In Europe and North America, museums just can’t win. It takes wealthy people and large corporations to keep them operating, but left-wing artists and intellectuals don’t like wealthy people and large companies.
In February 14, South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma resigned amid widespread corruption allegations, ceding power to his newly elected deputy, the business tycoon and onetime anti-apartheid activist Cyril Ramaphosa. Less than 24 hours later, Ethiopian prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn resigned,…
To one who spends time in the archives of the first quarter-century of the American republic can avoid references to one Jonathan Robbins. Probably in reality the Irish tar Thomas Nash, the pseudonymous Robbins scarcely ranks up there with other major figures of the period. But then why is his name…
Hassan Rouhani was sworn in for his second term as president of Iran on August 5, surrounded by fresh flowers, fervent followers, and around 500 foreign officials. Representatives of the United Kingdom, France, the United Nations, and the Vatican rubbed shoulders with the Syrian prime minister,…
Hassan Rouhani was sworn in for his second term as president of Iran on August 5, surrounded by fresh flowers, fervent followers, and around 500 foreign officials. Representatives of the United Kingdom, France, the United Nations, and the Vatican rubbed shoulders with the Syrian prime minister,…
First Lady Michelle Obama spoke today to graduates of Oberlin College. She encouraged the graduating class to "rise above the noise and shape the revolutions of your time."
Americans love revolutions. Our national identity began with a revolution, and a revolutionary war that lasted for eight years; and we cheer on other people’s revolutions, as though we find satisfaction in multiplying our own. “I hold that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing & as…
I taught for a year at the Kiev-Mohyla University in 1993-94 and returned to Ukraine this June after an absence of twenty years. Things here have changed.
It was a year or two before the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. I was sitting in the kitchen of a small, second-floor apartment in the Thuringian town of Ilmenau, when my friend’s mother turned pensive and pointed out the window to a hill nearby. In 1945, Frau Loebner explained, American soldiers arrived…
Bill Kristol, with Tom Friedman of the New York Times and Martha Raddatz, discussed the crisis in Ukraine this morning on ABC's This Week:
In Geneva, the famous “Pink Star” diamond fetches $83 million at auction, almost double the price ever paid for such a stone, and in Arkansas, Walmart lowers its sales outlook for the holiday season. That might be a metaphor for the holiday shopping season, where grouchy retailers are predicting a…
This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of Operation Ajax—the notorious CIA plot that is supposed to have ousted Iranian prime minister Muhammad Mossadeq. In the intervening decades, the events of 1953 have been routinely depicted as a nefarious U.S. conspiracy that overthrew a nationalist…
NBC’s Revolution (Mondays, 10 p.m. ET/PT) features swordfights, gun-fights, and crossbow fights, chases on horseback, chases on trains, and chases on foot. It is gripping, loud, and entertaining. Who cares that its high-concept premise (all electricity in the world suddenly and mysteriously stops…
Does Alexis de Tocqueville have anything to say to the current generation of Chinese leaders?
A large demonstration is planned for tomorrow, Friday, in front of the U.S. embassy in Cairo but, as you can see on Al Jazeera’s live streaming video, protesters are gathered today, too. The police have established their position at some distance from the crowd, as well as the embassy, and are…
James Piereson has an important article in the June New Criterion on the "forthcoming political revolution" in America. Here's the heart of the argument:
Zwara, Libya
Sabratha, Libya
As heartening as it is to see Muammar Qaddafi lose his grip on power, our expectations of Libya's future need to take into account this ethnically diverse country’s complicated reality. The biggest problem is Libya's enormous oil reserves.
Libya—Here, west of Tripoli, the revolutionaries are fighting largely without direction from Benghazi's Transitional National Council. I’m traveling with three Sabratha fighters—Rowad, his brother Ahmed, and their cousin Mansur. The goal is to get to the frontline at Adjilat, where they plan to…
Yesterday, Libyan revolutionaries "gave Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s recalcitrant loyalists a four-day deadline Tuesday to surrender," the New York Times reported. Today, Qaddafi has responded, according to the Washington Post:
The New York Times reports that Libyan revolutionaries have set a four-day deadline for Qaddafi's loyalists to surrender:
Zwara, Libya—We’ve arrived in Zwara, which is about 70 miles from Tripoli and 35 miles from the Tunisian border. It’s impossible to get out in any direction, though one could get out to sea, if one fancied a long boat trip.