Mearl Colaco

A humble casually dressed African-American man, Eric Garner, is approached by four casually dressed white officers. Garner cries out telling the officers, "Every time you see me, you will harass me. I'm minding my business officer. Please leave me alone." And all that was said in a cry-out for help. He didn't sound confronting at all. Two police officers grab him on both sides. All he says in response to that is, "Please, don't touch me." Garner doesn't attack the officers. Four officers then pull Garner to the ground, one holding him into a "chokehold." In less than 30 seconds into a choke-hold, Garner cries out "I can't breathe," (several times), but the officer who put him into a choke-hold press his head on the ground, without stopping the inhumane treatment imposed on him. And then, it was all over. Garner was no more in less than 3 minutes. Mind you, that’s not a narration of another Hollywood blockbuster about...

Runnnnnnn…its Ebola and runnnnnnn further ahead…it’s the Islamic State that is going to kill all of us. God what are you doing to us? Is the world coming to an end? Are we all going to die? Where do I go to save myself? Is there any place on earth that is safe? These are a few questions that people are still asking themselves. And to make it all worst, the institution that was established to give voice to the voiceless and keep people informed, went all out scaring people and already sending them to their death beds. Sections of the media went crazy over the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. They went crazy over the Islamic State threat in Iraq and Syria.  Calm down media fellows, breath-in and breath-out slowly, calm down!  No doubt that the Ebola outbreak has wrecked havoc in West Africa taking the lives of more than 4000 people and infecting nearly 9000 people, but the breather to all of this is the virus is not air-borne and can only be transmitted through bodily fluids....

On Twitter, “The Daily Show” bio’s itself as Jon Stewart and The Best F#@king News Team. I can’t agree more. The Daily Show is one blockbuster 30-minute show that has everything that an average person enjoys.  Personally as a news junkie and someone who enjoys comedy and late night talk shows, The Daily Show by Jon Stewart is everything I ever asked for, all three in one. All I need to do in tune in to the show and boom I get my dose of politics, comedy and talk show under one roof. Of course newspapers, television, radio and digital media are great sources of news. But I need those 30 minutes of Jon Stewart in my life to help me clean up the news clutter in my head. It’s only possible to analyze a story once all of it is digested. Coming at a perfect time in the day, Stewart digests all that news absorbed during the day, throws out the impurities and gets the daily news in a more filtered, cut throat, too-the-point style. He makes all politicians carry their crosses right up ...

Four words wrapped in a hashtag has brought the world’s attention to the abduction of more than 300 teenage girls in Nigeria. Although these innocent teenagers were abducted on April 14, it got traction recently after the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls showed up in tweets almost every single day. It’s outrageous that the whole episode was kept under wraps for more than two weeks, until some brave Nigerian activists launched an online campaign using the hashtags #BringBackOurDaughters, #BringBackOurGirls. These hashtag campaigns went viral in no time and pressurized Nigerian President Goodluck Joanathan to take action.  After abducting the teenagers, those maniacs who call themselves Boko Haram had the cheek to come back into the city and abduct more girls right from their homes. And to add more to it, they sent videos of the girls they abducted. In those nerve-wrecking videos, some weird looking men dressed in military gear- supposed leaders of the group - vow to sell the girls a...

The largest democracy on earth concludes its five-week election cycle in which a whopping 537-million people came out to cast their votes. It was not only the voter turnout that was mind-boggling, but the results of India's 2014 elections swung in large numbers in the kitty of the political party called the BJP (Bharitya Janta Party). It already looks like the Indian voters have bid a firm goodbye to Gandhi-led political dynasties that have been governing the nation for decades now. With the 2014 election results, Narendra Modi from the BJP will be sworn in as the 15th Prime Minister of India.  So when the majority of the 66-percent of eligible voters voted for Modi and his party, why do we have so many people – nationally and internationally - jumping the bandwagon concluding the gloomy fate of the minorities of India which accounts for 20-percent of the population. Well I belong to the minority population in India, but have never ever experienced any kind of d...

Today the world is celebrating the Web that has become an integral part of almost everything that we do. It was 25-years ago when the young, dynamic British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee wrote a proposal for the "global hypertext system" which then came to become the World Wide Web. Imagine a life without the 3W’s...devastating! There was a time when we just walked up to the library to read, gather material, or simply to get answers to a question that is bothering us for days. But the Internet has changed all that. Today lounging in our pajamas we can find answers to things that we need to know. Simply key in the question in Google and boom you’ll find pages of information to choose from. Google is Batman (without that dark side). You are no longer what you say you are, but you are what Google says you are. That’s the modern technology enabled world that we fortunately (and sometimes unfortunately) live in.  We surely are a fortunate lot who have the advantage of ...

It is difficult to find a person who hasn't heard about the brand new Pope of the Catholic Church. Less than a year old in his papacy, Pope Francis is a well-known pope not only among Catholics but everyone irrespective of faith, religion, race, seems to be talking about him. He is the 266th Pope of the Catholic Church, but the only one who joins the ranks of pop star icons like Janet Jackson, John Lennon, Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson, who featured on the Rolling Stone magazine cover. But does Pope Francis set the stage on fire like people who normally are featured on this magazine? Rolling Stone is a magazine known for its musical coverage and for political reporting. So what made the magazine have Pope Francis on its cover page? Did Pope Francis’ millions of Twitter followers draw the magazine to have him on his cover or is it the five magic words - "Who am I to judge?" - that did the real magic.  "Who am I to judge?" said Pope Francis when he was asked b...