Newsweek 06/01/2018

IN THE LATE 1940S AND EARLY 1950S, PARIS beckoned African-American intellectuals hoping to escape the racism and conformity of American life. Chief among them: Richard Wright, the acclaimed author of Native Son and Black Boy, who arrived in 1947. He was soon joined by Chester Himes, an ex-convict who mastered hardboiled detective fiction; James Baldwin, the precocious essayist; and Richard Gibson, an editor at the Agence France-Presse. These men became friends, colleagues and, soon, bitter rivals. Their relationship appeared to unravel over France’s war to keep its colony in Algeria. Gibson pressured Wright to publicly criticize the French government, angering the acclaimed author. Wright dramatized their falling-out in a roman à clef he called Island of Hallucination, which was never published, even after his death in 1960. In 2005, Gibson published…

AN OVERLY TANNED RIGHT-wing populist with a fervent base seemingly dodges scandal after scandal, until several women he’s abused, insulted or exploited finally lead to his downfall. That scenario may sound like Donald Trump’s presidency, albeit with a liberal fantasy ending. But I’m actually talking about Silvio Berlusconi, the flamboyant former Italian prime minister. The two leaders have a lot in common. Both are wealthy demagogues with long records of bankruptcy and shady business dealings. Both are celebrities—Berlusconi once ran a TV empire, Trump had a hit reality-TV franchise. Both entered politics, claiming that only they could fix a broken political system—one from which they handsomely benefited. Both are savvy salesmen who appealed to disgruntled voters by projecting themselves—paradoxically—as cartoonish authoritarians and victimized everymen. Both became embroiled in sex scandals. Trump…

VICENTE FOX “JUMPED THE WALL” to come here, he joked to the crowd. It was May 14, and the former president of Mexico was onstage at Cipriani, a restaurant and venue in downtown New York, where he had just received a Webby Award for best internet personality in film and video. These days, Fox is a celebrity, not just in Mexico but increasingly in America. And his Cipriani speech captured why. Since early 2016, when Donald Trump was still a Republican hopeful, Fox has been one of his most outspoken critics, lambasting the real estate mogul for his desire to wall off the southern U.S. border—and make Mexico pay for it. “I am not paying for that fucken wall,” Fox tweeted last January. Trump’s critics have loved his brash, comedic approach,…

At the upcoming 18th Meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Council of Heads of State, the first summit since the expansion of its membership, leaders of the eight member states will map the future of a larger organization. The meeting, to be held in Qingdao, east China’s Shandong Province, in June, will also see the release of milestone documents that codify their consensus. All this will further en- hance the solidarity and influence of the SCO. Evolution The SCO came into being against a distinct international backdrop in the aftermath of the Cold War. It was created as a new regional mechanism to meet the needs of countries in the region to maintain stability and promote shared development. Under the Shanghai Five grouping, predecessor to the SCO, China, Russia and countries in…

“PLEASE DO NOT THINK THESE ARE SOMEHOW radical, or unpopular, or extreme or fringe ideas,” Bernie Sanders tells me. It’s early May, and the once-and-perhaps-future presidential contender is ticking off progressive policy proposals—his policy proposals—that, in the two years since his loss to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primary, have rapidly remade the Democratic Party: universal health care, tuition-free public college, a $15-an-hour minimum wage. When he’s told that some believe his ideas may be better suited to Finland than Nebraska, Sanders bristles. “Look at the polling,” he snaps in his thick Brooklyn accent, which decades in Vermont have not diminished. “You don’t have to believe what I tell you.” By many measures, he’s right. In the two years since his insurgent campaign for the White House succumbed to the Clinton juggernaut,…

It WAS JUST AFTER SUNRISE ON APRIL 10 WHEN THE DOORBELL rang at Anatoly and Alyona Vilitkevich’s apartment in Ufa, an industrial city in central Russia. Their early morning visitors: masked police officers armed with automatic weapons. “Open up!” the officers shouted. Inside, the married couple hurried to get dressed and call their lawyer. “There were 10 of them, including plainclothes investigators,” Alyona, 35, tells Newsweek. “One of them was filming everything. They said I wasn’t allowed to use the telephone.” After searching the apartment, the officers told Anatoly, a 31-year-old handyman, to pack some warm clothes. “They said he wouldn’t be coming home again,” Alyona says. Since the raid, he has been in police custody, and investigators have not permitted his wife to speak to him, she says. The police’s tactics…