The UN, the perma-polycrisis, and our shrinking moral imagination The United Nations, the world’s most ambitious peace project, is once again on the brink of running out of money. But this time, it feels different, big time. We’re living through what many now call a perma-polycrisis, a constant layering of political instability and conflicts, economic…
A new kind of state is born Reflecting on what is happening in the US since the (second) Trump inauguration on 20 January 2025, people say it is becoming an authoritarian state, a corrupt state, an anti-immigrant state, a human rights crushing state, a white nationalist state, an oligarch-controlled state, and a state that is…
It is Easter again, among the holiest of holidays on the Christian calendar. And this year the two Easters coincide, that of the Western Churches, Catholic and Protestant that is, with that of the Eastern Churches, Orthodox and more. It is also the Jewish Passover, which this year culminates, like the two Easters, on Sunday,…
On 2 April 2025, newly declared “Liberation Day for America”, President Trump ceremoniously announced the imposition of trade tariffs on virtually all US trade partners, starting with an across-the-board tariff of 25% on imported automobiles and a minimum of 10% on all other imported goods and services. No favours were done to geopolitical allies and…
“A week is a long time in politics,” as former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson famously remarked. The first two weeks of March 2025 have felt endless, marked by political shifts, surprises, and moments that could shape the future for decades to come. The U.S. initially paused military aid to Ukraine, raising concerns over the…
With all that’s been going on in the world lately, I felt the need to express myself in a manner that is safe, controlled, and organized. While that may sound obvious, it really isn’t, not in the era of ‘fast food’ information that is sweeping the younger generations in which I belong. When it comes…
20 January 2025 is not just any inauguration day for just any new US President. All initial signs are that Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 47th US President will go down in history as a moment of major change, a point of departure and discontinuity, a quantum leap, perhaps a reason to reset the calendar…
On 27 January 2025 the world observed Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the former Nazi concentration and extermination camps near Krakow, Poland, in 1945. It was the 20th such observance, following the UN General Assembly resolution that established the “International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims…
The passing of U.S. President Jimmy Carter marks a moment to reflect on the life of a remarkable individual and the style of leadership he embodied—one defined not by the pursuit of power or profit, but by an unwavering commitment to human dignity, peace, and justice. I had the privilege of knowing President Carter first…
Friday, 13 December 2024 was celebrated as Victory Day by Syrians in Damascus and other parts of the war-torn country. After fourteen years of bloody civil war, this was a surprising new turn – surprising both in terms of the speed at which it happened and its overall peaceful character. Bashar al-Assad’s government imploded and…
