IS JOE BIDEN OUR FDR FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

Almost 90 years on, Joseph R. Biden takes over the helm of an ailing United States of America, much the same as Franklin D. Roosevelt did in the dark days of the Great Depression. The similarities are profound: both had enormous tragedies in their personal lives, both were first elected to political office when decidedly young, and crucially, both followed on the heels of poor presidencies (in Biden’s case, many would say disastrous presidency!), confronted from the start with overwhelming difficulties ...

STUBBORNNESS AND DISUNITY: those oh, so attractive British features!

Some time ago I was watching a portion of the BBC’s Brexit coverage – I can’t remember if it was a meaningful vote being discussed (mistakenly I had assumed all parliamentary work aspired to be meaningful … how wrong can one be!?) – when I happened to catch Andrew Mitchell, a conservative, voicing his admiration for what he called those “Attractive British features: stubbornness and the ability to push on regardless”.

CONFINEMENT BLUES: could they lead to the end of Trump … and the purging of his clones from leadership roles?

On a personal level this microscopic molecule is forcing us to address and respect the lives we led prior to the pandemic. What we thought were rights now appear more like privileges. Looking at the wider frame – the state, the nation, the world – perhaps this tiny beast is here to highlight the fact that we have gone too far down the wrong road and that for humankind’s sake, changes are required to put us back on the right track: a mini-Jesus for the modern world, come to cleanse us of our sins … one might argue!

TERRORISM HELPS KENYA FIGHT CORONAVIRUS

I am a Brit who has lived and worked in Kenya for more than two decades, first arriving in 1998, a few months after the devastating bombing of the US embassy by Al-Qaeda. As luck would have it, Al-Shabaab - the Al-Qaeda spin-off, based in Somalia – had me at their mercy fifteen years later, when they carried out their 2013 assault on Nairobi’s Westgate Mall. I had a narrow escape which left me shocked, but otherwise unscathed. How does this connect to coronavirus? ... (read more)

COVID19: THERE'S A LOT OF PAIN! BUT IS THERE SOME GAIN?

Get past all the doom and gloom and brain-numbing stuff – ‘Worse than wartime!’ ‘Eclipsing the Financial Crisis!’ ‘More unemployed than The Great Depression!’ – then look more carefully at some of the positive impacts the pandemic is having on our lives. If we can run on that parallel track for just a little while, we begin to see a glimmer of hope, where the tragic pains of Covid-19 could actually lead to multifaceted gains for communities, and our world, in the future.
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