Who is going to stand up and save the world from US entitlement?

Something outrageous and unthinable happened at the dawn of 2026. U.S. striked Venezuela and captured its President Nicolas Maduro, in a swift operation that took place without the approval of the UN, or the US Congress itself. It is illegal by international and US law, yet somehow the world is just watching and tolerating yet another US illegal takeover and bullying of another country.

US President Donald Trump even blatantly stated that "we're going to run the country" for now", after Maduro's removal, or shall I say literal kidnapping from Caracas, the Venezuelan capital. The move comes as after months of tensions between the two countries and attacks on boats by the US, accused of carrying drugs from the South American country, something that was never officially proven. President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela said the U.S. military operations were a thinly veiled effort to oust him from power.

Maduro was open to talks with the US on drug trafficking allegations, just two days before America invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its president. But as usually, the self righteous Americans did what they do best; ignored international law, the UN, the sovereignty of another nation, and they "yeehawed" into Venezuela to establish their will, dominance and own economic interests.

The relationship between the two nations was always complicated, since former Vnezuelan President Hugo Chávez took office as president of Venezuela. Chávez declared himself socialist and "anti-imperialist", in reference to being against the government of the United States. Tensions between the countries increased further after Venezuela accused the administration of George W. Bush of supporting the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt against Chávez. Accusations which they later withdrew.

The reason for all the above of course, is one; oil! Americans want it desperately and they will stop at nothing in controlling as much of it as they can, no matter where it comes from. But ever since Venezuela nationalized it's oil reserves, America found an excuse to meddle in their country. Especially after Hugo Chávez officially took office in February 1999, several policy changes involving the country's oil industry were made to explicitly tie it to the state under the Bolivarian Revolution. That meant that nationalizing heavy oil projects in the Orinoco Petroleum Belt which formerly operated by international oil companies ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron, obviously caused unwanted ripples in the oil market, in which USA relies so much.

Not that Chavez or Maduro are examples of good leadership or democracy, as they both mismanaged their country's resources, they installed people close to them in key positions in their country's oil industry and corruption was widespread. However that does not give USA the right to "fix" other nations, without the approval of the UN. But when it was actually the last time that America played by the rules that they themselves call upon when their adversaries like China or Russia, do something wrong? Was it during the Iraq war that they blatantly lied about the alleged "weapons of mass distruction", that existed in Iraq and threatened US national security?

Many Venezuelans are celebrating outside their country the fall of Maduro, since the country's economy was in a bad shape for years. Partially because of corruption and their leaders' mismanagement, but do not forget the barrage of US blockades, sanctions since 2006 and oil embargo since 2019. This is a very well known policy of US, that somehow wherever there is oil, some dictator or "regime" is in power which the heroic, always benevolent Americans see fit to oust, replace and liberate the country by installing a new regime that is friendly to their own interests.

They break the country's economy with sanctions, so that the people suffer and they eventually become keen for a government change. In addition they fund the opposition, or they simply appoint and recognize them, or award them with a Nobel Peace Prize. My enemy's enemy is my best friend, right? Then all they have to do is stirr unrest and tighten the economic sanctions, until the citizens come to a breaking point, and there the Westerners get their legitimacy for intervention.

Something like this is also happening to Iran now, and it actually happened before in the same country many times over. The US helped oust Iran’s government in 1953 and reinstate the Shah, which in turn brought as result the Islamic Revolution, since the Shah was very unpopular after a few years in power. We all know the outcome of this to this day. But even now, Iran hasn't escaped US intervention, as Iran's currency depreciation 'brought about by US sanctions' and government 'mismanagement'. An economic mismanagement of course, according always of course to Western media.

The people of Iran are suffering and just like Venezuelans, feel the need to a "change". They are currently protesting in their country and it is not a coincidence that all this is happening at the same time with the events in Venezuela. The US President Donald Trump has already threatened the Iranians, that he is ‘locked and loaded’ to back demonstrations, again just like all the benevolent and freedom fighting US governments have done in the past, meddling in another country's affairs and offer solutions to an internal struggle that they helped to be created.

Little do both the Venezuelans and the Iranians currently know or remember in their desperation now to overthrow the current "regime", is what happens once their country is "saved by the God blessed America". Just take a look at Libya, where people there were so keen to get rid off Gaddafi in the past, that they also celebrated his downfall. Fourteen years later and Libya is in a worse state, a "fractured state" and a failed one by all means.

That will be the future of Venezuela too. A civil war may occur between those loyal to Maduro and the current establishment and those supporting change. The US will no doubt establish a friendly to them regime in the country (as Trump already declared), that will make it easier for them to rob Venezuela of its own oil. With the tolerance of the rest of us, and shamefully the collaboration of Europe.

So our continent tolerates all this, setting an example for anyone that wishes to annex a country, rob of its resources or proceed to a regime change, just to go ahead and act on it. I wonder what the European leaders will do, if Russia does the same to Ukraine's President Zelensky. Or if Trump, now unbothered by anyone, just goes and annexes Greenland as he already stated and expressed his interest of accomplishing. What if China copies US example and takes over Taiwan in the same way? Where do we draw the line, plus a most pressing matter; what will happen with Trump's Nobel Peace Prize aspirations now? Clearly he is not qualified for it under the circumstances.

Joking aside, how can we as European have the nerve to lecture or sanction Russia or China to abide by international law, when America can so blatantly go and piss on it so arrogantly and provokatively, and all that the European leaders can say is that they are "supporting the Venezuelan people". Which ones exactly, only the ones who oppose Maduro, or the country as whole which was humilated in the globe by having its own leader dragged away by another government, which is going to judge and trial him according to their own laws?

Will there ever be sanctions against America, somebody to finally stop them from taking it upon themselves to bring their own solutions to problems they partially created with their foreign policy? America is obviously desperate for resources now, as is Europe after financing the war in Ukraine for years, thus Venezuela will pay the price.

So far, no mention of the damage done or the number of victims that this "operation" by the US have had in Venezuela by our own Western media. Just celebrations and "concerns", support for the future- no matter what that means for the stability of the country or the region as a whole and Latin America as a continent. The world passively watches yet another US war crime, and tolerates it. I think it is about time that the rest of the world ganged up against the US and copied a page out of their own book; kidnap their President and trial him, saving the American people from the lunacy of their leaders.

First Published in The Eblana European Democratic Movement

The last brake by Howard Morton

It is a strange and unsettling moment when the fate of global stability appears to rest not on diplomacy, law or international institutions but on internal restraint within a single political party. Yet that is where we find ourselves. After reckless attacking Venezuela, kidnapping a sitting head of state, casual threats of invading Greenland and renewed saber-rattling toward Cuba it is no longer alarmist to say that the greatest immediate check on catastrophe may come from Republicans themselves.

This is not a partisan argument. It is a structural one. Power, once concentrated can only be slowed from within. Courts move slowly. Allies hesitate. Voters are episodic. When a president treats foreign policy like a reality show stunt, the final guardrail is often the people who share his party label, his committees, his donors, and his institutional language.

History is filled with examples of nations undone not by external enemies but by leaders who confuse bravado with strategy. Threats become habits. Habits become escalations. Escalations, once set in motion, rarely ask for permission from public opinion. They feed on pride, grievance and the intoxicating belief that strength is proven by domination rather than restraint.

The danger is not merely war in the traditional sense. It is miscalculation. It is the normalization of absurd ideas until they drift from talk radio into briefing rooms. It is the erosion of credibility so severe that allies no longer trust assurances and adversaries stop believing warnings. In that vacuum, conflict thrives.

There is also a moral cost that accumulates quietly. When leaders casually violating sovereignty or abduct elected officials they corrode the very norms that once protected their own country. Precedents do not respect borders. What is joked about today becomes justified tomorrow by someone else, somewhere else, with fewer restraints and darker intentions.

Republicans know this, even when they refuse to say it out loud. Many were elected on platforms of fiscal responsibility, national security seriousness, and constitutional order. Many privately understand that turning foreign policy into a personal loyalty test is not strength, but vulnerability. An impulsive commander-in-chief is not a projection of power; he is a liability wearing a flag pin.

The tragedy is that silence has become safer than courage. Dissent is punished. Nuance is mocked. Loyalty is measured not by competence but by applause volume. Yet the Constitution was not designed for applause. It was designed for friction. Congress was meant to slow presidents down, not cheer them on as they sprint toward cliffs.

Stopping a slide toward global chaos does not require grand speeches. It requires boring, procedural resistance. Hearings that drag. Votes that fail. Briefings that insist on facts instead of slogans. Closed-door conversations that end with a firm no. The system still allows this. What it lacks is will.

There is a temptation to assume that catastrophe will be self-correcting, that markets will panic, generals will intervene, or allies will apply pressure. That assumption is dangerous. Systems do not correct themselves automatically; people do. And the people best positioned to apply the brakes are those closest to the wheel.

Republicans do not need to become heroes. They need to become adults. They need to remember that patriotism is not obedience to a man, but responsibility to consequences. That opposing recklessness is not betrayal, but conservation of national interest in its purest form.

The world is already unstable. Conflicts simmer. Arms proliferate. Trust is thin. In such an environment, performative aggression is not leadership; it is negligence. Every threat issued for domestic applause echoes internationally as unpredictability. Every joke about invasion lands somewhere as a contingency plan.

If disaster is avoided, it will not be because of speeches on cable news or hashtags trending for a weekend. It will be because enough Republicans, quietly and unglamorously, decided that history mattered more than careers. That the republic mattered more than a rally. That stopping one man was not disloyalty, but duty.

That is the grim irony of this moment. The same party that enabled excess now holds the key to preventing its worst outcomes. Whether they use it will define not just an election cycle, but an era, remembered for restraint or for silence when restraint was still possible, and when consequences were no longer abstract but irreversible, permanent, globally shared, devastating, morally inescapable for generations, and impossible to undo afterward.

History will not accept excuses, only outcomes, and the record will be written regardless of who chose comfort instead.

The art of the 'made in Venezuela' Peace Prize by #thoughts by Theodore K. Nasos

In a move that surprised absolutely no one and stunned everyone who still remembers what irony is Donald J. Trump has formally demanded the Nobel Peace Prize following the attack on Venezuela, the arrest of Nicolás Maduro and his generous promise to personally “run the country himself, better than anyone, maybe ever.” According to sources very close to Trump (namely Trump), this sequence of events represents “peace, but very strongly.”

Standing before a row of flags that appeared to have been borrowed from a discount international buffet, Trump explained the logic with his usual surgical precision. “Nobody’s ever brought peace like this,” he said. “You arrest a dictator, you take over the country temporarily, maybe long-term, we’ll see and suddenly everyone stops fighting. That’s peace. That’s Nobel-level peace.”

The attack itself described by officials as “decisive,” “necessary,” and “confusing,” was followed by Maduro’s arrest under circumstances that remain unclear though one unconfirmed report suggests he was lured out by a fake invitation to a very exclusive summit called Definitely Not a Trap 2026. Trump praised the operation as “very clean,” adding, “Cleaner than anything Obama ever did, believe me.”

What truly elevates this moment into Nobel territory is Trump’s magnanimous offer to personally govern Venezuela. “I didn’t have to do it,” he said. “A lot of people asked me not to. Melania said nothing, which I took as support. But I care. I care about Venezuela. Tremendous potential. Oil, beaches, great hats.”

Trump’s proposed governing plan is said to include renaming Caracas to “Caracas-a-Lago,” replacing the national currency with a gold-colored Trump Coin (value flexible, confidence mandatory), and hosting weekly rallies to “explain socialism, but correctly this time.” Democracy, Trump assured critics, would be restored “eventually” once the country “learns how to vote properly.”

International reaction has been mixed. Some leaders expressed concern over the legality of the intervention, while others were reportedly too busy rereading the words “Nobel Peace Prize” and “Donald Trump” in the same sentence to form a response. The Nobel Committee itself has remained silent, though insiders say several members were last seen rubbing their temples and whispering, “Is this what Alfred Nobel died for?”

Trump undeterred, laid out his case clearly. “Obama got one for basically nothing. I get one for actually doing something, big something and suddenly it’s controversial? That’s unfair. Very unfair. Frankly, the prize owes me.”

Critics argue that peace achieved through missiles, arrests and a surprise foreign takeover is not peace but conquest. Trump dismissed this. “Negative people,” he said. “Very negative. I prefer winners. Venezuela is going to win so much it’ll get tired of winning.”

As the world watches this unprecedented chapter unfold, one thing is certain, if the Nobel Peace Prize is indeed awarded it may finally answer humanity’s oldest question, how dark can irony get before it collapses into a singularity and swallows us all whole.

Ephemera #145 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

Ephemera: a word with ancient Greek roots meaning:
‘something that is produced or created that
is never meant to last or be remembered’.

For more Ephemera, HERE!
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Carl Rogers: Healing the Person and the State by Rene Wadlow

Carl Ransom Rogers, (8 January 1902 - 4 February 1987)  an active World Citizen, was a US psychologist and educator and a leading figure of what is often called “the third wave of psychology."  The first wave was Freud and Jung and their views of psychoanalysis.  The second wave was  the behaviorists symbolized by B.F. Skinner and the later behavior-modification specialists.  The third wave, often called “humanist”, has Abraham Maslow, Rollo May, and Carl Rogers as its best known figures.  Unlike Freud and Jung who developed relatively-closed approaches and a set of therapeutic techniques built on their theories, the humanist psychological theory and therapies could change according to the persons being treated or the setting in which work was undertaken.

In fact, Carl Rogers' approach was first called “client-centered therapy” and was based on the idea that the client (no longer called a 'patient') had within him vast resources for understanding and accepting his dynamics of actions, attitudes, and emotions.  These resources are released in working with the therapist (often called a facilitator).  The therapist communicates his own caring, empathy, and non-judgmental understanding.

Carl Rogers' way of working with the people was to bring his enormous capacity for empathy and understanding, his listening skills, and his caring for people to create a climate in which the inner potential of the client for growth could be realized.  He had an unshakable belief that the person is trustworthy, resourceful, capable of self-direction, and consequently, able to modify his view of self to overcome obstacles and pain and to become more effective, productive, and fully functioning.   The view that clients have, within themselves, vast, untapped resources for self-directed growth was met with rejection by many in the field of psychotherapy.  As C.H. Pattrerson has written in his The Therapeutic Relationship  "Person-centered therapy is often threatening to therapists, since it places responsibility on the therapist as a person, not on the therapist as an expert using a wide range of techniques supposedly selected on the basis of dealing with specific client problems or diagnoses.”

Even others within the humanist wave could be critical.  Abraham Maslow said “Rogers doesn't have enough sin and psychopathology in his system. He speaks of the only drive as self-actualization, which is to imply there is only a tendency to health.  Then where does all the sickness come from? He needs more theory of psychopathogenesis, fear, of resentment, of countervalues, of hostility.”

If many therapists were unwilling to follow Rogers in their therapeutic work, many more individuals who were working with people seeking growth and the release of potentials rather than overcoming personal problems, did follow Rogers' lead.  The 1960s and 1970s saw the development of encounter groups and a human potential movement.  Rogers' views on the need for empathy and unconditional positive regard was taken over by many of those who organized encounter groups.  Rogers shifted some of his activities from one-on-one client centered work to what could be done in a group setting.  The two foundation blocks of Rogers' person-centered approach are 1) that each human being has within himself a growth potential or actualizing tendency, and 2) that this can best be realized if a proper interpersonal psychological climate is present.  These elements could also be used in a group setting, and many of Rogers' views were taken over in the training of primary and secondary school teachers.

With the experience of the positive results of encounter groups, late in his life, Rogers hoped that his healing techniques could be used to help heal the deep antagonisms within those who held responsibility for States.  In the early 1980s, in the Soviet Union, some persons became more open to  what was being done in the intellectual life of Western countries. Carl Rogers was invited to lecture to mental health professionals in the Soviet Union.  Soviet psychotherapy had been largely in the behaviorist tradition with the heavy use of drugs for behavior modification.  Freud and Jung were known by reputation but not to be mentioned in polite company.  Thus the largely unknown but not taboo humanist approach merited being known, and Rogers was warmly welcomed.

I met Rogers on his return from the Soviet Union when he gave a talk in Geneva on his Soviet experiences.  He had seen people who were discovering new ideas, who had deep inner resources but these resources had remained undeveloped during most of the Soviet period by fear of stepping outside Communist orthodoxy.  He saw the need for follow-up both by him and by others such as those of us meeting with him in Geneva.

Rogers' peace activities also concerned Central America and South Africa − areas torn by deep divisions and uncertainty about the future.  His death in 1987 ended his personal ability to carry on this peace-related approach.  Much of Rogers' influence today remains in the client-centered therapy field.  Most political leaders do not feel that they are in need of help to discover new and more satisfying personal meaning about themselves and the world they inhabit.  Perhaps power fills all their emotional needs.  However for those of us who work, without power,  for peace, the humanist psychology wave and its emphasis on the formation of attitudes  and aspirations can give us real tools for action.

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Notes
C.R. Rogers. Client-centered therapy ( Boston: Houghton-Mifflim, 1951)
C.R. Rogers. On becoming a person – a therapist's view of psychotherapy (Boston: Houghton-Mifflim, 1961)
C.R. Rogers. Carl Rogers on encounter groups (New York: Harper and Row, 1970)
C.R. Rogers. A way of being (Boston: Houghton-Mifflim, 1980)

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Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

When empires smile at each other’s madness by John Reid

There is a particular kind of silence that follows the first missiles of a war that everyone pretends was inevitable. It is the silence of diplomats suddenly “unreachable” of analysts scrambling to sound surprised, of allies staring at their phones wondering when exactly they lost control of the narrative. Imagine that silence settling over the Caribbean as U.S. forces attack and occupy Venezuela without provocation, wrapped in the usual language of “security,” “stability,” and “temporary necessity.” Now imagine Vladimir Putin watching it unfold, leaning back with a satisfied smile. Not because he cares deeply about Venezuela, but because nothing validates his worldview more than watching Washington do exactly what it condemns.

In this scenario, the hypocrisy is not a bug. It is the feature. The United States storms into yet another sovereign country confident that outrage will burn hot and then cool that headlines will move on, that sanctions will remain selectively moral. Putin doesn’t need to intervene. He doesn’t need to shout. He just needs to point, quietly, and let the images circulate. Every tank rolling through Caracas becomes a talking point in Moscow, Beijing, and every capital already tired of lectures about international law delivered from the barrel of a gun.

But the real entertainment, the kind that comes with popcorn and a front-row seat, begins later. It begins when Donald Trump, returning from ...Venezuela, with his familiar mix of bravado and grievance decides that Greenland should finally be taken seriously, not as an ally’s territory but as a prize. Not purchased politely, not negotiated slowly but invaded swiftly under the banner of “strategic necessity.” In one reckless stroke, the rules are not merely bent; they are shattered in full view of those who once believed they were protected by proximity, history, and shared values.

This is where the smile widens in the Kremlin. Because an invasion of Greenland is not just another illegal war; it is a betrayal written in bold letters. NATO allies would wake up to discover that the danger was never “out there” but embedded within the alliance itself. Friends would find themselves caught with their pants down, stunned that the red line they assumed existed was imaginary. And Putin, watching the chaos wouldn’t need to lift a finger. The West would be doing his work for him.

The tragedy here is not that strongmen enjoy watching other strongmen stumble. That has always been the case. The tragedy is how predictably this collapse unfolds when power replaces principle. For decades, the United States has insisted that its interventions are different. Cleaner. Necessary. Reluctant. Yet every bomb dropped without consequence erodes that claim. Venezuela becomes just another example filed away by leaders who no longer believe in the rules-based order because the rules were never consistently applied.

Trump invading Greenland would be the final punchline. It would confirm what critics have argued for years, that alliances under the wrong leadership are transactional illusions. That shared values can be overridden by ego. That treaties mean little when they stand in the way of spectacle. The shock wouldn’t come from adversaries. It would come from allies realizing they had been cast as extras in someone else’s reality show.

Putin’s satisfaction in such a moment would not be emotional; it would be strategic. Every fracture within NATO is a victory without cost. Every confused press conference in Europe is proof that the West’s moral authority has evaporated. Russia wouldn’t need to expand its influence aggressively; it would simply wait as the vacuum forms. Power, after all flows naturally toward absence.

And what of the global audience? They would watch this unraveling with a mix of cynicism and fatigue. Many already believe that international law is a slogan, not a shield. Seeing Venezuela occupied and Greenland invaded would not radicalize them; it would confirm their suspicions. The message would be unmistakable, sovereignty is conditional, alliances are fragile and the loudest country in the room sets the rules until it decides to break them.

This is not an argument about left or right, Democrat or Republican. It is an argument about restraint and memory. Empires fall not only because they are challenged, but because they forget why others once followed them. The smile on Putin’s face would not be about Russia’s strength. It would be about America’s willingness to abandon the very standards it once claimed to defend.

And when the popcorn is finished, when the laughter fades, the cost will remain. Not paid by presidents or generals, but by a world that has learned, yet again that chaos is contagious and that watching it happen is far easier than stopping it.

The Prince's Tale #Poem by Jan Sand

The prince rolled his eyes.
He twirled his mustache.
He emitted several sighs,
Shoulders shrugged with panache.

His palms opened to the skies.
“Memory can be slippery”, he said,
“Like mud.  Sometimes it dies.
Or then again, it may be fed
By loss.  I remember well the day
The princess spotted me, bent down,
Kissed me on the nose. Without delay
I felt panic, leaped upon her gown.
My bones creaked and grew
And in a snap, I joined humanity.
No longer I was the frog I knew.
She proclaimed love! This seemed insanity!
But, she was determined, so, we wed.
She did admit that, for a former frog
I was not too bad in bed.
She snored and slept like a log.
To be a man, I accept
Held some compensation, some surprise.
I converse like an adept
But retain an appetite for flies.”

Oil, flags and the illusions of control by Emma Schneider

If Donald Trump truly wants to “run” Venezuela and its oil, there is no clever shortcut, no artful deal, no strongman handshake that gets him there. He would have to put troops on the ground. A lot of them. And once that first boot hits Venezuelan soil, the fantasy collapses into a familiar, grinding reality: a war without clean edges, without gratitude, and without an exit strategy. It would not be a quick intervention. It would be Iraq, Afghanistan, and Korea fused into a single geopolitical nightmare, replayed in a country that has every reason to resist.

Oil makes men reckless. It has always done so. It creates the illusion that control of a resource equals control of a nation. Venezuela’s oil reserves are vast, tantalizing, and politically radioactive. But oil does not flow just because a foreign power wants it to. Pipelines need security. Refineries need workers. Ports need stability. All of that requires something far more difficult than rhetoric: legitimacy. And legitimacy cannot be airlifted in.

Venezuela is not an empty chessboard waiting for an outside player to impose order. It is a traumatized, polarized, fiercely nationalistic society that has already suffered through sanctions, economic collapse, corruption, and authoritarianism. Add foreign troops to that mix and you don’t get liberation; you get unification against you. Nothing consolidates fractured political camps faster than a foreign army claiming to know what’s best.

The idea that Venezuelans would welcome American troops as saviours is a comforting myth, mostly told by people who will never hear gunfire. Even those who despise their current leadership do not necessarily want a foreign flag flying over their infrastructure. History is unforgiving on this point. Populations can hate their rulers and still fight invaders with relentless determination. Pride survives poverty. Sovereignty matters, especially when it has been violated before.

And make no mistake: this would be an occupation, not a police action. To “run” oil means guarding wells, roads, workers, and exports across a country with jungles, mountains, sprawling cities, and porous borders. It means constant exposure to sabotage, ambushes, and insurgency. It means militias, criminal networks, and political factions all discovering that armed resistance suddenly pays very well. Every pipeline becomes a target. Every convoy becomes a headline.

Trump’s brand of foreign policy thrives on spectacle and pressure, not patience. But occupations demand patience in obscene quantities. They devour budgets, attention spans, and political capital. They require an American public willing to watch casualties mount for goals that grow murkier by the month. They require allies who are willing to be hated alongside you. And they require a commander-in-chief who can explain, year after year, why staying is better than leaving.

Iraq should have cured Washington of the belief that oil can finance its own conquest. Afghanistan should have ended the fantasy that superior firepower equals political control. Korea should remind anyone paying attention that even decades later, foreign troops can still be frozen in time, guarding unresolved wars. Venezuela would borrow the worst elements of all three: resource temptation, insurgent resilience, and long-term entanglement.

There is also the inconvenient matter of precedent. If the United States openly invades a country to control its oil, it forfeits the moral language it relies on everywhere else. Every future condemnation of aggression becomes hollow. Every lecture about sovereignty sounds transactional. Rivals would not miss the opportunity to mirror the logic elsewhere, citing America’s own actions as justification.

Domestically, such a war would rot institutions from the inside. Emergency powers expand. Dissent gets framed as disloyalty. Oversight weakens under the weight of “national security.” Wars fought for abstraction, oil markets, leverage, prestige, have a way of bleeding into civil life long after the shooting stops.

The cruel irony is that Venezuela’s collapse is real, and its people do need relief. But relief delivered at gunpoint is indistinguishable from domination. True recovery would require diplomacy, regional cooperation, economic restructuring, and time tools that are slow, frustrating, and unsatisfying to leaders addicted to decisive gestures.

Trump’s rhetoric thrives on dominance, on the idea that nations can be “run” like properties. Venezuela exposes the fatal flaw in that thinking. Countries are not assets. Oil is not obedience. And power, when applied without consent, does not stabilize, it ignites.

If troops go in, they will not be greeted by gratitude. They will inherit a war that cannot be won on television or declared over at a podium. And once it begins, no slogan will be loud enough to drown out the echo of history repeating itself yet again.

Worming #122 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

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

For more Worming, HERE!
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Nigeria after the echo of bombs by Eze Ogbu

Nigeria is drowning in fear, and the water keeps rising. From the villages of the Middle Belt to the crowded streets of the northeast, violence has become a constant background noise, so familiar that outrage now competes with exhaustion. Every attack blurs into the next, every funeral into another statistic. Yet in this grim landscape, one uncomfortable truth deserves to be said plainly, Trump’s bombs did not save Nigeria. They did not stabilize it. If anything, they poured fuel onto fires that were already burning and sparked new ones that no one seems prepared to contain.

The logic behind those bombings was seductively simple. Strike the extremists hard, crush their leadership and terror will retreat. It is a logic that flatters power and impatience, the belief that fear can be bombed out of existence. But Nigeria is not a chessboard, and its violence is not a single enemy that can be erased with airstrikes. It is a tangled web of ideology, poverty, corruption, ethnic tension, climate pressure, and state failure. Bombs can shatter buildings, but they do not untangle webs. They tear them wider.

In the short term, the explosions offered something that looked like progress. Militants scattered. Camps were destroyed. Headlines spoke of decisive action. But beneath that surface, something more dangerous was happening. Groups fractured rather than vanished. Fighters slipped across borders, blended into communities, or pledged loyalty to splinter factions even more radical than before. Violence did not end; it diversified. Nigeria did not become safer; it became more unpredictable.

Worse still, the bombings imported new terrors into the country’s already crowded nightmare. The global spectacle of foreign intervention gave local extremists exactly what they crave: validation. They reframed their cause as resistance against external aggression, recruiting not just the desperate, but the angry and humiliated. Each crater became propaganda. Each civilian death, whether acknowledged or denied, became a story whispered in markets and mosques, growing sharper with every retelling.

Nigeria’s tragedy is that it is constantly treated as a battlefield rather than a society. When bombs fall, nuance dies first. Entire regions become shorthand for terror, entire communities viewed with suspicion. The result is collective punishment by neglect. Schools close. Farms are abandoned. Young people grow up knowing soldiers more intimately than teachers. In that vacuum, extremism does not need to knock; it simply waits.

The irony is painful. The stated goal of the bombings was security, yet insecurity has metastasized. Armed groups now overlap with criminal gangs, bandits, and traffickers, blurring motives and multiplying threats. Kidnapping has become an industry. Villages pay taxes not to the state, but to whichever armed group passes through that week. Fear has been decentralized, franchised, and made resilient.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian state remains trapped in a reactive crouch, emboldened by foreign firepower but hollowed out from within. Bombs create the illusion of strength while postponing the hard work of reform. They distract from questions that truly matter: Why are security forces distrusted? Why do victims feel abandoned? Why does justice arrive late, if at all? No airstrike can answer those questions, and none was meant to.

Perhaps the most corrosive impact is psychological. When foreign bombs rain down, they send a message, intended or not, that Nigerian lives are a problem to be managed from afar. That sovereignty is conditional. That complexity is inconvenient. Over time, this erodes faith not only in government, but in the very idea that peace can be homegrown. Dependency replaces agency, resentment replaces hope.

Nigeria does not need more explosions echoing across its soil. It needs investment that does not arrive disguised as missiles. It needs schools protected as fiercely as oil interests, justice pursued as relentlessly as militants, and leadership brave enough to confront corruption with the same enthusiasm shown for war. Violence here is not a sudden infection; it is a chronic illness worsened by blunt treatment.

Trump’s bombs may be history, but their aftershocks are not. They linger in new alliances, new hatreds, and new graves. If Nigeria is to stop drowning, it will not be pulled to safety by foreign firepower. It will rise, slowly and painfully, only when fear is answered not with louder violence, but with dignity, accountability, and the radical patience that real peace demands. Until then, every bomb dropped in the name of security will continue to echo as a reminder of shortcuts taken, lessons ignored, and lives lost in a struggle that demands understanding more than destruction. And humility.

Ovi History #eMagazine #15: Joan of Arc

 

The fact that a death and not current events motivated the theme of the Ovi History issue was pure coincidence. Still, here we are; 15th issue of Ovi History and first for 2026 and that while events and the madness of the very few shakes humanity.

And yes it was the death of a controversial silver screen star, Ms Brigitte Bardot and her very politically controversial past that brought in mind Jean d'Arc whose legend lives similar to Ms Bardot presence.

St. Joan of Arc is a national heroine of France, a peasant girl who, believing that she was acting under divine guidance, led the French army in a momentous victory at Orléans that repulsed an English attempt to conquer France during the Hundred Years’ War. Captured a year afterward, Joan was burned to death by the English and their French collaborators as a heretic. She became the greatest national heroine of her compatriots, and her achievement was a decisive factor in the later awakening of French national consciousness.

Joan was the daughter of a tenant farmer at Domrémy, on the borders of the duchies of Bar and Lorraine. In her mission of expelling the English and their Burgundian allies from the Valois kingdom of France, she felt herself to be guided by the voices of St. Michael, St. Catherine of Alexandria, and St. Margaret of Antioch.

Joan was endowed with remarkable mental and physical courage, as well as a robust common sense, and she possessed many attributes characteristic of the female visionaries who were a noted feature of her time. These qualities included extreme personal piety, a claim to direct communication with the saints, and a consequent reliance upon individual experience of God’s presence beyond the ministrations of the priesthood and the confines of the institutional church.

For this issue of Ovi History, two historical fiction short stories from Lucas Durand and James O. Miller.

So,
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With the hope that you will read and learn from the articles,
do read this historic chronicle

Thanos Kalamidas