Category Archives: General

Immigration reform as proposed in the United States consists of enacting policies that provide inducements and punishments to dent significantly, even eliminate, fresh inflows of undocumented, or illegal, immigrants, who are overwhelmingly unskilled, and thus reduce their  existing stock of … Continue reading →

The two Democratic leaders who have recently earned, for their achievements, the Nobel Prize for Peace, Jimmy Carter and Al Gore, are international icons. Carter introduced human rights into American foreign policy; Gore took up the cause of global warming. … Continue reading →

The horrifying tragedy that befell the young Indian woman Jyoti Singh, who was brutally gang raped in a New Delhi bus in December, and later died in a Singapore hospital, has led to spontaneous outrage. That Indian women face terrifying … Continue reading →

The community was in a “palpable state of shock” over the fire at a plant that left 25 workers dead and 55 others injured. “Many people who lost loved ones and friends in the fire expressed bitterness about the deaths … Continue reading →

I was reminded of Edna O’Brien’s novel, August is a Wicked Month, when two scandals erupted last month – one, predictably, in the financial sector and the other, more surprisingly, in the journalistic sector. BBC News (August 10) and Reuters … Continue reading →

The distinguished journalist Harold Evans directs his reptilian fury at the Financial Times (August 27th) for a lapse from its “high standards in publishing my “venomous” column on Mr. Zakaria’s plagiarism. He hisses loudly but he fails to bite. He … Continue reading →

The massacre in Norway in July 2011 and the recent attack on a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, were the work of right-wing extremists who sought to remake the world in their neo-Nazi image. Likewise, the terrorist attacks of … Continue reading →

Plagiarism is in the news. Fareed Zakaria, Time Magazine columnist and CNN television show host, was perhaps a predictable victim of overcommitment: there are only 24 hours in a day. It appears he overreached as he sought to grasp multiple … Continue reading →

The sudden death of Abid Hussain by a massive heart attack last Thursday, was a tragedy for his family. He was in London with his wife Karki (a woman of great charm and intellectual achievement) on way to Washington to … Continue reading →

If George Orwell were alive today, he would be irritated, and then shocked, by the cynical way in which every lobby with an axe to grind and money to burn has hitched its wagon to the alluring phrase “sustainable development.” … Continue reading →