Sex and poverty
To understand a criminal code it is less important to know the crimes than to know how they are ordered according to crime severity, from the most serious to the most soft one.
Read MoreThe art of banning
Parents know very well that when it comes to banning something it is better to remain silent than to impose a sanction that children will not comply or that they will not be able to impose.
Read MorePicture of pain
BY THESE DAYS I have been following the fate of the 33 Chilean miners of the Atacama Desert.
Read MoreLand and Bicentennial
To the surprise of all Colombians, the Minister of Agriculture has said the government wants to put forward an agrarian reform.
Read MoreDetails of democracy
IN SOCIETIES THAT HAVE Latino heritage, like ours, there is a particular liking for abstract discussions.
Read MoreMauricio García Villegas’ intervention in the debate “And they refounded the homeland…”.
Mauricio García Villegas’ intervention in the launch of the book “and they refounded the homeland… On how the mafia and politicians reconfigured the Colombian State”.
Read MorePresidential inauguration and protocol
DURING THE PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATION OF Juan Manuel Santos, Armando Benedetti, the new Senate president, began his speech by lamenting that Colombia was one of the most unequal countries in the world.
Read MoreThe people grateful with Uribe
TODAY, LAST DAY OF WORK OF President Uribe, the most popular governor in recent decades, I am reminded of the following sentence from Plutarch:
Read MoreRoad Intelligence
BY THESE DAYS there is an advertising campaign which talks about the epidemic of excuses that we Colombians call on when we are in public thoroughfares. “There are behaviors that make us act irrationally,” says the advertisement, and to avoid them “we must use our road intelligence.”
Read MoreCountries and butterflies
When a child asks how long a horse lives, some old people in Antioquia still answer this: see millet, a chicken lives three years, a dog three chickens, a horse three dogs and a human three horses, count yourself. I thought of this explanation last weekend when celebrating the Bicentennial. And how long does a country lives?
Read MoreThe Return of Turbay
The parliamentary initiative for legalizing the “roscogramas” is similar to that proposed by the Ex-President Turbay for reducing corruption.
Read MoreDiabolical Moral
There was a time in which priests asked people to confess if they had had bad thoughts or bad dreams.
Read MoreSemana cites Dejusticia on its Investigation on the Judicial Administration
In the Municipalities where there are armed actors, the justice administration works just a little or none, concludes an investigation that lights up where is needed exactly a reform to justice.
Read MoreJournalists and Union Leaders : Privileged Dead?
Numbers are alarming: 125 journalists killed in the last 125 years in the country. Equally serious is the number of cases that have ended in a sentence: only 12, and almost always against the one who shoot and not the one who gave the order.
Read MoreA tiger of flesh and bones
It´s very difficult to demonstrate, as pretends the columnist Alfredo Rangel, that the Colombian Government has the real and unequivocalwill to investigate and judge crimes against humanity that are of the competence of the International Criminal Court.
Read MoreThe Science of Religion
It´s been almost two centuries since Auguste Compte said in his Opuscules that society was in a state of transition between the old world, dominated by religion and the militarism, a new world where science and humanism will be the guides of civilization.
Read MoreRodrigo Uprimny in the Editorial of September 3 in El Espectador
The thing about impunity towards the killing of journalists in Colombia, very usual every certain time, was the object of debate during the meeting organized by the Interamerican Society of Press (SIP) and Andiarios, beginning this week in Bogota.
Read MoreJudicial Independence, Verbal Intemperance and Interamerican Court
The last ruling from the Interamerican Court was against Venezuela, but it seems to be written for Colombia due to the reflections about the threat to the judicial independence because of the verbal attacks from the governement againts the decisions from the judges that do not suit its will.
Read MoreMore Scandals than Institutions
One of the most visible things in a democracy that works properly is is the clear division that exists between the subjects that are object of consensus and dissensus.
Read MoreThe International Criminal Court Arrives to Colombia
With the visit from the International Criminal Court (ICC) I ask myself what are thinking the analyst who celebrated the decision from the government to extradit the paramilitary chiefs. Since then, many of us adviced that with the take of of the para-charter the right to the truth, justice and reparation of the victims smear.
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