On May 14th, Dominique Strauss Kahn, head of the IMF and a leading French Socialist, was arrested on a plane about to leave New York City. He was charged of sexual assault on a woman working as a maid in the hotel he had just left, the Sofitel. This affair was a big psychological shock in France: it even shut [...]
This is, I should admit, my first attempt and blogging and my inaugural post on the Soapbox blog. When I had initially promised to blog for the summer, I was under the impression that the world would be coming to an end on Saturday, May 21st, 2011 at 6pm. I had fashioned my tinfoil hat, grabbed my wind-up flashlight, and [...]
PPR, having prudently waited to make sure the apocalypse did not take place, would now like to invite you to enjoy the summer with us. Over the next few months we’ll have a beefed-up lineup, since we don’t have, you know, class or anything anymore. Sadly, we’ll be saying goodbye to one departing senior, Luke Hassall, whose adroit commentary on [...]
As I write this, the ultimate outcome of the revolutionary fervor sweeping the Arab world has yet to reach a clear outcome. But from Mauritania to Oman, a clear tide of political, economic, and social discontent has swept regimes long presumed invulnerable to such forces. Most observers, if asked to pick a Middle Eastern state liable to revolution, would have [...]
by Darina Shtrakhman East or West? Turkey has been debating this question as long as it has been a country, perhaps even since the Ottoman era a century earlier. After World War II, Turkey made a name for itself by maintaining a secular democracy in a predominantly Muslim country — an impressive straddling of Middle Eastern and Western values which has [...]
by Mihir Garud It took just 18 days for one of the most entrenched leaders in the Middle East, Hosni Mubarak, to be forced out of power. Despotic leaders from around the region are feeling the pressure that revolutions may be inevitable. Leaders in Libya, Tunisia, Syria, Bahrain, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia are struggling to prevent their countries from losing [...]
With autocratic, dictatorial regimes falling left and right in the Arab world, one might anticipate a few demonstrations by the oppressed in other corners of the globe. North Koreans in particular have been receiving news of the uprisings via leaflets flown in by balloon from the South. “A dictatorial regime is destined to collapse,” they claim. Sadly, so long as [...]
by Ben Wofford It was a classic budget showdown. Invigorated by a resounding off-year election and emboldened by his perceived political mandate, a young politician stepped into his newly-won executive office and initiated a staring contest with public sector unions. With his government facing a considerable deficit—let’s just say a number followed by a ‘b’—municipal unions and their generous pension [...]
by Brian Collopy Hopping on the underground train that connects the offices for Congressmen in the House of Representatives to the Capitol building flashing an ID and wandering around restricted areas, I found myself thinking that I had a pretty good job. During the summer of 2010, I interned for a congressman on Capitol Hill, learning how things actually get [...]
by Graham White The prevailing trend in American history has been one toward the further democratization of our republic. Virtually every aspect of how we choose our leaders has been modified since the ratification of the Constitution well over two centuries ago. The arrival of secret ballots, the vast expansion of suffrage, the 17th amendment, and the introduction of ballot [...]
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