Once again, one of my articles, just published on Impakter, with a remarkable introduction from the Editor (he is a millennial, a man deeply concerned about the issues of our time, value-driven like his whole generation, and this too is reason for hope in a better future). This is the beginning, to read the rest,…
Category: politics
What Turns a Police Thriller into a Bestseller? Lessons from Faceless Killers
Discovering Henning Mankell (here) Let me start with a confession: I’m not a habitual reader of police thrillers and murder stories. Like everyone, I’ve read Agatha Christie when I was young, I’ve gone through all the classics from Arthur Conan Doyle to Ngaio Marsh but I’m not a fan, call me a dispassionate reader. Why?…
Chasing the Flame…
This week leading to Easter was an authentic Via Crucis for some 300 innocents massacred by demented people: half of them were hapless tourists flying on Lufthansa’s low cost GermanWings, the other half, university students in Kenya who were shot and decapitated because they happened to be Christians. The Pope had unforgettable words on Holy…
How the United Nations Foresees The Future
That is the title of an article I just wrote for Impakter. As I am doing research for my upcoming book about the United Nations (tentatively entitled “Soft Power“), I keep coming across interesting aspects of UN work that are little known to outsiders and I wanted to share these “choice bits” with you on…
Getting Close to the “Darkest Hour”: Ancient Art Destroyed, Lives Lost, A Voice for Freedom Silenced
We are getting close to Mankind’s “darkest hour”. The Voice for Freedom, silenced in Moscow on 27 February, was that of Boris Nemtsov. It was close to midnight, he was gunned down not far from the Kremlin, as he was walking home from a radio interview in which he had dared to take Putin to…
What’s Wrong with Europe? Ukraine, Greece and Libya: All Unfinished Businesses
Libya is sinking into a fundamentalist Islamic chaos, the cease-fire in Ukraine is breaking down and Greece’s debt problems are far from resolved. Merkel, Putin and Hollande at the Kremlin (2015) And this in spite of the the so-called agreement reached in Minsk between Putin and the Merkel-Hollande couple. And in spite of the news…
France, Taking the Pulse
I spent the past week in Paris and it has opened my eyes. Several widely-held opinions and ideas struck me: 1. I am not Charlie I met NOBODY who evinced support for Charlie Hebdo – now with the killings in Denmark, there has been a revival of that “let’s defend freedom of the press” mood,…
Claude Forthomme 