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The struggle between two sets of conflicting cultural values
The only way China will become a threat, I believe, is if we believe it will be a threat. China, when it is afraid, when it feels backed into a corner, it can lash out and it can get very emotional. So anytime there is a perceived assault on the dignity, but even more critically the territorial ...
I won't propose an answer to this hugely complex question today. Instead, I want to point out some striking similarities between the American perspective on the conflict in Chechnya a decade ago and the run-up to the Obama administration’s pending decision on how to handle the Assad regime’s ...
Now that the two suspects Monday’s horrific bombing have been identified, attention turns to their motive. Why would two brothers originally from the troubled region of Chechnya, a republic of Russia, detonate bombs in Boston on Patriot's Day? Here is a very raw, very quick, very preliminary ...
Note: This is an edited version of a Praxis post originally published on December 21, 2012. The preacher in Ecclesiastes was wrong: there is something new under the sun, or at least something new on the horizon. This week, with two cases to be argued and decided by the Supreme Court, we are ...
He billed his first presidential visit to Israel as a listening tour, but it turns out Barack Obama is doing quite a bit of speaking as well. On his first day in the Holy Land, the president was all about the love: I know that in stepping foot on this land, I walk with you on the historic ...
Editors' Note: On New Year's Day, 2013, protests erupted in China's Guangdong province over government censorship of a newspaper, Southern Weekly. In highly unusual show of resistance, the paper's reporters demonstrated in the streets, protesting the rewriting of a New Year's editorial by the ...
I think those technology platforms [the internet and social media] constantly put the government on trial. And every event, every policy they make, people will laugh about it, and they will make fun about it. This is amazing for the younger generation. – Ai Weiwei Editors' note: In ...
What's the Big Idea? Okay. Right off the bat I’m going to have to acknowledge that this is a minefield: an article on a Western website featuring a (China-based) Westerner’s expert opinion on Chinese psychology. But here’s the thing: Tom Doctoroff is really, really good at selling products ...
Alison Klayman has a confession. When she started following Ai Weiwei around for her latest documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry , she knew nothing about him. Her roommate in Beijing was curating Ai's photography exhibit in 2008 and she needed a promotional video to accompany the show. Klayman signed ...