Politicians, especially those who climbed to the top, should disappear when they leave office. Deprived of spokesmen and advisors, they are bound to reveal character flaws they concealed while selling themselves to the electorate and their financial backers. Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt ...
It began when Mohamed Bouazizi, a twenty-six-year-old fruit seller, set himself alight last December 17th in provincial Tunisia. Bouazizi was not demanding fair elections, free speech, equitable wealth distribution, or free medical care. All he wanted was to support his siblings and widowed mother. ...
First it was Tunisia's Zein El Abidine Ben Ali. Then it was Egypt's Hosni Mubarak. Ousted by their own people? Yes, but here in France, they will be remembered as the all-expenses-paid hosts of Nicolas Sarkozy's two leading ministers. Step forward, Prime Minister François Fillon and Foreign ...
It is hard for an old hack like me to sit still when a big story is unfolding. Not so long ago, the sound of gunfire almost anywhere on Earth called me off with the rest of the pack to see who was shooting at whom. Now my colleagues are in Cairo watching history at play while I tap away at the ...
My old political philosophy teacher Professor Yusuf Ibish outlined the conditions he thought would lead inevitably to revolution. They included the population's impoverishment, denial of dignity, and repressive rulers who used torture and false imprisonment. I asked him where conditions would ...
As I write these words and watch them grow into sentences, I am living the final hours of my fifties. By the time you read this, I"ll be sixty years old. Or, as French and other Romance languages put it, I shall have sixty years. Having these four-seasons-times-sixty on my person feels heavy, ...
Late last year, a small book by a ninety-three-year-old man unexpectedly reached the summit of France's bestseller list. Stéphane Hessel's Indignez-Vous! (Be Indignant!) sold more than 600,000 copies from October through December, propelling it by several hundred thousand copies over Prix ...
We must hang together, gentlemen…else, we shall most assuredly hang separately. "Benjamin Franklin When a journalist disappears in Russia or is murdered in Iraqi Kurdistan, his or her colleagues in safer climes stand up to be counted. No one should be killed, tortured, or imprisoned ...
Henry Kissinger should emulate Old Marley's ghost, which "floated out upon the bleak, dark night" from the chambers of Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge. It was a gentle, necessary departure from our world that allowed Scrooge to confront his past and contemplate his future. Although Kissinger remains ...
You can fly safely this Christmas knowing that hundreds of federal agencies and their private contractors are working around the clock to keep the hijackers and bombers out of your economy-class seats. Sit back, buy a double Scotch and soda, and watch the runway lights disappear below as you soar ...
