Is shooting dolphins for gastronomic delectation really worse than the way livestock are treated before becoming supermarket steak? A debate reaches from Japan to South America.
Category: Ideas
-Commentary- BEIJING — Reports about rich Chinese men snapping up French chateaux for big bucks have been prolific lately. Many Chinese are astonished that these French cultural relics are available to private buyers at all, much less foreign ones. But I believe this represents not so much how open France is but rather how closed […]
-OpEd- I too can play the game of “I won’t think about that, so it can’t exist,” like a character tells himself in Delirium, the novel by Colombian writer Laura Restrepo. Indeed, such mental games are a national character trait. The country’s principal cinema chain Cine Colombia refused last December to show a short trailer […]
Barack Obama made American inequality the central challenge of his State of the Union address. Europe and the rest of the West should be listening too.
How did the Argentine economy arrive at a point of complete exhaustion, asks Brazil’s leading daily. Here’s a checklist of the errors made over the past decade.
-OpEd- MUNICH — During these past years of economic crisis, we Europeans learned that our fate was inextricably linked to that of the banks. We’re accustomed to the idea that numbers will decide how the continent fares. A good European, then, is a thrifty European. And now the pictures from Kiev come crashing in. They […]
-OpEd- BOGOTA – Permit me to be direct and frank, but also practical. What do we see from the outside when we look at Europe? We see a Europe that is languishing, despondent, self-absorbed and self-satisfied, and to some extent both tired and apathetic. I know these are words that are both harsh and ugly, […]
There is power, and there is truth. Then it’s up to you what to say and do. An essay to mark Jan. 25 in an Egypt where things change and stay the same.
Seven years after the assassination of Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink, silence remains on the crime of incitement to murder – just like last century’s Armenian Genocide.
China’s notorious re-education-through-labor system, abbreviated as laojiao in Chinese, has come into the spotlight with the recent reform announcement by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress. The system was born out of the “Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries” and the “Anti-Rightist Movement” of the Mao era. It was designed to eradicate opposition elements after […]
Ceyda Sungur became the symbol of the Gezi Park protests that shook Turkey because of photograph of a police officer spraying her with gas. That officer now has an unlikely defender.
Instead of actually forging relationships, or continuing those they have already, Japanese people are hiring actors to play the roles of loved ones.
Categories
Why Egypt Is No Longer Too Big To Fail
Over the past three years, most Egyptians have failed to see beyond the most immediate aspects of its crisis. Meanwhile, in the outside world, the most basic formulas have changed.
How could he think he’d be able to hide a love affair behind a scooter helmet? The French President has lost control amidst the celebrity-charged politics that he helped create.
Argentina’s former Minister of Education Susana Decibe asks if “Peronism” — that brand of Latin American politics named after the 20th century Argentine President Perón, and popularly associated with a unique mix of social justice and state paternalism — is to blame for the country’s current dysfunctional democracy. BUENOS AIRES — Argentina emerged from a […]
For this Chinese writer, Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife is a symbol of all that’s wrong with the power women of the new century.
-Commentary- For years, major sporting events have been hosted in the superbly wealthy Gulf States. Now, renowned Western cultural institutions are following suit. But these high-minded museums and cultural organizations are encountering a familiar problem. In Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, the French Louvre, the American Guggenheim and other branches of […]
China is asking hard questions about what it takes to make a big nation a great nation.
When the Syrian regime drops bombs on the country’s largest city the other target is the negotiating table in Geneva.
Six months from kickoff, two economic assessments, pro and con, as the world’s most popular sporting event lands in the ‘B’ of BRICS.
PARIS — A 4G offer? Danger! Bitcoin? Warning! The World Cup draw? It’s a trap! This is the story of a strange country blessed by the gods, with beautiful scenery and heir to a long and rich history. Though full of talented people and worldwide economic powerhouses, everything now seems to be full of peril […]
Categories
Venezuela, A State Of Emergency
The dire state of the economy and vanishing press freedoms are two key signs that Venezuela is a nation on the edge of disaster.
As the Brazil’s “commodities supercycle” grinds to a halt, Dilma Rousseff’s economic policy has failed to find a new path. Is World Cup excitement enough to avoid a national bust?
– Editorial – BOGOTA — Voters in Colombia recently rejected multinational gold mining near Piedras, and now people in Tauramena, near Bogotá, have said no to oil prospecting. The people have spoken, but will the state listen? Specifically, residents in seven rural localities voted against seismic testing as part of the oil firm Ecopetrol’s Odisea […]
The unfolding scandal of alleged bribery by people close to the ruling AKP party looked set to reach Bilal Erdogan, but the investigating magistrate was removed from the case.
Russia and China risk setting off global conflicts for the sake of national pride. A century later, the lessons of Otto von Bismarck are being ignored again.
A widening corruption probe has been consuming Turkey in recent days. Figures close to the leading Justice and Development Party (AKP), including sons of cabinet members, are facing serious allegations of bribery and money laundering. The government is denying all accusations and claims the charges are part of a conspiracy with roots both foreign and […]
Much has changed in the past 10 years. Oligarchs have been replaced by networks as the real challenge to Vladimir Putin’s power.
-Commentary- BERLIN — When two soldiers fell in the first hours of the French military operation that began last week in the Central African Republic, President Francois Hollande declared, “Morts pour la France.” Yes, killed for their country. But the young soldiers also lost their lives fighting for Europe, even if Europe has hardly shown […]
A senior judge in Yunnan province writes an open plea for such advances as live-streaming trials and online coverage of courts to help make Chinese justice more open, free and fair.
As France embarks on its third military intervention in Africa in the past three years, in the Central African Republic, a search for the sources of a continent’s perennial instability.
-Editorial- SAO PAULO — It’s the image that became the symbol of Nelson Mandela’s memorial in Soweto: the handshake between U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro. And it’s only fitting that this is the image that remains. The United States and Cuba have been living in open animosity since the Cold War. […]
What does Mandela’s example mean for Colombia as it seeks to end decades of bloody conflict with leftist guerrillas?
The former boxing champion has been plucked by the Western media as the new face of Ukraine’s opposition. The situation is more complicated than that, even as risks for all rise.
A poor education ranking in the latest international PISA report failed to humble the country’s top education official, who instead hailed the outcome as a “great triumph.”
The roots of the Gross Domestic Product measurement of economic health are in World War II. Even in 1968, RFK had doubts, and now criticism is growing about GDP’s real value.
-Op-Ed- MEXICO CITY — I am no energy specialist, but after reading and listening to experts in recent months, I have learned about the fundamental requirements that should drive any major energy-sector reform. Can smart energy policy become the most powerful platform for Mexico’s economic growth? Ramón Espinosa, an analyst at the Inter-American Development Bank […]
Europe represents the freedom from political dictatorship. But at what cost?
ALEXANDRIA — It is filthy and squalid here, putrid air and the smell of sewage palpable amid the din and dust from the constant passage of heavy vehicles. Far away, beyond the silhouette of a refinery, the horizon is hardly distinguishable. It is from this shore, in the suburbs of Alexandria, Egypt, that Mohammed tried […]
-Commentary- In the southern province of Guangxi, a pregnant woman was recently shot dead by a drunken policeman. After the incident, the local government proposed to compensate the victim’s family with 700,000 RMB ($115,000), which included damages for the deceased and child support for the victim’s two children. This was done on the grounds that […]