Their economic philosophies may differ, but Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa and Colombia’s arch-conservative former president Alvaro Uribe, share a taste for the perpetuation of power.
Category: Ideas
The Russian President is again one step ahead of the U.S. and Europe, and many have begun to wonder if sanctions are even worth it. And then there is the question: where to after Ukraine?
Just how should the West deal with terrorists as ruthless as ISIS? Hunt them down, ally with their enemies, mess with their minds? Some concrete options, but there’s no time to waste.
While Erdogan rises to the presidency, his ally and foreign minister Davutoglu is set to be the new Turkish prime minister. His intellectual gifts are matched only by his political failures.
The electoral horizon looks unsympathetic for disaffected Brazilian voters after the death of a charismatic presidential aspirant. Will Rousseff win again, despite politics-as-usual fatigue?
Chinese have looked skeptically at charitable organizations, for cultural reasons and a series of scandals. But as China’s rich and famous join the ALS challenge, something may be changing.
-OpEd- BERLIN — American Foreign Policy magazine’s home page is a little bit like a quotation board for security policy strategies. Here you see not only how various players evaluate the world’s conflicts but also how much support there is for their point of view, because the number of times the article has been shared […]
-Analysis- BOGOTA — Venezuela is in crisis — a tremendous one. Food and basic drugs are in short supply. The annual murder rate has reached 79 per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the highest in the world and a cold figure that covers a multitude of personal tragedies. Inflation is expected to reach a rate of […]
After 15 years of living and working in the United States, a Die Welt correspondent says good-bye, not only to his adopted country but also to the pre-9/11 grandeur the U.S. once enjoyed.
-OpEd- PARIS — Here we are amid a global rise in military conflicts and political tensions — wars in the Middle East, Ukraine, the exclusion of Russia from the G8, conflicts in the South China Sea, Argentina’s debt default, among others. A century after the start of World War I, the planet seems to have […]
Turkey is a NATO ally of the United States, but American officials have summarily dismissed its input about airstrikes in Iraq, even with Turkish lives on the line. Why Turkey needs to clarify itself in so many ways.
The “black market” accounts for a quarter of Mexico’s GDP and employs more than half its workforce. The numbers illustrate a failure of public policy and raise a red flag for the future.
The U.S. has a poor record on Iraq, but it’s optimistic that cooperation with the country’s new prime minister can help him win the war against terrorists and restore regional stability.
Why are Poles such a gloomy and miserable lot, always assuming the worst and refusing to love thy neighbor? It turns out, cheerlessness here has deep roots.
Presented as a peaceful power for the past decade, China is now seen as a potential military aggressor by many. Amid the tug of economic and political interests, China keeps rising.
-OpEd- It’s anything but a surprise, given the weakness of the opposition and an election played out in advance: Recep Tayyip Erdogan won after the first round of voting in Sunday’s presidential election — the first ever in Turkey by direct universal suffrage. Erdogan thus perfects a political career marked, for 20 years, by one […]
Despite a seven-year blockade, Israel’s control of movement and goods in the Gaza Strip has only strengthened the enemy Hamas and exposed Israel to global criticism. Time for a new policy.
President Barack Obama’s decision on the limited U.S. intervention in Iraq seems to have no long-term strategy behind it. Even Obama seems to know that.
–Commentary– BERLIN — There are photographs of Afghanistan’s capital city Kabul, taken in the 1960s, that show elegantly dressed women sitting in street cafés. There are similar photos from the period shot in Ankara, Cairo, Damascus and Karachi. A half-century later, comparable scenes are nowhere to be found in many of these cities. Ankara is […]
-Analysis- WASHINGTON — It was almost as a spectator earlier this week that the United States welcomed Egypt’s announcement of a 72-hour ceasefire in Gaza between the Israeli army and Hamas, which has since ended. The clearest sign yet of how Washington has begun to lose control over events came Aug. 1 when U.S. President […]
A century ago, those reporting on wars were little more than military puppets. Since Vietnam, journalism is freer and more complicated. Now social media is changing the equation again.
The emirate of Qatar is tiny, but it wields disproportionate power in the world, where it maintains complicated and often troubling relationships. Just ask Israel.
If you’re ever in Gaza and have the time for a museum visit, pop by the Al-Mathaf Hotel. Here in dusty glass showcases you’ll find treasures on display dating back to the days when this coastal area was still one of the ancient world’s major trade centers. Tempora mutantur (times change) — the wealth of the Philistines is well in the past: Gaza today is about misery, war and death. The Palestinian strip of coastland has become a cipher for an apparently unsolvable conflict. For decades this small scrap of land has been thrown back and forth between powers, administered […]
Justice is twisted in a country where a man is jailed for stealing candy from a store, while gangsters and corrupt politicians are always able to negotiate prison reductions.
-Analysis- Over the past few days, armed gangs have been setting Libya ablaze. The slogans sound familiar: “May the martyr’s blood not be shed in vain!” Nothing could be less certain. The country is sinking into chaos, and many Libyans say things are worse than the era of Muammar Gaddafi — the dictator who was […]
A view from afar on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where the Jewish-American lobby looks all too much like the Cuban-American lobby.
An impassioned defense of a fellow Algerian-born writer who dares to think for himself in the face of Arab identity politics and the eternal Israeli-Palestinian crisis.
ANKARA — Turkish foreign policy is having a serious identity crisis. The Turkey that had largely achieved an equilibrium in its relations with the West and the East, a shining star in the international arena between 2003 and 2010, unfortunately no longer exists. The high morale and sense of moral superiority of being a country […]
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s outright prohibition of the practice of aging cheese on wooden boards has sparked strong reactions, revealing a newfound interest for traditional, fermented food.
Israel’s supporters have responded to criticism of the Gaza intervention by asking why similar anger isn’t directed at the toll in Syria. It’s a bogus comparison, for many reasons.
Blaming French Jews for Israel’s actions in Gaza is just the latest vile expression of a rising wave of anti-Semitism that has resurfaced in the heart of Europe.
The country’s old imperialist ambitions are back. If you are inside or outside, and trying to understand Vladimir Putin’s 21st century Russia, keep that in mind in making your calculations.
Protests over the weekend in major European cities to support the people of Gaza were fertile ground for a growing movement of anti-Semitism.
KLAIPEDA — The entrance to this Lithuanian city’s port is a lesson in geopolitics. Klaipeda is the major transit hub for Russia on the Baltic Sea, but there’s no overlooking the huge semi-domes of the new terminals for LNG (liquefied natural gas) which Lithuania hopes will free the country from its energy-dependence on Moscow. There […]
BERLIN — How is Germany supposed to react to the U.S. spying activities that have come to light recently? The political opposition seems to think the answer is simple: Expel all U.S. intelligence agents! Allow whistle-blower Edward Snowden asylum! Immediately halt all negotiations regarding the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)! Stop all cooperation with […]
-Analysis- CAIRO — The events unfolding in Egypt since July 1, 2013, when General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi led the ouster of President Mohammed Morsi, has been by all accounts detrimental to the interests of the Palestinians in Gaza and to Hamas, an offspring of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, which has governed the tiny territory since […]
Animal rights activists have attacked an annual Dog Eating Feast, which asks the larger question over values in modern China.
Can Brazil apply the successful “Copa template” to everyday life and political leadership? Too often, the country tends to disappoint when the rest of the world isn’t watching.
Categories
Hey BRICS, We’ve Got A P.R. Problem
Media in emerging economies must start to challenge the dominant voice of the Western press, argues Xinhua News Agency chief Li Congjun in a guest column for America Economía.
The Mannschaft’s World Cup winning team was the perfect embodiment of what Germany hopes to be perceived as — a mix of artistry, perseverance, solidarity and individual freedom.