KajyibwamiNotes

  A viral social media post recently claimed that Iran had discovered a weapon “more powerful than oil.” According to the post, the Strait of Hormuz does not only transport nearly twenty percent of the world’s oil, but also carries undersea cables powering the global internet. It further alleged that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had threatened to cut those cables unless major technology companies such as Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon complied with its demands. While fact-checking later showed that many parts of the claim were exaggerated or unsupported, the story nevertheless revealed an important truth about the modern world: digital infrastructure has become one of the most strategic assets in global politics. The internet is often imagined as something abstract, wireless, and borderless. In reality, the internet is deeply physical. It depends on submarine cables, data centers, cloud computing facilities, satellites, semiconductor factories, energy syst...

  The debate between facilitative and evaluative mediation has for many years occupied a central place in mediation discourse, often framed as a choice that mediators must make about who they are and how they practice. This framing suggests a sharp divide between two opposing approaches: one that privileges party self-determination and process, and another that emphasizes substantive assessment and guidance. In practice, however, this binary has proven to be more misleading than useful, particularly in contemporary mediation environments where disputes are complex, emotionally charged, and shaped by legal, commercial, and institutional realities. In lived mediation practice, facilitation and evaluation do not function as fixed identities or mutually exclusive methods. Rather, they operate along a continuum, one that requires constant judgment, attentiveness, and responsiveness to the evolving needs of the parties. Experienced mediators rarely enter a mediation committed to a singl...