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
Marine Le Pen flunked the final debate. Over the course of three hours, she tried to portray her opponent, Emmanuel Macron, as President Hollande Mark 2, as a candidate promising five more years of failure. Voters would prefer her populist confection of anti-elitism, anti-globalism and anti-immigration. It was a flawed tactic. After the debate, her… 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
Because college admissions committees look for evidence of an applicant’s ability to do more than get good grades and high test-scores, high-schoolers look for ways to showcase their wide-ranging interests. And since these interests are generally conveyed by a commitment to community service, one popular option has been to volunteer abroad. Known as voluntourism, it… more
My last visit to Maiduguri and Chibok was eight months ago, on Easter Sunday. Since then a lot has happened, including the negotiated release of 21 Chibok schoolgirls in October. Before then, one Chibok girl, Amina Ali Nkeki, was discovered wandering in Sambisa Forest with her child on May 17. Amina was the first to… more
Colombians have been living through war for more than fifty years. In a conflict primarily between the state and a leftist insurgency, the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), other various antagonists (paramilitary forces, competing leftist guerrilla groups, and narco-armies) have complicated and bloodied the picture: over 220,000 people have been killed—80 percent of them… more
