-
A single market, a single currency, a single language? The doors and bridges shown on Euro notes already reflect the fluid nature of deals between businessmen with no home and no history. So should students be free to cross borders, using English as a passport valid everywhere (especially in French universities), with no need for dictionaries?
We are told that French universities, like the rest of France, are “bemused”: the people in them still speak French... The minister for higher (...)
Translated by Barbara Wilson
-
Never in the interests of the ordinary citizen
The Syrian people’s uprising began as a struggle over social and economic conditions, a fight for democracy in place of repression. Now it has been hijacked by regional and global conflicts.
Translated by Charles Goulden
-
Boston to the Caucasus, the same jihad ?
Scholars of terrorism have anticipated the next development: ‘lone wolf’ operators who solo, or in tiny closely linked units, attack with motives compounded of politics, religion and personal grievances. The Boston bombings in April were just such a lone wolf attack.
Original text in English
-
The army that can’t or won’t fight
Mali’s army is untrained, unmotivated, underpaid and, because of nepotism, is led by officers who often can’t read a map. Foreign troops and UN peacekeepers may have to stay around for quite a while.
Translated by Krystyna Horko
-
Slogan ‘islam is the solution’ to be put to the test
The neoliberal policy of Egypt’s new president Mohamed Morsi looks very much like a continuation of that of Mubarak. It is increasing social tensions.
Translated by G. M. Goshgarian
-
-
Wrecked lives for another ten cents’ profit
Before the collapse of Rana Plaza, which killed over a thousand people, most of them textile workers, there was the fire that killed a hundred at the Tazreen factory. A major cause is western companies’ greed for profits.
Translated by George Miller
-
Translated by George Miller
-
Half a continent in land, people and GDP
The US views Latin America as its backyard. Brazil is beginning to feel the same way about South America, where it is the biggest and richest country.
Translated by Charles Goulden
-
From autocracy to kleptocracy to dynastic oligarchy in 50 years
In April Uhuru Kenyatta was inaugurated as Kenya’s fourth president. He is the son of the first president, Jomo Kenyatta, who replaced the hope and triumph of Kenya’s independence with single-party rule. He is also the chosen successor to Daniel Arap Moi, the second president, who ran Kenya as a police state and personal ATM. We’ve come this far in just 50 years.
LMD English edition exclusive
-
New challenges of world’s ageing population
Old people in China used to live with their children, who cared for them, in accordance with Confucian teachings. Now the young have migrated to the cities and more than half of the 185 million Chinese over 65 live alone.
Translated by Charles Goulden
-
Japan, with the highest longevity in the world, has an ageing population. They form a new consumer market that will increase massively over the next 50 years.
Translated by Charles Goulden
-
It costs too much to take care of the western world’s old and frail in their own homes or care homes. German is beginning to export the work to low-wage service economies.
Translated by Stephanie Irvine
-
UFOs enter african arts space
Africa now invents its own sci-fi, and with that gains imaginative control over its own future through an artistic genre long the preserve of western writers.
Translated by Charles Goulden
-
Supplement: global fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria
Translated by Charles Goulden
-
Original text in English
-
Malaria still causes more deaths in Africa than any other disease. Health systems are lacking and poverty limits access to care and drugs. In the DRC international organisations and associations are campaigning for action and information, especially among pregnant women.
Translated by Stephanie Irvine
-
Original text in English
-
A global health strategy is necessary to end chronic diseases such as AIDS.
Translated by Charles Goulden
-
Was the UN unrealistic with its Millennium Goals? However much progress has been made, it could not match expectations.
Translated by Charles Goulden