We like our fears about artificial intelligence served in futuristic packaging. Killer robots. Conscious machines. A cold metallic supermind plotting humanity’s irrelevance. These stories are comforting because they postpone responsibility. They suggest the real danger is tomorrow, abstract and distant, something to be handled by future heroes, future laws, future wisdom.
But the real emergency is not waiting for us in the shadows of science fiction. It is already sitting in government offices, police departments, border checkpoints and data centers. It hums quietly. It files reports. It flags faces. It predicts behavior. And it obeys whoever owns the switch.
Artificial intelligence has not arrived as a rogue intelligence. It has arrived as a loyal employee.
Around the world, authoritarian systems have found in AI the perfect partner, tireless, scalable, and morally silent. Where older regimes needed armies of informants, mountains of paperwork and oceans of fear, modern ones need algorithms. Surveillance that once required human labor now unfolds automatically, invisibly, relentlessly. Cameras do not sleep. Databases do not forget. Pattern-recognition software does not hesitate.
This is not about a hypothetical future where machines rule humans. It is about a present where machines help humans rule other humans more efficiently than ever before.
AI turns repression into infrastructure.
A dissident once had to be followed. Now their phone does the work. A protest once had to be infiltrated. Now it is mapped before it forms. A journalist once had to be intimidated after publication. Now their risk profile is calculated in advance. Entire populations are reduced to streams of data points, movement, speech, purchases, associations, quietly assembled into portraits more intimate than any diary.
And because the process is automated, it feels neutral. Technical. Bloodless. That is its most dangerous feature. When repression wears a uniform, people recognize it. When it wears code, it passes as progress.
Authoritarians understand something many democracies still pretend not to, technology does not dilute power; it concentrates it. AI rewards those who already control data, infrastructure, and enforcement. It amplifies asymmetry. The watcher becomes omnipresent. The watched become predictable.
Even worse, AI offers the seductive promise of “objective” governance. Decisions are framed as mathematical outcomes rather than political choices. A citizen is not arrested because they are inconvenient but because an algorithm rated them as “high risk.” A neighborhood is not over-policed due to prejudice but due to “predictive modeling.” Responsibility dissolves into technical jargon. The system did it.
This creates a new kind of authoritarianism, cleaner, quieter, easier to export. You no longer need ideological devotion when you have software licenses. You do not need mass rallies when you have behavioral data. You do not need fear shouted from rooftops when you can insert it silently into daily routines, a delayed loan, a blocked train ticket, a sudden tax inspection, an unexplained travel ban.
Control becomes granular. Personalized. Continuous. And unlike old dictatorships, this one does not always announce itself. It hides behind convenience. Behind efficiency. Behind safety.
Facial recognition to “prevent crime.” Social monitoring to “maintain harmony.” Data collection to “optimize services.” Each step is small. Each justification reasonable. Each loss of freedom framed as a technical upgrade. By the time people notice the cage, they are already living inside it.
The tragedy is that this machinery is not limited to distant regimes with unfamiliar flags. The architecture is being tested everywhere. Democracies flirt with the same tools, the same databases, the same shortcuts, often promising they will be used responsibly, temporarily, exceptionally.
There is a particular kind of bully who does not shove first. He clears his throat loudly. He lets you notice his friends behind him. He talks about how strong he used to be. He jokes about taking your lunch, then waits to see if you laugh nervously. If you do, he smiles. If you don’t he jokes again ...louder.
Donald Trump’s political style fits this pattern perfectly. It is not diplomacy as conversation, but intimidation as performance. A flex wrapped in a punchline. A threat disguised as “just saying.” When he hints at military power while his country wrestles with debt, inflation, inequality, and aging infrastructure, it is not strategy. It is theater for dominance. And when that theater extends to casual talk about “acquiring” places like Greenland, as if allies were real estate listings, it stops being absurd and starts being dangerous.
Bullies operate on a simple logic: fear is cheaper than respect. Building trust requires patience, compromise, and consistency. Fear only requires volume and unpredictability. Trump has always preferred the latter. He speaks as if the world is a boardroom and nations are negotiators who should be grateful not to be fired. But countries are not employees, and alliances are not contracts you can tear up without consequence.
So how do you deal with a bully like this?
First, you do not mirror his posture. Matching threats with threats is the oldest trap in the book. It feels strong, looks decisive and photographs well. It also validates the bully’s worldview, that force is the only language worth speaking. When every response becomes louder than the last, reason evacuates the room and instinct takes over. History is crowded with disasters that began this way, with leaders trying not to look weak. Strength in this context is not volume. It is stability.
A bully feeds on reaction. Outrage is oxygen. Panic is applause. What starves him is calm consistency, rules applied evenly, alliances reaffirmed quietly, consequences delivered without spectacle. Not dramatic sanctions announced like movie trailers but boring, methodical, predictable responses that make intimidation unprofitable.
Second, you build a circle. Bullies prefer isolated targets. They love the lonely kid on the edge of the playground. Greenland is not just ice and minerals; it is a symbol of proximity, of testing how far intimidation can stretch without resistance. The correct response is not heroic speeches about sovereignty. It is making sure that sovereignty is visibly shared, supported, woven into networks of cooperation that are too dense to unravel with a few aggressive remarks. When allies stand together without theatrics, the threat loses its stage.
Third, you expose the costume. Trump’s favorite trick is to present chaos as strength. He sells unpredictability as genius, aggression as honesty, rudeness as authenticity. But bullies are often fragile performers guarding a shrinking spotlight. An economy under strain, social divisions widening, political legitimacy questioned, these are not foundations for empire. They are reasons to shout.
Calling this out calmly matters. Not as insult, but as diagnosis. “This is bluster.” “This is distraction.” “This is noise meant to cover weakness.” You do not need to say it angrily. You just need to say it clearly, often, and without fascination.
Fourth, you refuse to be entertained by menace. Modern bullying thrives in the attention economy. Every outrageous statement becomes a headline, every hint of conquest a viral clip. The danger is not only in the policy but in the normalization of the tone. When threats become content, they lose their moral weight. Colonization becomes a joke. Military dominance becomes branding.
A mature response treats such talk as unacceptable, not exciting. Not “shocking,” not “wild,” not “classic Trump,” but beneath the standard of serious leadership. Starve the spectacle, and you starve the bully.
Finally, you remember what real power looks like. It is not the ability to frighten smaller neighbors. It is the ability to cooperate without humiliating. To lead without shouting. To protect without demanding ownership. Real power is when others follow you even when you do not threaten them.
Trump’s version of power is loud, brittle, transactional. It resembles strength, but it behaves like insecurity wearing armor.
Bullies do not retire because someone finally punches harder. They fade when their tactics stop working. When intimidation stops producing silence. When jokes stop producing nervous laughter. When threats stop rearranging the furniture of international politics.
You do not defeat that kind of bully with bravado. You defeat him with patience, alliances, quiet consequences, and the stubborn refusal to treat playground behavior as statesmanship, no matter how large the playground, or how many missiles are parked beside it.
The idea that peace could be franchised, priced, and sold like a luxury condominium is grotesque but it is also perfectly on brand for the political culture that Donald Trump has cultivated for nearly a decade. According to recent reporting his administration has floated the notion of a “Board of Peace” to oversee Gaza, with membership carrying a billion-dollar price tag. The White House denies it, of course. It always does. But denial is cheap, and credibility is not. In an era where public office has been treated as a branding opportunity, the question is not whether the scheme is real but whether it feels real. And it does.
We have been trained to recognize the pattern. A crisis emerges. Cameras gather. A bold proposal appears, wrapped in the language of strength and deal-making. Then come the fees, the private interests, the quiet meetings in gilded rooms. It is governance as a cover charge. If you want influence, stability, or a seat at the table, bring your checkbook. The moral vocabulary of diplomacy is replaced by the language of invoices and “value propositions.” War becomes a networking event. Suffering becomes leverage.
Supporters will argue that this is just hard-nosed realism, that the world runs on money and pretending otherwise is naïve. But realism is not the same as auctioning off responsibility. A billion dollars is not a symbol of commitment to peace; it is a barrier to participation, a velvet rope drawn around human tragedy. It tells smaller nations, poorer states, and anyone without sovereign wealth funds that their voices are irrelevant. Peace, in this model, belongs to the highest bidder.
The deeper problem is not even the number. It is the mindset behind it. Trump’s political career has been built on the idea that everything is transactional, that loyalty can be bought, silence rented, truth negotiated. He does not see institutions; he sees storefronts. He does not see alliances; he sees subscription services. So why not peace itself? Why not slap a price tag on stability, offer platinum access to diplomacy, and call it innovation?
The administration’s defenders insist that critics are exaggerating, that no such plan exists. Perhaps. But trust, once eroded, does not regenerate on command. This is an administration that blurred the line between public duty and private profit so often that the distinction became theoretical. From hotels hosting diplomats to policy announcements that sounded like sales pitches, the message was consistent: access has a price, and proximity is a perk. Against that backdrop, a pay-to-play peace council does not sound outrageous. It sounds inevitable.
There is something uniquely corrosive about applying this logic to Gaza, a place already crushed under decades of blockade, war, and political abandonment. To suggest that its future might be managed by a club whose membership fee could rebuild the territory several times over is not pragmatism; it is obscenity. It reframes human lives as bargaining chips and rubble as an investment opportunity.
Even if the story proves false, its plausibility is the indictment. A healthy democracy does not casually entertain the monetization of ceasefires. A credible government does not have to issue reflexive denials every time reporters describe a scheme that sounds like it came from a casino boardroom. The fact that so many people shrug and say, “That figures,” is the real scandal.
We should not accept a world where peace is a luxury product, bundled with prestige and sold to the already powerful. We should not grow so accustomed to corruption that it no longer shocks us, only amuses us. Whether or not this particular proposal ever crossed an official desk, it captures a truth about the moment we are living in: that the language of markets has begun to replace the language of morals, and the logic of profit has invaded even our most fragile hopes. If peace ever comes to Gaza, it will not be because someone wrote a very large check. It will come despite that instinct, not because of it.
Until we demand leaders who treat human lives as more than revenue streams, rumours like this will keep surfacing, half-believed, half-dismissed, floating through the news cycle like toxic exhaust. They will linger because they fit too neatly into the story we have been watching unfold, a politics emptied of shame, filled with price tags, where even the promise of quiet skies and sleeping children can be reduced to a line item on someone’s balance sheet. And that is unforgivable.
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Pitirim Sorokin (1889-1968) whose birth anniversary we mark on 21 January, was concerned, especially in the period after the Second World War, with the relation between the values and attitudes of the individual and their impact on the wider society. His key study Society, Culture and Personality: Their Structure and Dynamics (1947) traced the relations between the development of the personality, the wider cultural values in which the personality was formed, and the structures of the society.
The two World Wars convinced him that humanity was in a period of transition, that the guideline of earlier times had broken down and had not yet been replaced by a new set of values and motivations. To bring about real renewal, one had to work at the same time on the individual personality, on cultural values as created by art, literature, education, and on the social framework. One had to work on all three at once, not one after the other as some who hope that inner peace will produce outer peace. In his Reconstruction of Humanity (1948), he stressed the fact that “if we want to raise the moral standards of large populations, we must change correspondingly the mind and behaviour of the individuals making up these populations, and their social institutions and their cultures.”
Sorokin was born in a rural area in the north of Russia. Both his parents died when he was young. He had to work in handicraft trades in order to go to the University of St. Petersburg where his intelligence was noted, and he received scholarships to carry out his studies in law and in the then new academic discipline of sociology. After obtaining his doctorate, he was asked to create the first Department of Sociology at the University of St. Petersburg. However, the study of the nature of society was a dangerous undertaking, and he was imprisonned three times by the Tsarist regime.
He was among the social reformers that led to the first phase of the Russian Revolution in 1917. He served as private secretary to Alexandre Kerensky, head of the Provisional Government and Sorokin was the editor of the government newspaper. When Kerensky was overthrown by Lenin, Sorokin became part of a highly vocal anti-Bolshevik faction, leading to his arrest and condemnation to death in 1923. At the last moment, after a number of his cell mates had been executed, Lenin modified the penalty to exile, and Sorokin left the USSR, never to return. His revolutionary activities are well-described in his autobiography A Long Journey.(1963)
He went to the United States and taught at the University of Minnesota (1924-1930) where he carried out important empirical studies on social mobility, especially rural to urban migration. These studies were undertaken at a time when sociology was becoming increasingly recognized as a specific discipline. Sorokin was invited to teach at Harvard University where the Department of Social Ethics was transformed into the Department of Sociology with Sorokin as its head. He continued teaching sociology at Harvard until his retirement in 1955 when the Harvard Research Center in Creative Altruism was created so that he could continue his research and writing.
Of the three pillars that make up society − personality, culture, and social structure − personality may be the easiest to modify. Therefore, he turned his attention to how a loving or altruistic personality could be developed. He noted that in slightly different terms: love, compassion, sympathy, mercy, benevolence, reverence, Eros, Agape and mutual aid − all affirm supreme love as the highest moral value and its imperatives as the universal and perennial moral commandments. He stressed the fact that an ego-transcending altruistic transformation is not possible without a corresponding change in the structure of one's ego, values and norms of conduct. Such changes havre to be brought about by the individual himself, by his own effortful thinking, meditation, volition and self-analysis. He was strongly attracted to yoga which acted on the body, mind, and spirit.
Sorokin believed that love or compassion must be universal if it were to provide a basis for social reconstruction. Partial love, he said, can be worse than indifference. “If unselfish love does not extend over the whole of mankind, if it is confined within one group − a given family, tribe, nation, race, religious denomination, political party, trade union, caste, social class or any part of humanity − in such an in-group altruism tends to generate an out-group antagonism. And the more intense and exclusive the in-group solidarity of its members, the more unavoidable are the clashes between the group and the rest of humanity.
Sorokin was especially interested in the processes by which societies change cultural orientations, particularly the violent societies he knew, the USSR and the USA. As he wrote renewal “demands a complete change of contemporary mentality, a fundamental transformation of our system of values and the profoundest modification of our conduct towards other men, cultural values and the world at large. All this cannot be achieved without the incessant, strenuous active efforts on the part of every individual.”
Notes For a biography see: B.V. Johnston. Pitirim A. Sorokin: An Intellectual Biography (University Press of Kansas, 1995)
For an overview of his writings see: Frank Cowell.History, Civilization and Culture: An Introduction to the Historical and Social Philosophy of Pitirim A. Sorokin(Boston: Beacon Press, 1952)
For Sorokin's late work on the role of altruism see: P.A. Sorokin. The Ways and Power of Love (Boston, Beacon Press, 1954) A new reprint is published by Templeton Press, 2002
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Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens
Empires do not export democracy; they export obedience. That is the moral alchemy at the heart of imperial power—where domination is laundered into virtue and coercion is repackaged as goodwill.
This time, if regime change cannot be achieved, regime destruction will suffice: civil war, fragmentation, and the shattering of a multi-century project for a unified, sovereign Iranian state. So far, however, events have refused to follow the script.
Before regime change can be sold, a people must first be simplified. Iranians are said to despise their government. Venezuelans are declared desperate for liberation. These claims are repeated with absolute certainty, never substantiated with evidence, and always freighted with consequence.
No society on earth is an ideological monolith. Who has ever encountered a country governed by unanimity? No one. Such uniformity would be unnatural—indeed, pathological. Yet when war planners and their media support structures go to work, entire nations are suddenly portrayed as echo chambers: robotic, instinct-driven, stripped of contradiction, dissent, and agency. Humanity must be suspended before bombs can fall without moral friction.
Of course, there are Iranians who oppose their government. There are also Iranians who support it. This is not exceptional; it is human. What is exceptional is the demand that we believe Iranians have ceased to behave like humans precisely at the moment their country enters the crosshairs of U.S. and Israeli power.
It is both an intellectual fraud and a moral transgression for any non-Iranian to claim authority over the political will of Iranians. No outsider possesses the right to dictate how a people conduct their internal affairs. That right belongs to them alone, as a matter of sovereignty and dignity. What does demand scrutiny—indeed, resistance—is the moment Western governments begin mobilizing public opinion for war, laundering aggression through the language of concern and care.
The true audience for this critique is not Tehran, but our own societies—where narratives are engineered, consciences anesthetized, and citizens prepared, yet again, for catastrophe marketed as humanitarian rescue.
We are repeatedly asked to accept a convenient fiction: that “democracy” in Iran would yield a government neatly aligned with U.S.–Israeli strategic interests. This claim collapses under even the lightest scrutiny. Israel—because of its occupation, its genocidal policies, and its industrial-scale slaughter of Palestinians—is deeply unpopular not only across the region, but across the world. A genuinely democratic Iran, responsive to its people rather than to foreign patrons, would almost certainly reflect that reality. And that, precisely, is the problem.
Real democracy is dangerous to the empire. It cannot be tolerated where public opinion runs decisively against U.S. militarism and Israeli impunity. This is why “democracy promotion” so reliably culminates not in self-determination, but in monarchies, dictatorships, or compliant client states. The script is familiar: liberation rhetoric first, domination machinery close behind.
Oppose U.S.–Israeli regime change in Iran, and the response is predictable. You are accused of silencing Iranian protesters, dismissing dissent, or denying agency. The charge is dishonest—deployed because honesty would unravel the case. This is not an attempt to instruct Iranians on their choices; it is a warning to Western audiences about what they must not endorse. In the present climate, any call by the war-mongering propaganda apparatus for regime change inevitably feeds a lavishly funded machine designed to condition public opinion for war.
Once, defiance of imperial overreach was a mark of patriotism. Today, it is mocked as naïveté, while submission to power is dressed up as moral responsibility. The moral compass has been turned on its head.
So, the question remains: what happened to the nation that once claimed to stand for law, human rights, and peace?
The answer is written plainly—in every regime-change lie, in every people reduced to abstractions, in every war sold as salvation. An empire that confuses domination with virtue must always dehumanize those in its path, because only by denying the humanity of others can it live with the crimes it commits in its own name.
Javed Akbar is a freelance writer with published works in the Toronto Star and across diverse digital platforms.
Chile is at an inflection point. The election of José Antonio Kast, a politician whose ideology treads uncomfortably close to the darkest chapters of Chile’s history, has thrown not just Chile but all of South America into a state of charged speculation. The question is simple yet alarming; how far right is Kast willing to take Chile? And just as crucial in the age of a resurgent Trumpism, how dangerous could his presidency be for the rest of the continent?
Kast did not rise in a vacuum. His ascent is a backlash against years of leftist governance, economic frustration after pandemic shocks, and deep societal divides exacerbated by protest movements and political polarization. He skilfully channelled anxieties about crime, immigration, and cultural change into an electoral triumph that has many observers worried he could push Chile well beyond the conservative mainstream.
Let’s be clear: Kast is not a re-enactor of Augusto Pinochet, at least not in the literal sense. He does not openly advocate for dictatorship or military rule. Nor does he promise to abolish democratic institutions. But that’s precisely the danger: the drift toward authoritarian instincts doesn’t need tanks in the streets to matter; it only needs the erosion of norms and the weakening of the checks and balances that safeguard democracy.
Kast has made clear his admiration for certain elements of Chile’s military regime in the 1970s and 80s. He has waffled on human rights abuses committed under Pinochet and has sometimes framed them as necessary evils in the fight against communism. For many Chileans, that historical relativism crosses a line; it signals a willingness to legitimize repression if it serves political ends. In a region where the ghosts of authoritarianism still stir in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and beyond, that is not a trivial matter.
In policy terms, Kast’s platform leans heavily on law and order, cultural conservatism, and neoliberal economics. He promises to roll back regulations he sees as stifling growth, to cut taxes, and to empower the private sector. On crime, he has pledged harsher penalties and expanded powers for police. On social issues, he stands firmly against abortion, gender-based reforms, and progressive education policies.
Chile has the legacy of the dictatorship etched into its psyche. Memories of torture, disappearances, and political purges are not academic; they are individual and collective wounds. Many Chileans, particularly the younger generation who came of age ignorant of the dictatorship’s everyday terror, view Kast’s overtures toward Pinochet as alarming revisionism. They see in him a politician comfortable with the language of extremes, even if he stops short of full authoritarianism.
This is where the real fear lies, not in the outright return of a Pinochet-style regime, but in the normalization of illiberal tropes under the veneer of democracy. Kast could very well preserve formal democratic institutions while pushing them into deformation: delegitimizing courts that check executive power, attacking critical media as purveyors of “fake news,” and cultivating a narrative of “the people” versus “the corrupt elites.” Many authoritarian leaders in history have followed this exact playbook. The danger is not tanks, but terminological erosion, where democratic language covers illiberal substance.
And because Chile has long been considered one of South America’s most stable democracies, its political trajectory matters regionally. A rightward shift under Kast doesn’t operate in isolation; it reverberates across borders already strained by polarization. In Argentina, the pendulum could swing further right as voters react against leftist policies. In Brazil, Bolsonaro still looms as a symbol of hard-right governance. Even in Peru and Colombia, where political volatility is the norm, the specter of emboldened conservatism fueled by Chile’s example cannot be ignored.
Throw into this mix the presidency of Donald Trump in the United States, a leader with his own history of flirting with authoritarian rhetoric and undermining democratic norms and the constellation becomes even more concerning. A Trump presidency amplifies right-wing leaders in Latin America who see in him a model or patron. Elected officials gain confidence when their ideological compatriots hold power in Washington; coups and crackdowns seem less risky when the global superpower looks away or offers tacit support.
Under Trumpism’s hemisphere, leaders like Kast could feel emboldened to push boundaries, especially on issues like immigration, trade, and security cooperation. They might read that stance as a green light to confront international human rights bodies, reverse progressive reforms, and redefine civic liberties. The institutional safeguards that have kept nations like Chile anchored could fray under sustained pressure from populist nationalism.
Yet, it is also worth remembering that Chile is not Peru, nor is it Venezuela. Its civil society is robust, its judiciary independent, and its people politically engaged. If Kast’s government overreaches, it will face resistance from protest movements, from courts, from media, and from within his own coalition. Chile’s vibrant street politics, which helped bring about constitutional reform debates and forced reckonings with inequality, remains a powerful counterweight.
Still, what keeps political watchers up at night is not the likelihood of a repeat of the 1973 coup. It’s the subtle, creeping normalization of illiberalism that chips away at democratic resilience. Kast’s presidency might not end in tyranny but it might very well make authoritarian ideas respectable again in South America. And in an era when democracy’s fragility is on display from Kyiv to Islamabad, that risk is far too great to dismiss as merely speculative.
Chile’s destiny under Kast will not be Pinochet redux. But it could be something more insidious: a slow drift toward a politics where dissent is disparaged, institutions are weakened, and the price of stability is compromise on fundamental freedoms. In a Trumpian hemisphere, that’s a future none of us should be comfortable betting on.
Martin Luther King Jr. has become a monument Americans visit without reading the plaque. His words are quoted, his image softened, his radicalism carefully laundered for bipartisan comfort. During the era of Donald Trump’s presidency, marked by strongman rhetoric and an abrasive disregard for democratic norms, King’s legacy felt less like a ceremonial inheritance and more like a moral stress test. The question was not whether King belonged to history, but whether his demands still applied to the present.
Trump’s political style thrived on division sharpened into spectacle. He governed less as a custodian of pluralism than as a performer of grievance, turning institutions into props and opponents into enemies. In that atmosphere, King’s insistence on a beloved community sounded almost quaint, like a hymn hummed inside a burning building. Yet it was precisely this discomfort that revealed King’s relevance. King did not preach harmony as mood music; he demanded it as a structural transformation. Unity, in his vision, was not the absence of conflict but the presence of justice.
What made the Trump years feel authoritarian was not tanks in the streets but the steady erosion of shared reality. Truth became flexible, loyalty personal, and power theatrical. King warned about this long before social media and cable news. He spoke of the danger of moral emptiness disguised as order, of leaders who promised safety while shrinking the nation’s conscience. His critique of the “white moderate,” more devoted to order than justice, echoed loudly in an era where civility was invoked selectively, often to silence dissent rather than to discipline power.
King’s legacy is often reduced to a dream, conveniently stripped of its economic clauses. But Trump’s America, with its tax policies tilted upward and its rhetoric aimed downward, made it impossible to ignore King’s unfinished business. King died planning a Poor People’s Campaign, insisting that racial justice without economic justice was a polite lie. In an age of gilded populism, where billionaire interests wore the mask of working-class fury, King’s moral clarity cut through the costume. He understood that inequality was not an accident of the system but one of its features.
There was also the question of protest. Trump portrayed dissent as disloyalty, a personal affront to authority. King, of course, treated dissent as democratic hygiene. Nonviolent disruption was his chosen instrument not because it was gentle but because it was relentless. He understood that power rarely concedes without pressure, and that pressure must be public, inconvenient and morally legible. Watching militarized responses to protesters during the Trump years felt like a rerun of arguments King had already won, at least on paper.
Perhaps the most unsettling contrast lay in language. Trump’s rhetoric revelled in dominance and insult, reducing politics to a contact sport. King’s language, by contrast, was capacious, biblical, and exacting. He believed words could build a world. This was not naïveté; it was strategy. In moments of authoritarian drift, language becomes a battlefield. To degrade it is to prepare the ground for cruelty. King’s disciplined eloquence stands as a rebuke to the idea that leadership requires vulgarity to appear strong.
Yet invoking King during the Trump era also carried a risk. He could be turned into a talisman, waved around to certify moral superiority without demanding sacrifice. King’s legacy is not a shield; it is a summons. It asks uncomfortable questions about complicity, courage, and cost. Would we accept being unpopular? Would we risk losing elections, donors, or comfort for the sake of justice? King lost his life answering those questions without the assurance of victory.
In the end, the Trump presidency did not diminish King’s legacy; it clarified it. Against the glare of authoritarian temptation, King’s vision appeared not outdated but unfinished. He offered no promise that history bends automatically toward justice, only that it can be bent by human hands willing to ache. Remembering King in such times is not nostalgia. It is a decision about what kind of country we are still trying to be, and how much we are willing to endure to get there.
Fika is a state of mind and an important part of Swedish culture. It means making time for friends and colleagues to share a cup of coffee and a little something to eat.
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Is the New World Order a hypothetical phenomenon or a convenient reality to be imagined? How do you assess its evolving substance for the future? Who would usher the New Order or would it be a remaking of historical belligerency by despotic rulers against the people? Who would the new kings, new emperors and new rulers of the 21st century and beyond world? Recall Hans Morganthau (Politics of Nations), called power politics a ‘psychological sickness’. Flamboyant proclamations of an imaginary world of power defies the logic of the present time and place of order. H.G. Wells, the British author, tried to redefine “new world order” as a synonym for the establishment of a technocratic world state and of a planned economy, garnering popularity in state socialist circles.
Some authoritarianism- lords, emperors and nobles stemmed from the 16th century European Renaissance although knowledge, science and intellectual awakening were the products of new manifestations. The so-called Western democratic culture of superior power is shortsighted and naive. Enlightened and people-oriented leaders hold visions for change and sustainable future-making, not greed or egoistic insanity to quell law, freedom, justice and global peace. Leaders and powerful nations search for stability and a sustainable future cannot be idealistic and perfectionist. Progressive nations look for continuous change and adaptability to future-making and not running after idealistic perfection which means the end game and nothing else.
NATO is in crisis on security, war in Ukraine, Greenland and divide between Europe and America. The US needs a navigational change but entrapped in chaos. After WW2, states and nations professed binding commitments to hold the Charter of the UNO and “save the succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” Not so, those pioneering the evolutionary Charter went astray to invade other nations and indulge in crimes against humanity, aggression and genocide. Historically, leaders and nations claiming to be the most powerful on earth violate the Laws of God and come closer to an end of their time and history. The Earth was meant to sustain life for all sanctity of human values and universal brotherhood. Imperialists time and again broke the covenants and victimized other nations in Asia, the Arab world and Africa. What a contrast, what a tragedy those responsible to shield global values turned out to be aggressors, hangmen and criminals under International Law. Israel leads the contemporary history of crimes against Palestinian people and global institutions appear dysfunctional to extend any protection or security to the people of Palestine. The masses live in fear and corrosive values of international norms. President Trump wants to make America great again by denying the existence of multicultural socioeconomic and political reality of the 21st century evolutionary world. It is not Greenland occupation or attack on Valenzuela or threat to Canada and Panama to empower America as a Great Nation but allegiance to the UN Charter, respect of states sovereignty, non-intervention, peace, order and harmony between nations and respect of law to contribute for global stability and peace.
To enhance America as a progressive nation, the essence is an integral part of emigrants from Europe and other parts of the globe as the historic foundation of this nation. Alarmingly, the immigrants are haunted and deported to foreign countries as gangsters, drug dealers and criminals. Is American history in conflict with its own formulation? Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’ Day will be celebrated on January 19. A visionary, a proactive pioneer of enriched moral, intellectual values of peace, humanity and global harmony. American history shall remember and honor such a role model of human consciousness, peace and brotherhood. When Western history wills, tragic history happens. Wars, colonization, aggression and military occupation are all distinct historical milestones of authoritarian leadership. Machiavelli’s Prince relives to unleash tragic tensions of time and history – the endless echo flows from the same myriad of supremacy, hatred and psychology of political maneuvering to control people and thinking minds. To wake -up informed mankind of the 21st century, and beyond you have a new World Order overshadowing all encompassed universal proclamations, charters, Magna Carta, nobility of rational thinking, collective consensus of time and history – it is a new beginning of unthinkable dark future. We, the People are engrossed by the few- the egoistic lords of lawless unexcitable shadows of power politics and fearful of their own inner soul, survival and strength for future-making.
We are cursed by what the historian Barbara Tuchman calls the “bellicose frivolity of senile empires.”…….
Our high priests of war, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine, are no different from the fools and charlatans who snuffed out empires of the past — the haughty leaders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the militarists in imperial Germany and the hapless court of Tsarist Russia in World War I. They were followed by the fascists in Italy under Benito Mussolini, Germany under Adolf Hitler and the military rulers of imperial Japan in World War II.
Monroe Doctrine was an intent of history not facts of history to be instigated by futurists US presidents. Global peace and order are not the by-product of authoritarianism. The creation of UNO assured the much desired stability after the bloodbath of WW2. Yet the lessons of history are ignored and stuffed in lost visions. The Chris Hedges Report (“The Machinery of Terror” 1/11/26), recalls annals of history: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-machinery-of-terror?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=i6yl0&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email...As Trump threatens other territories, from Cuba to Greenland to Mexico, many are questioning just how far his administration is willing to go in pursuing hemispheric domination—and, in historian Jay Sexton’s words, whether Trump’s ambitions will prove to be “another flash in the pan or the beginning of a more consequential strategic turn.”
In a prison, they call those awaiting the executioner ‘ Dead Men Walking’. Well, only a damned fool would not see what this Trump-led government has been doing since January 2025. ….. the fools in our Congress, our media, and the MAGA faithful won’t push away from this horror and demand that this cognitive failing hustler and his minions just go away! We are a Dead Country Walking that has plenty of military power and ammunition with absolutely NO MORAL COMPASS!
Contemporary Crises are a Menace to Global Peace, Law and Order
West European and American history needs no new introduction in the surge of imperialism and conquest and military domination of small and vulnerable nations across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
The Middle East Peace Plan is a hoax, a sham and failure of Arab-Muslim leadership. The composition of “Board of Peace” is a board of real estate agents to exploit Gaza and undo freedom of Palestine. Everyday innocent people are bombed and displaced by Israel. PM Netanyahu and his extremist governance would soon put the finished answer to Palestine and a Greater Israel would dominate the Arab Middle East. It is oil and land to be grabbed by the US-Israel strategic plan. Phil Rockstroh (“The Toxic Innocence of Empire:The US and Israel, Forever Blameless, Always Pure in Motive On the madness of perpetual war and imperialist overreach”, Dissident Voice: 1/09/26), views the US-Israel policies and practices as of a superior race acting to shield its own transitory image: https://dissidentvoice.org/2026/01/the-toxic-innocence-of-empire-the-us-and-israel-forever-blameless-always-pure-in-motive/https://dissidentvoice.org/2026/01/the-toxic-innocence-of-empire-the-us-and-israel-forever-blameless-always-pure-in-motive/
There is an exact and troubling historical correlation between the Trump administration’s imperialist aggression against Venezuela and Israel’s perpetual crimes against humanity. Both can be traced to a Western settler-colonialist worldview possessed by a sense of insatiable entitlement, and the psychological carnage concomitant to a citizenry given to the brutality inherent to the pursuit of colonialist and/or imperialist agendas. Whether the collective mode of mind is termed Manifest Destiny or Zionist doctrine, both are manifested in the ethnic cleansing of indigenous people that can be traced back to a European belief system that insists upon its innate (White supremacy-rancid) …
The UNO was an outcome of collective wisdom and resolve to foresee global peace, non-intervention and non-aggression and respect of human rights and sovereignty of states. Its main aims were to prevent wars and restore trust in collective dialogue and participation in peace and conflict resolution. Imagine some eight decades later, we continued to witness abrogation of human rights, lost freedom and justice in all parts of the globe. Those holding the Gospel in one hand have planned wars, killing, occupation and intervention in other states propelling greed of oil and money and monstrous control of helpless people. Raging wars in Ukraine, Palestine and elsewhere see no beacon of hope, knowledge and collective wisdom to stop or to change the nuisance of political power and sadistic leadership minds capable of offering a promising world of tomorrow or day after tomorrow.
Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution and has spent several academic years across the Russian-Ukrainian and Central Asian regions knowing the people, diverse cultures of thinking and political governance and a keen interest in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including: Global Humanity and Remaking of Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution for the 21st Century and Beyond, Barnes and Noble Press, USA, 2025 https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/global-humanity-and-remaking-of-peace-security-and-conflict-resolution-for-the-21st-century-and-beyond-mahboob-a-khawaja/1147150197 and We, The People in Search of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution. Kindle Direct Publishing-Amazon, USA: 2025 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F6V6CH5W
Check Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD. NEW eBOOK, Wars on Humanity: Ukraine, Palestine and the role of Global Leaders HERE!
