The ugly head of race has made the news of the day in the United States. By now most of you must know the story of the renowned black Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., arrested for “disorderly conduct” outside the front door of his home in Massachusetts by a white police officer. Read the rest of this entry »

In the last days most of the talk in the US is about health care. I already wrote about it on June 29th and on July 9th and with the many and very different proposals being on the table at the moment, I intend to keep a close track on the new developments. In the meanwhile, I want to go back to Guantanamo, which Obama had said he wanted closed. Read the rest of this entry »

The financial crisis has hit many countries baldly but what made the difference among then was the way they reacted to it. Stimulus has been the word widely used by governments to show how they were going to fight such a crisis. Read the rest of this entry »

It is amazing how the same news can be reported in such a totally different way in the United States and Europe. The gist of the story reported being the same generally but the interpretation of the story being so opposite that it is a wonder how it got so. Read the rest of this entry »

This week the Church of Scientology, with members as famous as actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta, has gone on trial in France on charges of organized fraud. This church -registered as a religion in the United States was founded in 1954 by L. Ron Hubbard, the science fiction writer- Read the rest of this entry »

Quite a few years ago I had a friend whose brother was studying to become a career diplomat. I thought it was exciting as in my youth an innocence about politics I saw it as a glamorous job with foreign travel, getting to know exciting people and at the same time contributing to make the world a better place for the understanding of people of different countries. Read the rest of this entry »

It took a while until the American media began reporting that Criminal proceedings had begun in Spain against six senior officials in the Bush administration – Alberto Gonzales, a former White House counsel and attorney general; David Addington, former vice-president Dick Cheney’s chief of staff; Douglas Feith, who was under-secretary of defense; William Haynes, formerly the Pentagon’s general counsel; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, who were both senior justice department legal advisers- for the use of torture against detainees in Guantánamo Bay. Read the rest of this entry »