Muslims are supposed to save water, Christians and Jews energy. In the past, we blamed those ideologies for ecological crises.
Category: Ideas
As Venezuela’s government becomes nervous about possible defeat in parliamentary elections Sunday, its threatening rhetoric shows signs it might refuse to acknowledge a loss at the polls. Then, all bets are off.
China’s GDP has overtaken that of Japan. If there’s one key area where Japan can still teach the Chinese, it is Japan’s demographic crisis.
As it loses territory in Iraq and Syria, ISIS may pursue the *distant enemy* that Osama bin Laden put at the heart of his own longer-term pursuit of a caliphate.
HAMBURG — In Birgit Böhm’s opinion, the “4” she’s looking at is balancing on one leg, like in the nursery rhyme “A little man in the forest,” and wearing a little red cloak. The “7” next to it looks like it’s made of thick gardening wire. And it’s green! The rest of the numbers and […]
Though 146 countries have pledged to fight global warming ahead of the UN’s COP21 conference, market realities and other forces means such commitments are unlikely to materialize.
BOGOTÁ — Recent election defeats for the social-democratic Peronist candidate in Argentina, and for Bogotá”s unapologetic socialist mayor, may be part of a wider trend for leftist leaders across Latin America. Both those elections — not to mention several mass protests against Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s Workers Party — suggest voters are tired of business-as-usual […]
The global refugee crisis forces us to rethink city planning and housing, with more focus on assuring people’s rights and needs. A chance to actually wind up with more human cities.
Research suggests that sustained terror attacks over time deal a crippling blow to economies, but a single act of appalling violence, like the Nov. 13 attacks in France, may have fewer lasting effects than one might think.
Argentina’s next president, the center-right Mauricio Macri, must be deft in reforming the economy of a society that has moved beyond a developmental stage, to one that sees itself as “at risk.”
Bewildering technology and savage capitalism fuels desperation and hatred against the West. War was declared a long time ago, and the underdeveloped world are the primary victims.
Long after the days of Pablo Escobar and cocaine cartels, Colombia has regained the crown as world’s No. 1 producer of coca. It gives further urgency that FARC-government peace talks succeed.
In the wake of wanton terror, psychology replaces practically everything, from social life to and information. Emotion is now political — and strategic.
-OpEd- ANTALYA — Opportunism may be one of the accepted facts of life in foreign policy, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. The Turkish government is busy right now trying to make the most of two pieces of the Syrian crisis that have come to the fore: The recent flood of refugees to […]
Dismissed and wooed as so-called millennials, a young French generation supplied both the targets and perpetrators of the Paris attack. Simple answers are nowhere to be found, though maybe this label will stick.
PARIS — France’s intelligence services no longer rule out what not so long ago seemed unthinkable: the emergence on its territory of a “Lebanon-like” terrorism which would see suicide bombs replaced one day by the deadliest of operational modes — truck or car bombings, possibly activated remotely. “We have to accept the reality,” a well-informed […]
-OpEd- PARIS — A majority of historians describe the Spanish Civil War, fought from 1936 to 1939, as a dress rehearsal for what came next, World War II. Will historians of the future be saying the same about the Syrian civil war? All you need to do is replace Nazi Germany and the Italian fascists […]
French President Francois Hollande has declared that his nation is at war against jihadist terrorism. But how do those words translate into action?
PARIS — As investigators follow possible leads from Syria to Greece and Belgium, Friday’s deadly and meticulously coordinated assault in Paris was no doubt very much a European attack. Governments across the continent are busy taking measures to enhance security against a growing threat of similar coordinated terror assaults. FRANCE French authorities carried out anti-terror […]
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 […]
Paris has been brutally attacked by Islamist terrorists two times in the past 10 months. Will Friday’s attack wind up changing the way the French live their lives?
Once focused solely on gaining Middle East territory for its caliphate, the terror group is now targeting “crusader nations,” those fighting it in Syria and Iraq.
-Editorial- PARIS — France is at war. At war against a terrorism that is totalitarian, blind and horribly murderous. We’ve known it since the attacks against Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket in Paris in January. And yet, despite the French population’s exceptional show of unity four days after those attacks, despite the shows of […]
The increasing “unreliability” of voters in a digital age are consistently knocking polling experts off their mark.
BEIJING — Over the past month President Xi Jinping made a state visit to the United States and to the United Kingdom. In the U.S. he was welcomed with a 21-gun salute on the south lawn of the White House followed by a state banquet. In Britain he was greeted by the Queen, and rode […]
Orthorexia is to eating right what anorexia is to eating less. It’s the condition of imposing such stringent control over one’s diet, insisting on eating only healthy or organic food, and it is becoming a health concern in developed nation
Where the Russian leader lacks any real strategy, his American counterpart is short on nerve. They’re playing two different games and following very different rules.
BEIJING — The setting is Singapore, where the two sides had a semi-official contact in 1992, giving the news a pleasant whiff of nostalgia. The summit on Saturday between Ma Ying-jeou of Taiwan and Xi Jinping of China is historic indeed: It is the first meeting between leaders of both sides of the Taiwan Strait […]
Unlike Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa manages to keep his political crackdowns below the international radar.
Climate change, pollution, terrorism. Teenagers are increasingly scared of what’s ahead, and why wouldn’t they be? While a certain amount of fear is normal, psychologists advise teens to get help when anxiety takes over.
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.
BOGOTÁ — In a kind of eerie, Darwinian evolution, abandoned pets in parts of Colombia have become feral beasts and predators that are proving more fearsome than wild animals. Once again, wildlife is proving defenseless in the face of yet another man-made threat, produced in this case by former owners of an unwanted dog or […]
-Analysis- ISTANBUL — Why did those who gave 60% of the vote to opposition parties in the June 7 parliamentary elections turn to the ruling AKP on Sunday? The message to the various forces of the opposition was clear: “You couldn’t find a ruling coalition with 60% of the vote. You made a mess of […]
The extreme economic condition that is now practically extinct across the globe could return in Venezuela if a range of corrective measures that are anathema to the socialist government aren’t swiftly instituted.
Are new technologies making the wage system obsolete, turning employees into independents? No, workers aren’t so much freelancing as moonlighting.
One of the most controversial words in the German language is the focus of a conference in Dresden, a city that itself is filled with highly charged meaning, past and present.
-Editorial- TOKYO — Both to deter North Korea’s military provocations and to ensure regional stability in Asia, it’s vital that the United States and South Korea maintain their solid alliance. South Korea should be mindful not to get too close to China, or risk weakening its collaboration with the United States. U.S. President Barack Obama […]
French academic André Gunthert asserts that the selfie is not narcissistic folly at all, but rather represents a new kind of revolution that threatens elite control of society.
With renewed violence raging between Palestinians and Israelis, and an international community caught up with other conflicts, the two-state solution is all but dead and buried. Another reason to mourn the Israeli leader, assassinated Nov. 4, 1995.
Argentina’s electronic music scene and clubs are perfect venues for testing the country’s latest illegal recreational drugs. The favorites then go on to the bigger markets in Europe.