A Muslim-American writer recounts the days after the Boston Marathon attack. No doubt, parents in the UK are having similar conversations right now.
Category: Ideas
-Essay- GENEVA – May is the month of Europe, celebrating the anniversary of the creation of the Council of Europe on May 5, and of the European Union on May 9. It is the opportunity to commemorate a man who played a determining role in Switzerland’s prosperity. This man was Robert Schumann, the French foreign […]
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Fellow Germans: Stay The Course!
New polls finding Germany has few fans in Europe should guide neither Berlin’s policies nor Germans’ own sense of self-worth. Other Europeans will come around, for their own good.
-OpEd- ROME – Italy’s entire political establishment is working together to avoid the collision between addressing the urgent social and economic problems that are engulfing the country, and the personal and judicial destiny of Silvio Berlusconi. Every time there is a political statement, and on the regular talk-show circuit, it is repeated over and over […]
-Op-Ed- PARIS – Guerilla scenes, an intolerable gratuitous violence, hundreds of angry youths looting shops… this is not Aleppo in Syria, but central Paris. On May 13, violence broke out in one of the French capital’s ritziest neighborhood as supporters gathered to celebrate the soccer team Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) winning the French League 1 championship […]
-Essay- PARIS – Charity starts at home, as the saying goes. So the very least that can be expected of communication consultants is that they are successful at communicating. And they have been successful – well beyond expectations. They have not only managed to take a front-and-center seat in electoral campaigns, they are now also […]
-Op-Ed- BEIJING – On April 28, the Japanese government held a ceremony it dubbed the “Anniversary of Japan’s Restoration of Sovereignty and Return to the International Community.” Held in Tokyo, the occasion celebrated the end of the American-led occupation in Japan in 1952, and featured Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe asking the public to cheer […]
In a society designed around individual liberty, has marriage become little more than a temporary link-up of working people choosing to spend some free time together? And the kids?
-Editorial- SANTIAGO – The month of April brought some very good news for supporters of gay marriage, and one piece of bad news. The best news in Latin America came from Uruguay, where the Chamber of Deputies gave same-sex couples the right to marry by the overwhelming majority of 71 to 21, topped off by […]
Unable to live up to the first wave of optimism, the uprising in the Arab world is nonetheless destined to change history.
Excessive feasting by public officials has a long and wide history in China. The fundamental source of its prevalence is actually not even the hearty appetites of the officials in question. These people are sacrificing a lot themselves in this banquet culture. On the lighter side, people may just lose a previously slim figure. In […]
-OpEd- More than 500 people died on April 24 when a factory collapsed near Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. In November, more than 100 workers perished in a fire at the Tazreen garment factory on the outskirts of the city. Not long afterwards, more than 50 people were hurt in a fire at a textile […]
The “dual” vocational training system used to be derided as limiting university degrees. Now it is being lauded in the U.S., and exported to struggling southern European countries.
There are signs of historical insecurity in Russia’s move away from Europe and the U.S. But at the end of the day, China looms as the real threat for Moscow’s future.
-Editorial- SANTIAGO – The soldiers killed and beheaded an old woman, recounted one of the witnesses in the trial of Efrain Rios Montt, retired army general and ex-President of Guatemala. Then the soldiers used her had as a soccer ball in an impromptu game. That might have been the most shocking testimony in the genocide […]
Hers was a revolution of ideas and economics that still can be seen in the struggle to shape the future of the West.
Nuclear arms are more shield than weapon, so long as no one is suicidal.
Food shortages are almost always a problem of supply, not demand, but don’t tell that to some top Chinese officials maintaining a tight grip on national family planning policy.
A new report finds that southern European households have higher net household income than places like Germany, which is shelling out euro bailout cash. Things must change.
President Obama’s arrival in Israel with no new peace proposal to offer is reassuring to many Israelis. They should be worried instead.
The justification for war was false and the victims are endless, even extending to those dying today in Syria. A bitter look back from leading Moroccan daily Le Soir.
-OpEd- PARIS – A lot of people in Europe, especially the French, cheered heedlessly when the Arab Spring took off in 2011. But then came the 70,000 dead from the Syrian war; the proliferation of terrorism in Libya and Mali; the assassination of the main Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaid in a country where there […]
-OpEd- BEIJING – A few days ago in the northeastern city of Changchun, a man left his baby in his SUV while he went inside a convenience store. He returned to find his car, which he had left unlocked and running, stolen, along with the baby. After 48 hours of public mobilization and searches, Zhou […]
-OpEd- BEIJING – The four foreign criminals who murdered 13 Chinese sailors in 2011 on northern Thailand’s Mekong River were put to death by lethal injection on March 1. I support the death sentence in this case and the execution of these men. The significance of this execution is three-fold. First, whoever commits a crime, […]
-OpEd- PARIS – Game over for the last of the European Marxists. Europe is getting ready to cap the size of bonuses for bankers. New rules would prevent bankers in European Union countries from receiving bonuses higher than their annual salary. This world first would put an end to the practice that allows these “workers” […]
BEIJING – It has been several weeks since North Korea conducted its third nuclear test on February 12. The international community has condemned it, and the worry expressed is unprecedented. China, in a very unusual move, summoned the North Korean Ambassador to Beijing the same day. The UN Security Council immediately made a declaration condemning […]
A Belgium perspective on the urgent risks that Italy’s economic implosion will spread. France could be next.
Some Mexican leaders say immigration reform is simply a domestic matter to be left for Washington to resolve. But the stakes for Mexico are simply too big.
-OpEd- BEIJING – During and after the 18th Communist Party Congress, party and state leaders re-stated that the country should be ruled by law and governed according to the Constitution. They also said that the supervision of power should be tightened, including oversight through public opinion by news media. The 17th Party Congress report of […]
PARIS – For the past eight years, the Western world has loved to hate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Propelled onto the front of the political scene by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian president declared, before being elected in 2005, that the Iranian people hadn’t participated in the revolution for democracy. Since then, Ahmadinejad hasn’t missed an opportunity […]
Up close with Syrian smugglers and Western NGOs. Turkish troops turn blind eye to arms trafficking, but worries grow about who is getting their hands on the weapons.
-OpEd- TURIN – Perhaps we deserve Berlusconi and his lies. Not the Italians, maybe, given as a single citizen is largely powerless in the face of a political system. But the media, especially the television, definitely does deserve him. A brief explanation is required: For the last three weeks, every time I turn on the […]
-OpEd- CAIRO – I believe the presence of armed gangs and the incidents of rape during Tahrir Square protests represent a serious problem. I do not just sympathize with the victims: women and revolutionaries who were, and still are, subjected to wide-scale suppression or abuse. I am concerned about two issues; the first of them […]
-Opinion- CARACAS – The Venezuelan opposition is at a crossroads after two electoral defeats and in front of imminent political change for the country. Instead of weakening him, President Hugo Chavez’s cancer has reinforced his power and pushed his opposition ever deeper into a corner. The opposition did not instigate the political change – they […]
Israel’s January 31 aerial attack on a Syrian research facility and arms complex has raised once again the thorny question of when preemption against a developing threat may be justified under international law—as opposed to simply strategic calculation. Predictably, the Israeli bombardment elicited a hail of criticism from some regional and global players. Syria has […]
Egypt and Syria are edging toward failed state status, while the West asks how all the hope has faded so fast.
As President Mohamed Morsi wagged his finger at Egyptians in his televised address to the nation on January 27, my mind wandered back to the televised addresses former President Hosni Mubarak gave during his last 18 days in power. Back then, too, there were pitched battles in the streets of Cairo, Suez and Port Said. […]
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Is There Such A Thing As Good Corruption?
From Russia to South Korea and Switzerland, thereis a different between kleptocrats and diligent greasers of wheels.
-Editorial- PARIS – The problem with making statements when you are the President is that you have to follow through. Before the French intervention in Mali, President François Hollande said on Jan. 11 that in Mali, France had “no other purpose than to fight terrorism.” On Jan. 15, he revised his motives: now, on top […]
Both men and women must change their attitudes