Where was Barack Obama on the day that Republicans in the House of Representatives dealt a potentially mortal wound to the Affordable Care Act, his signature domestic achievement? In France—at least, on French Twitter, where a video of Obama endorsing Emmanuel Macron for President was pinned* to the top of Macron’s page. Read Here – The New […]
There is heroism in battle but there are no geniuses in war. War is too complex for genius to control. To say otherwise is no more than armchair idolatry, divorced from real explanation of victory and defeat, both of which come from long-term preparation for war and waging war with deep national resources, bureaucracy and […]
You may know the name Thomas Piketty. His work launched him to prime time as the “rock star economist”; his sultry French accent and general attractiveness, of course, helped. You may not know the name of his intellectual counterpart: Branko Milanović. Balding and bespectacled, the 63-year-old looks much more like a dismal scientist than a […]
A new commodity spawns a lucrative, fast-growing industry, prompting antitrust regulators to step in to restrain those who control its flow. A century ago, the resource in question was oil. Now similar concerns are being raised by the giants that deal in data, the oil of the digital era. These titans—Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, […]
President Donald Trump has said that Saudi Arabia “blew up the World Trade Center” and wants “women as slaves and to kill gays.” He has also insisted that the oil-rich Arab kingdom provide the United States with free oil for a decade. But when Trump takes his first overseas trip later this month, Saudi Arabia […]
By 2030 one in five people will be African. Combine the continent’s soaring population with technology, improvements in infrastructure, health and education, and Africa could be the next century’s economic growth powerhouse. Read Here – World Economic Forum
Tourists, $100 vodka cocktails with caviar, a small dog in the arms of the Treasury secretary. It’s a hotel lobby as a symbol of this presidency. Read Here – Bloomberg
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered perhaps the most comprehensive roadmap of U.S. foreign policy, addressing the nation’s involvement with East Asia, Russia, Africa, and the Western Hemisphere. Read Here – The Atlantic
The last time a French Presidential election was anywhere near this wild was in 2002. Jacques Chirac, the center-right President, was supposed to face Lionel Jospin, the center-left Prime Minister. (The two men had been sharing power in a “cohabitation” government.) The extreme-right candidate, Jean-Marie Le Pen—Marine’s father, an eyepatch-wearing former paratrooper and gleeful racist, […]
…Since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012, nationalism has grown even stronger, which means “historical nihilism” isn’t likely to go away any time soon. At the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress in Beijing in March, lawmakers made the defamation of communist heroes and martyrs a civil offence. Read Here – South China […]
