As air strikes and missile attacks intensify following the deaths of both Israeli and Palestinian teens, neither the region’s leadership nor rank and file hold much hope for a peaceful way out.
Category: Ideas
Why are American “vulture” funds taking such a hard line on Argentina’s debt? It may have something to do with the political influence finance wield in the United States.
LONDON — A conservative British politician? Stereotypes would call for him to be educated in an expensive private school, to wear tailor-made suits from Savile Row and to be able to recite Shakespeare sonnets without an accent. We would expect him to have been a lawyer, a banker or a chartered accountant — and to […]
It may be billions and billions of years away, but right now the annihilation of the Universe is a foregone conclusion. Should scientists try to do something to change that?
ISTANBUL — A one-page document. That’s it. All right, let’s include the appendix — that makes a total of two and a half pages. And with a big font too. I am talking about the Draft Law for Ending Terrorism and Increasing Social Unity, which the government recently presented to Parliament. Five articles in total, […]
The new Ukrainian president’s attempt at peace has failed. What now?
A sharp critique against the government by an insider shows the ranks of the Bolivarian movement may be set to turn on President Nicolas Maduro. What’s lost without Hugo Chavez.
One hundred years ago, the Archduke of Austria was assassinated by a Serbian ideologue. Today, the threats are different but, like in 1914, conflicts are multiplying and leaders failing.
Egypt’s ostensible secular president, al-Sisi, seems to be guilty of the same sin for which he condemns the Muslim Brotherhood: using religion in politics. What will it mean for the people?
After the verdict sentencing Al Jazeera journalists to prison, it is difficult to consider the country’s court system independent. Dark days ahead for freedom of expression in Egypt.
CHENGDU — It’s common practice in every country to confiscate property that criminals attained illegally. In China, criminal law stipulates three concrete measures: confiscation of the instruments of crime and contraband, recovery of illegal gains from criminals, and confiscation of the personal property of criminals who commit certain offenses. It’s worth recognizing that the law […]
The online world’s big data and nanosecond velocity means we are losing control of the machines we’ve built ourselves. How can we avoid becoming victims of our own intelligence?
-Commentary- BEIJING — Seeing a strategic opportunity to dilute the global monopoly of the three major credit rating agencies, China and Russia recently announced plans to establish a joint credit rating agency. The idea is that it would evaluate Sino-Russian cooperation projects, then eventually enter the international market. But there is a deep divide between […]
The digital economy promised to create markets that were fluid by definition. But even in the so-called “sharing” economy of mobile applications, there are bound to be winners and losers.
As Islamists gain ground in Iraq and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki appeals for help, the U.S. says it will only help if he first resigns. But it’s not the only reason why his regime may fall.
The growing tendency to say ‘there is no just war’ is just a way to keep one’s hands clean, while leaving it to others to pay the consequences for your freedom. A view from Germany.
Categories
A Challenger For Erdogan
The main opposition parties have chosen Edmeleddin Ihsanoglu to run against Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Aug. 10 presidential election. A summer campaign is about to heat up.
-Analysis- SHANGHAI — The evolution of megacities is a common worry in various countries: Beijing and Shanghai in China, Seoul in South Korea and Mumbai in India all are concerned about how to manage skyrocketing urban populations. But while other countries typically regard population expansion as the result of economic development, and base their future […]
The ISIS assault in Iraq is spectacular proof that the U.S. has failed in the Middle East. It’s time for a return to power politics and a bloc of former enemies to take on the extremists.
Some German companies that used concentration camp victims as forced labor during World War II took decades to own up to their wretched acquiescence to the Hitler regime.
Abandoning Iraq and failing to act in Syria have left a vacuum that ISIS and other terrorist groups are filling. Obama’s criticism of his predecessor is no substitute for a real foreign policy.
As Colombia prepares to elect a president, voters must choose between a candidate willing to make painful concessions with FARC guerrillas and a hawk keen on the status quo.
ISTANBUL — In our divided existences, everyone lives their own reality, with their own priorities. Right now, the demand that this city’s Hagia Sophia museum be transformed into a mosque has suddenly become the singular issue for a certain segment of the Turkish population. The Anatolia Youth Association announced a gathering at the iconic location […]
Credit cards, ratings agencies and currency supremacy are some of the battlegrounds where Beijing and Moscow are teaming up to take on the West.
More people would have access to health care, and there would be less waiting for doctors if public hospitals were divided and more private hospitals were created in China.
-OpEd- PARIS — Let’s be honest, Syria’s June 3 presidential election was nothing but a giant government-orchestrated masquerade. Bashar al-Assad will remain president of Syria, a country whose population has been largely decimated, as the three-year-long conflict has turned the country into a battleground for international jihadists from Shia and Sunni Islam, with the direct […]
Categories
World Cup Aside, Brazil’s Economy Stinks
If Brazil wants to attain ambitious development goals, it needs radical reforms to its insular economy and inefficient public administration.
MADRID — Princess Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano has been preparing for this moment for 10 years. Soon the 41-year-old will be climbing the steps to the Spanish throne — a first for a Spanish commoner — to take her place beside her husband Felipe VI. That everything would happen so quickly after the unexpected abdication of […]
France and the entire European continent, but also the U.S. and Russia, all look very different than they did at the last commemoration 10 years ago. Ghosts of the past indeed.
A reported multi-billion-dollar U.S. fine against BNP Paribas, the eurozone’s biggest bank, puts the very heart of transatlantic relations at risk, writes France’s leading business daily.
Like the Toulouse shootings two years ago, the cold-blooded killings at Brussels’ Jewish Museum show radical Islam mixing with anti-Semitism to target Jews 70 years after the Nazis’ demise.
Protesters from the political far-right denounced the funeral honors bestowed on the last Polish communist dictator, General Jaruzelski. But with him gone, their cause may disappear too.
In 1930, the International Labour Organization set a goal to eradicate forced work. Today, 21 million people are exploited around the world. Globalization is making matters worse.
We may be witnessing the demise of the Western idea that climate determines how we think. Could it change the very way we look at the world, and ourselves?
The Brazilian Congress has passed a new law that requires no fewer than 20 percent of its civil service employees in the public sector to be of African origin. Good motives, bad policy.
-OpEd- PARIS — How often are war crimes being committed in Syria? Is it every time a helicopter from President Bashar al-Assad’s regime drops a barrel bomb on a school, a hospital, an apartment block? Every time a fighter-bomber launches a strike in the middle of a town? Or every time a group of Islamist […]
PARIS — France, the sick man of Europe… Until now, we have been using this old phrase as a provocative way to characterize this country’s current economic situation. But after the results of Sunday’s European elections, this phrase now can be used to refer to something broken in French politics. With the victory of the […]
Empirical research suggests that economic sanctions are at best ineffective and at worst counterproductive. But Russia may yet pay a hefty price for its Ukraine aggression.
-OpEd- BERLIN — There’s a cold civil war in Turkey. An event like the mining catastrophe and its 301 victims could have united the deeply split country, emotionally. But not even the grief of so many Turks could bring supporters and opponents of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan together. Turkey is split into at least […]
Information technology was supposed to usher in a new borderless utopia, but instead new walls are reappearing.