French Elections
Posted at Politics el 2007, April 22 | # Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Can The US Elect A Muslim/Atheist now Christian President?
Bruce Feiler the best selling author of a series of wonderful non religious books about religion such as Abraham and Walking the Bible has a provocative post in his blog today entitled Muslim Blood in the White House? In this post Bruce, an expert in religious relations describes Obama´s complex family background and wonders if somebody who was partly raised as a Muslim can be elected president in a country that is at war with Muslims. Moreover the subject becomes more complicated by Obama´s own description of his upbringing which was a complicated mix of Islam, Atheism and Christianity.
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Posted at Politics el 2007, January 29 | # Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
What should USA Do In Iraq?
My view on the Huffington Post.
Posted at Politics el 2007, January 26 | # Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Rui Chenggang and the Starbucks revolt in China
You may not know this, but there´s actually a Starbucks inside the Forbidden City. Personally, when I visit this amazing historical monument, I was shocked to see that this was the case. It seems that the Forbidden City is Forbidden to all....but Starbucks as there are no other commercial establishments inside this architectural wonder.
Personally, other than the fact that Starbucks offers expensive WiFi and its coffee that pales in comparison to Lavazza, my favorite brand, I have nothing against Starbucks. But the Forbidden City is not the place to open one up and when I was there I wondered what kind of corrupt official allowed that to happened.
So I fully support my friend and Chinese blogger Rui Chenggang who started the Starbucks revolt in Beijing and may actually succeed in removing Starbucks from the most sacred place in secular China.
Posted at Politics el 2007, January 17 | # Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Francisco de Narvaez and the Curse of Being Rich
Being rich is great until....you run for political office. Regardless of whether you are in Argentina, as is the case of my friend Francisco de Narvaez , or anywhere else in the democratic world, being rich is generally seen as an obstacle for political candidates.
Why is being rich a handicap even for people like Francisco de Narvaez, who are not running conservative campaigns aimed at favoring the interest of the top earners?
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Posted at Politics el 2006, December 30 | # Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Should I stay or Should I go: US in Iraq
I think that it´s time that United States learns from the way anti American pseudo democrats are dealing with democracy to suit their own political objectives. Democratically elected leader Ahmadinejad is a master at getting Iranian voters to back him in his anti American agenda. So why doesn´t America use the same method to legitimize the Iraqi invasion?
I think USA should run the Should I stay or Should I go referendum in Iraq. Instead of having yet another meeting to discuss in Washington what should happen in Iraq, USA should ask the Iraqi people what they want them to do in Iraq.
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Posted at Politics el 2006, December 28 | # Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Niklas Zennstrom and Pinochet
Pinochet finally died. In this video Niklas talks about transparency on the internet and that internet is making it harder to be a dictator. Now this is my free association. I grew up suffering the dictatorship of Videla in Argentina in the 70s a contemporary of Pinochet. I think that new style dictators, like Hugo Chavez ,have a much harder time than Videla or Pinochet, who finally died at the age of 91 (how can dictators live so long??).
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Posted at Politics el 2006, December 12 | # Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Ehud Olmert´s Tragic Mistake
Before last summer Hezbolah was a minority force in a Lebanon. Before last summer most Lebanese saw Hezbolah as group of fanatics funded by Syria and Iran who could not be trusted to rule Lebanon. But Nasrallah, working jointly with Ahmadinejad and Bashar Al-Asad outsmarted Ehud Olmert and thanks to his naivete have now placed Hezbollah at the center of Lebanese politics.
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Posted at Politics el 2006, December 2 | # Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Richard Falkvinge, Leader Of The Pirate Party In Sweden
The interview with Richard Falkvinge, of the Pirate Party, was done at a loud party with only candlelight. I hope you can hear something!
Posted at Politics el 2006, November 23 | # Permalink
Democratic Win Brings America Closer To The World
I would like to build a web site called www.voteintheamericanelection.org. Basically, what users of this web site would do is register and vote in the American Elections, regardless of whether they are US Citizens or not.
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Posted at Politics el 2006, November 12 | # Permalink
Don´t Build a Fence, Improve NAFTA
The US Border Fence between Mexico and the USA is advancing in the US Senate. Personally, I think that US Border fence is a wrong concept. My idea is that US should look at what Europe has done in terms of immigration and copy our model.
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Posted at Politics el 2006, September 29 | # Permalink
9/11 the Day Nothing Changed?
Foreign Policy magazine´s cover shows a surprising headline this week.
It refers to 9/11 and it calls it "The Day Nothing Much Changed". The article, written by William Dobson is at first extremely refreshing. In a world in which not a day goes by without us hearing how everything change on 9/11 we read Dobson demolishing myths one by one, argument after argument and proving that nothing much has really changed since 9/11. He argues that global commerce is way up, that global travel is way up, that working visas and student visas in the US are up, that USA did not become fortress America and that the world has gone on "business as usual" for the last 5 years. At the end of his article however he makes a statement that in my view pretty much changes the main point of the article. It goes like this
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Posted at Politics, Safe Democracy el 2006, September 11 | # Permalink
The United States and Europe: Immigration
In FON we are having some serious problems attracting people to come from the United States to work in Spain. The same is happening in reverse as well, when we want to bring Europeans to the United States to work. The situation of closed borders is absurd, considering that even if the United States and Europe were to mutually open their borders, there would be no massive migration in either direction.
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Posted at Politics el 2006, September 8 | # Permalink
African Dream
Spain has been receiving more and more illegal immigrants from Africa who, fleeing poverty, have been sailing hundreds of miles from places as far as Senegal to make it over here. On some days this week as much as 1000 illegal immigrants arrived in the Canary Islands in one day. Hundreds have died while trying to make it.
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Posted at Politics el 2006, August 22 | # Permalink
Israel Lost
Israel is managed by a generation of leaders who grew up wondering how could six million Jews walk to their death without putting up a fight. Maybe this explains why these leaders are so ready to over react when Israel is attacked and why Israel consistently loses the war that matters most, the war of global public opinion, even against the most unlikely candidates: Syria and Iran.
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Posted at Politics, info el 2006, August 21 | # Permalink
Ahmadinejad Outsmarts Olmert, Civilians on Both Sides Pay the Price
When I was a teenager I once heard somebody say that wars were a conspiracy by old people to get rid of young people. While I know this vision is simplistic lately I see that wars seem to be a conspiracy of combatants to get rid of civilians on the other side. The Iraqi war has been like that with the United States conducting air bombardments knowing that in many cases civilians and not terrorists will bear the brunt and with terrorists targeting civilians either directly or indirectly. And now the same is true in the Israel/Lebanon war.
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Posted at Politics el 2006, July 28 | # Permalink
Catholic Church: Creationism is Paganism
Being a non religious person myself I find many of the views of the Catholic Church difficult to deal with. Opposing the use of condoms for example is to me extremely irresponsible. But surfing the net this morning through Microsiervos I got to this comment made by a Vatican astronomer who I found summarized what I thought about creationism, mainly that creationism is a superstition. I was surprise to find myself in total agreement with the Catholic Church. I wonder though what the rest of the Catholic Church thinks about creationism.
Posted at Politics, info el 2006, May 9 | # Permalink
Iran and World War III
Global conflicts tend to start in small places over relatively small issues that somehow get out of hand when other countries divide themselves along different sides of the dispute in question. Unfortunately this is happening with Iran. Iran could be just another country that goes nuclear, like Pakistan, or Israel, but because of Iran´s aggresive foreign policy which directly clashes with America´s plans for the Middle East, the Iranian violation of the nuclear proliferation treaty is dangerously dividing the world in two. These two blocks could potentially be the two sides of WWIII. All the authoritarian countries are on one side, the democratic countries on the other.
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Posted at Politics el 2006, May 7 | # Permalink
Hugo Chavez´s gift to OPEC
Hugo Chavez has recently been a very good OPEC member. He´s been keeping oil production down. But this reduction has not taken place because Hugo Chavez wants to be a good OPEC member. The paradox of authoritarian leaders who nationalize oil production is that oil production goes down simply because they are bad at running their own, inefficient state oil companies. And the price of oil goes up. Personally I don´t believe that oil multinationals are the solution either. The best way for a country to get the most for its citizens is to blend well regulated intervention by multinationals with a very good schooling of local energy professionals. Rushed decisions a la Chavez simply fail.
Posted at Politics el 2006, May 7 | # Permalink
Is Oil to Chavez what Biodiesel is to Kirchner?
Most large exporters of energy are LDCs (less democratic countries). Oil seems to do that to countries. Venezuela for example, a nation that had been a democracy for decades is now more and more an LDC. How does this happen? Easy, a democratically elected president gets control over growing oil revenues and buys himself political power. Fast forward to Argentina. Argentina is a modest energy exporter nowhere near the ranks of Venezuela. Argentina however is a very large agricultural commodity exporter. Now that energy importing democracies (EU, USA) are beginning to use food to fuel their cars, namely biodiesel, and now that the prices of some agricultural commodities are beginning to track the price of oil, will we see the same tendency to power concentration in Argentina? Will we see Argentina joining the ranks of the LDCs thanks to Kirchner´s ability to control a few exports? Hopefully not but the combination of the autocratic tendencies of Kirchner with a very high price of agricultural commodities concerns me.
The temptation to buy votes using state resources becomes hard to resist. And at a global scale I have another concern with biodiesel. I used to wonder about how was it possible that Argentina, one of the largest food exporters in the world, and Brazil, another one, had starving children. The question then was, should a country with starving citizens export food to other countries? But now the moral dilemma is even worse. Should a country with starving citizens export food so others in rich countries feed.... their SUVs?
Posted at Politics el 2006, May 7 | # Permalink
Preventive Warfare that Works
Some choices are easy. Do you prefer democracy or dictatorship? Clean air or polluted air? Education or Ignorance? Some however are not. Here´s one. What do you prefer, oil at $30 per barrel or at $100 per barrel? If you own a car you may prefer oil at $30 per barrel. But if you think further you can see the benefits of oil at $100 per barrel: more investment in renewable energy, less traffic congestion, lower carbon emissions, higher sales of fuel efficient cars and higher use of public transportation. Now one of the problems we have in this planet is that when oil goes to $100 per barrel, there are a lot of doubtful characters who get very, very rich.
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Posted at Politics el 2006, May 3 | # Permalink
Immigrant Party: It´s happening!
A year ago I blogged about the opportunity to create political parties made of immigrants joined by native citizens who felt that to them humanity was a stronger concept than nationalism. Well, it´s happening!
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Posted at Politics el 2006, May 2 | # Permalink
Immigration in Europe
Most Europeans are born in Europe, of course. I am a European born elsewhere. I was born in Argentina, but when I came to Europe I had lived 18 years in the United States and had already acquired my US Citizenship. After a few years of being in Spain I learned that if I wanted to be a Spaniard I had to give up my US Citizenship and I did so. I became a Spaniard because while it was sad for me to give up my US Citizenship, I found Spain specifically and Europe in general a better place to live, raise a family and practice my skills as an entrepreneur than the United States. I have been in Europe for 11 years. During that time I built five telecom and internet companies, Viatel in the UK, Jazztel and Ya.com in Spain, Einsteinet in Germany and now Fon based in Spain but active around the world. Overall these companies have generated around 2000 jobs and invested over 1.5 billion euros in infrastructure. Some with better results than others but all contributing to the economy. So while being an immigrant in Europe I am a different kind of immigrant. I have not come here seeking employment. I have come here and created employment. I also did in the United States where I started two companies. Having lived through the experience of being an immigrant both in the United States and in Europe I would like to make some comments on what are the key issues that Europe needs to address for a better assimilation of immigrants.
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Posted at Politics el 2006, April 23 | # Permalink
Censorship in China, United States, Japan, Korea and Spain
China´s censorship is well known in Europe and the States. But much to my surprise, I am writing this post from Beijing where tonight I tried but consistenlty failed to experience censorship. I tried everything I could think of. I did searches in Google on all the taboo subjects in China, for example Tiananmen Square, Tibet Independence, Falon Gong, both on my Blackberry and the internet connection at the hotel and....no censorship.
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Posted at Politics el 2006, April 13 | # Permalink
Immigrant Parties: New American Party, New European Party
After putting together the Conference on Terrorism on March 11th 2005 attended by Kofi Annan and 32 heads of State my foundation worked on the idea of starting a political party. Now I know it´s crazy for a foundation to start a political party, but that´s what we researched.
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Posted at Politics el 2006, April 11 | # Permalink
The Cuban Paradox
I think it´s particularily tragic that in the island of Cuba both Fidel Castro and George W Bush two heads of state normally at odds would agree on one thing: that torture and abuse is a fair way to deal with those who seek to destroy their regimes.
Posted at Politics el 2006, February 26 | # Permalink
Hamas Victory: Israel needs a Plan B
We know what Plan A is. Plan A is for the Jewish people to stay in Israel. And we hope Plan A succeeds for generations to come and the two state solution is implemented: a peace treaty that gives Palestinians their country and the Jewish people and non Jews who want to live there, Israel.
But after the victory of Hamas, the expressed animosity of a soon to be nuclear power, Iran supporting Hezbollah and Hamas, the influence of Syria over Lebanon and the presumed rearming of Al Qaida taking place in Jordan, shouldn´t Israeli Jews begin to develop a contingency plan?
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Posted at Politics el 2006, January 27 | # Permalink
Klaus Schwab the Builder meets Klaus Schwab the Destroyer
I joined the World Economic Forum, in 2000. I left the organization five years later. During these years I had the opportunity to work and collaborate closely with Klaus Schwab both in the sessions that developed the Davos Agenda and within the Global Leaders of Tomorrow now dismantled and rebranded Young Global Leaders.
My conclusion? Klaus Schwab is a person who combines amazing organization building skills with even better organization destruction skills. My first Davos, Davos of 2000 was unarguably the best ever, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and many other heads of state debated key global challenges with some of the most world´s powerful intellectuals including Nobel Prize winners, deans of the best universities in the world, top writers, top NGO leaders. It was the most remarkable gathering of world´s political and thought leaders in all fields. Unfortunately since 2000, this level of success was never achieved again. Why? Mainly for one reason and that is that Klaus Schwab has a great difficulty to get along with the people he works with. Klaus can´t hold on to a great management team and no matter how strong the Davos brand name is, it takes continuity to sustain success. In 2000 there was a fantastic organization of around 150 people putting together the world´s best global conference. This team was headed by two impressive individuals, Lance Knobel and Claude Smadja. Klaus Schwab, who has a tremendous inability to share success with his collaborators, simply let go of Lance and Claude and after them came a series of remarkable managers, most of whom Klaus Schwab found ways of disagreeing with and soon left. The most recent case was that of Jose Maria Figueres, former President of Costa Rica and probably WEF´s most able manager ever, who was also forced to resign probably because he was very well liked both by Forum employees and Davos participants. Indeed practically none of the 150 people who were at WEF in 2000 are now with the organization. A very interesting Vanity Fair type article could probably be written interviewing former WEF managers and listening to their stories. Klaus Schwab continues to be able to recognize and attract top managers but then these managers end up leaving for two reasons: either they can´t put up with Klaus temper tantrums or Klaus can´t put up with their success. Still in spite of the difficult times that I spent with Klaus Schwab I do recognize that he has built an amazing franchise at Davos, that he has managed to attract some of the best global leaders in all fields to his conferences and I do hope that at some point he mellows down and finds a way to sustain key work relationships over time. In this way Davos could be as good an experience for those who work at WEF as those who attend the conference. Personally, in spite of our differences, I will always be grateful to Klaus Schwab because it was at Davos that I met my wife who used to co manage the GLTs, and as well as a number very close GLT friends who I now frequently see.
Posted at Politics el 2006, January 15 | # Permalink
