📩 NEWSLETTER | A slap and a pack

Grab a coffee and let’s get down to business. Good Morning!

where does the day go

One pack to unite them all

Today the Council of Ministers will approve a package of economic measures to alleviate the effects of war. We are talking about ICO loans, tax cuts, a rise in the Minimum Vital Income, a limitation on rental prices, a 20-cent reduction in fuel for everyone… Here’s an analysis of the measurements, one by one.

In this, there is internal unity in the Government. United We Can celebrates the measures and he congratulates himself for them. The usual partners of the Executive demand more forceful measures to support the plan, but it does not look like they reject the ones that exist. There are even options that the PP supports it.

A Russia without Putin?

Joe Biden’s mouth got hot the other day and he said that Putin “cannot continue in power” and that he was “a butcher”. That is what he and half the world think, but in the field of diplomacy they are delicate statements. Does that mean that the US is working to overthrow a foreign president? His staff has come out to deny it.

In this article (in Spanish), the American political scientist Rajan Menon asks himself a provocative question: are we sure that a Russia without Putin will be less dangerous than the one now? If you think so, remember Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

Meanwhile, the negotiations continue. Today there will be talks in Turkey. From kyiv, Ukrainian President Zelensky has agreed to address the status of pro-Russian areas of Donbas who want to become independent.

According to Jose Enrique de Ayalaretired Brigadier General and Alternatives Foundation analyst, as much as to Russia this war has been complicatedlet’s be realistic: “The most that can be aspired to is to achieve a ceasefire, a withdrawal of the Russian army, and a return to the situation prior to the aggression, or similar, in exchange for Ukraine’s renunciation of enter NATO.

Will Smith and the men

The Hollywood Academy has opened an investigation about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars. I don’t know what else you need to know because half the world saw it. Will they dare to withdraw the prize for attacking a colleague live?

today on the podcast, we talk about Will Smith, the slap and masculinity. Of males who defend their women by breaking other men’s faces and then cry because “for love they do crazy things”.

everything is politics

• daddy yankee, one of the pioneers of reggaeton in Latin America, retires. He’s 45 years old. He promoted the genre in the 90s and inaugurated the era of reggaeton as an international hit with that ‘Gasolina’ that anyone can hum. But Yankee’s story has a political side to it, not only because of his personal improvement from poverty but also because of his support for protest movements in Puerto Rico. More here.

• In this interview with the writer Javier Cercas, he talks about the tension between being a successful writer and one of prestige. But I am struck by this final reflection on how the writer Cercas dares with what the citizen Cercas is more prudent: “I want to distinguish between the citizen and the writer. As a writer I can allow myself to be anti-system and furiously criticize power, wherever it comes from”.

Well tomorrow more.

A hug,

Juanlu.