Autor: pacifista

  • Basant Returns to Lahore: Between Memory, Merriment, and Responsibility

    After nearly two decades of absence, the Government of Punjab has announced the revival of the Basant Kite-flying Festival in Lahore, scheduled for 6, 7, and 8 February 2026. The decision marks a significant cultural moment for the city, reopening a tradition that once defined Lahore’s skyline, seasons, and collective joy. Basant was banned following…

  • How Will Key Countries Respond To The US’ Attempted Restoration Of Unipolarity?

    The US’ restoration of unipolarity risks sparking another World War if cooler heads don’t prevail. The US’ new National Security and Defense Strategies, which collectively articulate the “Trump Doctrine”, make clear that the US’ grand strategic goal is to restore its predominant position (unipolarity) over the world. Unlike during the short-lived unipolar era that followed the end of…

  • Conflicts and persistent human rights violations in Sudan and other regions

    Behind this architecture of power and crossed vetoes lie concrete bodies. In Sudan, women have been systematically used as spoils of war: gang rapes, sexual slavery, abductions, and forced pregnancies form part of a pattern documented by humanitarian organizations and by survivors who, in many cases, have no access to medical or psychological care. Girls…

  • Olympic machismo and structural exclusion: the protest of women in Nordic Combined in 2026

    In January 2026, during official Nordic Combined World Cup events held in Central Europe —with visible actions in venues such as Seefeld, Austria, and Oberstdorf, Germany— athletes from the women’s circuit staged the most forceful protest to date against their exclusion from the Olympic program. In finish areas, ceremonies and media spaces, dozens of competitors…

  • The worst human rights crisis in the United States so far this century

    In 2026, Human Rights Watch issued one of the most severe warnings ever made regarding the state of human rights in the United States. It was not a sectoral critique nor a limited reproach, but a structural diagnosis: according to the organization, the country is undergoing the worst human rights crisis of the 21st century.…

  • China, Panama and the Canal: legal sovereignty, trade stability and the politicization of global infrastructure

    China’s reaction to the judicial annulment of the port concession contract held by CK Hutchison in Panama must be read through a lens different from that dominating Western headlines. From Beijing’s perspective, this is neither an impulsive threat nor an imperial warning, but a carefully calibrated political signal in defense of principles China considers fundamental:…

  • Trump’s Board of Peace Is a Dystopia in Motion

    While the sheer pomposity, Trumpian megalomania, and painfully paradoxical context surrounding the so-called “Board of Peace” (BoP) might tempt some to dismiss it as mere spectacle or farce, its criminal, inhumane, and hegemonic nature makes it far too dangerous to ignore. By Julia Norman Last week, Trump and his new, thuggish boys’ club of heads…

  • The Last Day of Nuclear Arms Control

    The following is an email that Professor Steven Starr, the former director of the University of Missouri’s Clinical Laboratory Science Program, sent out last night. It contains useful graphics and a reminder that today is the last day of an era of global nuclear common sense. It will be over at midnight. May the gods have…

  • Our blindness to whiteness

    During the COVID pandemic, I published a book titled The White-West: A Look in the Mirror. At the time, I did not imagine that only a few years later the dynamics I described would become so stark, so violent, and so openly visible. Today, many struggle to understand what is happening in the United States—and…

  • Colombian President Petro Makes Historic White House Visit After Diplomatic Rift with Trump

    Colombian President Gustavo Petro traveled to the United States this week for a highly anticipated meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House, marking a thaw in relations after a year of public clashes between the two leaders. The visit came under unusual circumstances. Last year, the Trump administration revoked Petro’s U.S. visa…