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Editorial

Powell’s political moderation

Much as Colin Powell deserves a tribute as America’s first Black secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he was under-recognized as a bridge-builder and champion of political moderation. Powell, who died Monday, was a Republican who dared to challenge his own party’s orthodoxy and tried to avert its drift toward right-wing extremism. The fact that he was later joined in his call for moderation by one of the architects of that rightward lurch — former Vice President Dick Cheney — attests to Powell’s judgment and thoughtful foresight. Cheney was adamant ...

More instability in Afghanistan

The suicide attack on a mosque in Kunduz last week, killing at least 50 people, all of them from Afghanistan’s persecuted Shia minority, is a grave reminder that the conflict in the country is far from over. The Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), the Afghanistan-based arm of the terrorist organisation, has claimed responsibility. The IS’s doctrinal hatred towards the Shias is known. In Iraq and Syria, it systematically targeted Shias, who it calls “rejectionists” of faith, and used such attacks to mobilise the support of Sunni hardliners and trigger sectarian conflicts. The ...

Unplugging has benefits

A recent break from internet, television and phone service has left us pondering the pace and immediacy of this hyper-connected world we live in. Not long after returning from a week unplugged, we had to apply the brakes for a man in Kihei who was so intent on texting while walking down the middle of a parking lot access road he did not register the vehicles he was forcing to halt behind and in front of him. At the Kula Country Farms Pumpkin Patch the next day we watched a toddler clutch a cell phone playing a cartoon movie as he ran and helped his family search for the perfect gourd to ...

The danger of political theater

Congratulations to Congress for avoiding economic catastrophe for another month or so. The Senate voted Thursday night to increase the nation’s debt limit by $480 billion, and the House is expected to do the same. That’s just enough money to pay America’s bills until Dec. 3, when Congress will likely have this fight all over again while the nation teeters on the edge of default. Can we get off this idiotic merry-go-round? The semi-regular debt limit fight is politics at its worst. Why? Because raising the federal debt limit should be a routine, obligatory act by Congress to ...

Election lie is dangerous

Elected officials lead us simply because of their positions — we have chosen them to do so. They lead by policy-making, they lead with the tone they set and the issues they choose to pursue. This editorial is a plea for these leaders of both parties to come together and tell the American public clearly and unequivocally that our electoral system is sound. To do anything less abets false conspiracy theories and dangerously ignores a real growth of fringes unwilling to accept vote outcomes and increasingly willing to resort to violence in an effort to get their way. No responsible, ...

Bringing tax havens to heel

Five years after the Panama papers exposed the vast scale of offshore banking and business services via the activities of the wealth management specialist Mossack Fonseca, hundreds of billions of pounds are still being secreted away in tax havens. The leak of almost 12m documents, known as the Pandora papers, reveals that 35 current or former heads of state are among the customers of secrecy jurisdictions where huge sums of money are hidden in order to avoid tax and transparency. King Abdullah II of Jordan, Czech prime minister Andrej Babis and Azerbaijan’s ruling Aliyev family are ...