected from two millenia ago and yet the Israelis set their faces obdurately against any suggestion that the 700,000 indigenous Palestinians who were forcibly severed from their homes after the … Read more