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We are reaching the seventh-year anniversary of the tragic conflict in Syria, which seems to evolve and get more complex as time goes on. If nothing else, with the recent downing of an Israeli F16 by the Syrian army of Bashar al-Assad, which was the first time an Israeli jet was shot down for breaching Syrian air space, the conflict could even grow, with sustained intrusions from Israeli military forces in Syria and tit-for-tat retaliations against Israel by Hezbollah opening a front between Israel and Lebanon.

One would think that, now that the despised 14-year long United Nations Mission for the (de)Stabilization of Haiti (MINUSTAH) has been forced to shut down, Haiti would be on the road to some modest, sustained, recovery from the devastating January 12, 2010 earthquake. It is not. The Republic of Haiti has never been in greater danger than it is now.

Last year, just a few days before the dreaded November 8, the day on which Modi’s decree on demonetization came into effect, I was so tired and exhausted of being myself that I decided to quit the overcrowded city in which I live and plunge headlong into the wilderness of the countryside.

Crown Prince Mohamed bin-Salman is such a darling of the global mainstream media that many call him, affectionately, by his initials MBS. The new strongman of the Kingdom has often mentioned the need for reforms and modernization of Saudi Arabia, both socially and economically. Can MBS walk the talk of his enticing narrative? The Crown Prince’s charm offensive is, at least partially, a way to cover up his failed attempt to bully Qatar into submission back in June 2017.

Unless one lives in the alternate reality of religious beliefs, it has become impossible to deny and ignore a simple fact: very soon, perhaps within only two decades, humans will join the crowded groups of endangered species. While polar bears, lions, and elephants are solely the victims of men’s cruel and reckless stupidity, humans are collectively both the perpetrators and the ultimate victims of a self-inflicted mass genocide.

Anti-capitalist and anti-globalist protesters, by the thousands, have greeted world leaders and their entourage in Hamburg, Germany, for the G20 summit. About 15,000 demonstrated on Thursday, July 6, 2017, and the riot police cracked down on them with water cannons set on armored vehicles.

There is trouble in oil paradise. It seems that all the elements of an already explosive geopolitical concoction are getting vigorously stirred.

What happens in Haiti doesn’t stay in Haiti. Sooner or later, it comes to places like Michigan’s Benton Harbor and Flint. Our destinies are linked. Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Polish aristocrat who long puppeteered United States presidents from behind the curtains, has written: “America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America’s power, especially its capacity for military intimidation.” I concur.

Historians might scratch their heads a long time to figure out when and why it happened, but by the time King Donald was doing the Arabian sword dance and rubbing King Salman’s magic lantern, he was gone. Well, he was just permanently absent, as if the little lucidity that remained had been switched off.

The notion of a colonist as cannibal in Haiti is widespread. This idea, called manje moun (eating people), could hardly qualify as superstition, given the experience of colonialism. It is daunting to find a better description for those who grab control of water and food, and then calculate the minimum caloric intake a population needs so that a maximum of labor may be extracted from its emaciated and zombified workers without killing them. The neo-colonists may call themselves humanitarians, but their victims know exactly what they are.