The new international media for a changing world – The new international media for a changing world
XULIO RIOS
Today, leaving aside Taiwan, the deterioration of the relationship between Beijing and Manila represents the main focus of tension in the South China Sea.
During former President Rodrigo Duterte's six-year term, the situation remained relatively stable and no major disputes occurred. However, since Marcos Jr. came to power in June 2022, disputes have frequently arisen, from Ren'ai Jiao to Huangyan Dao.
Read more
JEFFREY D SACHS
Since 1992, every president has left the United States and the world closer to nuclear annihilation than his predecessor. The Doomsday Clock read 17 minutes to midnight when Clinton came to power, but only 9 minutes when he left. Bush reduced the clock to just 5 minutes, Obama to 3 minutes, and Trump to just 100 seconds. Now Biden has reduced the clock to 90 seconds.
Biden has led the United States into three devastating crises, any of which could end in Armageddon. Washington seems to be single-minded these days: more funding for the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, more weaponry for Taiwan.
Read more
LUIS BRITTO GARCÍA
Everything you read, write, speak, record, photograph, or communicate on a computing device will surely end up in the hands of a U.S. law enforcement agency or its accomplices. The same will happen with your own data, that of your loved ones and your recipients, with information about everything you own, use, buy, rent, consume, borrow, throw away or want. The same will happen with your trips, infractions or contraventions: everything will be recorded and preserved even after you have forgotten it or die, for the exclusive use of surveillance agencies or monopolies.
EUGENIO GARCIA GASCON
Netanyahu's two great promises repeated since October, to defeat Hamas and recover the hostages still in his possession, have not been fulfilled seven months after the start of the war and nothing indicates that they will be fulfilled in the short term. This situation creates strong frustration within Israel and surely also among the political class, with the prime minister at the head.
XULIO RIOS
Lai Ching-te will assume the presidency of Taiwan on May 20. The change in leadership shows a double sign of continuity: from his party, the sovereigntist Minjindang or Democratic Progressive Party, at the head of the State, and also from the policy applied in the last eight years, during the mandate of Tsai Ing-wen. . However, there is one notable change: Lai will not be guaranteed the automatic referendum in Parliament after losing the absolute majority in the January 13 elections.
NATASHA LENNARD
In recent days, massive police operations have occurred on campuses in Manhattan and across the country in response to peaceful student encampments. Students gathered to share food, hold space for talks and rallies, and demand their universities divest from Israel.
I have been reporting on political dissent and police violence for 15 years, especially in New York. Compared to Tuesday night in Columbia, he had never witnessed at a protest site a use of police power so disproportionate to the type of demonstration taking place.
Read morePASCUAL SERRANO
After the period of talks in Havana, the peace talks between the guerrilla and the Colombian government have entered a new phase, now in Caracas. After a first round until April 22, both parties will negotiate again in the Venezuelan capital between May 20 and 25. However, it does not seem that the road is being easy.
This is the conclusion drawn after the conversation held somewhere in Caracas with the ELN's chief negotiator, Commander Pablo Beltrán. A man who has been in the guerrilla for 54 of his 70 years.
PASCUAL SERRANO
As things stand with the new panorama announced on April 18, the American company Chevron is the only one that is granted permission to market, leaving the Spanish Repsol, the Italian Eni and the Spanish company out of the market and under threat of sanction. the French Maurel/Prom, all of them in commercial negotiations with PDVSA.
With the alibi of pressuring the Venezuelan government to be more democratic on the eve of its presidential elections on July 18, the “American friend” whom it truly sanctions is the European oil companies, which it prevents from marketing its oil.
Read more
EUGENIO GARCIA GASCON
Common sense says that the Iranian attack against Israel in the early hours of April 14 will not escalate, but logic does not always work in the Middle East. Departing from logic has been common within the Israeli leadership for many decades and has been publicly stated by senior officials of successive governments since the establishment of the state in 1948, some of whom developed the doctrine of disproportionate response, so It remains an open question whether Israel will behave one way or another.
EUGENIO GARCIA GASCON
On the one hand, we have these criticisms of Israel, including those from the US, and on the other, the daily supply of bombs that, according to a good part of Western public opinion - including some American senators such as Elizabeth Warren - serves to facilitate the exercise of continued genocide. The images circulating are terrible and it is understandable that Hebrew television stations censor themselves. The average Israeli is in favor of war and the systematic destruction of the Gaza Strip, according to polls, and does not want to see disturbing images at dinner time.
XULIO RIOS
Ma Ying-jeou's trip to mainland China takes place just over a month after the inauguration of Lai Ching-te, who will take over from Tsai Ing-wen on May 20, and in a context marked by the reaffirmation of the two paths that define the Taiwanese crossroads: irreducible hostility towards an independence movement without a majority on the island, but with notable international support and, alternatively, the establishment of bridges that help preserve and develop the ties between Beijing and Taipei with the perspective of peaceful reunification.
ARUNDHATI ROY
The richest and most powerful countries in the Western world, those who believe themselves to be keepers of the flame of the modern world's commitment to democracy and human rights, are openly financing and applauding Israel's genocide in Gaza. The Gaza Strip has become a concentration camp. Those who have not yet been killed are dying of hunger. Almost the entire population of Gaza has been displaced. Their homes, hospitals, universities, museums and infrastructure of all kinds have been reduced to rubble.
