Yes, an open mind in Europe is necessary, but debt reduction isn’t even in the Greeks’ own interest. It’s time to change the way Greece works.
Category: Ideas
Governments in Latin America and Africa are scrambling to build so-called “stategic trading partnerships” with China. But is it really a win-win situaiton?
A native of China’s bustling capital who studied in the U.S. and UK felt more embraced as a local abroad than in a new Chinese city. Inside the native-foreigner divide.
Political drama may have once served Argentine President Kirchner, but now national debt, corruption and the suspicious death of a prosecutor are turning the people against her.
After the Greek election of radical leftists and the European Central Bank’s new liquidity, Europe is still where the rest of the world looks to understand themselves. History has so much to say.
BOGOTA — The significance of Uber goes well beyond its specific function, which is to connect willing drivers with people who need to move around in a safe, comfortable and punctual manner. The deeper message of the controversial digital application — and others like it — is in the changing way labor and service markets […]
A German take on new Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who looks ready to peddle his sense of alienation beyond Greece’s borders? If so, Europe itself is at risk.
Images are spreading of extreme cruelty to animals at the corralejas, a version of bullfighting in remote areas of Colombia. Social media can be both enemy and friend for animal rights activists.
And it will happen sooner than you think…
-OpEd- BERLIN — It was supposed to sound aggressive when Prime Minister Manuel Valls told French citizens after the terrorist attacks in Paris that the country would henceforth be in a state of “war.” President François Hollande too addressed the nation in these terms. On the only aircraft carrier France possesses, he announced that the […]
Categories
In Venezuela, The Maduro Reign Is Doomed
Political repression is one thing, but if store shelves are empty, the so-called “revolution” is destined to crumble.
Revelations of massive corruption at Petrobras come with more than economic consequences. The credibility of the entire state is at stake. All eyes are on President Dilma Rousseff.
Right-wing politicians think we should abandon the Schengen Area, and return to national borders within Europe. That would make about as much sense as putting a wall around Sicily.
Though both nations have been hit by Islamist terror, Nigeria’s Goodluck Jonathan hasn’t gotten the same global support as France’s Francois Hollande. There are many reasons, but it starts with Jonathan’s own attitude toward his citize
For many in these very different extremist camps, it all begins with a “lying media.”
While the United States’ political system is gridlocked by ideological poison, the German coalition government limits the benefits of bickering. A search for that perfect dose of acrimony.
-OpEd- BOGOTA — Skokie is a mostly Jewish district outside of Chicago, Illinois. In 1977, the far-right National Socialist Party of America decided to organize a march there, which the scandalized residents, including thousands of Holocaust survivors, naturally sought to stop, arguing it would incite hatred and lead to violence. But the ACLU, the American […]
The increasingly authoritative stances of Presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Erdogan are only isolating them inside their own countries and on the global stage.
After last week’s deadly attacks in Paris, a passionate open letter from four high school teachers in a French neighborhood not unlike those where the killers grew up.
An odd postscript to the dramatic events in Paris that says much about the evolving state of the media in China, which sometimes can be as “free” as it wants to be.
The discourse of East and West, and specifically Islamic East and Christian West, is flawed and implicitly destined for conflict. A view from Latin America as Paris burns.
The imminent injection of wealth into Cuba as the U.S. embargo ends, and the measure of prosperity that should follow, may be the first steps toward its eventual democratization.
Following a Sunday that may have restored our collective faith in humanity, the hard work for France and all of Europe begins in earnest. Will the rare burst of unity last?
TEL AVIV — After Israel announced plans to freeze the transfer of $126 million in taxes it collected for the Palestinian Authority, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah attended a round of meetings in Saudi Arabia to nurture solidarity for his government. And they obliged. The Arab States promised that if Israel wouldn’t transfer the money, […]
‘Je suis Charlie’ is a defense of neither blasphemy nor free speech. It is a stark and collective reminder that we know our enemy, and the stakes.
Where the French Revolution took place, religious terror now haunts the streets. Today’s voices of free speech must turn to state authority to feel secure. What we need to do now.
Argentina’s electoral routine fosters inequality and injustice, enabling opportunists to cash in. It’s time for a new approach.
While the world tries to get its collective head around what’s happened in the French capital, life here is bound to change. One American journalist, and mother of two, in Paris sees it already.
This thing called freedom lives in its most extreme form in satire, which by definition can never be blasphemy.
Categories
Your Prophet Is Not My Prophet
A French-Algerian writer launches a loud and clear message for whoever carried out the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine.
After the deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo, the reaction in Paris is raw: war has been declared on the values of the French Republic. First order of business: know your enemy.
PARIS — There’s a nice trompe l’oeil mural on rue Nicolas Appert here in the 11th arrondissement. I once stood in front of it for a little while on my lunch break, trying to make sense of the artist’s visual tricks. Today, making sense of what happened on that street feels impossible: Twelve people, among […]
-OpEd- SÃO PAULO — The ongoing corruption and money laundering scandals at Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras have badly tarnished the image of the company. Once considered as a sort of national treasure, the public firm faces almost daily revelations about kickbacks paid to politicians from oil sales as part of a scheme to buy […]
-OpEd- MOSCOW — The dials of the propaganda machine were never properly calibrated. Instead of talking about fighting Ukrainian nationalists, who like nationalists anywhere are dangerous and unsavory, it was simply Ukrainians and Ukraine that Russians were fighting. Less than a year later, this indiscriminate approach has had identifable results. In an October survey of […]
Is this the rise of another Hugo Chavez for Latin America?
A heartwrenching court case in France poses thorny questions as the very meaning of family evolves more quickly than the legal system, or even the experts, can keep up with.
Despite FARC declaring a ceasefire, peace won’t come to Colombia until warring parties in decades of civil war admit to all the people they’ve kidnapped, tortured and killed.
The rising battle between the forces of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and exiled imam Fethullah Gulen is a high-stakes power struggle. But some in Turkey want no part of it.
Another so-so summit on the climate, and another set of tepid, if not useless, commitments to curb emissions. If the governments can’t get it together, the people must act on their own.
If nothing else, the United States and Cuba stand to earn plenty of cash with a future end to sanctions feeding booms of American exports, Cuban tourism and infrastructure development.