Tag Archives: Opinion

The scenes appear daily on social media, taking on the familiarity of ritual. A red-faced customer breathes contemptuously in a waitress’ face or tries to muscle past a green-aproned clerk. They’ve been asked to wear a mask and they don’t like it. “I have my rights,” they say. Claiming rights …

Trump’s supporters are deplorable. Now, before the 100-percent-proof progressives – who consider the former first lady and failed presidential candidate the “devil in a designer pantsuit” – have a fit of apoplexy or crucify yours truly for being an apostate, let me explain what I am convinced Hillary Clinton was …

Right now, we could all use some good news, and it came yesterday in the form of dexamethasone. This cheap steroid could significantly reduce deaths in critically ill Covid-19 patients by one-third for those on ventilators and by one-fifth for those on oxygen alone. The drug appears to stop the …

This is not just ‘horrible stuff that happens in America’. Black people know we need to dismantle the same system here Pay attention to African Americans. The headlines are now describing the US as a nation in crisis. As the protests against the killing of African American George Floyd by …

Enormous doses of stimulus spending are offering relief from coronavirus damage but their lifelong legacy of debt could seed future crises by hobbling economic growth and worsening poverty, especially in developing countries. Central banks and governments worldwide have unleashed at least $15 trillion of stimulus via bond-buying and budget spending …

If rumors about a coup in Qatar this week turn out to be true, who could benefit from it and what would the possible consequences for the region be? Social media users may have seen recent footage of an alleged attempted coup d’etat in Qatar – footage rife with shooting …

Despite its magnitude, lack of access to antibiotics is a largely overlooked public health issue. 5.7 million people, including 1 million children, are dying annually from antibiotic-treatable conditions because they cannot access the necessary antibiotics in time. When I worked as a front-line doctor in South Sudan, I saw firsthand …

On Iran and the Middle East, the Trump administration is following Israel’s playbook. Supporters of Donald Trump think of the US president as an exceptional one-of-a-kind force of nature – a sui generis leader. His detractors like to compare him to Russian President Vladimir Putin or describe him as a …

Keeping a vegan diet has become easier, with new plant-based foods hitting the market every week. But most vegetables aren’t even vegan, and for those who want to live purely, it’s time to don the loincloth and forage. Seasonal vegetables are available year-round in supermarkets, all manner of plant-based milk …

This single piece of technology has obliterated the promise of the internet and corrupted human interaction. In the long lost year of 2011, I managed to graduate college without owning a smartphone. Even then, four years after the birth of the iPhone, I was not yet an unreasonable outlier. All …

Facebook claims its data collection is inherent to the way the internet works. The internet didn’t have to be this way It’s a quintessential experience of the digital age: you’re scrolling through Facebook or reading an article online, and suddenly get served with an advertisement so narrowly targeted to a …

In almost any other year it would be hailed as a public health victory: The smoking rate among U.S. high schoolers took its biggest hit ever this year, federal figures show, falling to a new low. Instead, the milestone was relegated to a lone figure at the bottom of a …

Trudeau’s blackface scandal cannot be muffled with weak apologies and ‘blind-spot’ excuses. Apparently, Justin Trudeau has no shame. If Canada’s prime minister had even a sense, let alone a mature understanding of the word, he would have resigned after his past racist acts were revealed. But maturity is not a …

Kashmir is under siege. Up to 10,000 people have been victims of enforced disappearance, including my son Javaid The Eid this year was like no other. We could not even offer the obligatory sacrifice because of the total siege by India of Kashmir. When my son Yasir went to fetch …

Gazing down with a vaguely orange tint at a new fire blossoming on the Earth where a fire should not be, the Moon confided that it felt sad and powerless watching the Earth destroy itself. “At first it was small things. Losing a species here or there. Just careless, really. …

Prime Minister Boris Johnson will fail in his promise to give back control to the UK over its policies post-Brexit. In fact, London will have fewer foreign policy alternatives to subservience to the United States. While the UK was negotiating with Brussels over its divorce from the European Union, Johnson …

A new survey of leading intellectuals shows many of them are preoccupied with trying to answer: who are we? What is preoccupying the world’s leading minds? It is an audacious question for sure. Some might say leading physicists will be concentrating on physics, leading philosophers on philosophy, historians on history …

Christmas has numerous traditions, of which perhaps none is more popular than a decorated tree. Whether real or artificial, Christmas trees are synonymous with the holiday. But how did trees become part of Christmas? Trees have been used in rituals and as decorations since ancient times, thus making the source …

April 11, 2019, brought us a new word for Judas: Moreno—the puppet president of Ecuador who sold Julian Assange to Washington for his 30 pieces of silver. Yesterday’s arrest of Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London is the first stage in Washington’s attempt to criminalize the First Amendment to …

“The gates of hell, the end of space and time.” That was how black holes were described at the press conference in Brussels where the first ever photograph of one was revealed to an excited audience. And this black hole, a super-massive object at the center of the galaxy Messier …