Mention Bolivia, and for the last decade it has been difficult not to mention Evo too. Evo Morales was elected as president for the first time in 2005 with 54% of the votes, and he can now celebrate 10 years as president. An absolute outsider, brought forward by social movements of mainly indigenous farmers, workers and small traders, with a tough anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist discourse, he horrified the traditional economic and political elite and the “international community” alike. His government has lived through conflicts and crisis, bordering to civil war, but at the same time it has brought a decade…

A canal passing from the Pacifc Ocean to the Caribbean Sea has been a century long aspiration for Nicaragua, but when the US finally opened a canal in 1914, it was in Panama, not Nicaragua. After many false starts, the idea of a canal through Nicaragua looks suddenly as a possibility. But the question is, how realistic are the plans? And is it actually good for Nicaragua?

Vladimir Putin has in the West become the symbol of all that we don't like. He is aggressive, authoritarian, brutal and untrustworthy, and he has ice-cold blue eyes, showing no feelings. The perfect villain for a James Bond movie. Unfortunately, he is also quite intelligent, competent and well formulated, and contrary to his ailing predecessors he has good health and is even sporty. Most Russians tend to think he is a better president than the ones they had before him. But how we are longing back to the days of our good old, corrupt, incompetent and drunk Boris Yeltsin.

Russia's risky decision to get directly involved in the Syrian civil war has been met with furious protests from the Western powers. BBC reports that NATO has urged Russia to end air strikes "on the Syrian opposition and civilians". But who is it that we want to defend against the Russians bombing raids? Are they the long sought for “moderate secular” opposition forces, which now are being destroyed by the Russian raids? Hardly.

As oil prices have plummeted, they have overshadowed the other important reality: renewable energy prices are also falling. And contrary to oil prices, the fall will continue in the future. So renewables are becoming a viable and profitable alternative for electricity generation, helping the world to get off its dependency on fossil fuels. But what about cars? They are intimately linked to fossil fuels, or – if need be – biofuels, to make the internal combustion engine work. Worldwide, transport is actually responsible for around 27% of all energy consumption, and 63% of oil consumption. So is there any future…