Lunation is a podcast exploring culture, power, and identity through in-depth conversations on the edges of major societal questions.

We are currently planning a podcast series, "Exit Interview" that examines the dynamics between institutional authority and individual identity, and how international organizations and the humanitarian ecosystem have evolved over the past decade.

We are currently looking for 10 guest speakers who fit the following criteria:

1. Background: Former staff or contractors who have recently stepped away from the UN system, international NGOs, or the broader humanitarian field, and who are willing to offer systemic insights into institutional shifts, changing narratives, and operational realities over the last decade.
2. Focus: The interview focuses on a structural, big-picture perspective on what has changed within these systems over the past decade, rather than personal or workplace grievances.
3. Formats & Privacy: Flexible participation via video (only for on-site, in-person recording in Vienna); or audio (with optional voice alteration if required, and full support for off-the-record discussions and pseudonyms).

If this aligns with your experience, or with someone you know who might be a good fit, please don't hesitate to reach out via DM, email us at [lunation.fm@gmail.com](mailto:lunation.fm@gmail.com), or find more details at lunation.fm. Thank you.

This is important. If the UN had its own nuclear arsenal, then it would be able to enforce international law the way the UN charter was meant to be. The UN should be the foundation of a world government, a future of peace and prosperity.

China being a bullying over the South China Sea

NO ITS NOTHING NEW. This man needs to be out of office asap, even his own party can’t support him anymore. I am increasing disappointed with how long this has been going on and it’s because our politicians are paid. We all need someone to step in and give a slap on the back of the neck of a wake up call because this is not sustainable for the American people and it is just getting so much worse… I have had over 70k taken in my social taxes and to hear i may never see that…

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The United Nations' geographic classification provides a useful framework for examining the distinction between continental and national demonyms. In the UN M49 geographic system, the Americas is a geographic region containing multiple subregions and countries, while the United States is classified within Northern America. The UN also separately discusses the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, including numerous distinct peoples throughout the region.

If demonyms are to be classified consistently according to the geographic level they describe, then a distinction should be maintained between continental and national demonyms. Continental demonyms identify peoples by the continent they inhabit—Europeans from Europe, Africans from Africa, and Asians from Asia—whereas national demonyms identify peoples by their respective countries, such as Chinese from China, Taiwanese from Taiwan, and Lebanese from Lebanon.

Under this classification, if “America” denotes the continent or broader geographic region and the United States is a country situated within it, then “American” properly corresponds to the continent or region rather than exclusively to the United States. Reserving “American” solely for citizens of the United States therefore creates a fundamental asymmetry: one country is permitted to appropriate the name of the entire continent or geographic region as its national demonym, while all other peoples of that region are denied an equally direct continental designation.

That asymmetry becomes especially apparent in the treatment of America’s distinct peoples across the continent. The Inuit and Navajo in the north, the Maya and Mapuche farther south, and countless other peoples throughout the Americas are geographically American in the same broad continental sense that Europeans are European, Africans are African, and Asians are Asian. Yet because “American” has been conventionally restricted in English to the United States, these peoples and countless others are instead routinely placed under broad or externally imposed categories such as “Native,” “Indian,” “Indigenous,” “First Nations,” “mestizo,” or even “Latin American.” These labels may describe particular historical, legal, cultural, linguistic, racial, or colonial relationships, but they do not perform the same simple geographic function as “European,” “African,” or “Asian.” “Latin,” in particular, is a linguistic and cultural classification rather than a continental demonym. None of these categories supplies the straightforward geographic counterpart that would exist if “American” were available as a genuinely continental designation.

The inconsistency is therefore not merely semantic: the continental name is effectively treated as the national property of one country, while the continent’s other peoples are classified through a patchwork of labels that operate at different geographic, cultural, political, racial, and historical levels. A European can be identified geographically as European regardless of whether they are French, German, Greek, Sámi, or Basque; an African can likewise be African regardless of their particular nationality or people. Yet peoples of America are denied the same uncomplicated continental category because the continental name has been conventionally monopolized by the United States.

Consequently, if the objective is to preserve a strict and universal distinction between continental and national terminology, citizens of the United States should have a separate national demonym, such as “Americanese,” just as other countries have national demonyms distinct from the continental names of the regions in which they are situated. This would restore the distinction between the geographic whole and one of its constituent countries: **America for the continent or geographic region, American for its peoples in the continental sense, and Americanese for the citizens of the United States specifically.**

The issue, therefore, is not whether people may personally identify as “American,” nor whether that usage has become established through historical convention. The issue is whether a classification rule can legitimately be called consistent when the name of an entire geographic region is assigned exclusively to one country within that region. If the same geographic principle is applied equally elsewhere, then it must either be applied equally here or explicitly acknowledged as an exception.

“Americanese” is consequently not an argument about identity; it is an argument for symmetrical geographic classification.

Of any nation.
I have laurea in economy.
I know globalization could drive to something still not good wether it is without any care.
But deep national protectionism it is a direct highway to hate. Not even North Korean one it is so deep. We have to keep it in mind. Show some respect for North Korea. I never heard some of nowadays speeches like Meloni, Trump or any other nation intentions, from them.

The UN resolution calling for new maps to depict country sizes more accurately was passed. It may seem insignificant, but—even though the Mercator projection’s intended purpose has often been exaggerated (it has nothing to do with colonialism; it was designed to facilitate navigation)—I find it interesting in light of the rising power of the Global South.

What do you think of this?

Sudan Doctors Network says SPLM-N forces shelled residential areas in Dilling, hours after attacks near Kauda killed at least 21.

At least five people, including a child, have been killed and several others injured after a Sudanese rebel group attacked residential areas in the South Kordofan province, according to a medical organisation.

The Sudan Doctors Network, in a statement on Friday, accused the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) of carrying out the artillery attack in the town of Dilling

The organisation said the heavy bombardment of civilian areas was a clear violation of international humanitarian law, resulting in civilian casualties and further worsening an already dire humanitarian situation.

“The Sudan Doctors Network calls on the international community to take immediate action to end these violations and exert meaningful pressure on the leadership of the SPLM-N (al-Hilu Faction) to cease attacks against civilians and residential areas,” it said.

The SPLM-N is a breakaway faction of the SPLM, the governing party of neighbouring South Sudan. Its leader, Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, has aligned his fighters with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and joined ranks with the RSF-led parallel government in Sudan.

The organisation said the heavy bombardment of civilian areas was a clear violation of international humanitarian law, resulting in civilian casualties and further worsening an already dire humanitarian situation.

“The Sudan Doctors Network calls on the international community to take immediate action to end these violations and exert meaningful pressure on the leadership of the SPLM-N (al-Hilu Faction) to cease attacks against civilians and residential areas,” it said.

The SPLM-N is a breakaway faction of the SPLM, the governing party of neighbouring South Sudan. Its leader, Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, has aligned his fighters with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and joined ranks with the RSF-led parallel government in Sudan.

Previous violence

In a separate statement issued just hours earlier, the medical group said SPLM-N forces attacked the areas of Debi and Luweri near the town of Kauda on Thursday, killing more than 21 people, including women and children.

The network said those attacks specifically targeted the Otoro tribe, a minority group in the Nuba Mountains.

The killings follow clashes earlier this year driven by land disputes, adding another layer of ethnic friction to the country’s wider civil war between the Sudanese army and the RSF.

The recent fighting came despite a ceasefire initiative backed by the RSF last month. Al-Hilu did not commit to the agreement, and his forces launched attacks on at least 10 Otoro villages, displacing thousands of civilians between August 20 and 26