A voice the desert still hears by Marja Heikkinen

Pope Leo XIV's appeal from Lampedusa was one of those moments when a moral voice echoes so clearly that the silence surrounding it becomes the real story. Standing on an island that has become both a sanctuary and a symbol of Europe's unfinished conscience, he urged leaders to meet migration not with panic or political calculation but with humanity. His words were not revolutionary. They were profoundly ordinary, help people integrate, address the conditions that force them to flee and remember that migrants are human beings before they become statistics.

Yet in today's Europe, those simple truths sound almost radical. Lampedusa has long been the front line of a migration crisis that Europe still treats as someone else's problem. Every overcrowded boat arriving on its shores carries not only exhausted people but also another test of the continent's values. Europe proudly celebrates its commitment to human rights, solidarity and human dignity. Those principles are engraved in treaties, repeated in speeches, and taught in classrooms. But they often disappear the moment frightened families appear on the horizon.

The political landscape has changed dramatically. Across Europe, far-right parties continue to gain ground, transforming migration from a complicated policy issue into a permanent campaign weapon. Fear has become more effective than facts. Every arrival is portrayed as an invasion. Every refugee is treated as a potential threat before being recognized as a fellow human being.

Many of these political movements wrap themselves in Christian language. They invoke Europe's Christian heritage, defend crosses in public squares, and speak passionately about preserving Christian civilization. Yet the Christianity they promote often seems strangely detached from the Gospel itself.

The Jesus they claim to defend was born into poverty, fled violence as a child, and repeatedly commanded his followers to welcome the stranger. Hospitality is not a footnote in Christian teaching; it is one of its central pillars. Compassion is not optional. Mercy is not reserved for those carrying the correct passport.

This is precisely why the Pope's message feels so isolated. He speaks the language of Christianity while many politicians merely speak the language of Christian identity. There is a profound difference. One demands sacrifice. The other demands exclusion. One asks what responsibilities we owe others. The other asks only how effectively we can keep them out.

It is politically easier to build fences than functioning asylum systems. It is easier to blame migrants than confront demographic decline, labour shortages, or the instability created by wars and economic exploitation beyond Europe's borders. Complex problems rarely produce simple solutions, but simple slogans win elections.

The Pope understands something many leaders appear unwilling to acknowledge. Migration will not disappear because governments become harsher. Climate change, armed conflict, persecution, and economic despair will continue pushing people toward safety. The real choice is not whether migration exists but whether it is managed with wisdom or with fear.

His call to improve conditions in countries of origin is equally important. Walls cannot substitute for diplomacy, development and long-term investment. Preventing desperate journeys begins long before desperate people reach the Mediterranean.

Perhaps the saddest image is not the boats approaching Lampedusa but the Pope himself, sounding increasingly like a biblical prophet crying out in the wilderness. His voice is steady, compassionate, and morally consistent. But too often it is drowned out by applause for those promising ever higher walls.

History has a habit of remembering lonely voices more kindly than triumphant crowds. Europe should hope it still has time to listen.

When I was loved by the sun #Poem by Abigail George

You did not love me
You couldn't if you tried
The illusion of you loved me better still
Perhaps it was meant to be this way
Perhaps it was just meant to be this way
That you would be seduced by other women
That you would marry
That there would be a suitable girl on your arm at a party eating canapes and drinking merlot or cabernet
That you would have a wife
Far lovelier and younger than me
With a steadfast personality and psychological profile
I could not give you children
I forget the reason why
That glaring moment of indecision that tore the fabric of us apart
I wish you journey safe my love
Until you return to me
For now I have the illusion of you
The light beer cooling in the fridge
These images of war of rust and blood and honey in my hands
I think of Cambodian snow and heat
You underground in the mine
Your security clearance
Your stint in the Congo
Your stories
How I long for your stories
Your voice
To feel your hand in the small of my back
Making circular motions and zigzag patterns
The night is as long as my memory
Day is pain when this soldier's wife remembers you.

The myth of the cloud by Jiro Lambert

Artificial intelligence has arrived wrapped in the imagery of science fiction. We speak about it as though it floats above the world, inhabiting an invisible "cloud" that somehow thinks, learns, and creates independently of the people who built it. Popular culture has encouraged this illusion for years. AI is portrayed as an ethereal intelligence, detached from geography and physical limits, capable of existing everywhere and nowhere at once. The reality is considerably less glamorous. Artificial intelligence is not magic. It is infrastructure.

Behind every astonishing AI demonstration is a data center that is, at its heart, an ordinary building. It is made of concrete, steel, cables, transformers, and industrial cooling systems working around the clock. Instead of futuristic holograms, there are endless rows of servers producing enormous amounts of heat. The greatest technological revolution of our generation depends, quite literally, on exceptionally powerful air conditioners.

This is the part of the AI conversation that often disappears beneath the excitement. We marvel at the chatbot composing essays or the image generator producing surreal masterpieces in seconds, yet rarely consider the warehouses quietly consuming electricity to make these moments possible. The digital world has never escaped the physical one. It merely hides it well.

The phrase "the cloud" may be one of the most successful marketing inventions of the digital age because it suggests weightlessness. Clouds drift effortlessly across the sky. Data centers do not. They occupy expensive land, require immense supplies of energy, demand constant maintenance, and consume billions of dollars in investment. They are monuments not only to engineering but also to capital.

Every leap forward in artificial intelligence is therefore not merely a triumph of algorithms. It is equally a triumph of financing. Building frontier AI requires staggering amounts of money, specialized hardware, skilled engineers, electricians, construction workers, cooling experts, and utility planners. The future, it turns out, depends on remarkably traditional professions.

There is something almost ironic about this. The technology that promises to transform every aspect of modern life remains deeply dependent on some of humanity's oldest realities: land, energy, labor, and money. No amount of sophisticated software can escape these constraints. Intelligence may increasingly be digital, but its foundation remains stubbornly physical.

Recognizing this changes how we should think about AI. It is tempting to imagine artificial intelligence as an unstoppable force evolving according to its own mysterious logic. In truth, it advances only because societies choose to build the infrastructure supporting it. Governments approve permits. Investors provide capital. Workers assemble equipment. Utilities generate electricity. Without this vast human effort, AI simply does not exist.

Perhaps the most revealing lesson is that every technological revolution eventually returns us to basic economics. The future is never built solely from brilliant ideas. It is built from concrete, cables, cooling systems, construction crews, electrical grids, and balance sheets. Artificial intelligence may appear to belong to tomorrow, but its roots remain firmly planted in the ordinary realities of today.

Worming #132 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

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

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The cooperative nobody voted for by Virginia Robertson

There is an irony hiding in plain sight every July 4. While Americans celebrate Independence Day with fireworks, parades and speeches about liberty, the same date is also observed internationally as the International Day of Cooperatives. The coincidence is amusing at first glance. But viewed through the lens of modern American politics, it becomes something far more thought-provoking.

The United States often presents itself as the world's great experiment in representative democracy, a nation founded on the revolutionary idea that government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. Yet over recent decades, that ideal has increasingly collided with another reality: the growing perception that the country's most consistent priority is not its citizens but its largest corporate interests and wealthiest shareholders.

That criticism did not begin with Donald Trump, nor will it end with him. Corporate influence has steadily expanded under presidents from both major parties. Lobbyists write legislation, campaign donors shape priorities, and billion-dollar industries enjoy access that ordinary citizens can scarcely imagine. But Trump's two administrations became, for many critics, the most unapologetic expression of that relationship. His rhetoric celebrated ordinary Americans, yet his governing philosophy often emphasized deregulation, tax reductions for corporations, and the language of business efficiency over public institutions.

It is tempting to think of America today not simply as a republic but as a peculiar kind of cooperative, not the democratic, community-based cooperative envisioned by the international movement, where every member has a meaningful voice, but one whose premium shareholders hold disproportionate voting power. In this version, influence scales with wealth, access, and market value rather than citizenship.

The metaphor is imperfect, but revealing. In a traditional cooperative, members share both responsibility and benefit. In today's America, many citizens increasingly feel they carry responsibility without sharing equally in the rewards. Productivity rises while wages stagnate. Corporate profits break records while housing becomes unattainable for younger generations. Stock markets flourish even as millions worry about healthcare costs, education debt, and economic insecurity. Success is measured by quarterly earnings reports rather than the long-term health of communities.

This transformation has altered not only policy but political language itself. Voters are frequently described as consumers. Public services become products. Universities become brands. Hospitals become revenue centers. Even citizenship increasingly resembles a market transaction in which one's value depends on purchasing power rather than democratic participation.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of this shift is how ordinary it now seems. Political debates revolve around reassuring financial markets almost as much as reassuring families. Every major policy announcement is immediately evaluated through the question: "How will Wall Street react?" Far less frequently does the first question become: "How will working people experience this?"

None of this means capitalism itself is the enemy. Markets have generated extraordinary innovation, prosperity, and opportunity. Businesses create jobs, develop technology, and improve living standards. The problem arises when markets cease being tools that serve society and instead become the society that government primarily serves.

America's founders certainly understood commerce. They were merchants, farmers, lawyers, and entrepreneurs. But they also feared concentrations of unchecked power. Their revolution was, above all, about preventing authority from becoming too distant from the people. Whether that authority wears the uniform of a king or the tailored suit of a multinational executive is ultimately beside the point.

So perhaps the shared date between Independence Day and the International Day of Cooperatives offers an unintended reminder. Independence is not merely freedom from outside rule. It also requires vigilance against internal systems that gradually shift political influence toward those with the deepest pockets.

Fireworks celebrate a declaration made in 1776. The harder question, nearly two and a half centuries later, is whether political independence still belongs equally to every citizen or whether the nation's most influential cooperative has quietly become one where the premium shareholders set the agenda while everyone else simply owns symbolic membership.

The curated exotic by Zarah Rivera

Walk through enough major Western galleries and museums, and a pattern begins to emerge. Contemporary artists from the Middle East and Asia are celebrated, exhibited and enthusiastically discussed but often through a carefully filtered lens that makes them more digestible for Western audiences. The result is a polished version of diversity that too often resembles an updated form of Orientalism rather than its rejection. The imagery has changed. The mechanisms have not.

The contemporary art world prides itself on global inclusion. Curators speak the language of dialogue, representation, and cultural exchange. Yet the market quietly rewards artists whose work confirms familiar expectations. Political trauma sells. Religious symbolism sells. Female resistance sells. Refugee narratives sell. Dictatorships, wars, veils, surveillance, and colonial scars become recurring motifs because they fit an established narrative that Western institutions already understand. Art that refuses these categories risks becoming invisible.

This is not to dismiss artists who genuinely explore conflict or identity. Many create profoundly moving work rooted in lived experience. The problem arises when these subjects become unofficial entry requirements for international recognition. A Japanese artist exploring suburban boredom or an Iranian painter fascinated by geometry may struggle to attract the same attention as peers whose work can be framed within stories of oppression, exile, or resistance. Complexity gives way to branding.

Western galleries rarely admit that they participate in cultural packaging. Instead, they present exhibitions as acts of discovery, introducing audiences to distant voices while subtly controlling how those voices are interpreted. Labels and catalog essays frequently become as important as the artworks themselves, steering visitors toward predetermined conclusions. The artist is transformed into both creator and cultural ambassador, expected to explain an entire civilization through a handful of installations.

Ironically, the global art market often rewards authenticity by demanding performance. Artists learn which themes resonate with collectors, institutions, and biennales. Some naturally revisit those themes because they remain meaningful. Others inevitably recognize that certain narratives travel better than others. Markets shape production. Galleries shape markets. The cycle reinforces itself until audiences begin to mistake repetition for cultural truth.

Meanwhile, countless artists producing abstract painting, conceptual sculpture, digital experimentation, or playful visual language remain overlooked simply because their work refuses to satisfy geopolitical curiosity. Their art is treated as insufficiently representative, as though artists from Cairo, Seoul, or Karachi carry an obligation to educate Western viewers before they are permitted to simply create.

Neo-Orientalism thrives precisely because it appears progressive. Unlike the colonial exhibitions of the past, today's galleries rarely present overt stereotypes. Instead, they curate carefully nuanced narratives that still revolve around difference, otherness, and cultural translation. The gaze has become more sophisticated, but it remains a gaze directed from the same centers of institutional power.

Perhaps the most radical exhibition a Western museum could organize would be one that refuses to explain non-Western artists through politics or identity alone. Imagine encountering their work without expecting it to represent a nation, a religion, or a historical wound. Imagine allowing artists from the Middle East and Asia the same creative freedom routinely granted to their Western counterparts, the freedom to be contradictory, mundane, humorous, abstract, or simply impossible to categorize.

That would not merely diversify museum walls. It would finally begin dismantling the invisible frame surrounding them.

Cocktails without consequences by Polly Hobbs

There was a time when declining a drink at a party required an explanation. Pregnancy, early meetings, antibiotics, marathon training, society seemed to demand a reason for sobriety, as though refusing alcohol was a breach of etiquette. Today, that quiet social contract is beginning to unravel, and surprisingly, it is not being dismantled by lectures about health or morality. It is being undone by bartenders.

The rise of sophisticated zero-proof cocktail bars represents something far more interesting than another wellness trend. It signals a cultural shift in how adults define pleasure, sophistication, and social connection. The best non-alcoholic drinks are no longer sugary stand-ins for the "real thing." They are intricate botanical creations layered with herbs, spices, fermented ingredients, rare teas, and house-made bitters that demand the same craftsmanship as any premium cocktail.

Ironically, removing alcohol has forced bartenders to become even more creative. Without ethanol masking flaws or providing warmth, every ingredient must justify its place in the glass. The result is often more complex than the gin or whiskey cocktails they replace.

Perhaps the greatest innovation, however, isn't found in the drink itself but in the atmosphere it creates.

Alcohol has long monopolized adulthood. Promotions, weddings, first dates, business deals, reunions even funerals have revolved around the expectation that shared intoxication deepens human connection. Yet anyone who has endured a loud bar conversation with someone three drinks ahead knows alcohol can just as easily diminish communication as enrich it.

Zero-proof bars challenge that assumption. Conversations last longer because memories survive the evening. People leave with clear minds rather than fuzzy recollections. Nobody calculates whether they are safe to drive home or debates ordering "just one more." The night ends on its own terms instead of being dictated by blood alcohol content.

Critics inevitably dismiss the movement as expensive theater. Why pay premium prices for a drink without liquor? But that criticism misunderstands what people are purchasing. They are not buying ethanol; they are buying craftsmanship, ambiance, ritual, and participation. Fine dining never justified itself solely by calories and premium coffee is not valued because caffeine is scarce. Experience has always commanded a price.

There is also something quietly democratic about the movement. The designated driver is no longer condemned to nursing flat cola all evening. Someone avoiding alcohol for religious, medical, or personal reasons no longer feels excluded from the shared ritual of raising an elegant glass. Nobody has to announce why they are abstaining because the menu itself assumes that choice is perfectly ordinary.

Will alcohol disappear? Of course not. Wine, beer, and spirits are woven too deeply into culture and history to vanish because rosemary infusions have become fashionable. But they are losing their monopoly on celebration.

That may be the true revolution hidden inside these crystal-clear glasses. For generations, adulthood was measured by one's ability to drink. Increasingly, it may be measured by something else entirely: the freedom to choose what belongs in your glass without feeling the need to explain yourself the next morning or to recover from the night before.

Ghostin’ #131 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

They are like neighbours we are aware of,
except we are NOT aware of and
they have absolutely nothing to do with Halloween.

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The day after the vote by Markus Gibbons

The most important question about the 2026 midterm elections is not simply who wins or loses. It is whether Americans will still accept elections as legitimate when the results disappoint them. That is the challenge hanging over the country, and it is impossible to ignore.

Donald Trump has transformed the Republican Party into a movement that often treats electoral defeat not as a normal feature of democracy but as evidence that something must have gone wrong. Whether that means alleging fraud, attacking election officials or insisting that unfavorable outcomes are inherently suspect, the political incentive has become clear: doubt can be more useful than concession.

The greater concern is not whether claims of misconduct will emerge, they almost certainly will from one side or another, as they often do in modern politics. The deeper concern is what happens if efforts are made to undermine confidence in legitimate election outcomes through misinformation, political pressure or attempts to overturn certified results. American democracy has survived fierce disagreements before, but it depends on a shared understanding that elections ultimately settle political disputes.

If Republicans perform poorly in 2026, will party leaders encourage acceptance of the verdict? Or will familiar narratives about stolen elections once again dominate headlines and fundraising appeals? Recent history gives many observers reason to worry. Once allegations become political currency, disproving them rarely restores public trust. Suspicion lingers long after court rulings, recounts and certifications have spoken.

But speculation about what politicians might do is only half the story. The more revealing question is how Americans would react if they believed democratic norms were being deliberately challenged. Public patience has limits. Election workers, judges, state officials, and local administrators have already endured years of threats and relentless scrutiny. Another cycle of widespread attempts to delegitimize certified results could provoke an even stronger institutional and civic response.

That response would not necessarily take the dramatic form imagined by political thrillers. Democracies rarely collapse or recover in cinematic fashion. Instead, they harden through ordinary acts: judges enforcing the law, governors resisting improper pressure, journalists separating evidence from rumor and citizens refusing to surrender their faith in constitutional processes. The quieter these defenses appear, the stronger they often prove to be.

Ironically, the greatest danger to democracy may not be a single disputed election but the gradual normalization of permanent distrust. A republic cannot function indefinitely if millions of voters conclude before ballots are even counted that only one outcome could possibly be legitimate. At that point, elections cease to resolve conflicts; they merely postpone them until the next accusation.

This is not a challenge unique to Republicans. Every political movement faces the temptation to question outcomes that disappoint its supporters. But because Donald Trump remains the dominant figure within today's Republican Party, the burden of demonstrating respect for democratic institutions falls especially heavily on the movement he leads. Leadership is measured not only by how victory is celebrated but by how defeat is accepted.

The 2026 midterms may therefore become something larger than a contest for congressional seats. They could become another referendum on whether the United States still possesses the civic habits necessary for constitutional democracy. The ballots themselves are only pieces of paper. What gives them power is the willingness of winners and losers alike to recognize their authority.

That willingness, more than any campaign slogan or electoral strategy, will determine whether America's democratic institutions emerge stronger or merely more exhausted, from another fiercely contested election.

Oviri (The Savage) #Poem by Strider Marcus Jones

 

woman,
wearing the conscience of the world-
you make me want
less civilisation
and more meaning.
drinking absinthe together,
hand rolling and smoking cigars-
being is, what it really is-
fucking on palm leaves
under tropical rain.
beauty and syphilis happily cohabit,
painting your colours
on a parallel canvas
to exhibit in Paris
the paradox of you.
somewhere in your arms-
i forget my savage self,
inseminating womb
selected by pheromones
at the pace of evolution.
later. I vomited arsenic on the mountain and returned
to sup morphine. spread ointments on the sores, and ask:
where do we come from.
what are we.
where are we going.

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Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society, nominated for the Pushcart Prize x4 and Best of the Net x3, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.

#eBook: Mogadishu's dust by Lucas Durand

 

Mogadishu had fallen silent for only a moment. A brief, unnatural calm in the air, before the whole city erupted again. The sun had set, but the night was no quieter.

Instead, it was alive with the shriek of mortar shells and the sharp staccato of gunfire. Every corner of the city seemed to pulse with tension, the smell of smoke and burning debris thick in the air. “Move, move!”

The order cut through the darkness like a knife. Hassan, barely sixteen, his young face streaked with dirt, clenched his teeth. His heart pounded in his chest, a deafening rhythm that drowned out everything else.

The heat was unbearable, the air thick with the stench of blood, oil, and gunpowder. He wiped the sweat from his eyes as he crouched behind a burnt-out car with the rest of the rebels. The streets were alive with death, the city they once called home reduced to a battle zone.

Historical Novel

Lucas Durand is a history enthusiast whose passion for the past fuels his work as a columnist and author. He delves into the rich tapestry of human events, exploring the triumphs and tragedies that have shaped our world. Lucas concentrates in the WWI era and loves bringing history and events vividly to life.

Ovi eBook Publishing 2026

Mogadishu's dust

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