Flowers decorate the statue of Simon Bolivar In Bogota’s main square on Friday, Oct. 7, 2016 – the day Colombia’s president, Juan Manuel Santos, won the Nobel Peace Prize. Fernando Vergara/Press Association. All rights reserved.The shock registered everywhere. On October 2, Colombians rejected the government’s peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia …
Read More “Was a peace agreement ever possible in a country as complicated as Colombia?”
Francois Hollande welcomes his South Sudanese counterpart Salva Kiir Mayardit, to the Elysee summit for peace and safety in Africa in Paris, December, 2013. Stephane Lemouton/Press Association. All rights reserved.The world expects South Sudan’s political landscape to descend into anarchy at any moment. Unmoved by the worrying signs of political and economic inefficiencies, some South …
Read More “How to hold up a sky that is falling in South Sudan”
As the richest individual on Earth, Microsoft founder, programmer, and philanthropist Bill Gates is hounded for advice on a daily basis. So, from time to time, he drops pearls of wisdom for those looking to follow in his footsteps. On Monday, Gates wrote an essay full of great advice for the graduating class of 2017. …
Read More “Bill Gates Pens An Essay For the Class Of 2017”
DiEM0216.Session 1. Arno-image. All rights reserved.For years the signs have been on the wall. The Tea Party in the United States. Golden Dawn in Greece. The Alternatif für Deutschland. UKIP’s inexorable rise in the UK. Etc. etc. We saw these signs. We analysed their historic and political causes. We developed a cosmopolitan narrative of how …
Read More “A painful lesson from Brexit: Why DiEM25 needs a simpler message”
It was no secret that Steve Park was adopted. He couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t know the whole story, which started in 1946 when his adopted parents took him in. Merril and Arthur Park—a big-time Hollywood agent who at one time repped Ronald Reagan—raised him in Brentwood; his sister was presented at cotillion. “It was a formal …
Read More “DNA Detectives Can Help Track Down The Family You Never Knew You’d Lost”
Syrian refugees' camp in Cappadocia, Turkey. Image: Fabio Sola Penna / Flickr There are three million registered migrants in Turkey, 90% are from Syria of whom one and a half million are women. Interviews with migrant women reveal that many are exposed to sexual harassment and assault during war, migration and resettlement processes, with the …
Read More “Dangerous journeys: violence against women migrants in Turkey”
For women who grow up playing baseball, there eventually comes a point in their adolescence when they are nudged away from the sport toward softball. Claire Eccles has nothing against softball, she plays for the University of British Columbia, but she never wanted to leave her favorite sport behind. So she continued doing both, staying with …
Read More “Claire Eccles Will Be The First Woman To Compete In The West Coast Baseball League”
Donald Trump speaking with supporters at a campaign rally at Fountain Park in Fountain Hills, Arizona. Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons. All rights reserved. “There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.” ― Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems, 1956-1968 As morning unfolded on this side of the Atlantic on November 9, Donald Trump addressed …
Read More “The road from democracy to kakistocracy – and back”
Rally for 'Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West' (PEGIDA) hold German flags during a demonstration in Dresden, Germany, Jan. 5, 2015. Jens Meyer /Press Association. All rights reserved.What is fascism? Perhaps one way to answer this question is to say that fascism is a political logic that assumes that there is an easy …
Read More “Where will we end up? Terrorism, Islamophobia and the logic of fascism”
Photo of Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and partner Jessica Schneider. Kamil Zihnioglu/AP/Press Association. All rights reserved.The carnage in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida on 12 June 2016 is one of the very worst of the so-called 'lone wolf' assaults. Though it was certainly an anti-LGBT attack, it is still not clear how much it was inspired …
Read More “ISIS after Orlando: a multiform war”
