Colombia, Moderation and Excess
Is Colombia the country of moderation and the right balance or the country of extremes and excesses?
Read MoreFacing Terrorism
I find three social attitudes to be particularly unpleasant: intolerance towards those that think differently, indifference towards social injustice, and the call to war to solve problems stemming from nationalism or religion. That’s why I identitfy with three philosophical traditions: liberalism, social democracy, and pacifism.
Read MoreThe Faith of the Coal-Mining Country
They say that the expression in Spanish “to have the faith of a coal miner”— a blind faith, devoid of a grip on reality— comes from a famous anecdote from fifteenth-century Spain, which involved a coal miner.
The Santos Administration in Favor of Civil Liberties
This November will be remembered as a liberal month.
Read MoreNot for Sale
And it meant that the “Not for Sale” signs pointed to something more than the constant potential for theft. They also pointed to the structural problem of land distribution and access to property in the country.
Read MoreThe Cigarras
The peace process treats gendered violence in a differentiated manner because it has been invisibilized like no other offense.
Read MoreThe Solicitor General and the Palace
I welcome the Solicitor General’s press release in memory of the judges and members of the armed forces that lost their lives in the taking and re-taking of Palace of Justice. The problem is that this attitude contrasts with his silence and insensibility towards the victims of these events: the disappeared and their families.
Read MoreThe Global Village
In 1962 the Canadian sociologist Marshal McLuhan spoke of “the global village” to suggest that, thanks to advances in communications technology, the world had become smaller and more managable.
Read MoreGoodbye, Micolta Soldier
The controversy surrounding the Micolta solider and his removal from the T.V. show Sábados Felices shows that there is progress in the debate and action against racism in the country.
Read MoreMonsignor Castro: To Build Bridges or Walls?
The Catholic Church has played an important role in the search for peace in Colombia. However, the bishops’ extremism against equal adoption sends a contradictory message to society.
Read MoreThe high functionaries’ pensions: ¿a decision to frame?
Lawyers usually call “decisions to frame” those that do not produce any effect in the reality, that its utility doesn’t go far beyond a simple decoration. Well, it is possible that the Constitutional Court will soon dictate on the pensions of the congressmen and other high functionaries of the State will be one of those that are only good to frame. Unless the Court gets into the discusion of the already acquired rights.
Read MoreThe Rose of India
The six violators destroyed her intestins with a metal stick. During the horror, the university student may have seen the luminous blemish of the elegant neighborhoods from New Delhi through the windows of the microbus of death. So far, so close: the Rosa Elvira Cely of India. With her dead, the indignation of the biggest democracy of the world woke up as in an electrical shock.
Read MoreEquity and priviliged retirement’s pension
Is it fair that all the colombians, even the poorest ones, finance with our taxes the payment of the high pensions that the congresmen and judicial magistrates receive?
Read MoreRich garbage, poor garbage
If we don’t want to throw the world to the garbage, we have to learn to recicle it.
Read MoreThe National Park Tayrona, or environmental policy through Twitter
The environmental policy of the Government look as capricious as the tweets. For the third time in only two months, the ministers and the president are improvising mends to the abuses that the social networks and the media denounce.
Read More“The responsibility of thinking”
That is the title of a very valuable book compiled by Alfredo Rocha and published in 2008 that collects 21 texts of well known academics that wrote to rend homage to Guillermo Hoyos Vásquez, one of the most recognized filosofers in Colombia, who unfortunately died last week.
Read MoreStop having a hard time! You are in one of the happiest countries of the world (again)
The last Win-Gallup survey on the (in)happiness in the world counterattacks. Colombia is placed in the first happiness place of the world.
Read MoreVenezuelan constitutionalism
The unedited situation that has presented itself in Venezuela due to the sickness of Chávez has caused a bitter constitutional in the neighbor country. To some, the decision of giving continuity to the living government until the possession and oath of Chávez is a clear fraud to the Constitution. It has been even been spoken of power usurpation and Coop d’Etat. To others the decision of preserving the popular will expressed in the elections in wich Chávez was elected is not violating the Constitution but honoring it.
Read MoreOn crisis and spells
Con los análisis de fin de año Y los propósitos de 2013 se reitera desde varios medios la crisis de las grandes potencias. Los periódicos de otras latitudes alegan que los europeos quieren olvidar 2012 y prepararse para enfrentar la realidad del año que comienzan. Anuncian el tijeretazo a las cuentas públicas portuguesas, el arreglito…
Read MoreHirshman, conflict and democracy
Francisco Gutiérrez y Posada Carbó are right in their last colums when they highlight the notable work of Albert Hisrschman, the heterodox economist who recently passed away and that knew Colombia very well.
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