The Democratic Republic of Congo is known best for its robust but troubled mining sector, which attracts 80 percent of the country’s Foreign Direct Investment but generates only 10 percent of its tax revenue. But far less attention is paid to Congo’s agriculture, which generates 42 percent of its GDP and involves the majority of… more
Critics called it the “sleep campaign” because Angela Merkel did everything in her power to send voters into a slumber. Her tactic in the German federal election, termed “asymmetric demobilisation,” was designed to depress turnout amongst opposition parties by making a maximally inoffensive pitch to the electorate. It successfully pushed her main opponents, the Social… more
Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1991, while she was under house arrest by Myanmar’s ruling military junta. Freed in 2010, she was finally able to travel to Sweden to deliver her acceptance speech in 2012, using the occasion to describe visiting migrant workers and refugees in Thailand who, as she… more
The lifecycle of the populist movement is well-known. In opposition, where they may whinge at leisure about corrupt elites and the bias media, populists flourish and multiply; but once they win power, they almost always suffer an identity crisis. It’s tough to lambaste the establishment if you are the establishment. Just ask Syriza, the radical… more
Last week I wrote about an attack on a refugee housing complex in Altenburg, Germany, in which two baby carriages were set aflame. It occurred just two days after members of a right-wing, anti-immigrant movement called PEGIDA marched through the town. That piece grappled with the question of how Germany—a nation with an unparalleled record… more
On December 7, 2015, two baby carriages were set on fire at an apartment complex housing refugees in the pristine Thuringia town of Altenburg. Ten refugees, including two infants, suffered from smoke inhalation. The attack came two days after right-wing protesters marched through the town carrying signs that read, “Please continue your flight. There's nowhere… more
A helicopter commandeered by anti-government forces recently attacked the Venezuelan Supreme Court, dropping two grenades, following up with a bellicose YouTube post, and inciting new fears that a coup could be imminent. The attack occurred on the same day President Nicolas Maduro warned that government loyalists “would go to combat” if the regime was toppled.… more
In April, French polling companies predicted the tightly-contested first round of the Presidential Elections with pin-point accuracy. The current surveys of their British counterparts, by contrast, look like random guesswork. Extrapolating upon the available data, the polling guru Nate Silver has concluded that “anything from a 17-point Conservative win to a 3-point Labour win is… more
Garth Greenwell, the author of What Belongs to You, a novel about gay life and the experience of cruising in Bulgaria, said in an interview with The Guardian: “You build bridges across difference to arrive at the universal through describing the particular.” The bridge between the particular and the universal, in literature, is built with… more
A0970455 was sentenced to die in 12 hours, and, because he was labeled as violent, a reprieve was unlikely. What I saw through the bars wasn't some hardened criminal, but a hard-luck Pug-Beagle mix of tender age—probably a discarded Christmas gift like so many of the others. He appeared underfed and anxious, quivering in a cramped, feces-littered… more
