In September of this year, the price of gold reached a record high, breaking $1,900 per ounce for the first time in history. This unprecedented spike in gold prices has come in the midst of the U.S. debt crisis and the financial turmoil sweeping over Europe. Although prices have tempered since then, hovering around $1,650 per ounce in October, the overall price of gold has more than quintupled over the past decade.
Many believe that attempts to control population growth are a conspiracy by the “global elite” to keep the world’s population to a controllable minimum.
Michael Jacobs explored the length of the Andes from the lush jungles in northern Colombia to the snow-covered peaks of Argentina’s southernmost tip.
When the Cuban government released a number of dissidents earlier this year, human rights groups applauded the decision. But critics also took the occasion to paint Cuba once again as a society where a single word of criticism gets you shipped off to a dungeon, from which you will never return, reduced to being a statistic in an Amnesty International report. This belief may contain a kernel of truth. But in many ways it provides a cartoon version of Cuba, one that misses altogether the texture and reality of Cuban life, particularly its politics and its culture of dissent. And there is a culture of dissent.
In Europe and South America, UFO investigation is taken seriously — not debunked and stigmatized as in the United States.
Negotiated by President Bush in 2004-2006, the U.S.-Panama free-trade agreement has since stalled in the face of congressional opposition. However, recent House votes have suggested a renewed interest in ratifying the agreement, which would normalize Panama’s status as a notorious tax haven for U.S.-based corporations, along with other, seedier entities.
In July, students, political activists, human rights workers, and average citizens in Lima, Peru, joined a march entitled “Ni indulto ni impunidad, asesinos a prisión,” or “No pardons or impunity, murderers to prison.” The event occurred just two weeks before the presidential inauguration of leftist Ollanta Humala Tasso. Humala’s victory has led countless activists across Peru to herald a new era of democracy, freedom of expression, and most of all victory over Fujimorismo.
In 1936, a church group commissioned a film “to strike fear in the hearts of young people tempted to smoke marijuana.” But it was not until the 1970s that Reefer Madness — billed as “the original classic that was not afraid to make up the truth” due to its grotesque portrayal of the supposed dangers of marijuana — obtained cult status.
Contrary to what international relations types may think, leaders seldom do a rigorous cost-benefit analysis of the results before waging war.
During his attendance at a recent African Union summit, former Brazilian president Lula da Silva critiqued the structure of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC): “it isn’t possible that Latin America, with its 400 million inhabitants, does not have permanent representation. Five countries decide what to do and how to do it, regardless of the rest of the humans living on this planet.”