Colombia’s reformist president has promised to tackle endemic violence, economic exclusion, pollution and corruption in the country. So what’s new with a politician’s promises?
The oldest newspaper in Colombia, El Espectador was founded in 1887. The national daily newspaper has historically taken a firm stance against drug trafficking and in defense of freedom of the press. In 1986, the director of El Espectador was assassinated by gunmen hired by Pablo Escobar. The majority share-holder of the paper is Julio Mario Santo Domingo, a Colombian businessman named by Forbes magazine as one of the wealthiest men in the world in 2011.
Colombia’s reformist president has promised to tackle endemic violence, economic exclusion, pollution and corruption in the country. So what’s new with a politician’s promises?
Venezuela’s first lady, Cilia Flores, is one of the country’s chief power brokers and a consummate wheeler-dealer who, with the help of relatives, runs a voracious enterprise dubbed the Flower Shop.
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The Russian president has resorted to a string of changing lies to justify his war on Ukraine. He has shown contempt along the way for the Christian values he claims to defend. But like arms and ammunition, a regime can also run out of lies.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has managed to cling to power after an allegedly rigged 2018 presidential election. He did so with the help of Cuba, having enjoyed “working relations” with Cuban intelligence for decades.
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Those touting degrowth for the sake of the planet should remember that the majority of the earth’s population has yet to taste a fraction of the material prosperity now blamed for destroying the natural world.
The Metaverse evokes utopian visions of an escape from reality or a life lived online. But for now, it’s still just interactive gaming or networking spaces that does not have the rules or laws necessary to manage its full potential.
States and technology have failed to stop the destruction of the natural world, but a deceptively simple rethinking of our habits could turn the tide.
This essential morning drink for millions worldwide was once considered an addictive menace, earning itself a ban on pain of death in the Islamic world.
The Biden administration and Colombia’s new government seem to agree on the need for a new approach to drugs policy. But will they be able to find support in their countries to forge a new strategy?
Giving nature rights, as South American nations are keen to do these days, is well-intentioned, but far too limited in scope to make sense.
Venezuela is to create free economic zones to attract foreign capital into the Venezuelan economy, but who would take “clean” money to a lawless land run by rapacious revolutionaries?
As measures to curb climate change move slowly in the face of deadly new weather patterns, we must immediately mitigate the havoc it has begun to cause around the world.
Green technologies are crucial to reducing carbon emissions, but they require ramping up the need for mining of minerals. And since mineral extraction can cause grave natural destruction, how can we ensure renewables are truly good for the environment?
With the complicity of leftist rulers in Venezuela, Bolivia and even Argentina, Iran’s sanction-ridden regime is spreading its tentacles in South America, and could even undermine democracies.
Gustavo Petro’s victory is not only a response to the social ills of today, but having been part of a Marxist guerrilla group that negotiated with the state decades ago, and returned to the social fold, he embodies the nation’s democratic future.
Colombians spurned the establishment candidates in the first round of presidential voting. In the second round, on June 19, they will have to choose between Gustavo Petro, a former Marxist guerrilla, and Rodolfo Hernández a “tough-talking” businessman being compared to Donald Trump.
The Colombian president recently said that the country had exported one million barrels of carbon-neutral or offset oil. But in an unregulated carbon market, such a claim is pure greenwashing.
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Russia’s President Putin may speak of denazifying Ukraine, but his words and actions — from the Mariupol maternity hospital to the atrocities of Bucha to Friday’s missile attack on the Kramatorsk railway station — show that he’s taken up the mantle of Europe’s line of fascist dictators. Take a look at those today who still lend him support.
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Like other intellectuals of his time, the celebrated Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez admired Cuba’s Fidel Castro. What’s just been revealed, however, is also, as one text reveals, the Sandinista rebels who have stifled Nicaraguan democracy in past years.
Although Betancourt is best known for surviving six years as a hostage of the Colombian terror group FARC, and is considered a centrist politician, her unlikely new campaign for president will be centered on gender issues.