Nathan Gardels is the editor-in-chief of Noema Magazine.
As Pope Francis slammed Europe as “elderly and haggard” in an address this week in Strasbourg, the speaker of the Polish parliament, Radek Sikorski, warned in the WorldPost that Europe’s starkest challenge is defending “a world of rules” against an aggressive Russia. Writing from the Vatican for our “Following Francis” series, Sébastien Maillard looks at the “holy ghostwriters” behind the pontiff’s tweets and encyclicals.
WorldPost Middle East Correspondent Sophia Jones reports from Istanbul on yet another retrograde move in Turkey’s modern history taken by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who declared this week that men and women can’t be equal. Though Erdogan still considers the Kurdish Democratic Union Party a terrorist organization, Nazand Begikhani writes from Iraqi Kurdistan about how women from that party who have taken up arms to defend their fellow Kurds from the radically misogynist Islamic State are also advancing equal rights in their own society.
This week, as the Israeli cabinet moved to define Israel as a “Jewish state,” the French parliament, like other European parliaments of late, is voting on whether to recognize a Palestinian state. Writing from Paris, Bernard-Henri Lévy argues passionately that such a move, intended to enhance peace, will perpetuate war.
Once again, the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program have failed to reach an agreement. Muhammad Sahimi places the blame squarely on the “excessive demands” of the West and lists Iran’s “major concessions.” Writing from Abuja, Olaiya Phillips chronicles the threats to the Christian community in northern Nigeria from Boko Haram. Writing for HuffPost Maghreb, Rebecca Chaouch looks at the phenomenon of “Taqwacore” that combines punk music and Islamic piety.
WorldPost China Correspondent Matt Sheehan reports that the crackdown in Hong Kong has finally come: the key leaders of the protest movement have been arrested and the demonstrations sites are being cleared. Writing from Singapore, Kishore Mahbubani argues that, despite predictions of doom by many in the West, Asia is on the brink of a “golden era.”
As Ferguson, Missouri erupted again this week in racial violence, Howard Fineman writes that the world is questioning whether America can live up to its ideals. The Rev. Madison Shockley‘s experience tells him blacks always seem to end up on the losing end of racial conflicts.
Geophysicist David Waltham takes a millennial look back to trace how oxygen-creating bacteria evolved to make Earth a livable environment, and wonders if humans can do the same. Finally, Robert Kuhn looks at the philosophical questions raised by the Christopher Nolan film Interstellar.
WHO WE ARE
EDITORS: Nathan Gardels, Senior Advisor to the Berggruen Institute on Governance and the long-time editor of NPQ and the Global Viewpoint Network of the Los Angeles Times Syndicate/Tribune Media, is the Editor-in-Chief of The WorldPost. Farah Mohamed is the Managing Editor of The WorldPost. Kathleen Miles is the Senior Editor of the WorldPost. Alex Gardels is the Associate Editor of The WorldPost. Nicholas Sabloff is the Executive International Editor at the Huffington Post, overseeing The WorldPost and HuffPost’s 11 international editions. Eline Gordts is HuffPost’s Senior World Editor.
CORRESPONDENTS: Sophia Jones in Istanbul; Matt Sheehan in Beijing.
EDITORIAL BOARD: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Arianna Huffington, Eric Schmidt (Google Inc.), Pierre Omidyar (First Look Media) Juan Luis Cebrian (El Pais/PRISA), Walter Isaacson (Aspen Institute/TIME-CNN), John Elkann (Corriere della Sera, La Stampa), Wadah Khanfar (Al Jazeera), Dileep Padgaonkar (Times of India) and Yoichi Funabashi (Asahi Shimbun).
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Moises Naim (former editor of Foreign Policy), Nayan Chanda (Yale/Global; Far Eastern Economic Review) and Katherine Keating (One-On-One). Sergio Munoz Bata and Parag Khanna are Contributing Editors-At-Large.
The Asia Society and its ChinaFile, edited by Orville Schell, is our primary partner on Asia coverage. Eric X. Li and the Chunqiu Institute/Fudan University in Shanghai and Guancha.cn also provide first person voices from China. We also draw on the content of China Digital Times. Seung-yoon Lee is The WorldPost link in South Korea.
Jared Cohen of Google Ideas provides regular commentary from young thinkers, leaders and activists around the globe. Bruce Mau provides regular columns from MassiveChangeNetwork.com on the “whole mind” way of thinking. Patrick Soon-Shiong is Contributing Editor for Health and Medicine.
ADVISORY COUNCIL: Members of the Berggruen Institute’s 21st Century Council and Council for the Future of Europe serve as the Advisory Council — as well as regular contributors — to the site. These include, Jacques Attali, Shaukat Aziz, Gordon Brown, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Juan Luis Cebrian, Jack Dorsey, Mohamed El-Erian, Francis Fukuyama, Felipe Gonzalez, John Gray, Reid Hoffman, Fred Hu, Mo Ibrahim, Alexei Kudrin, Pascal Lamy, Kishore Mahbubani, Alain Minc, Dambisa Moyo, Laura Tyson, Elon Musk, Pierre Omidyar, Raghuram Rajan, Nouriel Roubini, Nicolas Sarkozy, Eric Schmidt, Gerhard Schroeder, Peter Schwartz, Amartya Sen, Jeff Skoll, Michael Spence, Joe Stiglitz, Larry Summers, Wu Jianmin, George Yeo, Fareed Zakaria, Ernesto Zedillo, Ahmed Zewail, and Zheng Bijian.
From the Europe group, these include: Marek Belka, Tony Blair, Jacques Delors, Niall Ferguson, Anthony Giddens, Otmar Issing, Mario Monti, Robert Mundell, Peter Sutherland and Guy Verhofstadt.
MISSION STATEMENT
The WorldPost is a global media bridge that seeks to connect the world and connect the dots. Gathering together top editors and first person contributors from all corners of the planet, we aspire to be the one publication where the whole world meets.
We not only deliver breaking news from the best sources with original reportage on the ground and user-generated content; we bring the best minds and most authoritative as well as fresh and new voices together to make sense of events from a global perspective looking around, not a national perspective looking out.
