Changing World

Luis Rubio The way the Morena-party government functions, especially with President López Obrador’s early-morning press conferences, reminds me of an old Russian joke. It was about a peasant farmer whose neighbor saves enough to purchase a goat. The peasant asks God to put right this injustice and God answers, asking the peasant what he wants …

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Friedman 50 Years Later *

Manuel Suárez Mier Friedman 50 years later.September 13 marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of Milton Friedman’s influential essay, The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Profits, in the New York Times Magazine (NYT), which set the standard for business priorities until recently …

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Consequences

Luis Rubio For every action (force) in nature, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Newton’s Third Law of Motion is similarly applicable to physics and politics. Governments define their objectives and means to achieve them, and the population has to deal with the consequences: …

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Navigating Mexico’s New Lawless Roads *

Photo: Herika Martinez/AFP via Getty on thedailybeast.com Manuel Suárez Mier The Lawless Roads was the dyspeptic travelogue that English author Graham Greene wrote in the 1930s of his journey to Mexico – a “cursed nation full of hate and death.” At that time, the violence was launched by a rabidly socialist, anti-Catholic government, that pursued violent …

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Merkel: The Shadow of a Giant

Antonio Navalón Yesterday, Germany held general elections. For the first time in 16 years, an election in which a particular name did not appear on the ballot. In terms of conditions and term of office, Angela Merkel, the woman who can only be compared to …

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False Dilemmas.

Image: Daniels Joffe on Unsplash Luis Rubio Alexander Pope, a XIX-century English poet, penned the phrase “fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” Mexico’s relationship with the United States is, was, and will be complex and variegated as long as Mexicans do not resolve the fundamental problems of their own development, which would presumably …

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The Change Without End.

Antonio Navalón The 20th-anniversary commemoration ceremony on September 11 was a very sad event. Not only because of what it evoked, because of the memory of pain, because of the treacherous memory, or because of the conditions in which it was carried out, but because, …

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Corruption

Image: Tupungato on iStock Luis Rubio When he was a comedian on television in Guatemala, Jimmy Morales, garbed in a prison inmate’s uniform,  criticized the corruption of the politicians, accusing them of being atheists and not being able to imagine a better life than that deriving from the reigning corruption. Three years later, as President …

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The Prostituted Presidency*

Manuel Suárez Mier Here is a text that helps understand why the US, followed by many other countries, could fall in the quality of their institutions and democracy and move towards authoritarianism. In the search for how it happened that a reality TV actor, ruffian, …

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