The end of Sweden’s drawn-out accession to NATO signifies the completion of the Baltic region’s political transformation and strategic reconfiguration. Both processes were accelerated by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, which has recently crossed the two-year mark, and in both transitions, Russia loses. The value of Russia’s longstanding economic ties and political influence in the region is lost entirely, and its capacity to project military poion is in the making, and the Russian army’s offensive capabilities continue to be diminished on the Ukrainian battlefields. These shifts in European security may appear to make the Northern European political and military leaders’ persistent…

Israel, like all settler colonial projects, is built on lies – the lie that the land historically belongs to the colonizers, the lie that Palestinians have no national identity, the lie that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, the lie that a peaceful settlement is thwarted by the Palestinians rather than the Israelis. This mendacity is especially prevalent when Israel carries out its murderous assaults against the Palestinians, including the current genocide in Gaza. The Hebrew word for this propaganda is “hasbara” or “explanation.” Hasbara is a combination of agitprop, propaganda and censorship. It is designed to…

"Five months of violence, displacement, starvation, and disease on top of nearly 17 years of a blockade have caused relentless mental harm to children in Gaza," said Save the Children. In addition to killing, maiming, and forcibly displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children, Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza has wrought tremendous psychological damage upon kids in the embattled strip, as detailed by a Save the Children report published Tuesday. The charity’s report – entitled Trapped and Scarred: The Compounding Mental Harm Inflicted on Palestinian Children in Gaza – examines how “five months of violence, displacement, starvation, and disease on top of nearly 17…

Xi Jinping's crackdown on the "disease" of separatism encouraged local Chinese officials to sweep up as many detainees as possible for internment camps in the Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang, where they faced what the U.S. has described as genocide. Officials in the region, hoping to satisfy the Chinese president's drive for draconian "reforms," were incentivized to intensify the policy of repression, which escalated from "thought eradication" to mass internment, reeducation and sterilization under the guise of combating extremism, according to a new report. The report, based on files obtained from Xinjiang Police Security Bureau and other local security sources, was released…

We find ourselves at a moment where the financial and political systems that have dominated for decades are failing in a spectacular and irredeemable fashion. Those who pull the levers are (as usual) attempting to take advantage of the situation by rapaciously snatching and consolidating more wealth and power, while leaving the general public to rot. When faced with such a historic moment, one should assume a certain degree of responsibility to make sure the next paradigm ends up better than the one we’re leaving. If we fail to think deeply about an improved vision and framework for the future,…