Donald Trump’s brand of xenophobic patriotism belies basic values on which America was founded. Given the U.S.’s cultural sway, his election would weign on other countries facing similar issues.
Category: Eyes on the U.S.
Donald Trump travels to Las Vegas to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Trump International Casino, a day after calling The Wall Street Journal “garbage propaganda directed by an immigrant named Rupert Murdoch, who at 85 should be in a nursing home.” The man bringing together Trump and Putin is Silvio Berlusconi. That’s how […]
LYNCHBURG — Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. stood before more than 10,000 of his students and some visitors on Monday morning and laid out the case for why conservative evangelicals like them should support a presidential candidate like Donald Trump – the cursing, self-promoting, thrice-married billionaire who bungles Bible references. It’s not that Trump is the most religious or pious of the candidates, Falwell said, although he described Trump as a “servant leader” who “lives a life of helping others, as Jesus taught.” It’s that Trump is a savvy businessman who “speaks the truth publicly, even if it is […]
With the primary season about to kick off, questions about economic inequality — and the fact that even with jobs, many Americans can’t climb out of poverty — are taking center stage.
Czech President Milos Zeman, Donald Trump and other over-the-top personalities may not offer any practical solutions to society’s problems, but they do have a function in an increasingly uniform political arena.
Hey Donald Trump, Hugo Chavez Would Be So Proud CHILE / America Economia, Aug. 25 Jihadism As Nihilism, An X-Ray Of Homegrown Terror In France FRANCE / Le Monde, Dec. 3 The Siberian Fasting Cleanse For Body And Mind RUSSIA / Le Temps, Aug. 17 El Chapo Escape, When Income Inequality Breeds Corruption MEXICO / […]
PARIS — Our fair-minded but ever subjective staff of journalists, translators and editors have chosen what we believe to be the year’s most engaging and provocative stories. Why The Chinese Are So Good, But Rarely Great CHINA / Caixin, Jan .5 That Slippery Euphemism We Call “Cultural Differences” FRANCE / Worldcrunch, Jan. 15 Artificial Intelligence […]
Many now blame the U.S.-led Iraq invasion of 2003 for the spread of terror in the Middle East. But what would the region look like today, if the Iraqi dictator hadn’t been ousted?
The Somali community has solid roots in and around Minneapolis. But young people have increasingly been lured by jihadists.
TURIN — Like in a comedy that suddenly turns into tragedy, a caricature of Silvio Berlusconi may become the next president of the United States. It’s not really shocking that Donald Trump would propose closing the Internet and the borders to Muslims, as Americans have grown sick and tired of President Obama’s babblings and potential […]
PARIS — Two nights ago, there were sounds outside our apartment window that I was convinced were gunfire. It was 9 p.m., and my husband was 30 minutes late getting home. I sent a breathless text message right away, imagining him on the sidewalk with bullet holes through his chest. He was on the Metro. […]
WASHINGTON — In a pair of public appearances this week, CIA Director John O. Brennan made clear that he blames leaks by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden for enabling terrorists to evade detection. “Because of a number of unauthorized disclosures, and a lot of hand-wringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to […]
WASHINGTON — The 2016 presidential campaign has been peculiarly disconnected from the real world of problems, crises and governing. It took the catastrophe in Paris to narrow the gap — and even a monstrous terrorist attack may not shake the trajectory of a contest that operates within a logic of its own. The inevitable distance between politicking and the business of running a government is especially wide this year because of the strange configuration of the Republican field. Donald Trump and Ben Carson in particular have detached themselves from anything resembling normal politics, and sometimes from reality itself. Moreover, the […]
The U.S. was once vulnerable to the geopolitics of energy reserves. Now American shale gas exploration offers foreign policy muscle in the face of the Saudis, Russians and Iranians.
Since the end of World War I, the United States has been methodically establishing a global state, in the same way European kings built power.
WASHINGTON — Tattoos dedicated to Lucifer, traces of alcohol and various drugs, lots of wounds: The recently unveiled autopsy report for the nine victims of a gunfight in Waco, Texas include all the elements needed to preserve the dark legend of American bikers. On Aug. 6, a week before the report went public, Republican Party […]
ISTANBUL — The program to train and equip the “moderate opposition” in Syria, as long planned by the United States alongside Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, ended in utter failure. What led to this global diplomatic fiasco that has left the future of Syria looking so grim? The chain of problems began with the most […]
-OpEd- WASHINGTON — I never expected to write these words, but I miss Mitt Romney. On Wednesday, the day the front-runner for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination was in New Hampshire alleging that Syrian refugees fleeing for their lives may actually be clandestine terrorists, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee was in Washington, talking sense. “Donald Trump will not be the nominee,” Romney told a group of business-school students at Georgetown University. And why won’t Trump, who, when he isn’t besmirching Syrian refugees as terrorists, is maligning Mexican immigrants as rapists, get the nod? Because, Romney said, “when all is said […]
The pharmaceutical industry looks to identify new diseases so it can push new drugs on the market, and patients play along. The approval of reduced female libido as a pathology is a case in point.
The European airplane giant has just opened its first U.S. assembly plant in Mobile, Alabama. Airbus is banking on lower labor costs and an aging American aircraft fleet.
This Argentine family decided a 13,000-mile trip in a VW van was the perfect way to see Pope Francis, their former archbishop. There were bumps along the way.
On the eve of the pontiff’s visit to the United States, confidential Obama administration documents reveal a remarkable harmony with Francis’ objectives.
NEW YORK — I am one of those privileged people who live in New York and have the chance to escape from the city on occasion. No matter how many loops a person bikes around Central Park, riding across the George Washington Bridge, and biking along the Hudson River, it’s not until you get out […]
A Latin American take on the rise of the Republican frontrunner finds a similar freedom with the facts and exploitation of the dispirited working class as the late Venezuelan strongman.
BOGOTA — Spanglish: Is it a dialect? Ghetto talk? Whatever else it may be, Spanglish is now the brazen, no-nonsense fruit of two languages and cultures coexisting in the United States. It may sound a little crazy at times. For example, walking in a Latino area of New York one day, I saw a notice […]
WAIMEA — Everyday, Klayton Kubo, 49, does the same pilgrimage across his village of Waimea, on Kauai, an island in the Hawaiian archipelago. He takes the road along the river, parks his pickup on the roadside and climbs up the hill overlooking the agrochemicals factory. He stands there and observes. On the other side of […]
As the U.S. President visits his father’s homeland, an exclusive encounter with the now 94-year-old woman who raised Barack Obama Sr.
NEW ORLEANS — There are still gaping holes left by houses that disappeared forever. There are also the brownish lines, sad reminders of just how high the water level reached on Aug. 29, 2005. And yet 10 years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, the song rising from New Orleans is not a melancholy one. […]
Reflections on the influx of (mostly) wealthy Chinese students enrolling at New York’s Columbia University.
¡El Candidato! Jeb Bush Running For President, World Reaction by Worldcrunch
A persistent drought is threatening California’s storied vineyards, which employ hundreds of thousands in the Golden State alone. But there is still water, for now.
It is politically reasonable for President Obama to want to focus on problems at home. But his fainthearted foreign policy approach has contributed to global volatility.
A U.S. pharmaceutical company testing a drug meant to slow down child dementia refuses to offer the medication to a terminally ill young girl in Germany. Her family is fighting the decision.
Categories
The Big Trend Of Living Small
From New York to Buenos Aires, more and more single people choose to live in tiny spaces. It’s the marriage of economic forces and modern lifestyle.
-OpEd SANTIAGO — Over the past half-century, two fundamental social changes have taken place in the United States around the issue of race. One was the end of segregation laws that explicitly discriminated against African-Americans, and the other was the decline in racial prejudices. Polls show that such racist sentiments among individuals persist today in […]
PALO ALTO — Tucked away on Waverley Street in Palo Alto, California, the house where Steve Jobs used to live is an inconspicuous brick Tudor with rambling roses climbing all over. As one of the residential areas favored by Silicon Valley software engineers, a big house here usually costs well above $10 million. Over the […]
NEW YORK — Four different credit and bank cards, an International press card, a health insurance card and a gym membership card, a monthly MetroCard for the New York subway, a couple of prepaid international phone cards — probably expired — and $32 in cash. In the inside pocket, my Italian driver’s license and a […]
Though a shadow of its former self, the Ku Klux Klan has registered a small uptick since Barack Obama’s election and the Ferguson riots. Here’s how it looks from one senior member who lives in a Tennessee trailer.
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Sunday announcement that she’s running in the 2016 presidential race, her second bid to become the first female U.S. president, drew news coverage from around the world, with one German newspaper even using the English headline, “The Very First Lady.” Via a short video (watch below) on her campaign website, the former […]
The Obama administration says, try talking to truculent states instead of squeezing or bombing them. In its own way, this is an eminently imperial approach.