With the White House looking like Grand Scandal Station — from Donald Trump’s intelligence sharing with Russian leaders to former FBI director James Comey’s claims that the president asked him to back off on the probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn — we sat down with OZY senior columnist John McLaughlin to discuss the latest twists and turns.

"For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?"

--Bell Hooks

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY -- Because they are humans, priests and other spiritual leaders will also commit the same mistakes being committed by ordinary faithful.

Like you and me, they also lose their cool; they raise their voice; they drink; they smoke; they gamble; they commit sexual indiscretions, among other "bizarre" sins.

While the world remains distracted by the constant circus surrounding the Trump White House, I sense a different kind of power play, and potential American future, brewing beneath the surface at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: Ivanka Trump becoming the first female president of the United States.

Last June, Alejandro Arboleda Uribe was awakened from an afternoon nap by police kicking in the door of his apartment in a posh district of Medellín. The 32-year-old drug kingpin probably assumed the protection of Mexican cartels and renaissance elements of the old Medellín cartel inoculated him from this kind of raid. Not so. Capping years of investigation, Interpol and the Colombian police nailed him and 13 others in his organization and seized their stash, but it wasn’t cocaine. Uribe peddled synthetic drugs: ecstasy, MDMA, acid and his own recipe for a new favorite among Colombia’s youth – a pink powder called 2C-B.

As a strain of ransomware hit computer networks in more than 150 countries on Friday — from the U.K.’s National Health Service to Russia’s Interior Ministry — and with many more targets feared today as employees return to work, it’s clear that our digital infrastructure is far from secure.

"A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us." 

--John Steinbeck

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY -- To escape the "lackluster" day-long rainy Saturday (May 13) in the Big Apple, my friend Demetrio and I spent a fruitful day at the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Connecticut.