Uribe’s reality
Many of the great political leaders have been talented communicators. Charles de Gaulle, for example, had a particular capacity to interprete the feelings of the french and to design, with his words, real utopies that united and mobilized the people.
Uribe’s communication talented doesn’t consist in mobilizing people through a speech that shows a reachable future. His thing is more like playing a character of Big Brother, with the lightness of the “Protagonista de novela”.
War’s breaking
Last tuesday the race for the United State’s presidency ended. But I think that, even more important than that, at least for us in Colombia, was the popular decision, that same day, of legalizing the cannabis consume in the states of Washington and Colorado.
Read MorePublicists and altruism
Travelling through the roads of Antioquia I watch a sign from the “Legan Antioquia campaign”, promoted by governor Sergio Fajardo. It reads as follows: “If someone provokes you, will you swindle him or her on a deal? There is a very thin line between being legal and being ilegal; where are you?”.
Read MoreOil’s media
In march I published a column with the results of an OCDE study that showed how a country depends on oil’s exportation less habilites and knowledge is acquired their youngsters through the education system.
Read MoreFrom the speach to the dialog
Las thursday, in Oslo, the negotiations between the Farc and the Government began. The first one to speak was the spokesman of the Government, Humberto de la Calle.
Read MoreLearning to govern
Each political group likes to talk about what it knows. The left talks about social rights, political participation and human rights, among others. The right, on the other hand, loves talking about security, moral, culture, business, etc.
Read MoreIndependent catholics
Nicolás Boileau, a french writer of the XVII century, used to say that every protestant was a pope when he had a Bible in his hands. This sentence well reflects the luteran idel of liberating believers from the ecclesiastical hierarchies and of reducing the religious to God, the scriptures and grace.
Read MoreDangerous populations
One of the most hateful practices of the authoritarian regimes it of punishing someone for the simple fat of belonging to a social group considered dangerous for the regime. Students in military dictatorships, homosexuals in islamic theocracies or the black in the Apartheid are only some of the most visible examples. This practice is founded in an ideology that is known as penal peligrosism, prescribed since the beginnings of the XIXth century, but that we are still far away from having banished from the occidental democracies, as the social composition of the prison population shows.
Here, I want to speak about about a type of peligrosism that is rarely mentioned, but that still persists and progresses. I mean the discriminatory way how countries treat immigrants when they enter and leave their frontiers.
Read MoreWords and violence
Fernando Savater once said that wars live over all on words and that, therefore, adding words to war is like adding fuel to the fire.
Read More¿Me? ¿A fundamentalist?
In his last column, “The law of the funnel”, Salud Hernández says that those who criticize the Prosecuter are religious fundamentalists that stand for a sacred model of society. Hernández acuses them of commiting the same sin that they denounce (intolerance) but without listening to their arguments.
Read MoreRacial discrimination in Colombia: alternative report submitted to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
This report describes the effects of the State’s inaction towards the situation of constant discrimination both Afro-Colombian and indigenous peoples are subject to. Despite some progress in this area, the current circumstances demonstrate how the absence of public policy measures and affirmative action that enable ethnic groups to overcome marginalization and to eradicate the racial discrimination they suffer continue to prevail.
Read MoreA statute for the victims that got stuck on the way
Camilo Sanchez’ concept was referenced in the Reparations Dossier of the International Center for Transitional Justice-ICTJ.
Read MoreThe reelection against democracy
The main argument of the reelection referendum defenders is that it is legitimate and democratic because answers to the people’s will.
Read MoreThe State Council and the democratic Security
In the case of the soldier-peasant Guzman, hurt by the guerilla, the court failed against the army because it broke the law.
Read MorePeople to Order
It has been surpirsing for me how foreigners get easily used to the cold tropic that is Bogota.
Read MoreEvading the abortion in the General Attorney
It was evident. For the elections the attorney Ordoñez promissed not to evade the sentences of the Constitutional Court, that are against his moral conceptions, but are obligatory, as well as the sentences that protect the rights of homosexuals, and the right of the woman to abort when raped, or victim of incest or her health is in risk.
Read MoreNotes from Honduras: Constituent Power and Reelection
Honduras President Manuel Zelaya proposed a “fourth ballot box” for the next electoral contest. In late 2009, there will be elections for president, congress and municipal governments. The idea of the “fourth ballot box” is convening a Constituent Assembly to change the Honduran Constitution of 1982.
Read MoreUribe and the Mermaids
Homer in the Odyssey that the Mermaids of the Mediterranean had a beautiful chant that when the sailors listened to it, they went blinded to them and finished crashed against the corals, if not they died in the place, killed by the mermaids.
Read MoreCambio recognizes the participation of Dejusticia in the presentation of unconstitutionality lawsuit that supports the sentence C-029
The unconstitutionality lawsuit that supports the sentence C-029 was filed April 28, 2008 by Colombia Diversa, Center for the Studies of Law, Justice, and Society (Dejusticia), and Public Interest Law Group of the University of the Andes and supported by nearly 30 groups of human rights like the Comisión Colombiana de Juristas and Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir
Read MoreDemocracy, Majorities and Deliberation
The defenders of the reelection referendum have evaded the debate in the Congress about the criticism to the constitutional reform, with the argument that this initiative has been supported by millions of Colombians, and in that sense it has to be assumed practically without discussion. The basic thesis supports the idea that in a democracy the majorities are sovereign. But the fact is not that simple.
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