Posts:
By James Kirchick Fourteen years ago, at a human rights conference in Oslo, I met Julian Assange. From the moment I encountered the wraithlike WikiLeaks founder, I sensed that he might be a morally dubious character. My suspicions were confirmed upon witnessing his...
By Brian Winter When masked criminals in Ecuador invaded a TV station, took prison guards and police hostage and paralyzed the business capital of Guayaquil in early January, the prevailing reaction across the Americas was: Oh no, here we go again. Another country...
By Kashmir Hill This time of year, everyone asks what you like least about your life, but they phrase it as, “What’s your New Year’s resolution?” My biggest regret of 2023 was my relationship to my smartphone, or my “tech appendage” as I’ve named it in my iPhone...
By Samir Tounsi and David Salazar As Ecuador wages war against criminal gangs, experts warn that similar security crackdowns have produced mixed results elsewhere in Latin America -- and sometimes even led to worse violence. President Daniel Noboa has deployed more...
By Kyle Smith Say, kids, did you know “Blazing Saddles” is “an overt and audacious spoof on classic Westerns”? Well, now you do, thanks to the trigger warning that has just been slapped on the movie by HBO Max, which hired University of Chicago professor Jacqueline...
By Carolina Mella President Daniel Noboa made a campaign promise to purchase prison ships to house the leaders of the gangs that operate in the country’s penitentiaries 80 miles off Ecuador’s Pacific coast. Delivering on that promise, he now says that he has seen...
By Roger Livingston Several months ago I attended the Japan Day fair at the city museum on Benigno Malo and talked to one of the Japanese-Ecuadorian vendors. He told me about all the support the Japanese government offers its citizens living overseas. He explained...
By Edward Gibson About 20 per cent of the United States population (65 million out of 330 million people) are non-native speakers of English. Speaking multiple languages has advantages – for example, you get to talk to people from different cultures. But being a...
By Kyle Harper At some time or another, every historian of Rome has been asked to say where we are, today, on Rome’s cycle of decline. Historians might squirm at such attempts to use the past but, even if history does not repeat itself, nor come packaged into moral...
By John Raby When those of us of a certain age were in school, we learned that the Monroe Doctrine committed the United States to protect the independence of Latin American nations, which had just freed themselves from Spanish and Portuguese rule. While it granted...
By Carolina Mella When Guillermo Lasso stepped down as president on Thursday, he had been in office for 913 days. During this period, Ecuador gradually collapsed politically, socially and economically. The state of affairs has become so extreme and rapid that for the...
The culmination of our 3-part series focuses on our relationship with the world. Released from the bondage of the past and the future, we now focus on the meaning of life itself. The key to the meaning of life is simplicity itself. I use the term "singularity," but...
Author’s note: This is the second of a 3-part series. Following our First Face of Freedom, Freedom from the Past, our second is integrally connected to the first. Essentially an unhealed past requires a future. This is the ego at work, where denial and projection are...
By Leita Hulmes Dear Hearts of Gold Community: I hope this finds you doing well! I am writing this on behalf of the entire team and supporters of Hearts of Gold. No, it's not a request for donation this time. I am quite sad that I have to talk about this, but we very...
Author's note: This is the first part of a 3-part series. The keystones in the foundation of personal happiness are forgiveness and gratitude. For those of us over 70, the vast majority of our lives is our past. How we enjoy the last chapters of our lives depends...
By Zeke Hausfather Staggering. Unnerving. Mind-boggling. Absolutely gobsmackingly bananas. As global temperatures shattered records and reached dangerous new highs over and over the past few months, my climate scientist colleagues and I have just about run out of...
By Megan McArdle In 2015, El Salvador was the world’s murder capital, with 107 homicides per 100,000 people — as if one of Chicago’s worst neighborhoods was a country unto itself. Since then, homicide in El Salvador has fallen so far, so fast that it looks comparable...
By Tyler Colman Italy's Agriculture Ministry announced recently that some wines that receive the government's quality assurance label may now be sold in boxes. That's right, Italian wine is going green, and for some connoisseurs, the sky might as well be falling. But...
By Carol E. Leutner On my most recent trip to see my family in Washington, D.C., I finally had time to visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Opened in 2016, it is the most visited of all of the Smithsonian’s 19 museums. The museum...
By Danel Kalder Of all the grim futures on offer today, climate change is unquestionably the doomsday scenario that weighs most heavily on the minds of the most people. Despite the raging hype that AI might one day turn against its creator, no protestor has yet glued...
