Modern times and capitalism have given the words failure and success an emotive charge and excessively personal connotations, turning mechanical, humdrum notions into engines of angst.
Tag: opinion
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.
We know them from the movies: the heroes who save the world from disaster in the nick of time. In real life, you sometimes look for them in vain. But the Russian invasion of Ukraine shows that the West needs new heroes.
Two years of restrictions and millions of deaths brought on by the pandemic might have had us reflect on the reality of suffering and death, but as booming pharmaceutical and retailing figures suggested, nothing can distract modern folk from their love of distraction. A view from an Argentine physician.
The topic of COVID is dividing siblings, old friends and parents at daycare centers. So maybe we need an experiment and stop sharing opinions, from the dinner table to your local news outlet.
Ousted Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok was the face of the “stolen revolution”. The fact that he accepted, out of the blue, to return at the same position, albeit on different footing, opens the door to the final legitimization of the coup.
In a rush to bolster its image, the Modi government is giving away coronavirus vaccines that will do little for the country’s international standing and would be better served at home.
If Poland and Hungary fail to meet the high standards demanded by the European Union, it shouldn’t just cut off their pocket money, it should suspend them. But that won’t ever happen.
No country has profited from the Pax Americana as much as Germany. Now, as U.S. influence wanes, it has a key role to play in filling the power vacuum.
While we see a general boost in solidarity, a small minority is looking to profit from the COVID-19 tragedy, feeding on a weakened and distracted society.
Public discourse seems to be dominated these days by political polarization and extreme positions, but it’s largely an illusion.
Some of the world’s most insular places are cut off by land, not water.
In the land of Charlie Hebdo and Plantu, the decision of the American newspaper to eliminate cartoons in its international edition is not welcome news at all.
With the rise of social networking, fake news and changing psychologies, political parties have little use now for traditional campaigns.
-OpEd- PARIS — The gravity of the situation at the White House grows clearer each day. The anonymous article published by the New York Times in which a high-ranking official from the Trump administration describes the internal resistance, coupled with the publication of “Fear,” in which the investigative journalist Bob Woodward, celebrated for his role […]
-OpEd- WASHINGTON — It’s good that Starbucks, with its announcement this week that it will close thousands of stores for a day of “racial bias training” in May, is taking steps in the right direction after a video of two black men getting arrested in one of its coffee shops went viral. But white America’s habit of needlessly calling the police on black people is not just a Starbucks culture problem. It’s an American culture problem. The tragic examples are all over the Internet. In McKinney, Tex., in 2015, after a neighbor called police about a pool party, a responding […]
-OpEd- ISTANBUL — The April 16 referendum result that gave Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sweeping powers can be summed up in a single sentence: he won on paper but lost the political battle. The followers of the “chief” — a term used by Erdogan’s loyalists to describe the Turkish president — would consider this […]
-OpEd- BERLIN — The theater of war that is Syria has brought us scenes of a world devoid of rules: children killed by poisonous gas, the bodies of prisoners who were tortured or burned alive and a multitude of national armies and rebel groups that hack each other to pieces. In short, it has brought […]
WASHINGTON — The world seems to be stepping into a new era — literally. As if, all of a sudden, the Gregorian calendar is no longer valid and the world needs to start counting from the beginning. On January 20 of the year 2017, according to the old calendar, the new Trumpian calendar will start […]
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A New World Disorder
PARIS — Put any two Americans abroad (of a particular political bent — or not?) in the same room, and they’ll try at first to avoid the elephant in said room. It won’t last. The time has come to count down the days and hours to Friday’s inauguration of a bad-New-York-joke-turned-leader-of-the-free-world. An old Colorado friend […]
PARIS — There was enough news (real and fake) to keep our heads spinning for all of 2016. Yet one project we are particularly proud about this past year is our new Rue Amelot ongoing series of essays. These pieces may or may not take news as a leaping-off point, but ultimately wind up somewhere […]
Another week that will be stained in blood. For people in the West and throughout the (non-Orthodox) Christian world, this happens to be the week before the Christmas holiday, which leads us toward a new year. Few, at this point, have any illusions that 2017 can really be any less dreadful than 2016. Monday’s attacks […]
Just before this week’s attack by a Muslim student at Ohio State University, which authorities believe was inspired by ISIS, a young peace-loving Muslim-American described his faith in this essay.
Trump’s victory reminds this Chilean writer of some of the worst moments of the past half-century, including 1973 army coup in Chile and the 9/11 terror attacks.
International newspapers and commentators chime in on an unexpected victory and the unpredictable nature of the incoming “Leader Of The Free World.”
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In France, The Sky Is Falling — Still
-Essay- PARIS — Nothing ruins the cheese course more than the smell of burning tires. Yes, it seems, the hour of camembert and brimstone is at hand. Angry mobs are burning Michelins at the picket lines. Congestion at the gas pump. Travel chaos as metro and rail lines strike. Power outages and the River Seine […]
Venezuela’s economic woes are depriving the socialist regime of its remaining popularity, even as the government uses every constitutional and political trick up its sleeve to block the opposition’s ascent to power.
Plan Colombia was never the aid program touted by leaders in Washington and Bogota. But it proved to be excellent business for arms dealers and other shady characters.
Ordinary citizens, the media and politicians make so much noise about ideology and petty politics, but quietly carry on in the face of massive mining pollution.
The Obama administration says, try talking to truculent states instead of squeezing or bombing them. In its own way, this is an eminently imperial approach.
Modern life, with its rules and material rewards, has robbed people of the most basic sense of happiness. What do we have to lose by ridding ourselves of so many imposed ideas?
A German take on new Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who looks ready to peddle his sense of alienation beyond Greece’s borders? If so, Europe itself is at risk.
Where the French Revolution took place, religious terror now haunts the streets. Today’s voices of free speech must turn to state authority to feel secure. What we need to do now.
Argentina’s electoral routine fosters inequality and injustice, enabling opportunists to cash in. It’s time for a new approach.
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Your Prophet Is Not My Prophet
A French-Algerian writer launches a loud and clear message for whoever carried out the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine.
PARIS — There’s a nice trompe l’oeil mural on rue Nicolas Appert here in the 11th arrondissement. I once stood in front of it for a little while on my lunch break, trying to make sense of the artist’s visual tricks. Today, making sense of what happened on that street feels impossible: Twelve people, among […]
Modern feminism is too focused on the image of feminists themselves, rather than renewing debate of the movement’s core principles. What can be done about feminism fatigue.
There’s always a clever argument – security, stability, secularism – to put rule of law and democracy on hold. But denying human rights is a certain recipe for destruction.
-OpEd- BOGOTA — Mexico bleeds as criminal gangs kill the innocent and not-so-innocent, before the gaze of an impotent — or is it indifferent? — state apparatus. The latest victims were 43 student activists who disappeared in late September and, many believe, were shot dead and cut up by gangsters and policemen collaborating in the […]