Worldcrunch Magazine

Congolese Blood, Our Silence — And Our Smartphones

PARIS — The list of signatories is impressive: 75 Nobel Prize winners of a wide range of nationalities and disciplines, from chemistry and literature to medicine and peace. What brings them together? A conflict that receives very little publicity but...

The Accelerator Of American Decline — That’s How Putin And Xi See Trump

When it comes to Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump seems to go from one disappointment to the next. The first miscalculation of the “dealmaker” was believing that a single phone call would be enough to reconcile with the Kremlin’s master: peace in Ukraine...

Trump, Xi And Pope Leo XIV: A New Accidental Power Trio To Pacify Our World?

BUENOS AIRES — In the 1980s, three of history’s great statesmen were in power at the same moment: U.S. President Ronald Reagan, the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and Pope John Paul II. This was in the closing phase of the Cold War, the global...

Team-Building Tyranny! Court Rules Employee Not Obliged To Join Company Dance Therapy

BOGOTÁ — Recently in the pages of this newspaper, El Espectador, was a report on the case of a Colombian employee, John Jairo Ramírez, who was dismissed from his position at a construction company for refusing to dance along at one of the firm’s...

Time To Start Calling It: The Former Transatlantic Alliance

Donald Trump is distancing himself even further from his European allies — or should we start saying “former allies?” The U.S. president wants to impose his formula for peace on Ukraine, and Wednesday launched a new contemptuous attack on Volodymyr...

My Lunch Is My Lunch! The Psychology Of People Who Hate Sharing Food

PARIS — “Personally, I count the number of potatoes on each plate before serving my boyfriend...” Manon let out an embarrassed laugh, but the 26-year-old care assistant makes no secret: she hates sharing her food. She may share something out of...

An Earthly Calling For Ramadan? Breaking The Grip Of Modern Consumerism

BEIRUT — Everything slows down during Ramadan. With fewer meals throughout the day, our bodies’ energy reserves shrink, making us more judicious about how we use them. Our emotions become less intense, our priorities shift, our vocabulary narrows, and...

Havana Postcard: Signs Of Beauty In The Cuban Social Paradox

I was in Havana, visiting the world’s poorest book fair (held in February). Very few guest authors, few books on show... and yet it was a most attractive fair, perhaps for the rock-bottom prices. Some books were going for the equivalent of 1 U.S. cent,...

Our World Has Swallowed That Old Poison: Politics Based On Blind Faith

BUENOS AIRES — When U.S. President Donald Trump created the White House Faith Office in early February, it reminded me of the Happiness Ministry created by Venezuela’s late socialist leader, Hugo Chávez: both are useless, paradoxical and redundant. The...

Au Revoir, America

BERLIN — Siding with Russia and China on UN resolutions; getting into a shouting match with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office; and now suspending all of U.S. military aid to Ukraine: In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has...

USAID Was A Tool Of American Imperialism — Trump Will Find A Way To Replace It

BOGOTÁ — In the early 1960s, in the midst of the Cold War, U.S. President John F. Kennedy devised an imperialist control mechanism to stop the ‘contagion’ of the Cuban revolution: the Alliance for Progress. Touted as a tool for economic development in...

Whose Hummus? Israeli “Gastro-Colonialism” Is Another Bitter Pill For Palestinians

PARIS — It was one of those days when my lunch break couldn’t come soon enough. My stomach growled, and my mind kept drifting to one thing: hummus. Not just any hummus, not the pre-packaged kind I’ve seen in every supermarket since arriving in Paris....

In A Trump World, I’ll Just Stay At Home — Musings Of A Colombian Author

BOGOTÁ — In June 2022, as my entry visa for that earthly paradise otherwise known as the United States had a year left before expiring, I paid the fees for an appointment to renew it with U.S. consular services in Bogotá. Four months later, on Oct....

Alone Or Lonely? There’s A Critical Difference, Especially As We Get Older

BUENOS AIRES — Is being alone the same as feeling lonely? Hardly, for the latter is a sense of isolation and the need for more encounters or relations. Yet even in company you can feel alone, which is what makes this yet another, complex human...

Cuba Joining BRICS Is A Lifeboat For Its Economy — And A Warning To Trump

BOGOTÁ — In another piece of trademark bullying, U.S. President Donald Trump has placed communist-led Cuba back onto the U.S. list of sponsors of terrorism. It’s an absurd, obsolete instrument and outrageously unfair to a people that have already...

When Can We Return? The Eternal Palestinian Question Hangs Again Over A Decimated Gaza

GAZA CITY — In 1948, Israel and its gangs occupied Barbara village, following the fall of the Majdal city, and the expulsion of its residents. One day in November of that year, a six-year-old girl fled the village on her father’s shoulders. They...

Digital Overload: Screens Promise Connectivity, Deliver Atomization

BUENOS AIRES — Digital hyper-production, or the vast torrent of pictures and data coming out of our screens, seems to be dissolving the real world in some inexplicable, blinding light. This technological inflation — or inflammation — isn’t just about...

A Mediterranean Survivor To The Victims Of Gaza, Faces To Remember

CAIRO — Over the decades, as spectators of the tragedies of repeated migration attempts via small boats, crossing dangerous borders and water barriers for a better life, we came to know Luna Reyes. In 2021, 20-year-old Luna, a Spanish Red Cross...

Be Humble, Olaf Scholz — Sit Down

BERLIN — Olaf Scholz, the Chancellor of Germany, stands at the precipice of his political career — and contradicts himself to the very last moment. Just a few months ago, in September, he brushed off the notion of a vote of confidence as a distant...

UN, Multilateralism, Dialogue: These Are (Still) The Key Words To Peace In Our World

BOGOTÁ — It seems to be a time of chaos everywhere as we’re forced to watch wars, invasions, indiscriminate attacks, mass migration, dictatorship and destruction. It is as if the world were in a process of destruction, with politicians and rulers...

Notre Drame! Macron’s Fate In The Balance After Playing With Political Fire

PARIS — Dissolution, clarification, redemption. French President Emmanuel Macron was convinced this summer that he had the perfect plan when he suddenly dissolved Parliament and called snap elections. But he only succeeded in the first phase. With the...

Rather Than Blame Trump, Mexico Should Look In The Mirror

MEXICO CITY — U.S.-Mexico ties will always be complex: two nations that share a long border, yet have enormous historical, cultural and economic differences. Theoretically, the relationship is also a tremendous source of opportunities. Now, following...

Glass Towers, Fire Outside: The Middle East Wealth-And-Horror Show Can No Longer Hold

In this dark corner of the world, in our Arab lands, where glass cities seem like ghosts, skyscrapers soar like accusing fingers reaching toward the sky, escaping a scorched earth. Here, nations drown in endless riches — oil flows like a river through...

What Happened To Gen Z? The Hard Truth Of My Generation’s Shift To The Right

WARSAW — The demographic hand-wringing among progressives in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s victory is bound to continue in the days, weeks and years to come. What explains his rising support among African Americans and Latino men? With abortion...

Turkey’s Hazelnut Trap: Why Nutella Is Eating Up All The Profits

ISTANBUL — Excavations in the antique Hittite City of Nerik have unearthed 3,000-year-old hazelnut shells, shedding light on the long history of the nut’s existence on these lands. If Turkish hazelnuts are such an ingrained part of the country’s...

I’m A Human Being — A Refugee In Italy Responds To Salvini’s “Dogs And Pigs” Slur

ROME — My name is Soumaila Diawara. I’m neither a dog nor a pig: I am a refugee. Italy, the country where I have been living for the past 10 years, is my home. Here I was welcomed, and I was able to rebuild my broken life. Yet, I cannot stop thinking...

After Sinwar, Will Hamas Break From Iran — And Turn Back To Muslim Brotherhood?

BEIRUT — It is easier to talk about a Hamas future after Yahya Sinwar than Hezbollah’s future after Hassan Nasrallah. The hierarchical nature of Hezbollah — directly connected to the Wilayat al-Faqih and what the “Deputy of the Imam” sees — makes it...

Autumn Siege

JABALIA — For the past nine days, the Israeli army has been imposing a complete siege on the northern Gaza city of Jabalia, as well as other nearby neighborhoods. There are reports of the IDF committing horrific massacres against civilians, and...

Hanoi To Bavaria

HANOI — Had he never left Vietnam, Van Bau Nguyen would still be living with his parents. Even at 24, he would still share a bed with his brother and help his mother in the family’s Hanoi workshop until late at night. “In Vietnam, it’s hard to find a...

Censorship 2.0: Why The Fight For Free Speech Is Never Over

BUENOS AIRES — We protect the right to free speech for two basic reasons. The first is that it is in principle a sign of personal autonomy, which in turn requires protection from outside interventions, especially by the state. For that reason,...

All The Rage? We Need To Make Room Again For Anger In Art

HAMBURG — It is the cliché of the modern artist: bad-tempered, edgy and highly snappish, because in the end, had they been calm, relaxed, optimistic, they would have become dental technicians or yoga instructors with neatly trimmed beards. But that is...

Can Democracy Survive This Fragile Moment? A View From Latin America

BUENOS AIRES — For over a decade now, the social sciences have been peering into what is being termed the “democratic erosion” of Western-style, constitutional systems. The idea of democratic erosion received a boost in 2017, with the election of...

The Misery Paradox: Unpacking Cuba’s Eternally Broken Economy

Cuba is on a downward spiral and appears to be headed for economic collapse. Cubans lack essential items such as food and medicine, especially milk and bread, while the prices of other products, such as gasoline and electricity, have increased by...

The School Of Tomorrow

How Avant-Garde Design Could Remake Your Local School, From A To Z

The Problem With Our Modern Quest For A Pain-Free Existence

BUENOS AIRES — We live in times of an “emphatic self,” as the South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han points out in one of his best books, The Palliative Society. We live in a political, social, economic and fundamentally cultural environment that...

Straight To 6G? How Finland Is Leading The Push To Leapfrog 5G

OULU — It’s a little paradise for studying and innovating. With its many cafés, huge beanbags for napping, fab lab for 3D printing and several hairdressers, the ultramodern university in Oulu, Finland, is not your typical university. A private 5G...

The Mass Tourism Tipping Point

What Makes France Special? The Answer Was In The Olympic Opening Ceremony

PARIS — The hope of an “Olympic truce” began with the worst that France has to offer. At 4 a.m. last Friday, suspected far-left saboteurs set fire to SNCF equipment, paralyzing part of TGV high-speed train service for several hours. And yet, our...

Can An Autocrat Ever Lose? Venezuela Election Tests The Limits Of Democracy

BUENOS AIRES — On July 28, Venezuela will experience an “electoral process” that will be a landmark in the nation’s history — for better or worse. The vote will either kickstart the transition toward real democracy or consolidate a corrupt and violent...

Why Trade With China Weakens Mercosur — And How South Americans Only Make It Worse

BUENOS AIRES — The current strained relations between Argentina and Brazil may hide a problem about the region that goes deeper — and wider. Argentina’s scarce participation in the July 8 Mercosur summit is the latest sign of the South American trading...

The Zarif Card: Why Nobody Is Buying Tehran’s Old “Reformist” Trick This Time

Iran’s electoral circus turned out to be as absurd as expected, doing nothing to boost its frayed legitimacy as hoped. The majority of votes did not go to the winner, Masoud Pezeshkian, but stayed with the millions of Iranians who rejected the regime...

Far Right Frenemies? Le Pen And Meloni Jostle For European Leadership

TURIN — Giorgia Meloni can consider herself satisfied with the results of this past Sunday’s first round of the French elections: her arch-nemesis Emmanuel Macron, the embodiment of a European elite out of touch with what people need, has emerged as...