As an analyst for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) I had the opportunity to watch both conventions up close. One of my takeaways: the two parties present two distinct visions of the future, with one more aligned with Canadians the other a more-than-a-little frightening to many Canadians.
Distracted by the elections and with a lame duck president, there’s a risk that at November’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit, China will press its own agenda—one less in line with U.S. interests.
Beyond a few nice sounding phrases and curious omissions, the Democratic Party platform mentions Trump more than it mentions Latin America.
Yes, I get the comparison in terms of their rhetorical styles. But the caricature of Chávez as just an uncouth blowhard is downright insulting to Venezuelans who now live with his toxic legacy.
Despite relatively better human rights records and environmental protection policies, Latin America and the Caribbean lead the world in murders of environmental activists. Why?
In Venezuela, Honduras, Egypt, and—most recently—Turkey, the armed forces have pointed to violations of the constitution by sitting, elected presidents as the justification for a coup. But are coups ever constitutional?
The newly released Republican platform twists itself in pretzels attempting to accommodate Trump’s positions, its own historical positions and its need to oppose the current administration’s position wherever possible.
Brazil, Russia, India, and China (the BRICs) were first grouped together in 2001 as the countries most likely to produce rapid economic growth (South Africa joined in 2010). Today another phenomenon binds the BRICS together: corruption scandals that have hit state-funded infrastructure companies and the projects they’ve overseen.
Civil society organizations thrive in healthy democracies, but their role as watchdogs of governments and “gap-fillers” providing where the government is absent, tends to make those in power uncomfortable. In the following piece, we explore how Latin America fares compared to other countries in terms of barriers to civil society.
President Nicolás Maduro shocked Venezuela this week when he announced he was giving exceptional powers to his Defense Minister, General Vladimir Padrino López. Was this a palace-coup by the military against a rudderless, discredited Maduro government?
