Tag / France
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The Empire Strikes Back: Soccer In A Postcolonial World
As the final whistle blows at a World Cup Quarter Final watch party in Miami, I leave the venue alongside dozens of silent yellow-clad Brazil fans, many on the verge of tears. With their heartbreaking 2-1 defeat to Belgium, Brazil’s elimination narrows the competition to six teams going into the second leg of the Quarter-Finals—all…
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Desensitized: Violence in the Media
I was three years old on the morning of September 11, 2001. I have no memory of that day, a day the nation remembers as the most violent attack on the United States in its modern history. My parents told me of their experiences on that day and the weeks of shock and depression they…
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Age Never Matters
Commentators have a habit of describing a certain generation of people as sharing common characteristics by placing them in the same generational set. For example, people in their 20s and younger are known as millennials. The commentators called people born between 1946 and 1964 “baby boomers,” and people of a later generation “Generation X.” Critics…
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Complicity in Genocide: Pascal Simbikangwa in Paris
BY SONYA SCHOENBERGER In a 100-day period between April and mid-July 1994, members Rwanda’s Hutu ethnic majority slaughtered nearly a million Tutsi and moderate Hutu with clubs and machetes. Twenty years later, one of the alleged orchestrators of the genocide is on trial in Paris. Pascal Simikangwa, former intelligence chief of the Rwandan National Forces, faces…
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![Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou (Photo by Vasilis Filis, Wikimedia Commons)]()
Greece Ruins Everything for Everybody
For those of you just joining the ongoing Greek debt/Euro crisis currently unfolding, here’s the abridged version: For years, Greece employed excessive public spending and unchecked debt growth to a blatantly unsustainable degree. Greek public culture grew around this expectation, to the extent that state dependence on employment and tax evasion were the norm. Then,…
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France in Gridlock
As long queues form in front of gas stations all across France and increasing numbers of protesters amass, President Nicolas Sarkozy remains staunchly defendant of raising France’s retirement age from 60 to 62. Citing the faltering the economy, Sarkozy has stated that the change is necessary to cut the expenditures going to French pensioners. As…
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Belgium Enacts National Burqa Ban
In a nearly unanimous decision, the lower house of the Belgian parliament passed a measure banning the burqa in all public areas, following similar actions taken in France, Denmark, and the Netherlands. The law’s author, Daniel Bacquelaine, a Liberal, said a burqa is incompatible with basic security as everyone in public must be recognizable and…
