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Ideas

eyes on the U.S.

The Weight Of Trump's Indictment Will Test The Strength Of American Democracy

The U.S. legal system cannot simply run its course in a vacuum. Presidential politics, and democracy itself, are at stake in the coming weeks and months.

-Analysis-

Events often seem inevitable in hindsight. The indictment of former U.S. President Donald Trump on criminal charges has been a possibility since the start of his presidency – arguably, since close to the beginning of his career in New York real estate.

But until now, the potential consequences of such a cataclysmic development in American politics have been purely theoretical.

Today, after much build-up in the media, The New York Times reported that a Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict Trump and the Manhattan district attorney will now likely attempt to negotiate Trump’s surrender.

The indictment stems from a criminal investigation by the district attorney’s office into “hush money” payments made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels (through Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen), and whether they contravened electoral laws.

Trump also faces a swathe of other criminal investigations and civil suits, some of which may also result in state or federal charges. As he pursues another run for the presidency, Trump could simultaneously be dealing with multiple criminal cases and all the court appearances and frenzied media attention that will come with that.

These investigations and possible charges won’t prevent Trump from running or even serving as president again (though, as with everything in the U.S. legal system, it’s complicated).

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The AI Arms Race Has Begun: Why We Need A NATO For Artificial Intelligence

Like with the atomic bomb, artificial intelligence will divide the world into the haves and the have-nots, French columnist Édouard Tétreau writes. To win the AI arms race, France and its allies need a new transatlantic partnership.

-Analysis-

PARIS — The artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT and its future competitors have started an epistemological and anthropological revolution. This super-powerful tool, a "metalanguage" that feeds on all the human knowledge available online, will disrupt every part of our lives.

We will think and make decisions differently with ChatGPT. We will perform better at work and be better educated, better fed and better supervised, collectively and individually. Whether in manufacturing, intellectual production or essential services like medicine — nothing will escape the power of ChatGPT and artificial intelligence.

Last month, The Wall Street Journal published a lengthy discussion of ChatGPT signed by academic Daniel Huttenlocher, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Eric Schmidt, former boss of Google.

The authors ask the right, philosophical and essential question: that of trust. ChatGPT's answers have the appearance of intellectual and moral authority (drawing on all the world's online knowledge), but the answer is produced in a black box of machine-to-machine communications, which no one can enter.

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Pausing AI Research: Are Humans Intelligent Enough To Do The Right Thing?

Everyone from Elon Musk to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak to top Artificial Intelligence researchers have signed a public petition calling on a six-month moratorium on AI research. The ultimate decision will be left in the hands of humans, who are smart, but also vain and greedy.

-Analysis-

PARIS — A request for a six-month moratorium on artificial intelligence research, shared Wednesday by the Future of Life foundation, garnered over 1,000 signatures within hours from leading engineers and entrepreneurs in American technology. Notable signatories include Elon Musk, the head of Tesla and SpaceX; Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple; and the visionary author Yuval Noah Harari.

Their request is simple: they're calling for a six-month moratorium on any new research into AI tools that goes beyond what has already been accomplished by conversational software such as GPT-4, which has attracted significant attention.

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U.S., France, Israel: How Three Model Democracies Are Coming Unglued

France, Israel, United States: these three democracies all face their own distinct problems. But these problems are revealing disturbing cracks in society that pose a real danger to hard-earned progress that won't be easily regained.

"I'd rather be a Russian than a Democrat," reads the t-shirt of a Republican Party supporter in the U.S.

"We need to bring the French economy to its knees," announces the leader of the French union Confédération Générale du Travail.

"Let's end the power of the Supreme Court filled with leftist and pro-Palestinian Ashkenazis," say Israeli government cabinet ministers pushing extreme judicial reforms

The United States, France, Israel: three countries, three continents, three situations that have nothing to do with each other. But each country appears to be on the edge of a nervous breakdown of what seemed like solid democracies.

How can we explain these political excesses, irrational proclamations, even suicidal tendencies?

The answer seems simple: in the United States, in France, in Israel — far from an exhaustive list — democracy is facing the challenge of society's ever-greater polarization. We can manage the competition of ideas and opposing interests. But how to respond to rage, even hatred, borne of a sense of injustice and humiliation?

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Economy
Les Echos

France, Portrait Of A Nation In Denial — In Our World In Denial

The continuous increase of public debt and a tone-deaf president in France, the rise of authoritarian regimes elsewhere in the world, the blindness to global warming: realities that we do not want to see and that will end up destroying us if we do not act.

-Analysis-

PARIS — In France, the denial of reality seems to be the only thing that all of our public figures have in common: The president (who is right to say that it is his role to propose unpopular measures) refuses to see that other solutions than his own were possible and that institutions will not be sufficient in the long term to legitimize his solitary decisions.

The parliamentary opposition groups refuse to see that they do not constitute a political majority, since they would be incapable of governing together and that they have in common, for too many of them, on both sides of the political spectrum, left and right, only the hatred of money, the mistrust of success, and the contempt for excellence.

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Society
Eugenia Nicolosi

Mapping The Patriarchy: Where Nine Out Of 10 Streets Are Named After Men

The Mapping Diversity platform examined maps of 30 cities across 17 European countries, finding that women are severely underrepresented in the group of those who name streets and squares. The one (unsurprising) exception: The Virgin Mary.

ROME — The culture at the root of violence and discrimination against women is not taught in school, but is perpetuated day after day in the world around us: from commercial to cultural products, from advertising to toys. Even the public spaces we pass through every day, for example, are almost exclusively dedicated to men: war heroes, composers, scientists and poets are everywhere, a constant reminder of the value society gives them.

For the past few years, the study of urban planning has been intertwined with that of feminist toponymy — the study of the importance of names, and how and why we name things.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Anna Zafesova

Don't Underestimate How Much More Putin Needs Xi Than Xi Needs Putin

Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Moscow was a much-needed favor Vladimir Putin. But make no mistake, Beijing is there to serve Beijing — and holds virtually all the cards.

-Analysis-

Chinese president Xi Jinping’s much-anticipated visit to Moscow begins with a diplomatic mystery. In the first minutes of formal greetings at the Kremlin, Xi congratulated Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Russia has achieved significant successes under your leadership. Next year you have elections coming up, and I am convinced that the Russian people will give you their support.”

The Russian president’s candidacy in 2024, officially, is one of the biggest mysteries in Russian politics, as Putin has not yet declared his intentions, even though it is extremely unlikely that he would voluntarily move out of the Kremlin, and even less so after amending the constitution in 2020 to allow himself to enjoy two more six-year terms.

Still, the fact that Russians learned that their president will run again from Xi is extraordinary enough that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters they had "misunderstood."

According to Moscow, the Chinese president said more generally that his Russian “friend” would continue to be supported by Russians next year.

It was hardly a gaffe — not at this level of politics, where every blink is weighed and measured. Maybe it was a translation error, or a courtesy Xi wanted to show Putin, in response to his host's compliments. Putin's welcome speech included the phrase "We envy you a little bit” (for China’s rapid pace of progress), which must have truly pained the Russian leader to say.

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Ideas
Juan Gabriel Tokatlian

Populists With A Plan: Welcome To The Age Of Reactionism

Right-wing reaction to the globalized, liberal order is starting to look less dispersed and more systematic, like 20th-century political movements like socialism and communism.

-Analysis-

BUENOS AIRES — In a 2018 text published in the International Studies Quarterly, academics Joseph MacKay and Christopher David La Roche asked why there was no "Reactionary International Theory." In December of that year, speaking with Crisis journal, I myself stressed that beyond Europe and the United States, international reactionism was taking root in Latin America. Then in 2019, "Reactionary Internationalism" and the philosophy of the New Right were the subjects of another paper by Pablo de Orellana and Nicholas Michelsen.

As an emergent trend, the "reactionary international" is worth considering.

This international is comparable in scope to 20th-century currents like the Communist International, Socialist International and Christian Democrat International. While those were prominent in Europe, the new reaction has emerged most emblematically in Anglo-American countries and remains a solidly Western phenomenon. Its expressions in peripheral countries, eastern Europe or Latin America have effectively adopted its mainstream proposals.

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Society
Ricardo Iacub

An Ode To Gratitude — The First Step To A Better Life

Learning to actively be more grateful to those in our lives, even when it's hard, can change everything.

-Essay-

BUENOS AIRES — A medic and friend of mine recently told me he was trying to help a woman with medical tests. She had cared for him as a child and youngster, and now she needed surgery. I was struck by his sense of gratitude, but also by the fact that a friend of his had advised him against helping. Was it his problem, really? he had asked.

The conversation reminded me of the elderly people who feel their grown-up children don't appreciate the efforts they'd made in the past as much as they should. Despite the inherent difficulties of close relations and some further, "Oedipal" complications, such parents feel a little left behind, and may even see their affection and past service become a source of resentment.

I am not interested so much in the Manichean tale of long-suffering parents "who did everything" for their ungrateful children, as I am in observing how some entire societies can forge ties that include a lifetime of caregiving and support.

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Ideas

Beirut Blast And Us: A New Generation Of The Lebanese Diaspora Finds Its Voice

Lebanese citizens spread around the world have gradually gotten connected in new ways, thanks to the internet and social media. But the author recalls how the massive explosion in the port of Beirut triggered something altogether different.

-Essay-

PARIS — In a Paris emptied by the pandemic’s first summer, I was in the Jardin du Luxembourg when the images of the Beirut explosion started showing up in my Instagram feed.

There was a huge detonation, then an even bigger blast, followed by a massive mushroom cloud — red, white, and orange.

The posts showing images of the wounded and damage in the streets soon followed. It was quickly clear that people had been killed and the magnitude of the blast had destroyed buildings around the city.

We’d find out later that the explosions — which were first triggered on August, 4th, 2020, in 6:07 p.m. local time, — detonated 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate that had been stored at the Port of Beirut. That’s equal to 1.1 kilotons of TNT, and the explosions shook virtually every corner of the country of 6 million people and were heard more than 240 kilometers (150 miles) away on the island of Cyprus.

It is considered the most powerful non-nuclear explosion in history.

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Ideas
Gaspard Koenig

Ratatouille Was A Documentary: A French Philosopher Dives Into The Paris Garbage Crisis

The ongoing strike of garbage collectors in France shows us why we try so hard to hide how much garbage we throw out. As trash piles up in the streets, philosopher Gaspard Koenig reminds us that it wouldn't be so hard to recycle and compost more of it.

-Essay-

PARIS — The strike of garbage collectors can be felt in many cities across France, but it is particularly impressive in the capital, Paris. After just one week, the streets have been invaded by mountains of trash, already estimated at more than 5,000 tonnes.

On some sidewalks, barricades of trash in torn-open bags have piled up above head height. In narrow alleys, the smell is unbearable. Rats are already enjoying an unexpected feast. As we know from Albert Camus’ The Plague, this is not a good sign.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Anna Akage

Oscar for Navalny? The World Still Doesn’t Understand What’s Wrong With Russia

The Oscar for best documentary went to the portrait of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, considered Vladimir Putin’s top domestic rival. If it was meant as a gesture of solidarity with Ukraine, Hollywood has badly missed the mark.

-OpEd-

The Oscar awarded Sunday to “Navalny,” the documentary about Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was not much of a surprise. As a storyline, it follows all the laws of Hollywood: a courageous hero, an absolute villain, a love story, oppressed peoples — and a sequel. It also, of course, allows the movie industry to collectively and very publicly declare its strong stance against Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine.

Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.

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But if Hollywood thought this Oscar would be well-received in Ukraine, they got hold of the wrong script.

Assigning this highest honor of Western culture to Navalny is instead a reminder of how much is still misunderstood about Russia — and what must be done about its invasion of Ukraine.

Sure, Putin’s No. 1 domestic rival plays his role perfectly: Navalny is a caring father, a loving husband, a brave man, an honest politician. The film evokes all the right emotions: sympathy and admiration for the protagonist and regret for the country's plight and its citizens, who, like Navalny, have become figurative and literal prisoners of a regime.


And so the Kremlin’s victim par excellence receives an Oscar against the backdrop of a bloody war that Putin launched in Ukraine over a year ago. Yet Hollywood has, as it is prone to do, not gone beyond the surface — has not done its research.

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