Turkish President Erdogan was quick to blame U.S. and French leaders after terror attacks struck those countries, but has failed to take responsibility for allowing the deadly Ankara attacks to occur.
Category: Ideas
Pursuit of free trade may be at an all-time high as Washington seals the TPP deal and Beijing pursues its New Silk Road. Here’s how it all looks from Bogota.
Typically reliant on solid argument and logical persuasion, Merkel is now turning to the humanity of Germans on the refugee crisis. It’s a revolutionary approach for the world’s most powerful woman.
Saturday’s bombings in Turkey’s capital may be the worst in the nation’s history, with a toll approaching 100 dead. Some point the finger at President Erdogan’s ruling AKP party.
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ — The Colombian Health Ministry wants to tax sugary drinks. The Supreme Court is ordering parliament to regulate labeling on food products so consumers know which ones contain genetically modified ingredients. A nationwide debate has begun on the poor quality of school meals, as the regional head of the World Food Programme tells […]
-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 […]
-Analysis- BUENOS AIRES — We’re now very much in the “hangover” stage, the proverbial “morning after,” as countries all over the world face painful adjustments now that the party years — when China’s booming economy fed a seemingly insatiable appetite for outside products — are finally over. While the pain may not be as intense […]
Today’s generation of university students are the children of so-called “helicopter parents,” particularly coddled and worried about in the US. And they can’t seem to cope in the face of adulthood.
-OpEd- BERLIN — German authorities are now trying in every possible way to come up with solutions for sheltering the wave of refugees entering our country. But that has somehow led the state to threaten the suspension basic rights of property and ownership. The federal government does its best to foster optimism. German Chancellor Angela […]
-Analysis- NEW YORK — In the celebrated sci-fi comedy “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” a supercomputer determines that the answer to life, the Universe, and everything is the number 42. The really difficult task, however, is figuring out what the question was in the first place. Sometimes I feel like interest rate hikes are […]
-OpEd- PARIS — It’s a thorny issue that has experts divided. For some, a ground war is a trap and should not even be considered; only well-targeted, reinforced airstrikes will do the job. For others, it’s impossible to slay ISIS without hunting down its jihadists one by one, from street to street, hideout after hideout, […]
Brazilian governments again are guilty of spending too much when exports and revenues were booming. A view from neighboring Argentina, where bad economics is endemic.
Law enforcement agencies that bring cases to court, and the administrators who act as court overseers, have far more power and influence than judges, who are often pressured to render false verdicts. How it works, and why the system needs overhauling.
Categories
China Reflections: From Mao To Xi
NEW YORK — For some years now, I have been observing China from a distance, never going back to the country that I called my third home for many years. Back then, during my long stays in China, I learned a lot about the country and its culture. In the past, foreigners had to travel […]
There’s a video circulating on the Internet that stunned me stone cold. You see a group of animal rights activists literally tearing a homeless man’s puppy from his arms. You can see the poor guy trying in vain to free himself from the leader of the activist group, while the frightened little pup squeals and […]
The bloody Syrian stalemate unites Russia and the West, in a shared urgency to defeat ISIS. But the Syrian dictator, also an ISIS foe, should not be seen as a lesser evil.
A showdown over Israel’s choice for ambassador to Brazil, pro-settlements leader Dani Dayan, shows the Netanyahu government may be set to abandon the two-state solution that has promised Palestinians a homeland.
If and when Colombia’s FARC guerrillas stop fighting and peace comes to Colombia, the socio-economic benefits will be multiple and unstoppable. There is only one choice.
Carmen Balcells, literary agent to some of the greatest Spanish-language writers of our time, died this past weekend in Barcelona. One of the novelists she discovered, Isabel Allende, pays tribute.
And watch out for Pablo Iglesias, leader of Spain’s leftist Podemos party.
The Mexican government’s recent actions suggest the ruling party yearns for the days when it governed unchallenged through cronyism. But order comes at a price.
Honest judges and popular protest combined to topple a president, setting a bold precedent in an age when news travels fast.
A pregnant Chinese woman must abort her baby, or see her husband fired. After first changes to family planning laws, sweeping reform is now urgently needed.
Humanitarian, demographic and economic reasons have been cited by much of the German establishment for welcoming migrants. But what’s the real end game?
Turkish political leaders and ordinary citizens are blind as ever to why Kurds continue to fight for freedom. It recalls another open chapter in the nation’s troubled history.
Germany’s welcoming of refugees is sending out a strong signal to the rest of Europe and the world. But there’s hard work ahead in a country that knows the weight of history.
Ordinary citizens, the media and politicians make so much noise about ideology and petty politics, but quietly carry on in the face of massive mining pollution.
Even as anger rises about the gap between rich and poor, looking hard at the numbers shows global poverty is decreasing. And government aid is not the reason.
-Essay- PARIS — There are times when it is necessary to compare things that are not comparable. There’s a chance at least that it will wake up some anesthetized minds. Between 1933 and 1940, several million refugees who had escaped from Germany, Poland, the Baltic countries and elsewhere, fleeing Nazism, were met with closed borders. […]
Despite huge amounts of food still being wasted every day in the world, initiatives in various countries demonstrate growing public awareness about this modern-day abomination.
Of all the milestones along the road to human civilization, none is more profound than the advent of reading and writing. But in the name of interactivity, the 21st century is marked by the shallow language of social media that risks burning all our acqui
After last week’s foiled Thalys train attack, citizens must get used to playing their part in the fight against the jihadist threat, a former French intelligence agent warns.
As vegetable wholesalers around Buenos Aires ignore government calls to moderate prices, angry shoppers may resort to their last weapon.
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.
From the SARS health crisis and high-speed train crash to the latest explosion in Tianjin, Chinese officials don’t understand damage control or how to communicate with the public.
China’s recent currency devaluations have set off a series of economic consequences, both intended and otherwise. And the reach is more global than ever.
While lawmakers wage political battles every day about how much religion the government should impose, ordinary Israelis, both religious and secular, are surprisingly unified on the notion of keeping the government out of their private lives.
Faced with an economic downturn and corruption among state officials, the middle class is venting its fury at Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. But that may not be enough to oust her.
-OpEd- 

How important is intellectual property in the digital age? Not very, if the business strategies of industry luminaries like PayPal’s Elon Musk and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg are any indication. Musk, the multi-talented entrepreneur behind PayPal, and more recently Tesla cars and SpaceX, has made it clear he considers Tesla’s impressive lead in battery and […]
-OpEd- TEL AVIV — The reactions to last week’s Locker Commission report that calls for massive cuts to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) budget is perhaps the best proof to date that the Israeli people don’t understand the mechanisms that keep them safe. The report recommends keeping the defense budget at $15.4 billion for the […]