Toma nota.../Take note...

Stephen Kotkin is one of our most profound and prodigious scholars of Russian history. His masterwork is a biography of Josef Stalin. So far he has published two volumes––“Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928,” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and “Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941.” A third volume will take the story through the Second World War; Stalin’s death, in 1953; and the totalitarian legacy that shaped the remainder of the Soviet experience. Taking advantage of long-forbidden archives in Moscow and beyond ...

An analysis of the dictatorial and expansionist policy of Vladimir Putin

David Remnick.– Earlier this week, I spoke with Kotkin about Putin, the invasion of Ukraine, the American and European response, and what comes next:

Question: We’ve been hearing voices both past and present saying that the reason for what has happened is, as George Kennan put it, the strategic blunder of the eastward expansion of NATO. The great-power realist-school historian John Mearsheimer insists that a great deal of the blame for what we’re witnessing must go to the United States. I thought we’d begin with your analysis of that argument.

Stephen Kotkin: I have only the greatest respect for George Kennan. John Mearsheimer is a giant of a scholar. But I respectfully disagree. The problem with their argument is that it assumes that, had NATO not expanded, Russia wouldn’t be the same or very likely close to what it is today. What we have today in Russia is not some kind of surprise. It’s not some kind of deviation from a historical pattern. Way before NATO existed—in the nineteenth century—Russia looked like this: it had an autocrat. It had repression. It had militarism. It had suspicion of foreigners and the West. This is a Russia that we know, and it’s not a Russia that arrived yesterday or in the nineteen-nineties. It’s not a response to the actions of the West. There are internal processes in Russia that account for where we are today.

¿Qué es el Swift y por qué podría ser el arma definitiva contra Rusia? 

►¿Quienes son los aliados de Ucrania y Rusia? ←pulse aquí

►Tres propuestas de un exministro de Ucrania que colapsarían la economía rusa. ←pulse aquí

 
 Bruselas, Feb.26.– La guerra de Ucrania y Rusia puede provocar una serie de sanciones por parte de los países europeos, EE.UU., así como un posible bloqueo del sistema Swift, con el objetivo de tensionar la economía del país.

El Swift es la Society for World Interbank Financial Telecommnication. Es un sistema de mensajería interbancario que usan las entidades bancarias, con el fin de permitir agilizar las transferencias internacionales.

U.S. consumer prices post the biggest rise in nearly 40 years; inflation close to peaking

CPI surges 7.0% year-on-year.

Washington DC, Jan 12 (Reuters).- U.S. consumer prices increased solidly in December as rental accommodation and used cars maintained their strong gains, culminating in the largest annual rise in inflation in nearly four decades, which bolstered expectations that the Federal Reserve will start raising interest rates as early as March.

Winds of change blow through indigenous lands in La Guajira

The Caribbean coastal desert is ground zero for Colombia’s plan to lead the region’s shift to renewable energy, but at huge cost to the Wayúu people.

La Guajira, Dec. 22.– Looking like huge, beached white whales in an arid landscape, the wind turbine’s blades lie on the ground. This is Cabo de la Vela, a remote area on the northern tip of the Colombian Guajira, a huge desert region on the Caribbean coast. The turbine is one of ten on the first wind farm to be built in Colombia in 17 years. It will stand 78 meters tall, each blade 49 meters long. The turbines are the new improved variety – bigger, more powerful and more cost-efficient because they can tap higher wind speeds.

The wind farm, called Guajira I, is owned by the Colombian hydroelectric company Isagene. Next door is Jepírachi, a wind farm owned by Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM).