June 2011
5 posts
6 tags
In Germany, Prosperity has Turned a Nation Against...
Düsseldorf
Here in the industrial core of Europe, things have never been so good.
Germany’s western flank has become the greatest exporter in the Western world, second only to China and far ahead of the United States. The container ports along the Rhine are working day and night to deliver record orders of German products to southern and western Europe, the U.S. and especially to China....
10 tags
In Egypt, China and USA, Rural Migrants Define Our...
It is the little-noticed force behind the revolutions in the Arab world, the new protests in China and the economic booms in India, Turkey and South America: The largest population shift in human history, currently at its peak, is probably the most significant, and misunderstood, global event of our time.
Read essay in the Los Angeles Times
In Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East,...
9 tags
It's Not India, Congo or Afghanistan: The...
London
My mother began her career as a high-school teacher in a country that regarded women as the property of men. She could not get a bank account or a credit card of her own, only one bearing my father’s name – and only with his permission and under his control. Most jobs were open only to men. Only a quarter of drivers were women, and the whole phenomenon of women driving was hotly debated in...
10 tags
Amid Arab Spring and Political Chaos, Europe...
Ventimiglia, Italy
Zied Guetari’s European journey began in the excitement of the Arab Spring, but it came to a crashing halt this week in the languid heat of an Italian summer.
The 24-year-old Tunisian, one of thousands of Arabs who have taken advantage of their countries’ new freedoms to cross the Mediterranean in makeshift boats since January, awoke Friday morning beneath a bench in a seaside...
11 tags
Scotland's Alex Salmond and the New Politics of...
I ran into Scotland’s separatist First Minister, Alex Salmond, when he had come to meet with George Osborne, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer. Glowing with pride at an electoral victory that gave his Scottish National Party an unprecedented majority in the Edinburgh legislature, Mr. Salmond had come to ask the British government for more tax and spending powers for Scotland.
I had...
