The Ryanair Boeing 737 that was hijacked on May 23, seen in 2019 in Poland. Photograph by Andrzej Otrębski.
Though we should never court tragedy, we know our true selves really only in it. Catastrophe, adversity of any kind, reveals character. So what does the Belarusian hijacking of a Ryanair jet tell us about ourselves?
It tells us what we have known all along in our fractured age, what we have seen with the pandemic, which is that we can’t come together in a crisis, because we can’t think clearly about it.
Read MoreA Manchester Brexit protest ahead of Great Britain’s Conservative Party Conference Oct. 1, 2017, with a caricature of Prime Minister Theresa May clearly visible. The more she catered to the extremists in her party, the more unpopular she became with them and the opposition.
In Jenni Russell’s fine May 24 column for The New York Times, she compares soon-to-be former British Prime Minister Theresa May to the queen at the end of “Game of Thrones” — lost, abandoned, her realm destroyed. I gave up on the series after the first season, finding it misogynistic. Besides, who needs such popular fiction when we have history and current events themselves? After all, we must account God — or, for the atheistic crowd, life — as good a writer as George R.R. Martin, n’est-ce pas?
Read MoreBy George: A British World War I recruitment poster invokes St. George, England’s patron saint. England could use him right about now.
Like the student or reporter who simply cannot meet a deadline, the United Kingdom will today ask the European Union for a short (three-month) extension to the March 29 deadline for its leave-taking from that organization. No, that’s not the right analogy. The British are like the soon-to-be-ex hubby, who needs to spend a few more months on your couch as he ponders his commitment to the woman he betrayed you with. How well does that end? The other 27 members of the E.U. must approve such a request. And they’re not inclined to a longer goodbye without a new game plan, which the Brits don’t seem to have. As Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte said, there’s really no point to the British “whining on for months.” Yes, quite.
Read MoreThe border on Killeen School Road between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is marked only by a sign in kilometers. What will happen with this open border is one of the sticking points of Theresa May’s Brexit deal. Photograph by Oliver Dixon.
t was an historic day on both sides of the Pond — the 10th anniversary of the “Miracle on the Hudson” when Capt. “Sully” Sullenberger landed US Airways Flight 1549 in the river, saving all 155 aboard, and the day the old Tappan Zee Bridge deliberately went down, taking with it coincidentally Theresa May’s Brexit deal dream as the House of Commons voted by a more than 2 to 1 margin to reject her plan for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union.
Read MoreHome Secretary Theresa May with Prime Minister David Cameron in 2010. It’s her show now. Courtesy UK Home Office.
It was no minor metaphor when British Prime Minister Theresa May’s car door stuck as she strove to exit recently to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who waited with characteristic stoicism on the red carpet for yet another go-round in May’s futile attempt to negotiate a better Brexit deal. Brexit has been the ultimate stuck car door for May and the British people, a frustrating rigmarole with no satisfactory conclusion in sight.
Read MoreJust when we needed a well-deserved break from the circus that is the Trump Administration – what with former National Security adviser Michael Flynn seeking immunity to testify about Ruskie hacking and oxymoronic House Intelligence chair Devin Nunes skulking around the White House bushes like the star of some third rate Tom Clancy thriller and President Trumpet and Ayn Rand-reading House Speaker Paulie PowerPoint trying to keep the No, No Nanettes of the Freedom Caucus in line for another pass (God help us) at repeal and replace – Brexit is back to remind us that it is just a transatlantic mirror of all of the above. ...
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When Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, the satirical newspaper The Onion ran an article that said the country was now badly mucked enough to be run by a black man. (Actually, the word The Onion used rhymed with “mucked,” but then I think you knew that.)
To which we might add that the world is now badly mucked up enough – again, still – to be run by women. Tomorrow Theresa May, home secretary of the United Kingdom, will become only the second woman in that country’s history (after Baroness Margaret Thatcher) to become prime minister. Already, she has distinguished herself from Lady Thatcher by announcing that half her cabinet will be made up of women. ...
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