For decades, France did well in accommodating the religious needs of Muslims — on the condition they went back to their country of origin. Now, demands to express one’s faith are often labeled: separatism.
Category: Ideas
The streets are quiet, the joy is missing, and the guns are out. The eve of Carnival feels different this year in Brazil — and it’s not just the pandemic. Even as newspaper headlines report the country’s coronavirus death toll nearing 250,000, President Jair Bolsonaro has introduced another element of danger: new looser gun ownership […]
How can you hold on to wealth if you are no longer in power?
Murky definitions of national identity were igniting worldwide debates long before COVID, but travel lockdowns have shifted the cards. And what if I wanted to become French?
The contemporary crises of our world – climatic, democratic, technological, economic, epidemic – can no longer be understood or contained within the logic of nation states.
Italy’s new Prime Minister Mario Draghi, the highly respected former head of the European Central Bank, is tasked with fixing festering systemic failures.
The new documentary “Framing Britney Spears’ explores how both tabloid and mainstream media outlets first framed the American megastar as a hypersexualized Lolita, then a bad role model and finally an unstable mother. The film, produced by The New York Times, explores how the news coverage may have led to Spears being placed under a […]
Argentine landscape historian Sonia Berjman deplores a lack of long-term planning and park maintenance in Buenos Aires.
Venezuela’s PDVSA, once among the world’s most powerful oil firms, was transformed and largely gutted under Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. But the story is more complicated than it may seem.
Russia may not be heading toward a full-blown revolution, at least not yet. But the current wave of protests shouldn’t be dismissed either.
NEW DELHI — India is a cricket-crazy nation. We love our cricketers and some of us even worship them. Also, we love our cinema. We look up to the reel life heroes and admire them with the expectation that they are real life heroes. But what happens when these influencers do something unexpected? When we keep someone on a pedestal we, unknowingly, keep them in the position of authority and give them the power to influence us, our decisions. From their fashion sense to their political ideologies, we believe everything they do could be correct, since they’ve achieved something we […]
Of Italy’s 58 prime ministers since World War II, you probably don’t remember the name Lamberto Dini. He took office on Jan. 13, 1995, several months after uncertain general election results, as the country grappled with an ongoing corruption scandal and billionaire businessman Silvio Berlusconi“s recent entry into politics. The Italian establishment had turned to […]
The pandemic has prompted financial authorities to take a more relaxed approach to debts. For Latin America, overspending in response to the crisis may take them back to the poverty pits of the past.
For many people, the lesson from the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 – and more broadly from the experience of the last four years – is that American democracy has become newly and dangerously fragile. That conclusion is overstated. In fact, American democracy has always been fragile. And it might be more precise to diagnose the United States as a fragile union rather than a fragile democracy. As President Joe Biden said in his inaugural address, national unity is “that most elusive of things.” Certainly, faith in American democracy has been battered over the last year. […]
Facial recognition cameras have imposed themselves in every nook and cranny of Chinese life — to the point where a concern is growing within the population and certain cities are reacting.
The editor of Mada Masr writes about what how to remember the revolution in Egypt.
A New Year’s Eve ‘free party’ in Lieuron, France, became a state affair. While politicians are quick to condemn and punish the fête’s organizers and attendees, they offer no real solution.
In a rush to bolster its image, the Modi government is giving away coronavirus vaccines that will do little for the country’s international standing and would be better served at home.
The attempted assassination and subsequent arrest of Alexei Navalny, and accusations of state corruption, have sparked a new protest movement in Russia that may force Vladimir Putin to consider the ‘Belarus option.’
The virtues that laid the groundwork for Western civilization’s many advances are being eclipsed, it would seem, by an internet-driven rush of irrationality.
History, as it takes place on the local level, is more than just a precious heritage. It also reflects the multiple visions that our societies need to remain healthy and vibrant.
MILAN — The first day of Joe Biden’s presidency bore clear traces of some of the recent wounds inflicted on the United States. After being sworn in, Biden arrived at the White House protected by thousands of troops and barricades just two weeks since deadly violence engulfed the Capitol. Thousands of flags stood in for […]
A pillar of French culture, the Paris Opera is struggling to survive both the pandemic and criticism of its lack of diversity. Will such an important institution be able to withstand the changes of time?
Democrats who reach the White House do not necessarily play into the hands of Europeans. It is up to them to unify their voice to pass their agendas.
When I was a kid — 12,13 — my dad’s shrink friend was a frequent guest in our house. His usual business on these visits was to review for us the degenerating state of the world, and list the ways it all made his profession difficult. “Wanna catch a glimpse of the future?” he asked […]
At 6 p.m. local time Wednesday in Rome, while much of the world was transfixed on Washington, D.C., Italian reporters were huddled in a vast room of the nation’s Parliament to witness another political crisis unfolding. Former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi announced that his minor party would pull out of the government, plunging Italian […]
Before it even began, the pandemic was already on the radar of big risks — and yet we were unprepared. Will it be the same for cyber security and environmental threats?
By closing Donald Trump’s social media accounts, the Big Tech platforms have recognized for the first time their fundamental responsibility for the content they broadcast. But for this and other reasons that now also means the regulators must step up.
The assault on the Capitol wasn’t an attempted coup, per se. But the ramifications of how to hold Trump responsible are fundamental for the future of the American democracy.
Categories
Let’s Make 2021 The Year Of Social Justice
This new year may be one of greater justice and better social conditions, but only if people fight for them.
A dictator-in-waiting orchestrates a violent assault on the seat of government. Shots are fired. A stunned world watches what most agree is an attack on democracy itself, a rejection of what had long seemed self-evident: that a nation’s health and prosperity depend on an orderly transfer of power from one elected leader to another. Two […]
The raid of Congress by a crowd of Donald Trump supporters is the culmination of a tumultuous presidency that has deeply fractured the American political system.
The Iranian regime’s plans to be the power broker in three Middle Eastern states have withered since the United States killed its key regional operative Qasem Soleimani.
New Year’s resolutions are still freshly made, but how long will we stick to them? Here’s what legendary German thinker Immanuel Kant has to say about them.
There are more and more elected leaders these days willing to ride roughshod over the rules of democracy. But that hardly means the system’s doomed.
The Schengen Area is not a “sieve” that lets migrants in but, as recent events have shown, it is not a fortress either. The fundamental rights of individuals will always prevail over security requirements.
From The Freedom Of Vanlife To A Pandemic Quarantine — And Back Again? RUE AMELOT Pathogens In The Permafrost: A New Climate Change Health Risk LES ECHOS No Work, No Way Home: Russia’s Migrant Workers Trapped By COVID-19 KOMMERSANT Brazil’s Stranger-Than-Fiction Descent Under Bolsonaro CLARIN Quiet Killer: When Coronavirus Got Inside A Capuchin Convent LE […]
Worldcrunch’s editor reflects on how we lived through – and covered – a year that we might have known was coming.
The forced abortiona of a Hindu woman married to a Muslim man should be treated like murder by the state. Yet, not much is being said about it, or other ways new laws are used to disenfranchise Muslims.
COVID Death Toll At 1.5 Million: A World United By Those We Lost WORLDCRUNCH Abidjan Postcard: Black Lives Matter, But They’re Different Here JEUNE AFRIQUE Pandemic Postcard: Nearly Alone As A Paris Museum Reopens RUE AMELOT “Joan Of Arc” In Exile: Can Tikhanovskaya Lead Belarus From Abroad? KOMMERSANT COVID-19, Address To The Nations: Faces Of […]