Politics of Wickedness is Destroying Humanity by Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD.

“Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually”. (The Bible: Genesis 6:5)

Politics of Wickedness Overshadows Wars and Insanity

Political wickedness is not the value of responsible systems of global governance  for harmony, peace and globalization. But knows no bound, no accountability as it embodies the characteristics of abnormal minds boasting clichés of power and affluence over others. Leaders and nations lacking rational thinking imply it to disguise cynicism and treachery for socio-economic and political domination. Its ultimate aims and impacts are beyond logic, hope and truth in conventional wisdom. It professes immense power of devilish acts against human nature to wipe out all moral, spiritual and humanitarian norms essential for human survival, positive change, growth and stability of human cultures and civilizations. Do civilizations flourish out of tyranny, cruelty and conquest of other peoples? How do we find cure to cruelty and aggression to avert the end of civilizations and humanity? You wonder, what is wrong with the warriors and those obeying their commands to commit crimes against humanity and planned genocide as if they are inhuman or above the systematic legal accountability. Undoubtedly if analyzed under a mental microscope, political wickedness is a sadistic disease for increased societal disorder, corruption and violence leading to destruction of human morality, rational thinking, progress and sustainable future.

Witness to Dangerous Time of False Democracy

If the leaders of Ukraine and Russia were serious and responsible for peace, they could hold a dialogue for a ceasefire and end the almost 5 years conflict any time. Not so, American and Europeans manufacture wars and  instigate disorder to propel their own mastery of wickedness. They would never directly challenge Russia or Israel to stop the wars. Have they learned any lessons from history to  change when facts of life warrant a navigational change? Utilitarianism pursues economic prosperity and higher living standards, not moral and spiritual virtues for internal peace and human progress. The oil exporting Arab world appears lost in fantasy only to discover America and Israel are not friends but foes bent on destroying them. Killing and displacement of Palestinians warranted a strong international force to protect the civilians population under the UN Charter and civilized norms. Ironically, West Europeans, the Master of Israeli existence and the US would joke about safeguarding human rights, and so are the puppet Arab leaders risking their own survival. None of the Arab leaders are morally and intellectually powerful to challenge Israel or America. Most maintain normal relationships with Israel. Imagine! how ignorance and unjust leaders rule the world. Was the Gaza Board of Peace not a hoax spelled out by the US-Israeli leaders to destroy the people of Palestine? Across Gaza and the occupied West Bank, Israeli settlers and military continue to forcibly displace, bomb, and dehumanize the indigenous population as if they were not equal human beings. Julia Buck (Threat Level: Emergency. “The Israeli Establishment is Firmly Entangled in the US Government” Global Research:9/16/26) points out: The Israeli establishment has firmly entangled itself deeply within some of the highest levels of the US government and critical infrastructure.... Israel  should be perceived as a very high level threat to our national security and sovereignty, but instead, Israel is consistently exonerated and touted as our “greatest ally.”https://www.globalresearch.ca/threat-level-emergency/5939929

America and Israel Defy the Sanctity of life, Earth and Laws of Governance

If the US and West European had any respect for International Law, Geneva Conventions and equality of humanity. they should have stopped Israeli leaders from committing crimes against humanity. Not so, they continued to supply weapons to bomb the innocent people of Gaza and Palestine. The Earth is a Divine hub of human Life, Survival and a Trust to mankind. Those bombing and destroying it are mentally sick and defy the Divine Truth. It looks as if the US and Israeli leaders do not believe in life and death and final accountability. Nobody lived forever on this Earth. Israeli ‘democracy’ has no Constitution of equal rights and obligations to swear in the name of God, but a US President taking oath in the Constitution makes reference to God in faith. One wonders, what kind of accountability of deeds after death would be waiting for the crimes of Israeli and American leaders once they face God? The earth is living and spins at 1670 km per hour and orbits the Sun at 107,000 km per hour.

Imagine, if this spinning fails, what consequences could occur to the living beings on Earth. Think again, about the average distance of earth from moon is 93 million miles -the distance of Moon from Earth is currently 384,821 km equivalent to 0.002572 Astronomical Units. Earth is a “trust” to mankind for its existence, sustenance of life, survival, progress and future-making. Wherever there is trust, there is accountability. 

Erik Jones (“A Wicked and Evil Humanity”, Hope, Life and Truth, Church of God: 9/2026) caption explains: Jesus Christ compared the end times to this antediluvian period: “But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark” (Matthew 24:37-38). This shows us that before the flood, life was being lived as normal, with no regard for God. The flood came upon the antediluvian as a surprise because they lacked any regard for God or the preaching of Noah (2 Peter 2:5). Peter described the people of this time as “ungodly” (2 Peter 2:5).

The social conditions during the end time are described in detail in 2 Timothy 3:1-5. Since Christ likens the end times to the antediluvian world, we can assume many of these same conditions describe what society was like then. Putting all these scriptures together, the fundamental issue during this time period was people living lives totally driven by lust and hate with absolutely no fear of God or sense of morality (Romans 1:28). The Bible also defines this as being “carnally minded” (Romans 8:6-8).

The Divine Message clarifies the truth of universal brotherhood and wisdom for all the times to come:

It is God, Who has made for you the Earth as a resting place and the sky as a canopy; And has given you shape and made your shapes beautiful, and has provided for your sustenance, Of things pure and good; Such is God your Lord. So Glory to God, the Lord of the Worlds. It is He Who has created you from dust, Then from a sperm-drop, Then from a leech-like clot; then He does He get you out (into the light) as a child; then lets you grow and reach your age of full strength; then lets you become old. Though of you there are some of who die before; And lets you reach a Term appointed; In order that ye may learn wisdom (The Quran; 64 and 67: 40)

Tyranny is always powerless and transitory. To warmongers and sadistic political actors -  listen to voices of reason otherwise your fate is set as was of the Pharaoh at Red Sea. Late Professor Howard Zinn envisaged the future of humanity in the following words of wisdom: “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction."

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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, 05/2025 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F6V6CH5Wand https://pdfhost.io/v/BZkFa7FYPR_Wars_on_Humanity_-_Mahboob_A__Khawaja__PhD_

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Check Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD. eBOOK,
Wars on Humanity:
Ukraine, Palestine and the role of Global Leaders
HERE!

The cost of silence by Maddalena Conti

International Day of Sign Languages arrives in 2026 with an uncomfortable question: what exactly are we celebrating when the services that make communication possible are being quietly cut?

Every September 23rd, the world is reminded that sign languages are not improvised gestures, simplified versions of spoken languages or charitable substitutes for “normal” communication. They are languages, with their own structures, histories, cultures and communities. Yet recognition is remarkably cheap. Inclusion is considerably more expensive.

And this is where the celebration meets the age of permanent budget cuts. Governments have become increasingly fond of announcing their commitment to accessibility while simultaneously examining which accessibility services can be trimmed, delayed, outsourced or turned into another application form. The language of inclusion survives remarkably well in an austerity spreadsheet. It is the practical part that keeps disappearing.

Interpreters are not decorative extras. Deaf children need access to education. Deaf adults need access to healthcare, employment, justice and public administration. Families need communication. Public information must be accessible when emergencies happen. None of this is particularly revolutionary. It is simply what equal citizenship looks like when governments take their own principles seriously.

Yet budget politics has a peculiar habit of transforming rights into expenses. An interpreter becomes a cost. Sign-language education becomes a programme. Accessibility technology becomes an investment that can supposedly wait another year. Specialist teachers become an organisational luxury. The accumulated result is that something formally recognised as a right becomes practically dependent on where a person lives, which institution they encounter and whether somebody has remembered to include accessibility in the budget.

This is not efficiency. It is shifting the bill from the public budget to the individual. The cruel irony is that cutting accessibility rarely eliminates the need for accessibility. It merely transfers the consequences. A child who cannot properly follow lessons may require additional educational support later. A patient who cannot communicate effectively with medical staff faces greater risks. Someone excluded from employment becomes dependent on other forms of public assistance. A citizen unable to understand official information becomes less able to participate in society.

The supposed saving therefore becomes another invoice, only delivered somewhere else and usually much later. There is also a cultural dimension that budget documents routinely fail to understand. Sign languages belong to communities, not merely to disability-service departments. Deaf people are not simply recipients of assistance; they are citizens with identities, cultures, families, professions, ambitions and political voices. Treating sign language as an unfortunate technical problem to be solved by the cheapest available arrangement misses the point entirely.

The danger of this era is not necessarily spectacular discrimination. It is something quieter: gradual disappearance through administrative decisions. One interpreter fewer. One specialist programme closed. One accessibility requirement postponed. One service centralised until it becomes practically unreachable. Each decision can be defended individually. Together they construct a wall.

International Day of Sign Languages should therefore be more than another annual celebration filled with photographs of smiling officials signing carefully rehearsed greetings.

It should be a reminder that equality costs money and that this is not a scandal. A society is judged not only by what it can afford, but by what it refuses to make expendable. If sign-language access becomes one more casualty of budget arithmetic, the problem is not that society has suddenly become poorer. It is that its definition of what matters has become cheaper. And silence, in this case, has a very precise price.

Art wants you in by Alana Desham

For centuries, the bargain between artwork and audience was wonderfully simple: the artist made something, and the public looked at it. You stood before the painting, admired the sculpture, listened to the performance and tried, with varying degrees of success, to understand what the artist was saying. The gallery demanded quiet, contemplation and a certain respectful distance.

That arrangement is increasingly being demolished. Contemporary installation art is breaking the frame, sometimes literally and inviting audiences to become part of the machinery of creation. In these works, movement can produce sound, voices can activate objects, proximity can alter an environment and collective behaviour can transform the work itself. The visitor is no longer merely looking at art. The visitor is completing it.

And, frankly, it is about time. There is something wonderfully democratic about an artwork that refuses to exist entirely without us. Interactive installations using movement and sound have demonstrated how a visitor's body can become an artistic instrument. A person walking through a field of objects might trigger sounds; several people moving through a space can create an entirely different composition. The artwork becomes less like a finished object and more like a conversation.

That changes the psychology of the gallery. The traditional museum visitor is trained to behave like a ghost: look, don't touch; listen, don't speak; admire, don't interfere. Interactive art reverses the rules. Suddenly the supposedly innocent visitor becomes responsible. You have to move. You have to speak. You have to experiment. You have to discover what happens when you do something rather than merely observe what somebody else has done.

Some installations go further, turning groups of strangers into accidental collaborators. Large-scale speaker sculptures, for example, allow visitors to contribute sounds and voices directly to the work. The result is unpredictable because no single person controls it. The artwork acquires a social life of its own.

This is where participatory art becomes genuinely interesting. It is not simply technology wearing an artistic hat. The best interactive works ask a philosophical question: Where does the artwork actually reside?

Is it in the physical structure? The software? The artist's original idea? The visitor's action? Or in the strange moment when all four collide?

The answer may be that it resides in none of them individually. A conventional painting remains essentially the same whether ten people look at it or ten million. A participatory installation can be radically different from one minute to the next. Its audience becomes its changing material. Every encounter leaves something behind, whether that is sound, movement, memory, data or simply the knowledge that another human being stood in the same space.

There is, however, a danger. Not everything with a motion sensor is profound. Too much interactive art can resemble an expensive playground designed by people who discovered technology five minutes ago. Press a button, watch a light flash, wave your hand, hear a noise: congratulations, apparently you have participated in contemporary art.

Participation alone is not enough. The technology must serve an idea. When it does, the results can be extraordinary. The physical installation becomes a temporary ecosystem in which artist and audience negotiate authorship. Even recent experimental works are exploring collective movement, proximity, breathing and environmental data as artistic material, suggesting that participation can become not merely an amusing feature but the central subject of the work.

Perhaps this is the most important development. Interactive art is quietly dismantling the old mythology of the solitary genius. The artist still creates the conditions, but no longer necessarily controls the final experience. The audience brings the missing ingredient. That is both liberating and slightly terrifying. After all, once you invite the public inside the artwork, you surrender ownership of what happens next.

And perhaps that is precisely the point. Great art has never really been about staring obediently at something behind glass. It has always been about creating a disturbance inside the person experiencing it. The new art simply has the courage to admit that the disturbance requires two people: the artist who starts the conversation and the audience willing to answer.

Worming #137 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

A family of worms and all their worm friends worming in new adventures.

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Europe’s digital tightrope by Nadine Moreau

Europe likes to imagine that technology can be governed the way a motorway is governed: establish the rules, install the signs, fine the reckless and let everyone get on with their journey. Artificial intelligence is making that fantasy increasingly difficult. The arrival of Chinese models such as DeepSeek has exposed a problem Europe has been postponing: in a technological world splitting into rival ecosystems, sovereignty is no longer simply about where data is stored. It is about who controls the machinery that processes it, the assumptions embedded in it and the infrastructure on which it depends.

The European Union has built an impressive regulatory architecture around digital life. GDPR established data protection as a political principle rather than a bureaucratic nuisance. The AI Act extends that instinct into artificial intelligence, attempting to classify risks and impose obligations before the technology becomes another uncontrollable marketplace. Data sovereignty adds another layer, insisting that Europe should not become merely the geographical location where other powers harvest information.

The difficulty is that regulation cannot manufacture technological independence. DeepSeek is important not merely because it is Chinese, but because it arrived as another reminder that the assumptions of Western technological superiority are not permanent. Europe can regulate a Chinese AI system operating within its borders. It can demand transparency, impose safeguards and restrict particular uses. But it cannot regulate the geopolitical ecosystem from which the technology originates. Nor can it regulate the strategic ambitions of Washington or Beijing.

This is where Europe's balancing act becomes almost absurd. Brussels wants the benefits of American and Chinese innovation while remaining sufficiently independent of both. It wants open digital markets without becoming dependent on foreign platforms. It wants privacy without suffocating experimentation. It wants strategic autonomy without paying the enormous price of rebuilding every layer of the technological stack.

And then there is the Splinternet. The internet was once sold as the great borderless marketplace of ideas. That vision now looks increasingly like a historical curiosity. China has its own heavily controlled digital universe. The United States remains dominated by enormous private technology companies. Europe is attempting to create a third model in which markets remain open but digital power is constrained by public rules. The result could become a genuinely European alternative or simply a heavily regulated island surrounded by technological giants.

The danger is confusing regulation with power. Europe is very good at writing rules for companies it does not own. It is less good at producing the chips, cloud infrastructure, foundational models and platforms that determine how those rules operate in practice. A continent that regulates everyone else's technology but depends on everyone else's technology is not sovereign. It is an excellent customer.

Yet abandoning regulation would be an even greater mistake. GDPR and the AI Act embody something valuable: the idea that technological progress should remain subordinate to citizens rather than the reverse. The answer is not to surrender those principles because the world has become competitive. It is to connect regulation with investment, research, infrastructure and European technological capacity.

Europe therefore faces a choice that is less glamorous than the language of digital sovereignty suggests. It can become a rule-maker with little leverage, a dependent consumer of competing technological empires, or begin building enough technological muscle to make its rules consequential.

The Splinternet is not coming. It is already here. Europe's challenge is deciding whether it wants merely to regulate the new borders or possess enough power to have a say in where those borders are drawn.

The White House without witnesses by Markus Gibbons

There is something profoundly revealing about a president deciding that the easiest way to deal with journalism is to remove the journalists. Donald Trump’s announcement that CNN, MS NOW and Politico are being banned from the White House, supposedly because they produce “fake news”, is not merely another quarrel between an unpopular president and an unfriendly press. It is a much more serious confrontation over who gets to witness presidential power. Trump has also suggested that other organisations could follow.

The distinction matters. Presidents are entitled to dislike newspapers. They can complain about reporters, denounce headlines, ridicule television anchors and insist that particular stories are wrong. Journalists, in turn, can be irritating, intrusive, unfair or occasionally mistaken. That is the unpleasant machinery of a free press.

But the government cannot turn access to the government into a reward for favourable coverage. That is the dangerous principle emerging from this episode. The White House has historically been a place where presidents and journalists fight over facts, questions, leaks and interpretations. The argument was supposed to end with the story being published. Trump is attempting to move the argument somewhere else: into the control of the press room itself.

That changes everything. A president who says, in effect, write about me positively and you may come inside; criticise me and you stay outside, is no longer simply attacking journalism. He is attempting to establish a political economy of obedience. Access becomes currency. Credentials become leverage. The press is invited to understand that criticism carries a price.

And once that principle is accepted, the list of forbidden journalists can grow remarkably quickly. Today it is CNN, MS NOW and Politico. Tomorrow it might be The New York Times. Trump has already suggested that additional organisations could be targeted, while directing his hostility at other major newspapers.

This is how democratic institutions can be weakened without anyone formally abolishing them. The First Amendment remains printed on paper. The Constitution has not disappeared from the library shelves. The White House briefing room still exists. Cameras still operate. Newspapers still publish. Yet institutions can retain their physical appearance while their habits are slowly emptied of meaning.

There is an important legal complication here. The announcement is not the same thing as a completed, enforceable prohibition. Journalists from the three organisations were still working at the White House after Trump announced the ban, and the precise mechanism for enforcing it remained unclear. Existing court precedent has also held that when the White House establishes general press facilities, access cannot simply be denied because officials dislike a journalist's coverage.

So the courts may yet stop the door from being closed. But democracy should not have to depend upon a judge repeatedly reminding a president what the First Amendment means. The deeper danger is cultural rather than procedural. If a president can persuade millions of citizens that an independent newspaper is legitimate only when it praises him, then the constitutional text becomes almost irrelevant. Freedom of the press requires more than permission to print. It requires the political class to tolerate scrutiny.

A democracy without uncomfortable journalism becomes a democracy looking into a mirror polished by the government. And that is the real significance of Trump's latest move. The White House does not merely contain power; it exercises power in the name of the public. The public therefore has a right to independent witnesses. A president should be able to survive hostile questions. A democracy must.

#eBook: The River of Blood by Ovi History

The Battle of Spercheios in 997 was one of the most dramatic clashes of the Byzantine-Bulgarian wars, a battle where geography, timing, and tactical brilliance combined to create a devastating defeat for the forces of Tsar Samuel of Bulgaria.

Fought near the Spercheios River in central Greece, the engagement was not simply a military setback; it was a psychological blow that revealed the vulnerability of an empire that had appeared unstoppable for decades.

At the end of the 10th century, Byzantium and Bulgaria were locked in a long struggle for dominance in the Balkans. The rise of Samuel’s Bulgarian state had challenged Byzantine authority, while Emperor Basil II was determined to restore imperial control. The conflict was more than a contest for territory; it was a battle for political legitimacy, religious influence, and the future balance of power in southeastern Europe.

Ovi History eBook
September 2026

Ovi eBook Publishing 2026

The River of Blood

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Ghostin’ #136 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

They are like neighbours we are aware of,
except we are NOT aware of and
they have absolutely nothing to do with Halloween.

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Mitsotakis diplomacy of damage control by Thanos Kalamidas

Damage control is not diplomacy. It is what governments do after diplomacy has already failed. That distinction matters in the increasingly complicated relationship between Greece and Turkey, where every carefully staged handshake risks becoming another exercise in managing yesterday’s problem rather than preventing tomorrow’s crisis. And this is precisely why Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ non-schedule meeting with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in New York deserves more scrutiny than the choreography of another stand-in photo.

The disturbing part is not that the Greek PM is meeting Erdoğan. Of course he should. Neighbours with a history of disputes, competing interests and overlapping ambitions have to talk. The disturbing part is the apparent absence of a sufficiently defined agenda. Diplomacy without an agenda can easily become diplomacy by improvisation and improvisation is rarely a sensible strategy when dealing with a leader who understands leverage considerably better than he understands restraint.

Erdoğan has spent years constructing Turkey as a regional power whose influence stretches far beyond its borders. He has combined military power, economic relationships, migration, energy, diplomacy and geography into a foreign-policy toolbox that gives Ankara options. Turkey does not need every option to be used. The mere existence of those options creates leverage.

Greece, by contrast, too often appears trapped in a reactive diplomatic rhythm; tension rises, European partners become nervous, Washington encourages dialogue, Athens seeks de-escalation, Ankara signals flexibility, a meeting is arranged and everybody congratulates themselves on having prevented a crisis. Then the cycle begins again.

That is not a strategy. It is a fire brigade. The problem with permanent damage control is that it gradually changes the balance between the parties. The side that creates uncertainty acquires bargaining power; the side constantly trying to restore stability becomes responsible for maintaining it. Eventually, stability itself becomes the concession.

This is where Mitsotakis needs to be particularly careful and sadly he literally …fails. There is nothing inherently wrong with dialogue. Indeed, refusing dialogue between Greece and Turkey would be reckless. But dialogue has value only when it serves a clearly defined diplomatic purpose. A meeting should establish what can be discussed, what cannot be traded away, what constitutes progress and what happens when commitments are ignored. Otherwise the meeting risks becoming another ritual in which the existence of dialogue is mistaken for the achievement of diplomacy.

Erdoğan understands political theatre. He understands the symbolism of presidential meetings, the language of strategic patience and the usefulness of appearing reasonable while keeping multiple avenues of pressure open. Calling him a regional superpower may be premature; calling Turkey an increasingly consequential regional power is simply recognising reality. Ankara wants influence and it has repeatedly demonstrated that it is prepared to pursue it.

That does not make Turkey an enemy. Nor does it make Erdoğan an inscrutable mastermind with a secret plan behind every curtain. But it does mean that Greek diplomacy should stop behaving as though good intentions automatically produce balanced negotiations.

Athens needs its own leverage. That means European solidarity cannot remain a ceremonial phrase. It means alliances must be converted into practical diplomatic capital. It means Greece needs clearly articulated red lines, but also clearly articulated areas where cooperation with Turkey is possible. And above all, it means Greece should enter negotiations knowing precisely what it wants, not merely hoping to prevent what it fears.

There is a dangerous psychological trap in diplomacy: believing that because nothing exploded today, something was achieved. Nothing exploding is not necessarily progress.

A successful Greek-Turkish relationship cannot be built on endless emergency management, carefully worded communiqués and photographs from meetings whose substance disappears before the aircraft lands.

Mitsotakis can meet Erdoğan in New York. He should talk to him. But Athens should not confuse access with influence, conversation with negotiation, or calm with resolution.

Diplomacy is not the art of making every crisis disappear from tomorrow’s newspapers. It is the art of ensuring that the next crisis begins with fewer advantages for the other side. That requires an agenda. And, more importantly, it requires a strategy.

Greenland’s strange …victory by Marja Heikkinen

Donald Trump has a familiar way of turning compromise into conquest. Announce a deal, declare victory, repeat the word “permanent” often enough, and let everyone else argue over the small print. His Greenland announcement follows precisely that choreography. Washington gets to celebrate an expanded military presence in the Arctic; Copenhagen gets to say Greenland remains Danish; Nuuk gets to say its sovereignty and right to self-determination have survived. Everybody has apparently won. Which, naturally, raises the more interesting question: who actually paid the price?

Trump certainly did not get the Greenland he demanded. For months, he threatened to acquire the island, refused to rule out force and treated the territory of a NATO ally as though it were an attractive piece of real estate sitting on an auction table. Denmark and Greenland repeatedly answered with the same message: Greenland was not for sale. The emerging agreement does not change that. That matters.

If Trump wanted sovereignty, he did not get it. If he wanted ownership, he did not get it. If he wanted Denmark to surrender Greenland, Denmark has not surrendered Greenland. The Danish government insists that the agreement respects the kingdom’s sovereignty and Greenlanders’ right to self-determination. The Greenlandic leadership says essentially the same thing. And the agreement still requires parliamentary approval.

Yet it would be naïve to pretend that nothing has changed. The United States appears set to obtain a substantially stronger military position in Greenland, with arrangements designed to prevent rival powers from establishing bases or making certain sensitive investments. Trump says Washington will begin developing a larger military presence almost immediately. The United States already operates Pituffik Space Base, so this is not an American arrival in Greenland. It is an American expansion.

And that is where the Danish victory becomes rather more complicated. Denmark resisted the extraordinary proposition that an ally could threaten to seize its territory. But after months of pressure, the result may be an agreement giving Washington considerably more strategic influence over that territory. The flag does not change. The constitutional relationship does not change. But the strategic balance does.

Trump therefore gets something extremely valuable without having to acquire anything formally. He gets the political theatre of victory and much of the strategic substance he wanted. That is clever diplomacy or clever branding, depending on one's perspective.

But there is another player whose position deserves greater attention: Greenland itself. For years, Greenlanders have discussed greater autonomy and possible independence from Denmark. Now the island finds itself caught between two enormous strategic realities. Denmark retains sovereignty, while the United States wants Greenland to become an even more important military platform. The Greenlanders are being told that this strengthens their security and development. Perhaps it will. But security arrangements involving great powers have a habit of producing consequences that extend far beyond the wording of treaties.

There is also a dangerous precedent here. An American president threatened the territory of a NATO ally. The threats created enough anxiety to bring Denmark and Greenland into negotiations. The eventual agreement may be entirely consensual and may protect sovereignty. But the diplomatic lesson could nevertheless be uncomfortable: pressure works.

That is not the same as saying Trump won. He did not get ownership of Greenland. He did not get Danish sovereignty transferred to Washington. He did not erase Greenland's right to self-determination. Indeed, the agreement appears to reaffirm precisely those principles.

But he may have demonstrated something more subtle and potentially more consequential: a sufficiently aggressive demand can change the starting point of a negotiation.

The danger for Denmark is therefore not that Greenland has suddenly become American. It is that the meaning of Danish sovereignty could gradually become thinner while remaining perfectly intact on paper.

And perhaps that is the real Greenland deal. Trump can call it a victory. Denmark can call it sovereignty preserved. Greenland can call it security strengthened. The final judgment belongs to what happens after the signatures. Because sometimes a country does not lose its territory. It merely discovers that somebody else has become very comfortable inside it.

Peace, while the world burns by Mary Long

On 21 September, the world will once again observe the International Day of Peace. The United Nations has chosen an unusually appropriate theme for 2026: “Invest in Peace - For Everyone, Everywhere, Every Day.” It is difficult to imagine a more necessary message, or a more uncomfortable one. Peace today sounds almost like an old-fashioned word, something placed carefully in speeches while governments count missiles, redraw red lines and calculate how many civilians can be described as “collateral damage”.

The calendar offers little encouragement. War continues in Ukraine. The Iran war has become another major source of instability. Yemen, after years of suffering and a fragile truce, has again been pulled into intensified fighting, with tens of thousands displaced in the latest escalation. Around these wars sit many others, from Sudan and Gaza to conflicts that barely survive a paragraph in international news. The geography changes; the vocabulary does not. Security. Retaliation. Deterrence. Victory. Strategic interests. National sovereignty. And, eventually, another cemetery.

The uncomfortable truth is that modern politics has become remarkably good at explaining why peace is impossible.

There is always a reason to postpone it. The enemy must first be weakened. The border must first be secured. The terrorists must first be defeated. The nuclear programme must first be destroyed. The territory must first be liberated. The alliance must first demonstrate strength. The other side must first make the first concession.

And while everyone waits for the other side to blink, ordinary people lose homes, families, livelihoods and futures.

Yemen offers perhaps the most brutal lesson. A country can disappear from the headlines without disappearing from war. The latest Houthi offensive has displaced more than 100,000 people, reminding the world that a conflict does not become peaceful simply because international attention has moved elsewhere.

Ukraine offers another lesson: prolonged war does not become normal merely because it has lasted for years. Behind military maps and diplomatic statements are prisoners, refugees, destroyed towns, traumatised families and generations growing up with the sound of drones and missiles. Even the language of negotiation has become another battlefield.

The greatest failure, however, is not that governments wage wars. Humanity has been doing that for thousands of years. The failure is that governments continue to treat peace as the period between wars rather than as political work requiring investment, patience and imagination.

Peace requires institutions. It requires diplomacy before missiles. It requires international law that powerful states cannot simply reinterpret when inconvenient. It requires schools instead of military recruitment, functioning hospitals instead of field clinics, food security instead of blockades and economic opportunity instead of another generation of grievance.

Most importantly, peace requires people to be regarded as people before they are regarded as Ukrainians, Iranians, Yemenis, Israelis, Palestinians, Russians, Americans or anything else.

The International Day of Peace should therefore not be another annual performance of solemn speeches, white doves and carefully photographed politicians. It should be an accusation against our political imagination.

If humanity can mobilise billions for war, surely it can mobilise something for peace. Peace is not naïve. War is not realism. Sometimes stopping violence requires strength; sometimes protecting people requires force. But strength without diplomacy becomes an addiction, while military victory without political settlement merely prepares the next war.

The world does not need another beautiful declaration about peace. It needs governments to make peace as concrete as war: funded, organised, negotiated and defended.

Because somewhere tonight, a child is sleeping beneath a roof that may not exist tomorrow. That child does not care who won the argument. That child wants peace. And perhaps that is the simplest definition we have.