Andre Vltchek

After my work in the Middle East had finished, at least for the time being, I was waiting for my flight to Santiago de Chile. In Paris. I could count on a few ‘free’ days, processing what I had heard and witnessed in Beirut. Day after day, for long hours, I sat in a lounge, typing and typing; reflecting and typing...

It is wrong, totally wrong to abandon Jakarta and try to build some Potemkin village in the middle of Borneo, an island known in Indonesia as Kalimantan. There are many reasons why, and we will be addressing at least some of them here. But before we begin, let us state the obvious: the cowardly and...

There seems to be no limit to Qataris tossing around their wealth. This tiny kingdom with 2.6 million inhabitants is full of ridiculously lavish gold-plated palaces, most of them built with terrible taste. It is overflowing with Lamborghini racing cars and Rolls Royce limousines, and now, even with ludicrously wasteful air-conditioned sidewalks (cold air blows from below, into the 35C heat...