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Geopolitics Society

Ai Weiwei: China’s Caged Artist Trying To Get To Alcatraz

BEIJING — Three years after his imprisonment, still deprived of his passport and shut off in a bubble of official Chinese silence, Ai Weiwei, 57, neverthless appears ubiquitous everywhere else on the planet. The Martin-Gropius-Bau exhibition hall in Berlin devoted a huge retrospective entitled “Evidences” from April to July. His last documentary, Ai Weiwei’s Appeal […]

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blog

8 Reasons Tunisia Is Not Egypt (And Vice-Versa)

Two revolutions, two months apart, that launched the Arab Spring. Three years later, the respective quests for democracy in Tunisia and Egypt are in very different places.

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Geopolitics

Record Paris Rally, Islamists Massacre Nigerians, Golden Globes

Monday, January 12, 2015 RECORD PARIS RALLY FOR TERROR VICTIMSNewspapers around the world are hailing France’s show of unity in the face of terrorism after yesterday’s marches across the country gathered a record 4 million people, including at least 1.5 million in Paris alone. See our selection of today’s best front pages here. Here are […]

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Society

In Yemen, Battling To Ban The Forced Marriage Of Girls

Because of outdated tradition and economics, 14% of Yemeni girls are married off before their 15th birthday. But since the Arab spring, a movement is growing to stop this.

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Future Society

The Streisand Effect: When Internet Censorship Backfires

Babs tried and failed, so did the peeps working for Beyonce and even French President Francois Hollande. Once online, information beats to the sound of its own drum.

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Society

Human Capital: The Formula That Makes Finland’s Schools So Good

Though the country spends less per pupil than many other developed nations, students here consistently test better than nearly all their global counterparts. Here’s why.

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Society

Yes, The NSA Is Tracking You. Get Over It

A German writer is fed up with the hypocrisy of an exhibitionist society outraged by the limits of privacy. Yes, you are being monitored. Now get back to your celebrity Twitter feed.

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Geopolitics

Turkey Uprising Exposes Limits On Free Press, Power Of Social Media

ISTANBUL – “The media have sold out! The media have sold out!” several thousand protesters chanted in front of NTV offices. Their beef with the Turkish news channel was that it had stayed silent too long about what was going on in and around Gezi Park in Istanbul. The protesters feel the press has let […]

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Eyes on the U.S.

Mobility Nation – On The Unfinished American Experiment

How the always changing ‘work-in-progress’ that is the United States of America looks to a European, where the past still holds everything in place.

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Future

Sweden: More Than Ever, The Land Of Internet Freedom

STOCKHOLM – “This is happening right now in Homs, Syria…” Hans Eriksson shows a shaky video of column of smoke just after a bombing from Bashar al-Assad’s troops. Bambuser is the name of the service launched by this 44-year-old Swede, which allows any smartphone user to broadcast live what’s happening in front of him – […]

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Ideas

The Lesson Of Saudi Arabia’s Silent Revolution

-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 […]

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Geopolitics

Asmaa, The Last Free Woman Of Gaza

GAZA – They have almost all left: Bachar for Sweden, May for Spain, Imad for Tunisia, Mohamed for Qatar, Assad for Egypt, Adham for Belgium. Moustapha, Asmaa’s brother also left for Belgium, while Mohamed Matar, aka Abou Yazan, the leader of the short-lived March 15 Movement, that tried to bring the Arab Spring to Gaza, […]

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Geopolitics

What A German Dreams For Italy

(Hint: it won’t ever come true)

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Ideas

China: When “National Interest” Is An Excuse To Quash Civil Rights

-Editorial- BEIJING – In response to a letter sent by a women’s rights NGO regarding quota on enrollment of women in certain colleges and universities, China’s Education Ministry said that this restriction was based on “considerations of national interest.” The officials probably thought they would subdue any unruly voices with such a pompous answer. However, […]

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