Nathan Gardels is the editor-in-chief of Noema Magazine.
A flood of desperate refugees from across the Mediterranean and the related surge of indignant fringe parties, including now from iconic, self-satisfied Denmark, are battering the discredited political establishment in Europe.
Writing from London, Mark Leonard argues that the contest in Europe today is not between right and left; it is a revolt of the left behind masses against the “cosmopolitan” and “metrosexual” elites. Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, says in an interview that what Europe needs is “pragmatic solutions, not big debates” when resolving the Greek financial crisis.
In the southern nations enduring austerity policies, that revolt has brought left populists like Syriza to power in Greece and bolstered Podemos in Spain. Moving north, it has empowered the anti-immigrant, anti-EU National Front in France and the anti-refugee Danish People’s Party. Writing from Copenhagen, Fabrizio Tassinari and Christine Nissen explain how Europe’s concept that security is best guaranteed by opening borders instead of erecting barriers is being tested. Joergen Oerstroem Moeller chronicles how the Greek crisis evolved despite the fact that it has received massive infrastructure investment from the rest of Europe. Christoph Asche of HuffPost Germany talks to young Greeks who want to change their country. Former World Bank Vice President Otaviano Canuto traces the fiscal crisis of nations to their lack of saving a “rainy day” fund reserve to counter cyclical downturns.
In this week’s “Forgotten Fact,” we look at why Greece’s bailout money doesn’t really end up in Greece.
Roque Planas reports from Santo Domingo and Laguna Salada on another refugee crisis, this one involving the expulsion of Haitians from the Dominican Republic.
World editor Eline Gordts considers why other nations change gun laws after massacres like the one last week in South Carolina, but not America.
As deadly attacks surfaced in three countries on three different continents on Friday, World editor Charlotte Alfred looks at how the world is reeling from the wave of terror that rocked Tunisia, Kuwait and France. Friday also saw a historic ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court legalizing gay marriage across the country. We look at how the rest of the world reacted to America’s giant step toward equality for its LGBT citizens.
Noted scholar John Esposito and his colleagues claim that the recent elections in Turkey and Tunisia prove that Islam is compatible with democracy. India’s political enfant terrible, Shashi Tharoor, says that India, China and the rest of the leading emerging economies will no longer wait for a seat at the table of the American dominated world order and are creating their own global institutions. Keynesian scholar Robert Skidelsky writes “Eurasia is an idea whose time has come” and that China’s effort to build a new Silk Road across the region is reminiscent of the 13th century Pax Mongolica. Harvard’s Joe Nye dismisses the notion that China will be more economically powerful than America anytime soon.
As the battles between the Islamic State and Kurdish fighters continue, WorldPost Middle East Correspondent Sophia Jones reports from Akcakale, Turkey at the Turkey-Syria border that the biggest obstacle to Kurdish victory over ISIS might not actually be ISIS. One Syrian tells her, “We’re between everyone’s feet. Syria’s over.” She also reports on a group of Syrians trying to do something revolutionary: film a television series.
In multimedia posts this week we capture the brazen Taliban bombing of Afghanistan’s Parliament building and the resilience of Syrian women refugees who tell their stories in a new documentary short. We also look at what the world looks like from its most beautiful peaks and learn why Chinese tourists aren’t going to South Africa for vacation.
In an exclusive interview, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says that mainstream media are rife with censorship.
Writing from Stockholm, Johan Rockström lauds Pope Francis’ recent encyclical on ecology. He says he hopes the pope’s message will stem the ongoing erosion of critical “planetary boundaries” that will doom the Earth to a warming trend and in turn disrupt the narrow band of a livable climate that allows our human species and others to flourish. Former French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy explains in an interview how the global health organization, UNITAID, is fighting HIV/AIDS and malaria through small donations attached to airline tickets. As the United Nations charter turns 70, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon takes the opportunity to look toward a safer and sustainable future for the world. Marking Father’s Day, U.S. President Barack Obama claims that he has become a better father despite the demands of occupying the Oval Office. Futurist Vivek Wadhwa explains why India is ready for its next tech revolution. In our Singularity University series this week we look at “the sins of the future.” Finally, our column from Fusion highlights a new documentary about Malala, who says she’s “still an ordinary girl.”
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 and Peter Mellgard are the Associate Editors of The WorldPost. Katie Nelson is the National Editor at the Huffington Post, overseeing The WorldPost and HuffPost’s editorial coverage. Eline Gordts is HuffPost’s Senior World Editor. Charlotte Alfred and Nick Robins-Early are Associate World Editors.
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.
