The decision by the United States and Cuba to restore diplomatic ties looks like good news for now: for Cuban families, for regional democracy and for peace in war-torn Colombia.
Category: Ideas
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done great harm to Israel’s reputation, and the early elections he’s called for March are a perfect chance to end his hold on the nation.
After World War II, it was SS prisoners in Germany’s Landsberg prison. After 9-11, it was Guantanamo. The U.S. repeats its sins, but also repeats its repentance.
Hong Kong’s umbrella protesters have all but conceded defeat, and China is taking a victory lap. The showdown offers a glimpse of Beijing’s new use of smart power, and its deeper weaknesses.
The dominant economic idea used to be to cut all barriers to capital flows, the so-called Washington Consensus. But since the 2008 financial collapse, the tech industry’s hold on global consumption rules the day, and anything impeding it is considere
The U.S. currency is stronger on world markets than it’s been in years, which could fundamentally undermine emerging economies that have borrowed trillions in dollars.
Colombians seem to worship all things Anglo-American, “Miami-style” most of all. It’s a sign of our own socio-cultural shame and some appalling choices made by past governments.
There’s always a clever argument – security, stability, secularism – to put rule of law and democracy on hold. But denying human rights is a certain recipe for destruction.
A heated national debate in Germany over raising the retirement age is posing the wrong questions. A German writer in the U.S. sees a different solution.
-OpEd- DOURADOS — Large imposing walls and fences have become a compulsory part of construction plans for the luxury gated communities mushrooming all around Brazil. But there is one particularity about the Ecoville Residence in Dourados, in the southwestern state of Mato Grosso do Sul. On the other side of its three-meter electric fence sits […]
As the 20th UN Climate Summit begins in Peru, one faster way to fight global warming is to steer investors away from oil and gas, and bet instead in clean energy. The planet depends on it.
The U.S. President has shown a mix of political pragmatism and historic vision in pushing forward in the face of a backward-looking Congress.
Japan has slipped into recession, the ultimate mark of failure of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ambitious but misguided efforts to turn around the nation’s economy.
The current series of kissing protests in India are indicative of a country and a culture in transition.
Gays and lesbians rarely come out of the closet in a society that has more generally been ‘anti-sex’ since the Communists took over.
A policy of war abroad, mixed with tighter border controls at home, won’t meet the challenge.
The kidnapping of a Colombian general is the clearest sign that FARC guerrillas may have entered in peace talks, but have yet to give up their war mentality and false populist ideology.
Reducing the strain on the environment, and opting out of a “growth-at-all-costs” logic, may be the only path forward for the future. And it will require the smartest new ideas.
-OpEd- BERLIN — As German military theorist Carl von Clausewitz once wrote, the aggressor is always peace-loving. He wants to take over our land, our people, our resources without firing a single shot. By this same logic, the defender is always the aggressor. This truth has seldom been better illustrated than by events in eastern […]
-OpEd- BOGOTA — Mexico bleeds as criminal gangs kill the innocent and not-so-innocent, before the gaze of an impotent — or is it indifferent? — state apparatus. The latest victims were 43 student activists who disappeared in late September and, many believe, were shot dead and cut up by gangsters and policemen collaborating in the […]
A 6.6-billion-kilometer space mission flew with the spirit of Paris’ Notre Dame cathedral and some of the old continent’s other great achievements of vision and steadfastness.
SAO PAULO — During my time in the early 1980s as a correspondent for Folha de S. Paulo in Buenos Aires, I covered more demonstrations of the “Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo” — and then of the “Grandmothers” — than I could count. Brave women, their faces furrowed by time and pain, their heads […]
HONG KONG — A journalist from mainland China asked me recently whether the current unrest in Hong Kong is perhaps because residents there “are losing their confidence.” The question took me by surprise. I’ve heard people in Hong Kong complain and criticize a lot, particularly with regards to Chinese mainlanders, but I never thought these […]
After hundreds of years of reducing our physical activity with the help of machines, we now find we need to move to remain healthy. A friendly city is one that forces you to walk more.
-OpEd- PARIS — As Germany celebrates the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on Sunday, we mark the passage of time. Historically speaking, time is a variable. Much can happen in a quarter century, or very little. Twenty-five years was how long military service used to last for peasants in Tsarist Russia. […]
The midterm elections were a stinging defeat for Barack Obama. But it was also a wholesale indictment of U.S. politics, which is both disturbing and confounding when viewed from abroad.
Falling crude prices spell trouble for oil-dependent economies like Venezuela and Russia, with political consequences to follow. Meanwhile, the world’s two biggest economies may fare well.
The fact that people are buying cars is touted as a good sign for the economy, which you can think about while you’re stuck in traffic or breathing in rising pollution.
Moscow is clearly testing the limits of the West, which must now put a stop to Putin’s muscle-flexing with some muscle of its own. How about a German-Polish army brigade?
China may be Africa’s largest trade partner and investor, but what China brings to the table is often regarded as sloppy, thoughtless and inconsistent with African values.
After a religious pilgrimage to Mecca, an Arab-Israeli businessman imagines how a Saudi-brokered peace across the region could help solve economic problems for all.
The idea of today’s neuroscientists and radical secularists that human beings are nothing more than cell matter is not only arrogant, it is a theory that is self-defeating to the core.
With slower demand expected in the world’s raw materials and consumer markets, big Latin American firms must find new strategies.
Yes, it’s a minority, but too many Muslims offer religious justification for violence and subjugation – and we must be free to criticize Islam’s dark side without being branded Islamophobes.
Looking at the business fundamentals, there are both very good and very bad signs for Microsoft’s new CEO Satya Nadella. Is there a (positive) lesson in IBM’s evolution?
-OpEd- BOGOTA — The crucial question in Brazil’s presidential elections, set for Sunday, is whether or not the country will remain the political and economic third way it has become. Will this “alternative socialism” – distinct from various offerings from both the traditional political Right and Left – keep its standing in the world established […]
-OpEd- CAIRO — The record of police violations is extensive, ranging from murder to extortion and illegal bribes. While some claim these are individual incidents and that the situation should not be generalized, tedious accounts of numerous violations reveal the dysfunctional role of police in daily Egyptian life. Within the old structures of authority under […]