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Columns

How is corruption like snow?

Andrea G

Moisés Naím / El País

In countries where snow abounds, words abound to describe it. And the same goes for corruption. Where there’s a lot of corruption, it goes by many names.

In the Sami language, spoken in Norway, Sweden and Finland, there are more than 300 words for snow. In Latin America, and in countries such as Italy, Greece, Nigeria and India, there are hundreds of words for corruption. Coima, mordida, moches, ñeme-ñeme, guiso, mermelada and cohecho are some of the words for corruption used in Spanish-speaking countries. But just as interesting as the concepts we have too many words for, are those we have none for.

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Venezuela’s Problem Isn’t Socialism

Andrea G

Moisés Naím and Francisco Toro / Foreign Affairs

In the last three years, tragic scenes of poverty and mayhem have dominated the coverage of Venezuela, a nation that used to be one of the wealthiest and most democratic countries in South America. Venezuela has become both a byword for failure and, curiously, something of an ideological hot potato, a rhetorical device dropped into political conversations around the world.

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The shoestring superpower

Andrea G

Moisés Naím / El País

Being a superpower is not what it used to be. These days, you can do it on a shoestring.

A superpower is a country able to project its military power over great distances and, if necessary, fight more than one war at a time – and in different continents. That costs a lot of money: military bases, ships, aircraft, tanks, missiles, communications and transportation infrastructure, none of this comes cheap. Also necessary is an expeditionary force of thousands of troops prepared to go to war anywhere on the planet. And, of course, nuclear weapons.

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Expensive murders

Andrea G

Moisés Naím / El País

Each year, about half-a-million people are murdered worldwide. Naturally, these deaths have devastating effects on the victims’ families and loved ones. But there are also killings that reach far beyond friends and family and change the world. These transcendental murders can turn out to be very expensive. The iconic case is the 1914 assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. His death set off a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I and the deaths of 40 million people.

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Full-scale action

Andrea G

Moisés Naím / World Energy & Oil

The numbers are in. Humanity needs to cut global greenhouse emissions by 7.6 percent every year for the next decade to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius target agreed upon in the 2015 Paris accord. This is just one of the alarms sounded by the 2019 Environment Emissions Gap Report recently released by the United Nations.  Each year the report assesses the difference between “where we are likely to be and where we need to be” with regards to greenhouse emissions.  The report also notes that, in the past decade, global emissions of greenhouse gases have increased 1.5 percent each year on average and confirms that the world has warmed more than 1 degree Celsius from what it was in pre-industrial times.  

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Revolting alliances

Andrea G

Moisés Naím / El País

In some countries, opposing political groups figure out how to reach agreements, govern, and share power. In others, long-standing hatreds make it impossible for them to move forward. Opponents are not seen as political rivals but as illegitimate enemies with toxic agendas and unforgivable past behaviors. The mere possibility of any deal with people or groups that promote unacceptable platforms – or worse, that have been accused of crimes and abuses – becomes morally and psychologically intolerable.

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Junk TV is more toxic than we thought

Andrea G

Moisés Naím / El País

Some TV enriches our lives, some TV debases us. Some television opens minds, makes us think, takes us to places we would never get to visit and brings us face to face with life’s great dilemmas. There is also television that deliberately degrades, deceives, and confuses. And of course, there is TV that simply aims to distract us. Frequently, television that seeks to educate us is unbearably boring, while the shows that try to manipulate us end up polarizing and deceiving us. In contrast, TV that only aims to entertain is politically irrelevant. Or so we thought.

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Democrats must refuse to be (falsely) called radicals

Andrea G

Moisés Naím / The Washington Post

Americans will not follow politicians who fit the caricature that Donald Trump and Fox News use to depict opponents of the incumbent president.

America-hating, illegal-immigrant-loving, soft-on-crime radical socialists will not do well with voters. Fortunately, these radical socialists are scarce and not very influential. Unfortunately, they are omnipresent in Trump’s speeches and tweets.

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Is Venezuela becoming the Libya of the Caribbean?

Andrea G

Moisés Naím / El País

In 2011, Libya cracked into a thousand pieces. With United Nations authorization, a broad coalition attacked Libya, a mob murdered Muammar Gaddafi, his bloodthirsty regime collapsed, and the country fragmented. Eventually, two governments were formed, one based in Tripoli and another in Tobruk. Each has its own leader, armed forces, government bureaucracy and even a Central Bank that prints its own money.

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Why Latin America Was Primed to Explode

Andrea G

Moisés Naím and Brian Winter / Foreign Affairs

In a world aflame with protest, Latin America stands out as a raging ten-alarm fire. From Bolivia to Ecuador, Haiti to Honduras, the closing months of 2019 have seen enormous, sometimes violent demonstrations prompted by a truly dizzying array of grievances, including electoral fraud, corruption, and rising fuel and public transportation prices.

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The world’s most dangerous place

Andrea G

Moisés Naím / El País

International security experts often draw up lists of the most dangerous places on earth. These are not places that are just dangerous to their population, but rather places that irradiate conflict and instability to neighboring nations or even to other continents.

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Electric Surprises

Andrea G

Moisés Naím / World Energy & Oil

In recent years, the attention of energy companies, governments, investors and the media has focused on the enormous upheaval caused by new technologies which have made the exploitation of shale gas and shale oil technically and economically feasible, and these innovations have upended energy markets and traditional geopolitical structures. In particular, the United States has become not only self-sufficient in energy terms but also one of the main hydrocarbon exporters. It is not exaggeration to call the changes in the oil and gas industry revolutionary. However, this change has diverted attention from another revolution changing the world, the electrical revolution.

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This is not normal

Andrea G

Moisés Naím / El País

What do Spain, Italy, Israel, and the United Kingdom have in common? They can’t seem to form stable governments able to rule. And it’s not just these four countries where, after all, the division of powers and limits on executive power still hold. As we know, plenty of other countries are much more dysfunctional.

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What has a bigger impact, elections or street protests?

Andrea G

Moisés Naím / El País

What do North Korea and Cuba have in common? The obvious answer is that both are dictatorships. Less obvious is that both recently held elections. On March 12, the North Koreans reported that 99.99% of their citizens had gone to the polls and that 100% of the votes were for the 687 candidates put forward by the regime. There were no others. Weeks earlier, Cubans voted in a referendum in which they were asked if they approved of a new constitution. Ninety-one percent of them said yes.

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Energy and the "Thucydides Trap"

Andrea G

Moisés Naím / World Energy & Oil

Thucydides is booming. In recent years, the ideas of this Athenian general and historian who lived around 450 BC have attracted renewed attention. He wrote on a variety of subjects, but the current interest in his work was sparked by his chronicle of the 30-year war between Sparta and Athens. Specifically, what has attracted the attention of contemporary politicians, generals and historians is his conclusion that “What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.” The prediction that worries modern-day analysts is that the ascent of a rival capable of challenging the dominance of the established power inevitably leads to war. Of course, what they have in mind is China’s ascent and America’s reactions to it. Will the current frictions between the two giant nations continue to escalate and lead to a confrontation that will change the planet or will they find a way to coexist in a tense and fractious but ultimately peaceful sharing of global power?

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Economic inequality: What’s new?

Andrea G

Moisés Naím / El País

"I’m a capitalist, and even I think capitalism is broken,” said Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater, one of the largest private investment funds in the world. According to Forbes, Dalio ranks 60th on the list of richest people on the planet. “I believe that all good things taken to an extreme become self-destructive and that everything must evolve or die,” he said. “This is now true for capitalism.”

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Political dialogue in Venezuela: Naïve or inevitable?

Andrea G

Moisés Naím / El País

JIran wants peace talks in Venezuela. “Chaos and violence can, by no means, be a solution to political differences,” said Abbas Mousavi, spokesman for the Islamic republic’s Foreign Ministry. The Chinese government has also insisted that “Venezuela’s affairs should be resolved… through peaceful dialogue and political means.” These sentiments have been echoed by Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, the UN, and many other countries, agencies and political pundits.

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Politician-eating beasts

Andrea G

Moisés Naím / El País

Most animals do not eat human flesh. But some do. It’s said that once a tiger, a lion or a leopard incorporates homo sapiens into its diet, it becomes a man-eater. Some say that once they develop a taste for it, they can’t stop.

Something similar is happening in politics. Once the political system in some countries learns how to toss out a head of state, it seems to develop a taste for it, and starts doing it again and again. The act becomes a sort of ritual sacrifice that takes place within the courts, the legislature, and the media, as well as in the streets. The proliferation of these “politician-eating” beasts appears to be a worldwide phenomenon. But why?

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Cherry blossoms and nervous bankers

Andrea G

Moisés Naím / El País

In March 1912 the mayor of Tokyo, Yukio Ozaki, gave the city of Washington D.C. 3,020 cherry trees. The saplings adapted well to their new surroundings and, over time, spread throughout the capital and its suburbs. So, for 107 years, springtime in Washington has brought the gorgeous spectacle of the cherry blossoms.

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