Category Archives: Blog

Politics in Latin American crime fiction


Hav­ing read a con­sid­er­able num­ber of crime books by Anglo and Latin Amer­i­can writ­ers, I believe that the plots of noir genre nov­els penned south of the Rio Bravo are much more polit­i­cal than the major­ity of Amer­i­can or British crime books. His­tory shows that all along the 19th and 20th cen­turies, most British and U.S.

Now that it’s over


Hav­ing wasted forty-four years of my life under Com­mu­nism, where only the party-controlled Union is allowed, col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing is nonex­is­tent, and attempt­ing to found an inde­pen­dent Union gets peo­ple sent to prison, since my arrival in Canada I read and watch the news about strikes with great inter­est and cer­tain respect. I don’t know enough about the

More talent shows—a sales pitch


Con­tem­po­rary soci­eties require pro­fes­sion­als in thou­sands of dis­ci­plines, includ­ing those that enter­tain peo­ple. In the last few years we’ve been intro­duced to born singers, amaz­ing dancers, cre­ative chore­o­g­ra­phers and other artis­ti­cally endowed peo­ple some of whom shared with us absolutely heart–rending sto­ries. These indi­vid­u­als might’ve remained unbe­knownst to mil­lions were it not for sev­eral shrewd

Making a case against price controls


In 2008 the strong pop­u­lar dis­con­tent at the price of gaso­line has given rise to numer­ous demands for price controls.

Many among the mal­con­tents are not well-versed in eco­nom­ics and finance. They seem to have for­got­ten the essen­tial rule of mar­ket economies: prices fluc­tu­ate accord­ing to sup­ply and demand. These hard-working peo­ple are strug­gling to make ends meet and deserve an expla­na­tion in plain words (…)

Letter to prospective Socialists and Communists


Mildly wor­ried about the Amer­i­cans, Aus­tralians, Britons, Cana­di­ans, New Zealan­ders and cit­i­zens of other English-speaking coun­tries who, for diverse rea­sons, have con­cluded that cap­i­tal­ism and democ­racy have failed across the board and thus posit that com­mu­nism might be a bet­ter social order, I decided to pen this letter (…)

Learning about democracy


Hav­ing spent over forty years of my adult­hood under the cen­sor­ship pre­vail­ing in my coun­try of birth, I had never before wit­nessed polit­i­cal cam­paigns in well-developed, func­tion­ing democracies (…)

Indispensable, yet invisible


Strikes are use­ful in one respect: They teach the younger gen­er­a­tion and remind older adults that some peo­ple we take for granted and rarely hear about per­form socially impor­tant jobs. When garbage col­lec­tors stop work­ing for a few days, we real­ize these folks are essen­tial to our well being. Physi­cians, nurses, fire­men, police­men and pub­lic trans­porta­tion work­ers also are indis­pens­able, yet invisible.