Campaigns challenging the country’s environmentally destructive, low-wage economic model are gaining ground, despite political insecurity.
Brexit: What’s Next?
The EU needs to increase funding to help out the economically dislocated, or it will face more exits.
Korea’s Next Generation
Young people have been pushed to the margins in South Korea — can they transform the country’s political system?
How John Maynard Keynes Can Save the Arab Spring
With secular autocrats and rigid Islamists equally discredited in the Arab world, the space is wide open for progressive democrats to save the Arab spring.
Egypt’s Dark Tunnel
The Egyptian people face a very difficult choice. They must choose a path that does not lead toward greater violence, further economic decline, dictatorship, or even civil war. Egypt must somehow avoid the fate of Syria (a civil war with over 100,000 civilian...
Letter From Sofia: Old Tanks and Modern Mayhem
The military museum in Bulgaria's sprawling capital city consists of a tiny building and a huge outdoor display of weapons that look as if they had been wheeled in fresh from the battlefields and parked, higgledy piggledy: mountain howitzers that shelled Turks in 1912...
Chavez: Lest We Forget
Comparing Hugo Chavez’s accomplishments to his U.S. obits was like taking a trip through Alice’s looking glass. Virtually none of the information about poverty and illiteracy was included, and when it was grudgingly admitted that he did have programs for the poor, it was “balanced” with claims of soaring debts, widespread shortages, rampant crime, economic chaos, and “authoritarianism.”
Four More Years: Europe’s Meltdown
Back in the 1960s, the U.S. peace movement came up with a catchy phrase: “What if the schools got all the money they needed and the Navy had to hold a bake sale to buy an aircraft carrier?” Well, the Italian Navy has a line of clothing, and is taking a cut from a soft drink called “Forza Blu” in order to make up for budget cuts. It plans to market energy snacks and mineral water. Things are a little rocky in Europe these days.
The Politics of the London Riots
With homes and buildings vandalized, and communities literally reduced to ashes, it has become easy to dismiss the violence on the street as “pure criminality.” But such conclusions are naive and insufficient. Viral civil unrest should not be reduced to simple terms; the riots have many different elements. Although some rioters have been plainly motivated by opportunism, social, political, and racial factors are also at play.
What You Will Not Hear About Iraq
Iraq has between 25 and 50 percent unemployment, a dysfunctional parliament, rampant disease, an epidemic of mental illness, and sprawling slums. The killing of innocent people has become part of daily life. What a havoc the United States has wreaked in Iraq.