Talking iPINIONS

Episode 53: Manchin, the Manchurian Senator, Bedeviling Biden’s Agenda

Joe Biden promised America Rolaids-like relief from the four years of chaos and dysfunction Donald Trump’s presidency wrought. But, given the chaos and dysfunction that have characterized Biden’s presidency to date, you’d be forgiven for feeling, well, heartburn.
Of course, Trump was to blame for practically all the chaos and dysfunction that beset his presidency. But in Biden’s case, one senator, namely Joe Manchin, bears most of the blame. 
Contact:
ipinionsj@gmail.com
Length: 28 min 20 sec 

Episode 52: Barbados Becomes a Republic…

Yet, stupefyingly, Barbados still retains many vestiges of British colonialism…
Contact:
ipinionsj@gmail.com
Length: 12 min 09 sec 

Episode 51: Jet Blues of Flight Attendants AND My Facebook Suspension…

No doubt you’ve noticed the “friendly skies” aren’t so friendly these days. That’s because sky rage is one of the prevailing side effects of Covid lockdowns. And a mask mandate is invariably the fuse that sets that rage alight.
But you know we’re living in a world gone mad when Facebook is suspending me for posting a prayer for Colin Powell, while allowing rightwing nuts to peddle conspiracies and human smugglers to promote their trade.
Contact:
ipinionsj@gmail.com
Length: 15 min 24 sec 

Episode 50: California Oil Spill: Not Quite Biden’s Katrina, But…

Trump-appointed judges are foiling President Biden’s attempts to reinstate all the rules President Obama implemented to fight climate change that President Trump then made such a show of rolling back.
That, of course, is troubling enough. But this month's “enormous” oil spill off the coast of southern California reminds everyone that Biden is fighting the dystopian force Trump still presents – not just to save democracy, but to save the planet.
Contact:
ipinionsj@gmail.com
Length: 17 min 30 sec 

Episode 49: Columbus Day–cum–Indigenous People’s Day…

People around the world have celebrated Christopher Columbus for centuries as the seafaring explorer who discovered America. In doing so, they blithely ignored the Vikings who preceded him, to say nothing of the Indians who greeted him.
This episode is my modest contribution to the cognitive dissonance afoot that should correct the historical record … in due course.
Contact:
ipinionsj@gmail.com
Length: 7 min 48 sec 

Episode 48: Reinstate the Draft to Defend America Against Itself

If former President George W. Bush had any reason to fear one of his loved ones getting killed, America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan would have been more like the 40-day war his daddy waged in Panama. Moreover, think of the opportunity costs inherent in all America lost fighting plainly unwinnable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 9/11. And this, simply because the CEOs and politician - who sit atop America’s military industrial complex - had vested interests in having the loved ones of other Americans continue to fighting those wars.
Contact:
ipinionsj@gmail.com
Length:  24 min 

Episode 47: Google and Apple Obey Putin’s Orders to Suppress Russian Votes

Microsoft, Apple, Google, et al. decided years ago that doing business in China means checking personal conscience, corporate principles, and democratic values at the border. Now it seems they’ve decided the same applies to doing business in Russia. Which clearly makes them little more than tools of these authoritarian governments.
But, with their willingness to sacrifice everything for their bottom line, it can only be a matter of time before big tech companies are doing the bidding of authoritarian governments even to the detriment of democratic ones. 
Contact:
ipinionsj@gmail.com
Length:  12 min 12 sec 

Episode 46: Indie Film ‘Paradise: Love’ and Female Sex Tourism

From the birth of this nation, miscegenation laws made sex between whites and blacks not only taboo but illegal. But this did not stop middle-aged white men from slinking out in the middle of the night to have sex with young black women. Of course, on slave plantations throughout the South, these nocturnal forays were pursuant to a presumed entitlement to rape.
The point, though, is that interracial sexual attraction simply could not be denied. The motley hues that compose race in America today is a testament to that. And even though other countries, like England, did not enact laws banning interracial marriages, their prevailing customs effectively did the same.
This is why it speaks volumes that we are still grappling with this natural attraction to this day. Because a direct line can be drawn between the middle-aged white men mentioned above and middle-aged white women who are slinking away to black countries to have sex with black men.
Contact:
ipinionsj@gmail.com
Length:  17 min 50 sec 

Episode 45: US Leaving Afghanistan … a Tragic and Humiliating Mess

We’ve all seen the despairing images. I hope this episode provides insight.
Contact:
Ipinionsj@gmail.com
Length:  42 min 

Episode 44: Alexander Lukashenko Auditioning to Play Fidel Castro in Cold War II

Nobody could have predicted that the wannabe dictator of a relatively insignificant country in the Caribbean would end up being a veritable king among pawns in the Cold War chess game between the United States and Soviet Union.
Well, I’m predicting that the wannabe dictator of a relatively insignificant country in Europe will end up being the king among pawns in the Cold War II chess game now playing out between the United States and China (and its Iago Russia).
Contact:
ipinionsj@gmail.com
Length:  20 min   40 sec 

Episode 43: Osaka and Biles, the (Black) Faces of these Tokyo Olympics, Crack Under Pressure

Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles starred in the main events of these Games. But China and Russia loomed menacingly, and in equal measure. More to the point, though, events to date have seen China and Russia triumph as much as they have seen Osaka and Biles fail. But the way the United States has underperformed will probably be the most enduring story of these Games.
 
This is a fairly detailed account of how it all happened, and what it all means – complete with recitations of real-time comments I posted on news sites like The New York Times and BBC. And, with all due respect to Osaka and Biles, I cover the role other Olympians like Ahmed Hafnaoui of Tunisia, Flora Duffy of Bermuda, Elaine Thompson-Herah of Jamaica, Novak Djokovic of Serbia, and Sydney McClaughlin of the United States, as well as the specter doping, played.
 
Contact:
ipinionsj@gmail.com
Length:  51 min   02 sec 

Episode 42: Assassination of President Jovenel Moïse: Wither Haiti…

Haiti was the first Black independent nation in the new world. Therefore, you might have expected a who’s who of Blacks worldwide to be among those attending the funeral of its assassinated president, Jovenel Moïse, in Cap-Haïtien yesterday. This, just as a who’s who of whites were among those who attended the funeral of America’s assassinated president, John F. Kennedy, in Washington, DC, in 1963.
Yet it’s a reflection of how marginalized and disrespected Haiti has become that you’d have been hard-pressed to recognize a single face among any of the foreign delegations. Indeed, it speaks volumes that America thought the occasion only warranted its relatively unknown US ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, leading a delegation of even lesser knowns to show its respects.
Even so, nothing justified this universal snub quite like the attendees having to flee for their lives less than an hour into the funeral service when gunfire erupted outside the church. The US delegation made a beeline for the airport, leaving Haitians to the funereal devices that now govern their way of life.
Contact:
ipinionsj@gmail.com
Length:  25 min   05 sec 

Episode 41: Japan Bans All Spectators at Tokyo Olympics? Oh, the Irony…

Augusta National shrewdly trademarked Jim Nantz’s famous  phrase “a tradition unlike any other” to hail the annual Masters golf tournament. But there’s no denying that the quadrennial Olympics is far more worthy of that praise.
The problem is that so much civil unrest and public debt have occasioned the modern Olympics that host cities invariably end up feeling like the giddy teenager who partied too much, and woke up with an olympian hangover.
No doubt we all remember the protests that scarred the 2016 Rio Olympics. But Brazilians could point to the poisoned chalice the 2004 Athens Olympics turned out to be for the Greeks. After all, the debt hangover from those Games not only triggered the EU financial crisis of 2010, but austerity measures to service that debt have many once-proud, middle-class Greeks now living like favela-dwelling Brazilians.
Alas, measure for measure, Covid-19 seems bound to make the 2020 Tokyo Olympics … unlike any other in this respect.
Contact:
ipinionsj@gmail.com
Length:  25 min 

Episode 40: Happy Independence Day, My Bahamaland

We are independent. But it seems we just don’t know how to quit the British. And I find that very vexing … indeed.
Contact:
ipinionsj@gmail.com
Length:  8 min 29 sec

Episode 39: Welcome Back Cruise Passengers. But No Gays and Lesbians Please…? WTF!

President Bill Clinton first declared June “Gay & Lesbian Pride Month” in 1999. Since then, despite the official interregnum of the Bush and Trump years, the LGBTQ community have used that declaration to celebrate their increasing liberation. And most notable are gay pride parades and cruise trips that make Mardi Gras and “The Love Boat” look tame, respectively.
Unsurprisingly, their liberation has not been welcomed universally. Alas, nowhere less so than where I hail from down in the Caribbean, where locals gained infamy for greeting gay cruise ships as if there were carrying a mix of latter-day conquistadors and lepers.
Contact:
ipinionsj@gmail.com
Length:  19 min 27 sec