June 12, 2018

Smoking bans and mirrors: Is it about health? Or control?

Call me Ishmael. I have been banished to the wilderness of the smoking area.  I am a social pariah, exhaler of toxic gases, deliverer of death. A little sign in my hotel room here in Puerto Rico explains, "For your convenience, t...

January 19, 2014

Fear and Loathing in America's Paradise

In August 2005, St. John businesswoman Esther Frett was raped, bound, and gagged and thrown into the sea off the remote east end of the island near Coral Bay by three young, white Klansmen. Frett, who is black, survived to tell the tale, and that's e...

March 21, 2010

When Freedom Fails: The Myth of Decolonization

In 1804, after twelve years of conflict and tens of thousands dead, General Jean-Jacques Dessalines proclaimed victory against the French and declared the new state of Haiti. It was the longest and bloodiest slave rebellion ever. Dessalines then anno...