Is there anyone among us who can live with the guilt of turning away those who escaped death and sought refuge in Egypt? Can our conscience bear the death of an individual because we closed our door and let him die?
Category: Ideas
The biggest firms and richest people in the world have the money states need to invest in services that can improve the lives of billions of people. That could help stop a collective slide into acute social and political tensions.
Doing the laundry, tidying up after men, “I’ll do it”: Even modern women fall for stereotypical patterns in the household. They should learn to put their feet up.
As the “American Century” and the West’s time at the center of the world draws to an end, Europe — which has died and been reborn many times — may have a new role as the wise teacher of decline, therefore also a teacher of limits and temperance.
Venezuela’s elections this year took a very different course than Nicaragua’s in 2021. In both Latin American countries, an authoritarian leader wanted to stay in power and committed electoral fraud to do so. But in Venezuela, the opposition was able to create resistance to Nicolás Maduro.
The Argentine comic strip, who is now about to get its own Netflix series, was created at a time when Latin America was going through political censorship. A testament to Mafalda’s innocent-but-serious attitude toward world problems, an excellent example of how young people often see more clearly than the rest of us.
The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh has become the subject of an unhealthy debate between Palestinians and Syrians. Yet this discussion misses the point and has allowed Israel to benefit from the situation.
Egypt disqualified a track cyclist from the Paris Olympics following an incident of unsportsmanlike behavior. But there is general confusion in Egyptian society — whether in politics or soccer — over the concept of competition.
In the release of 26 people from seven countries, freedom for those unjustly imprisoned is great news. But this case, which included the freeing of the Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich and Radio Free Europe journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, could also set up an international precedent: journalists can be used as geopolitical bargaining chips.
The author indulges himself in some summer reflection about the world and himself, and what future his children will build.
For years, France has been searching for what makes it truly stand out in the modern world, beyond its eternal critical sense and Gallic quarrels. The creativity of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games was the beginning of the answer.
With wars around the world arousing political strife and affecting the personal lives of many athletes, it seems the Paris 2024 Games could be overrun by geopolitics. Polish journalist Radoslaw Leniarski, an 11-time Olympic Games correspondent, explains what is, and isn’t, different this time.
Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro joins a long line of dictators whose fall from grace is marked by a period of incessant corruption, isolation, and a disconnection from reality.
Harmless insects are named after nasty dictators, which doesn’t seem to bother zoologists. Botanists, on the other hand, want to banish the offensive word “caffra” from the realm of flora. There is an understandable reason why South Africa has managed to do so, writes correspondent Christian Putsch.
Some Palestinians believe the Israel-Hamas in Gaza war has turned into a war of attrition. But it is, in reality, one of extermination. And the people of Gaza are no longer hiding their criticism with the international community that for nine months has failed to stop the war.
Laws in the late 1990s ended bans on women from wearing pants in Brazil’s courts and legislature, a practice that de facto has continued in many place. Female judges and legislators discuss how dress codes hinder women’s access to power, and the battle to change habits.
In the Arab world, it is a regional sport to blast the biases and prejudice of Western media. But voices criticizing the performance of Arab media are rare. That is a serious problem, for multiple reasons.
The current unprecedented political crises in France and the United States — two very different systems and political cultures — have points in common, notably that partisan issues are still taking precedence over the need to rethink the democratic system and its practices.
Questioning the choices that Hamas makes is a necessary step to bring forward the Palestinian cause.
Disappointed by poor gains over the past three years in Ukraine, Russia’s pro-war Z community is blaming a new scapegoat. Russian writer and historian Ivan Philippov explains why a society that just wants to live and to work is now their main enemy.
What we are witnessing is the struggle of a people against their oppressors. This electoral process, although flawed, could become a milestone for Venezuelans to regain their freedom — and it is one that should concern everyone who believes in democracy.
Narcissistic and other deeply self-involved parents can turn their children into diffident, dysfunctional adults. But it’s never too late to help yourself and decide to step away from their toxic discourse and manipulative games.
Africans account for 43% of all rejected Schengen visa applications for non-Europeans. In light of this inequalities, it is time for the African Union to react and propose a symbolic but powerful alternative: the “Addis Ababa” visa.
Egyptian author Alaa Khaled observes crowds of Sudanese refugees walking to and from the nearby UNHCR office, prompting him to imagine the story of each individual and to try to understand the root causes of the current civil war and of the eternal Darfur crisis.
The remains arrived in Rafah in two bags, one blue and the other white. I placed them in front of me, waiting for a time that would force me to open them up.
Argentina’s rabidly neo-liberal president, Javier Milei, is downsizing the state at home and curbing diplomacy to the bare minimum of promoting the free market, lambasting communism, and nurturing ties with just two, cherished states, Israel and the United States.
France’s presidential regime epitomize a Caesar-like power, endlessly replaying the missed encounter between “a man and a people.” Macron should end those powers to allow the emergence of parliamentary coalitions and to rediscover the democratic virtues of deliberation in France.
It is not not gray-haired men who feel uncomfortable with feminism, but rather Gen Z boys. So what is causing young men, witnesses of #MeToo, to take sides against feminism?
What’s the difference between a nation before a voting booth and a nation before a soccer match? How can we reconcile electoral systems that don’t seem to match the popular will? How do we remember that democracy is about more than just casting your vote?
Fearing Europe’s shift to the right and a second Trump term, Tehran has dusted off its reformist credentials — with president-elect Masoud Pezeshkian and veteran diplomat Mohammed Javad Zarif — to show the West it is willing to talk. But this ploy will not work again.
After more than two years of war, Russia’s bombing of a children’s hospital in Kyiv on Monday was among the most violent. What does Vladimir Putin aim to achieve with this escalation of horror — which came just 48 hours before the NATO Summit in Washington in the presence of Volodymyr Zelensky?
A confounding alliance between leftists, wokism and Islamic fanatics is the perfect smokescreen for an insidious enemy targeting the West’s liberal values. It’s happened before.
A recent study has shown that Tina, a Neanderthal child with Down’s syndrome, lived to the age of six because her group took care of her, placing the documented origin of altruism in the Homo genus between 270,000 and 146,000 years ago. Altruism is not a right, it is a human condition, something every human heart has to conquer.
The landslide victory of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom is first and foremost a stinging defeat for the Conservatives, who are paying for their Brexit lies over the past eight years. An estimated 65% of Britons now believe that Brexit was a mistake. This offers lessons for other European countries.
At just 18-years-old, Daria Kozyreva sits in a pre-trial detention center. She is facing five years for “repeatedly discrediting the Russian army.” Here is her letter to all Russians, trying to convince people of good will to denounce the Kremlin regime.
After nine months of war, most Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced multiple times. Often that leaves the sense of being at home, even a destroyed home, fading from their consciousness.
The Albanian writer has died at the age of 88, after a life challenging, and occasionally acquiescing, the whims of the regime.
Violence and denunciation won’t beat political Islam. Its deconstruction must be through reasoned criticism, the methods of modern science and allowing space for religion to have its influence.
The same nostalgia and same fear of the future seem to animate the two countries that have made exceptionalism their trademark
Zionism shares with Nazism the claims of building what they call National Socialism, though the nationalism always takes over. There are lessons in the Oscar-winning film The Zone of Interest, and the current politics of the far right in Europe.