More than 300 dead in last week’s mining disaster in Soma, rage from the people, and utter insensitivity from an Erdogan government interested only in its own fate.
Category: Ideas
Taking a sizable stake in Deutsche Bank, Qatari investors are once again showing a strategy that is single-minded by definition.
Leaders in Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil refuse to face the reality that the days of easy money are over, and the time is now for real reform.
-Editorial- BOGOTA — Some residents of the Colombian capital are indignant at recent police checks on white cars thought to be carrying passengers through Uber, an Internet application that links users with private drivers. Passengers using Uber can pay by credit or debit card beforehand and can be picked up anywhere. Cars are clean and […]
Two full decades after its previous version was voted in, the country’s newly amended environmental protection was cited for its toughness. But the challenge is in the execution.
The Russian leader’s propaganda machine attracts all sorts of extremist movements in the European Union, on both sides of the political spectrum.
With the intention to stop the ‘corruption’ of the Chinese language, authorities in Beijing have been taking aim at everything from the NBA and MBAs, to iPhones and WiFi.
The number of Syrian refugees in Turkey has reached 900,000. They are our new poor. How we treat them is the great test of a new democracy.
As evangelical hostility to proposed same-sex civil unions demonstrates, Peruvian society has yet to embrace its own government’s rhetoric of tolerance and social inclusion.
China is set to supplant the US as Latin America’s preeminent outside economic power: it remains to be seen if that is a good thing.
The recently botched execution in Oklahoma is the just the latest sign that this ‘quaint and cruel’ form of American justice is not worthy of a democracy.
Should a state be driven by law, or by force? Russia’s neighbors, friends and enemies must reflect on what’s really at play in the showdown over Ukraine.
Economic growth has brought more people into Latin America’s middle class, a first but insufficient sign of progress in one of the world’s most unequal regions.
The French navy has announced it will allow women to work in submarines starting in 2017. A Le Temps columnist contemplates whether that takes gender equality too far.
Two Argentine authors dig deeper into the causes – and cycles – of poverty in Latin America.
Gossip columns and scurrilous TV shows peer into people’s private lives more every day. Not about freedom of information, they perpetuate the social complexes of the Colonial era.
-OpEd- PARIS — From Vichy France to the Algerian War, the demand that France “open the archives” resonates every time the country struggles with one of its “pasts that don’t pass.” Twenty years after the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsi people, researchers are once again singing this refrain, especially in light of the provocative declarations […]
Technology will destroy more jobs and leave fewer for the under-qualified. Are countries prepared to deal with the social exclusion being forged by this work revolution?
Did you notice that the Geneva deal on Ukraine made no mention of Crimea? Actually it may have been an unspoken license for Russia to continue to pursue control of the rest of the country.
A new German study shows that half of people born today will live to be 100. Surely this calls for a new way to think about life – and lifestyle.
LANZHOU — Over the last few days, panic has been spreading about the drinking water in Lanzhou, the capital city of the northwest Gansu Province. The water contains dangerously high levels of benzene, a cancer-causing substance. Television reports show the public madly rushing to the supermarkets for bottled water. What if this also happens to […]
As the West wastes time with endless discussions and threats of sanctions, Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to gain ground in Ukraine.
Critics of both Nestor and Cristina Kirchner have focused on the “populist” nature of their hold on power. But to understand their rule, it may be wiser to follow the money.
Britons and Americans used to depict Germans as obsessed with Nazi uniforms, now our supposed obsession is nudism. A friendly patriotic ode to letting it all hang out.
The International Monetary Fund could be crucial providing aid in Ukraine and elsewhere, but much is on hold as the U.S. Congress blocks much needed IMF reforms.
BERLIN — It looked as if a great moment might be in the making: German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his Polish colleague Radoslaw Sikorski had teamed up with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, and the trio flew to Kiev for joint talks with the then-Ukrainian government and opposition. At the time violence on Maidan […]
-Commentary- WARSAW — It did not end with Crimea, but then again, nobody thought it would. In the face of further Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine, the European Union and the United States should no longer consider financial and political support for the Ukrainian government an option. It’s now a necessity. NATO, on the other […]
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had high hopes of bringing the Israelis and Palestinians together, but fell into the same traps as other would-be saviors of the Middle East of the past.
Argentina and Venezuela are again trying to wiggle their way out of spending deficits by devaluating their currencies. It’s a short-term fix with long-term consequences.
-Op-Ed- SAO PAULO — Brazil’s military rule, which began 50 years ago with the coup on April 1, 1964, and lasted until 1985, has since been the target of well-deserved and widely-shared aversion. The solid establishment of a modern democracy over the last three decades helped shine a light on all that was wrong with […]
Tough on crime and blatently ambitious, Valls was plucked by President Hollande to lead a new government after Sunday’s disaster in local elections. It’s a risky choice, for many reasons.
President Dilma Rousseff’s once widespread popularity is sinking. But if Brazilian protests reignite when the World Cup begins, it could have major consequences on her October reelection bid.
One year after rising to power, Chinese President Xi Jinping shows no signs of turning back on major reforms…or sweeping purges.
ISTANBUL — The current state of Turkey offers little cause for comfort. • The claims of corruption and theft multiply with each passing day. • Those same claims are about to be swept under the rug. • The judiciary is effectively finished. • Limitation of basic freedoms is on the rise. • Authoritarianism is alive […]
Even if General Al-Sisi is elected president because people want a return to the past, he can’t pick up where Mubarak left off. The revolution has changed things forever. For better or worse.
In serving the plundered art worth hundreds of millions, historical justice is being served. But it comes at the expense of legal rectitude.
-OpEd- ISTANBUL — The saying goes that if the word “but” is featured in a sentence, nothing that comes before it should be taken seriously. Whether this is always true, I don’t really know, but what happened after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan targeted Twitter at a political rally in Bursa reminds me of this […]
What happened when the most powerful man in the world felt the aura of the Argentine pontiff.
-Opinion- BEIJING — After trying it out for less than two months, China’s southeast city of Guangzhou has announced it will suspend the “safe baby hatch” program, which provided a secure place to leave abandoned babies to increase their chance for survival. Since Guangzhou’s Children’s Social Welfare Home launched the arrangement earlier this year, 262 […]
CARACAS — The rigid black-and-white vision of a Venezuela divided between government supporters and opponents obstructs any understanding of the multiple identities that have emerged since the start of mass anti-government protests in February. For those looking in from the outside, the media have presented a veritable caricature of events. The situation reminds me of […]