Though their conclusions have been criticized as racist and fatalistic, a group of researchers argues that civil wars are more likely in countries where there are vast genetic, and therefore aesthetic, differences among populations.
Category: Ideas
More and more countries are limiting cash transactions and the amount people can carry. Beyond the economic rationale, what are the moral implications?
-Analysis- BEIJING — There is a popular Chinese television series called “Tiger Mom: My Sweat, Your Success” that has prompted no shortage of debate in China. Indeed, discussion has even extended to Chinese people living in America, where the concept of Tiger Moms made waves after the publication of a book in by a hard-driving […]
TURIN — Italian politicians from very different backgrounds have been trying to capitalize on last week’s victory of Spain’s anti-austerity party Podemos in regional elections: from centrist Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and the populist Northern League leader Matteo Salvini, to the banker-turned-cabinet minister Corrado Passera and leftist LGBT activist and governor of the Puglia region […]
After Swiss banking scandals shook global finance, arrests at the Zurich-based world soccer body shine a light on what’s wrong with business as usual in Switzerland.
The return to office of Chile’s first woman President has been a veritable disaster. It is only partly her own making.
-Op-Ed- JERUSALEM — I finished my military service as a fighter in the Israeli military’s Nahal Brigade 11 years ago. That’s when, together with some friends, I founded the NGO Breaking The Silence. Since then, I’ve talked to hundreds of soldiers who’ve told me about their service in the occupied territories. From what the dozens […]
-OpEd- TEL AVIV — Who would have thought that we’d miss Avigdor Lieberman at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs? Well, we don’t really miss him, but unlike Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely, Lieberman at least understood the importance of good relations with the United States. So sure that relations with the U.S. are “excellent,” she […]
-OpEd SANTIAGO — Over the past half-century, two fundamental social changes have taken place in the United States around the issue of race. One was the end of segregation laws that explicitly discriminated against African-Americans, and the other was the decline in racial prejudices. Polls show that such racist sentiments among individuals persist today in […]
-Essay- PARIS — Once again, the Nepalese are burying their dead and tending to their wounds. It’s impossible to rebuild for now while everything is still so wobbly. Between the houses that disappeared, the villages erased, the roads cut, the survivors are trembling — for the present suffering as much as for the colossal task […]
Evidence is so overwhelming that even Russians can no longer deny the truth that their country is fighting in Ukraine. But Putin offers something better than the truth.
Jerusalem and Berlin have strong ties in no small part because German officials virtually never criticize Israel. But that may be the seed of creeping estrangement.
Boundaries of personal space can depend on geography and wealth. City planners and interior designers should keep it all in mind when drawing up blueprints for the future.
Over the past two years, so-called “Female Virtues classes” have become popular across China, particularly among the less-educated. The classes mainly promote antiquated ideas about how women should be submissive. It’s obviously a shrewd businessmen’s way of cashing in — but the fact that flocks of women attend them also demonstrates a certain deep-seated ethical […]
-OpEd- BEIJING — When Macau authorities recently uncovered a prostitution ring, the most shocking aspect of the case was that its alleged mastermind was a 16-year-old boy. Needless to say, the teenager in Macau, one of two special Chinese administrative regions, represents an extreme example of the more diffused problem of the millions of minors […]
PARIS — “It’s the economy, stupid!” Just like the famous slogan in Bill Clinton’s 1992 challenge, the economy may have been decisive for David Cameron — but in a positive way this time for the incumbent. The economic crisis 22 years ago was George H. W. Bush’s downfall, despite his laudable record in foreign policy. […]
As boatloads of desperate immigrants land in Italy, the debate is highly charged. One writer reminds his countrymen of their own emigrant past.
Colombia’s health minister has opened up to euthanasia and imposed new bans on herbicides — news in a conservative country, and one so close to the U.S. for so long.
A view from France of Thursday’s high-stakes election across the Channel.
Despite serious financial difficulties, Argentina is negotiating major arms purchases from Russia. Relations with the U.S., in the meantime, have gone from bad to worse.
Doctors in Germany have noted an alarming rise in psychotic episodes linked to excessive marijuana use among young people, which follows other studies around the world raising alarms.
Bags, pouches and purses are among the world’s oldest fashion items, used through the ages for carrying seeds, weapons and eyeliner. A history of this most indispensable adornment.
TEL AVIV — One day, six years ago, while working on a documentary for Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day, television producer Ronnie Sarnat came across a strange story. “I sent a crew to film testimonies of Holocaust survivors and the crew came back deeply distraught,” she says. “One of the survivors came out to them, crying […]
Even at 93, Oskar Groening must still be tried for his alleged crimes. But the real question is why German authorities didn’t try him decades ago.
-Analysis- TURIN — Thousands of people — calling them people, i.e. men, women and children, is the first step — have died in the Strait of Sicily since 2010. Sunday saw the worst tragedy yet, but it was not the first, and unfortunately it won’t be the last. Many of these people are fleeing the […]
A German journalist suggests that the conversation around feminism has taken a terribly wrong turn. First you must ask the right questions.
China is moving into a new phase of both political and economic power that will test both its skills and ambitions far beyond the factory walls.
France lags behind the rest of the industrialized world in facing fundamental changes to the nature of work. The old model dominated by wage labor just can’t compete.
The Obama administration says, try talking to truculent states instead of squeezing or bombing them. In its own way, this is an eminently imperial approach.
An entire industry has been built to exploit Chinese couples desperate desire for their children to obtain U.S. or Canadian passports. But because the process requires both operators and clients to distort the truth, homeland security has launched a crack
Categories
Cover Your Eyes, Yemen Is Dying
A view from Turkey on the new conflict that is not only shaking the map of the Middle East, but costing the lives of innocent victims.
The White House move to impose sanctions on Venezuela was a badly timed swipe against the authoritarian government that may have imploded on its own. Instead, the U.S. gave it new life.
Modern life, with its rules and material rewards, has robbed people of the most basic sense of happiness. What do we have to lose by ridding ourselves of so many imposed ideas?
-OpEd- PARIS — Half-animal, half-human? The astounding developments in nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science (NBIC) are posing problems that we thought only existed in science fiction. Recent studies have brought us closer to Planet of the Apes, written by French novelist Pierre Boulle in 1963. In three experiments, the last one of which […]
The West’s accord with Iran was not just about a nuclear threat. The U.S. has bigger plans to recalibrate the region’s balance of power among Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt and beyond.
Time for a major ecological awakening in the world’s most populous nation. The planet is at stake.
Mexico is struggling to move past almost a century of semi-dictatorship to become a liberal democracy. But it is plagued by a shared and absolute rejection of the ideas of others.
-Editorial- PARIS — The deal reached in Lausanne on Iran’s nuclear program is a historic breakthrough. Or at least it will be if it leads to a “final” agreement by the June 30 deadline, which is by no means certain. For the first time in 12 years, when the West’s talks with Tehran began, the […]
-Analysis- BOGOTA — Cuba, in its effort to loosen the economy and move toward a partially free market system, may be borrowing a page from the history of another communist country, Vietnam. Starting in 1986, Vietnam implemented a series of economic reforms known collectively as Doi Moi. The changes were inspired by the industrialization drive […]