From the apocalyptic Australian fires to the killer drone strike on Iran’s top military commander, these are troubling times indeed.
Category: Ideas
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ — Is there a relation between women and the environment? Is it necessary to view environmental policies through female eyes? Is there is a difference in the male and female relationship to the matter? The response to all these is a definite “yes.” Around the world, women are the most interactive with natural […]
Are explicitly polemical art works, by now a tradition in modern culture, related to the wave of rebellions across the world? Or are they just a moneymaking tool?
Once again, we are entering the Twenties, a decade which, last century, saw an eruption of freedom caught between two immense tragedies. Here is a little taste of what might await us this time around.
LES ECHOS France’s Yellow Vests And The Problem With Post-Truth Economics Opinion shapers have a habit these days of disregarding facts, be they scientific or economic. Opinions matter, of course, but shouldn’t supersede well-founded knowledge. SUDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG RoboJudge: When Laws Are Transformed Into Computer Code Laws take time to catch up with reality. Could we […]
A new rendition of the famous Puccini opera opens this month in Milan, and it all revolves around the powerful and predatory Scarpia character.
The island nation hasn’t had a free election for more than 70 years. And yet, as millions take to the streets across the region, the Cuban regime keeps getting a pass.
There’s an old joke about the apartment complexes named after Khrushchev.
LA STAMPA Meet The Doctor’s Maid Who Inspired The Mediterranean Diet A housekeeper with serious culinary skills helped feed the mind and mouth of Ancel Keys, the American doctor famous for documenting the health benefits of Mediterranean food. THE INITIUM Yulin To Paris: Dog-Eating At Center Of Animal Rights Battle A Chinese dog meat festival […]
MOSCOW — In a recent letter to the European Court of Human Rights, the Russian Minister of Justice Aleksandr Konovalov declared that the level of domestic violence in the country is overstated, adding that there is no evidence that women suffer from it more than men. This was a response after the European court citing […]
Alberto Fernández takes office with a well-known left-leaning world view, but in a Latin American region increasingly dominated by the right.
By Dec. 10, one third of German employees have already mentally switched off for the holidays — even though they still have to show up for work.
France is virtually shut down now by national strikes over pension reform. But from Denmark to UK to Germany, social change and the popular movements resisting have their own histories.
An end to the conflict in Eastern Ukraine doesn’t necessarily seem closer, though at least it’s not farther away.
They shall not pass: Since July, soldiers have stepped up patrols along the country’s 1,600-km border with Mali and Burkina Faso.
-OpEd- MOSCOW — Despite the predictions before this past week’s NATO summit of a major split in the alliance, and some awkward moments among its respective leaders, the meeting itself concluded without any real substantive complications. Even traditional anti-globalist clashes we’ve come to expect from these kinds of gatherings were absent. As for Russia, it […]
The weakness of institutions in Mexico once gave its presidents leeway to reform the state. Today President López Obrador is using it as a tool to accumulate more and more power of his own.
From Venezuela to Hungary, populist leaders are carving away at fundamental checks and balances in slow and often subtle ways.
MOSCOW — Last month, the Interior Minister of Cyprus Constantinos Petrides announced the revocation of 26 “citizenships by investment” that had been granted before stricter criteria of this program was introduced in 2018. Though Petrides refused to name those who had lost their so-called “golden passports’, Kommersant has recently revealed some of the names on […]
A closer reading of the Pope’s recent treatise that challenges the way contemporary culture sees poverty in society.
-Analysis- MINSK — Following the Nov. 17 elections for Belarus” lower house of parliament, independent observers and opposition politicians unanimously rated this campaign as one of the dirtiest in the 25 years of Alexander Lukashenko’s rule. The 65-year-old president of Belarus has once again demonstrated that he is not going to adjust the eastern tilt […]
Many people have had to tighten their purse strings in recent years. But that’s only part of what’s fueling frustrations in the region.
The U.S. president has a history of strong-arming trading partners. But the move to tax things like French wine and Spanish olives is actually justified.
With a now-leaderless Democratic Party and no charismatic successor to take over from Berlusconi, his one-time backers may migrate to more extremist parties.
Categories
Evo Morales Has Only Himself To Blame
The leftist leader had some worthy accomplishments during his long tenure as Bolivian president. But his quest for indefinite leadership cost him in the end.
Protesters in Lebanon and Iraq have been venting their fury at Iran, which is accused of practically running their countries. Tehran is not afraid to come down hard on its domestic opponents.
MOSCOW — For the first time, the U.S. Congress has recognized the mass killings and deportations in the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923 as genocide. So why now? It doesn’t seem that the United States has anything really to gain from the country of Armenia. Two of the four borders of the country are […]
Globally, 25% of all people admit they have nobody to talk to, with older people living longer and young people spending their time on line.
Chileans are fairly well off, but only in comparison to their Latin American neighbors. The country’s success has also bred greater expectations.
PARIS — “Kolossal’naya opasnost.” In a recent BBC interview, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev used those two words – “colossal danger” – to sound the alarm of the risk the world faces as tensions rise between Russia and the West. What prompted such strong language to describe the geopolitical standoff? Two more words: nuclear weapons. Indeed, […]
The world faces a set of challenges not unlike the tumultuous times depicted in the classic British novel A Tale of Two Cities.
Election winners Alberto Fernández and Cristina Kirchner will soon take over leadership of the country. But they’ve also lost momentum already …
President López Obrador is bending Congress and the judiciary to his will, and scaring away investors in the process.
-Analysis- MOSCOW — The USA betrayed the Kurds. This was the blunt interpretation from Dmitry Peskov, press secretary to Russian President Vladimir Putin, following the Turkey-Russia agreement on northeast Syria signed earlier this week in Sochi. The Kurds have been the Americans’ most loyal allies in Syria, yet Washington abandoned them. Now Kurdish military units […]
-Essay- NEW YORK — They said the devil had traveled in her clothing. Elsche Prösche, née Wohler, wife of Jochim, was in her forties, and lived a life of relative poverty in Kölzin, a village in northeastern Germany. She was my great-aunt, nine generations ago — and for charges of witchcraft, she was burned at […]
At the 150th anniversary of the Indian independence leader and philosopher of non-violence, looking back long line of African-American leaders influenced by his ideas.
South American states like Chile and Ecuador suspect Venezuela’s socialist regime of fanning rioting in their countries.
Politics in the region have become even more complex since the Cold War era of revolutions and military juntas.
Soccer stars and public figures show their dismal side when they play the victims on being caught in contempt of the law.
WARSAW — Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) won last weekend’s parliamentary elections. So why was longtime party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski so obviously glum during his victory speech? The first answer is in the performance of other Polish political parties: combined, the three main blocks of the democratic opposition received more votes in total […]