The Venezuelan president’s calls for a constitutional overhaul suggest a possible first step toward the ‘corporatist’ policy forged by 20th century rulers like Castro in Cuba, Francisco Franco in Spain and Italy’s Benito Mussolini.
Author: Alidad Vassigh
Born in Tehran, educated in Britain and France, I have been a freelance translator since the late 1990s.
Sadly, the wall-sized master work says as much about the world’s current horrors as it did about the first-ever air raid on civilians 80 years ago.
Emmanuel Macron’s victory halts the blind assault against globalization, at least in Europe, if not the rest of the world. But the battle is far from over.
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ –– For some time now, Latin America has not figured on the U.S. State Department’s agenda. If the continent did appear, it was at the bottom of the government’s list. This indifference has only grown starker since Donald J. Trump moved into the White House. This state of affairs is neither good nor […]
A Colombian NGO is hoping football could turn former communist guerrillas into peaceful citizens — and maybe even sporting stars.
A mix of arrogance, careful planning and fortuitous circumstances have brought the political outsider and youthful former economy minister Emmanuel Macron to the gates of the French presidency.
-Analysis- LIMA — Peruvian historian Javier Puente’s latest research includes some very interesting maps. The first (and most extensive) covers the area affected by drought as a result of the El Niño weather phenomenon between 1982 and 1983 (when it was unusually intense). The second, relying on data from Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee, shows […]
When El Espectador’s Aldo Civico spots a former henchman of the Medellin drug cartel in a restaurant, enjoying a meal and the well wishes of patrons, he wonders if something has gone terrible wrong with society at large.
-Analysis- Fox News opted for the verb “slam” to describe the first significant comments about Iran from new U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. “Tillerson slams Iran nuclear deal as “failed approach,”” the conservative network headlined its story yesterday, following Tillerson’s remarks about the 2015 nuclear accord inked by President Obama. But there is another […]
Love, jealousy and courtship have become impatient, high-speed activities that play out on our computer screens and smartphones.
After Trump and Brexit surprise victories with the support of disenchanted voters, the populist right-wing candidate in France is feeling supremely confident.
As the Rainbow Warrior III traverses the Strait of Magellan, its crew shows what it means to defend the natural world on a daily basis.
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ — There is a curious new twist to a longstanding political phenomenon, and we see it popping up around the world. Provocation and outrageous behavior is switching sides. Crossing the line has been a part of culture since poets like Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, with their disheveled hair and shabby clothes, used […]
Brexit could isolate Britain in its dispute with Argentina over the Falklands, though leaders in Buenos Aires need to think and speak clearly, or risk keep the status quo.
Rural physician Julián Ramírez recounts the spectacle of desperate survivors streaming into a hospital in Mocoa, devastated by the deadly mudslide on April 1.
MEXICO CITY — Residents of Iztapalapa, a crowded area on the edge of Mexico City, have hung up sheets warning criminals they would be lynched if they threaten locals, steal or vandalize cars. Iztapalapa is a working-class delegación, or large district, where crime has spiked in recent months, the daily Milenio reports. The move to […]
GENEVA — At the Geneva University Hospitals, pneumologist Jean-Paul Janssens receives patients suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). This rare disease is caused by the degeneration of motor neurons and kills patients within a few years. It is incurable. And yet patients often receive invitations from private clinics or doctors promising a miracle cure using […]
-Essay- VALENCIA — As a British national living in Spain, it is strange to (still) be an EU citizen and yet start to feel unwelcome in this “European home.” All this thanks to Brexit, that nasty little gnome doggedly making its way through the disbelief of millions. Born in Iran and with nearly 40 years […]
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Venezuela’s Chilling ‘Self-Coup’
-Analysis- You don’t need to be an army general marching in with troops to mount a coup in a country. Sometimes democracy can be crushed by the very person elected at its helm — the president. In Venezuela, analysts and opposition leaders are describing this phenomenon as a “self-coup,” after President Nicolás Maduro ordered the […]
We have already been revealed, both our leaders and ourselves, by writers of the past.
Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolás Maduro has brought his country to the lowest socio-economic levels in its history. His clinging to power is a dangerous thing.
Technology is transforming how goods and services are sold, and may soon kick millions of workers out of a job. But certain professions can’t be replaced by bots.
Innovative television programming could be challenging the dominance of youth on television in Argentina and Brazil.
Murderous paramilitary organizations that formed in the 1980s were supposedly dismantled. Elements, however, continue to live on through what the government now calls Organized Armed Groups, or GAO.
For the ordinary Mexican, the free-trade agreement has been a chance to build a modern country based on the rule of law, and, above all, a ticket to economic development. Without it, Mexico could quickly slide backward.
Iran built itself a lavish modern art museum in the late 1970s, only to end up stowing away a priceless collection after the Islamic revolution. Signs of reform could open up Iranians to Giacometti, Picasso, Warhol and Pollock.
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ – We often confuse a phenomenon with its causes. We’re in the 21st century but we still believe that the problems we face are due to political personalities, whether it’s Donald Trump in the U.S., the combative former president Álvaro Uribe here in Colombia or Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela and so many others […]
The new U.S. president might want to think twice about taking a business-world approach to international affairs.
MEXICO CITY — The capital of Mexico delivers water unequally to its 20 million people. While residents of neighborhoods like Cuauhtémoc or Polanco suffer occasional water shortages — everyone does — poorer areas face routine shortages, reports Mexican newspaper La Jornada. One such place is Iztapalapa, where there can be no water for weeks, and […]
Venezuela is one of a handful of petrol states that imagined they could live it up forever off crude oil cash. After oil prices sank, decades of neglecting agriculture has now left a nation literally starving.
But for some, politicians’ rising calls for unity ring hollow.
Repatriating people like Ismael Arciniegas, a Colombian executed in China for drug smuggling, could create a perverse incentive.
Massive use of antibiotics in animal farming and for the treatment of common ailments is helping create incurable infections.
Companies and universities in Argentina are encouraging naps to boost the productivity and mood of students and workers.
The tiny European country has improved its position as a post-Brexit business destination by reforming its fiscal rules and digital environment.
Beyond the Filippino leader’s inciting vigilante killings of drug dealers, Colombian leaders who have long battled the narcotics trade might study his other ideas.
As his words and public gestures confirm, Francis is a people’s pope, not a populist, and as genuine as he is popular with ordinary folk.
Bolivian president Evo Morales has been criticized for his supposed ‘cult of personality.’ But he is no Donald Trump.
First with Obama and now with Trump, the U.S. is making space for a second imperialist power on the American continent, China.
Irrational anger is turning ordinary individuals into system wreckers when they are seduced and provoked by demagogues.