Highlighted

On 28th August of 2020 Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno announced on his Twitter account “a technical agreement with the IMF to access 6.5 billion dollars for social protection and reactivation”. After passing an anti-corruption law required by the agency, they have already reached an agreement for the disbursement of the first 2 billion, which the president rushed to celebrate on the networks. It is a new loan from the IMF in addition to the one for 200 million dollars and that … Read more

Nonviolent resistance, also called active nonviolence, became popular in the early twentieth century when Ghandi1, based on the ideology of Tolstoy and Thoreau made use of a series of disobedience and non collaboration tactics that resulted in the independence of India and Pakistan from the British Empire2. This form of activism continued to be common throughout the twentieth century and would be the preferred form of operation of the anti-globalization movement to this day. By the end of the twentieth … Read more

On 15th September the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, announced his intention to hold a popular consultation on the possible prosecution of former presidents who ruled Mexico from 1988 to 20181. To do so, he sent a formal request to the Senate of the Republic. Obrador suggested that the consultation take place on 6th June 2021 or on the date established in article 35 of the Constitution2. At the same time a national popular campaign to collect signatures took … Read more

In many authoritarian governments around the world, appealing to a glorious past of the collective imagination is a common political tool. We see it in Mongolia, with the constant memory of the figure of Genghis Khan1, or in the nostalgic memories of the British imperial past by the conservative politicians of that country2. In few places, however, does it take on the appearance of such a warmongering political ideology as with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Neo-Ottomanism: the dream of … Read more

For three weeks tens of thousands of farmers have been blocking the entrances to the city of New Delhi in protest at the new reform of the agricultural markets promoted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi1. At the same time the mobilizations spread throughout the country. While the prime minister reasoned that the reform will make the agrarian sector richer, the labor unions argue that the reforms will make them vulnerable to exploitation by large corporations and erode their negotiation power. … Read more

Last Tuesday, December 8, water began to trade on the New York Stock Exchange. The futures contracts linked to the spot price (cash price) of water have begun to be the result of speculation in the Wall Street market1. Thereby, it will be traded in a similar way to gold and oil. At the moment, this stock index, NQH20, only trades the water of five areas of California2. Although there are already other antecedents of water rights speculation3, the fact … Read more

On September 8, the German government commissioner for Africa, Günter Nooke, announced in the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung his country’s intention to source “green” hydrogen from the Democratic Republic of the Congo1. For this, a new large dam on the Congo River, the Inga 3, would have to be built. In its construction there are Chinese and European interests2,3. The Congo is a country that suffered harsh colonization4, which continues to be the victim of extensive plunder by foreign nations and … Read more

The Organic Law of Data Protection and Digital Rights (LOPD)1, approved on last November 21st, adapts to spanish law the regulations of the General Regulation of Data Protection of the European Parliament2, dealing with issues related to internet privacy. Thanks to the title X of this law Spain will become pioneer in recognition of many digital rights, although the majority are amplifications of rights which are already recognized in other laws or applications of basic worldwide digital rights. Nevertheless it … Read more

The National Security Council, in its meeting on October 6, 2020, approved the Procedure for action against disinformation, published on November 5 in BOE-A-2020-136631. Given that the Procedure was questioned from the first moment, the Presidency of the Government published a clarifying press release2, although it is not binding. This Procedure does not have the force of law, and is only an update of another one already in force. It links with two basic documents of the European Commission: the … Read more

The approval of the 2021 budget in Guatemala, at 5:30 in the morning of Wednesday, November 18, caused a massive protest in the country, with more than 10,000 protesters. The protest, initially peaceful, ended with fires in the Parliament building, in addition to 37 detainees and 22 people injured1. These mobilizations take place just five years after the massive demonstrations that removed then-President Otto Pérez Molina2 from power, and are a sample of what happens when austericidal recipes are followed … Read more