Miércoles, 21 de febrero de 2018 (Continuación)

A billboard featuring Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra promoted the store of luxury jeweler Nirav Modi earlier this month in Mumbai. (Punit Paranjpe/AFP/Getty Images)

MundoAsia

Indians are furious over a $1.8 billion bank fraud case involving Nirav Modi, a billionaire and the man whom Vanity Fair called (in an astonishingly poor sense of timing) “the atelier of India’s most ambitious luxury jewelry brand”.

The diamond merchant, who boasts showrooms from Mumbai to Macau, and whose ornaments have bedazzled such stars as Kate Winslet and Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra, is accused of conniving with employees of Punjab National Bank (PNB), the country’s second largest state-owned bank, to create fake letters of undertaking against which he and his uncle Mehul Choksi were able to raise millions of dollars in loans from banks outside India.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesDemocracia

Experts often refer to the erosion of democracy and democratic norms since 2005 as a “recession.” But, in fact, we are facing a global democratic depression that will ultimately disrupt international stability and security far more than did the 2008 financial crisis.

This is not hyperbole. Last fall, our organizations — the liberal Center for American Progress and the conservative American Enterprise Institute — joined forces to study what ails democratic nations and how democratic regression will affect transatlantic security. While we often disagree over important policies, we are more unified than ever in our fear of a coming wave of democratic collapse.…  Seguir leyendo »

Germany set out to delete hate speech online. Instead, it made things worse

EuropaUnión Europea, ,

The German government’s Network Enforcement Act, which came into effect on Jan. 1, aims to improve law enforcement on the Internet and more effectively fight hate crime. The law targets criminal online offenses including defamation, incitement and sharing unconstitutional symbols, such as the swastika.

But within just a few days of coming into effect, the inevitable has become apparent: legitimate expressions of opinion are being deleted. The law is achieving the opposite of what it intended: it is actually hampering the fight against crime.

The operators of social networks that are subject to the law now have to delete “obviously illegal” content within 24 hours of being notified.…  Seguir leyendo »

Seated behind North Korea’s cheerleaders at the Olympics are, from left, Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s president; Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee; Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly of North Korea; and Kim Yo Jong, the sister of Kim Jong Un. (AFP/Getty Images)

MundoAsia,

North Korea made an unprecedented move in the 2018 Winter Olympics. It sent athletes to compete — and a squad of peppy cheerleaders — and did so under a “one Korea” banner.

The international media have largely dubbed this diplomatic maneuver a “gold-medal” success. An official delegation led by Kim Yo Jong, Kim Jong Un’s sister, helped North Korea get what it undoubtedly aimed for: At minimum, the regime has a friendly human face; at best, Pyongyang has driven a wedge between South Korea and the United States, even as the regime finds itself increasingly isolated in a nuclear standoff.

Far beyond the network cameras, what would this “one Korea” look like, though?…  Seguir leyendo »

In this undated image taken from video distributed Aug. 14, 2016, an alleged Boko Haram soldier standing in front of a group of girls alleged to be some of the 276 abducted Chibok schoolgirls held since April 2014, in an unknown location. (Militant video/Site Institute/AP)

MundoÁfrica, ,

Although widely understood as the Islamist terrorists that they are, Boko Haram insurgents in the borderlands between Cameroon and Nigeria are also slave raiders — at least that’s what many local residents call them. And there’s good reason to use that term. In many striking ways, Boko Haram’s raids for “wives” parallel the slave raids of a century ago.

Thinking about Boko Haram as slave raiders, complete with a history in the semi-lawless borderlands, might change how policymakers approach this group and similar insurgencies across West Africa.

Boko Haram’s activities echo those of earlier smugglers, Islamist militants, and slave raiders

Boko Haram began in 2002-2004 in Maiduguri, the largest city in northeastern Nigeria, as an Islamist movement in which young men from prominent families and jobless youths rejected any engagement with the Nigerian state.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea, , ,

La publication, en 2000, d’un livre de l’universitaire américain Jan Gross consacré au massacre de la totalité de la population juive, sauf un survivant, par ses voisins polonais, dans une bourgade de l’est de la Pologne occupée, Jedwabne, le 10 juillet 1941, plongeant l’opinion dans la stupeur, allait rompre avec un demi-siècle d’occultations. Une Pologne victime et héroïque, frappée par les deux totalitarismes du XXe siècle, pouvait-elle avoir participé aux crimes commis par les nazis ?

Un débat national s’engagea, franc, ouvert. Soixante ans jour pour jour après le massacre, le 10 juillet 2001, le président de la république polonaise, Aleksander Kwasniewski, suivi des plus hautes autorités de l’Etat, se rendit à Jedwabne pour une cérémonie repentance, l’Eglise ayant fait de même de son côté.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNuevas Tecnologías

Depuis quelques mois, Facebook est sur la sellette. On l’accuse pêle-mêle de rendre les jeunes « addicts » à leur smartphone, de faciliter le harcèlement, de propager de fausses informations, de détruire le plaisir de vivre en attisant la comparaison sociale et en coupant de la vie réelle… Excessif ?

Le sujet n’est pas pris à la légère. Au point que son fondateur Mark Zuckerberg a annoncé que l’algorithme du réseau social avait été refondu pour améliorer le « bien-être » de la communauté. Facebook va donner moins de visibilité aux messages des marques et des médias sur le réseau et davantage aux publications des amis proches et de la famille.…  Seguir leyendo »

Lucas Cranach the Elder: Martin Luther, circa 1532; Hans Holbein the Younger: Portrait of Erasmus, 1523

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, the leading figure of the Northern Renaissance, is widely considered the greatest of early humanists. Five hundred years ago, he faced a populist uprising led by a powerful provocateur, Martin Luther, that resulted in divisions no less explosive than those we see in America and Europe today.

Between 1500 and 1515, Erasmus produced a small library of tracts, textbooks, essays, and dialogues that together offered a blueprint for a new Europe. The old Europe had been dominated by the Roman Church. It emphasized hierarchy, authority, tradition, and the performance of rituals like confession and taking communion. But a new order was emerging, marked by spreading literacy, expanding trade, growing cities, the birth of printing, and the rise of a new middle class intent on becoming not only prosperous but learned, too.…  Seguir leyendo »

The poet Pablo Neruda in 1952. He persuaded Chile’s president to offer asylum to some of the mistreated Spanish patriots rotting in French internment camps. Credit Gamma-Keystone, via Getty Images

MundoAmérica,  

Chile, like numerous other countries, has been debating whether to welcome migrants — mostly from Haiti, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela — or to keep them out. Although only half a million immigrants live in this nation of 17.7 million, right-wing politicians have stoked anti-immigrant sentiment, opposed the increased rates of immigration in the past decade and directed bile especially against Haitian immigrants.

Immigration was a major issue in elections here in November and December. The winner was Sebastián Piñera, a 68-year-old center-right billionaire who was president from 2010 to 2014 and will take over in March. Mr. Piñera blamed immigrants for delinquency, drug trafficking and organized crime.…  Seguir leyendo »

What’s the Right Age to Read a Book?

ReflexionesSocial,

What was the book that changed your life? How old were you when you read it?

Sometimes I wonder how many great books — even those I have since come to revere — were wasted on my younger self. And not because I wasn’t a devoted reader then (I was), but because sometimes what books have to say can’t get through to us until we are considerably more venerable.

It is one thing to read “The Old Man and the Sea,” for instance, when you are 15 and the world lies ahead of you in all its endless possibility. It is another to read it in middle age, when a few big dreams may have died, and by “a few dreams” I don’t just mean catching a big honking marlin off the coast of Cuba, although sure: that too.…  Seguir leyendo »

Christine Yared el 16 de febrero en Parkland, Florida Credit Saúl Martínez para The New York Times

MundoAmérica,

Soy estudiante de primer año en el bachillerato Marjory Stoneman Douglas en Parkland, Florida. En los días posteriores al ataque que acabó con la vida de diecisiete personas aquí, no he dejado de revivir mis recuerdos de esos momentos terroríficos.

Todo comenzó cuando se accionó una alarma contra incendios justo antes de la hora en que se supone que terminan las clases. No creímos que fuera nada. Mis compañeros de la clase de Finanzas ya se habían ido y yo tomé mi mochila para salir. Lo siguiente que recuerdo es gente que corría y gritaba y a mi maestra que nos gritaba que regresáramos al salón de clases.…  Seguir leyendo »