There must be moments, late at night, when some of the Conservative politicians who have marched through Nigel Farage’s revolving door quietly wonder whether they have made a terrible mistake. Perhaps they lie awake remembering the old Tory party, the one with its rituals, its grand old men, its conference rows, its Cabinet committees and, above all, the comforting certainty that everyone knew who was supposed to be in charge.
Instead, they joined Reform UK. And now they have Nigel Farage. This is not necessarily a criticism of Reform’s policies. One can agree with its arguments on immigration, taxation or the failures of Westminster without necessarily signing up for the increasingly personalised politics surrounding its leader. The curious thing about some of the Tory defectors is that they appear to have escaped one political personality cult only to discover another waiting at the railway station.
The Conservative Party they abandoned was indeed exhausted. It had spent years eating itself, changing prime ministers, fighting internal wars and treating political survival as a substitute for political purpose. The 2024 election was not merely a defeat but an exorcism. Reform offered an obvious escape hatch: sharper language, fewer inhibitions and the intoxicating promise that politics could once again be about enemies rather than committees.
For politicians such as Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman, Danny Kruger and others, joining Farage could therefore look less like betrayal than migration to the future. Reform seemed energetic while the Conservatives seemed embalmed.
But political movements have an awkward habit of revealing themselves once the honeymoon ends. Farage's political gift is enormous. He understands grievance, television, timing and the emotional vocabulary of people who believe that polite politics has failed them. But charisma has a darker twin: narcissism. A party built around one man inevitably risks becoming an audience for that man's performance.
And there are already signs that Reform is discovering the difference between a movement and a personality cult. Internal criticism of Farage has produced uncomfortable consequences, while quarrels involving senior figures have exposed tensions between the party's populist theatre and the rather more complicated business of building a functioning political organisation.
This should make former Conservatives nostalgic. Not necessarily for Boris Johnson. Certainly not for Liz Truss. And probably not for the endless parliamentary soap opera that preceded the Conservative collapse. But they may discover that boring politics has virtues.
A party with competing factions can be irritating. A party with no competing factions can be frightening. A Cabinet full of people arguing can look dysfunctional; a movement in which everyone eventually learns to applaud the leader can look efficient right up until it becomes dangerous.
The defectors may have believed they were joining the Conservative Party without the Conservative Party's baggage. They may instead have joined something more volatile: a political vehicle whose greatest strength and greatest weakness is the same man.
That is the irony. The old Tories were painfully dull, occasionally ridiculous and spectacularly capable of self-sabotage. Reform is exciting, angry and apparently convinced that history has finally arrived at its front door.
But perhaps, after watching Farage perform his Trumpian politics of grievance and personal dominance, some of the defectors are beginning to miss the old blue benches. There was something reassuring about a political party where the leader could be challenged. Even by his own people. Especially by his own people.
I am patiently waiting for the day Donald Trump wakes up, looks out of the White House window, surveys the mess we call civilisation and thinks: You know what this planet really needs? Better branding.
And thus, by executive proclamation, perhaps sometime before lunch, Earth will become Planet Trump.
Why stop at Lake Ontario or the Gulf of Mexico? Why stop at airports, buildings, golf courses and whatever else can be renamed with the subtlety of a property developer putting his name on a condominium? The entire planet is surely the logical next step.
The announcement would probably arrive on social media in the familiar style of a man simultaneously declaring victory and complaining that everyone else is cheating.
“EARTH IS NOW PLANET TRUMP. Nobody has ever renamed a planet before. Very BIG. Very BEAUTIFUL. The greatest planet in the HISTORY of planets. China is jealous. NASA loves it. The Moon called me personally.”
Naturally, the next question would be whether the name could be trademarked.
Of course it could.
Or at least, in the Trumpian universe, the Supreme Court could be asked to make it possible.
Imagine the hearing.
“Your Honour, my client believes the planet should be called Trump.”
“On what constitutional basis?”
“Because he really, really likes the name.”
A solemn silence would descend upon the courtroom.
Then someone would ask whether the other 8 billion inhabitants of Earth had been consulted.
Trump would presumably consider this an outrageous suggestion. Why would they need to be consulted? They already live on his planet.
The oceans could be renamed Trump Oceans, the Atlantic could become Trump Atlantic, and the Pacific could be rebranded Trump Pacific, because apparently even the world's geography must now develop a loyalty programme.
Mount Everest might become Trump Mountain, although that could cause an awkward dispute with the Himalayas, which have stubbornly existed for millions of years without asking permission.
The Sun could perhaps be renamed Trump Star.
The Moon?
Trump Moon.
Mars?
Obviously Trump Mars, because apparently conquering the solar system is easier than solving healthcare.
And somewhere in NASA, exhausted scientists would stare at their computers as centuries of astronomical terminology disappear beneath a giant golden logo.
There would be merchandise.
PLANET TRUMP — LIMITED EDITION EARTH GLOBE.
The irony would be magnificent. Humanity spent thousands of years arguing over philosophy, religion, science, democracy and the meaning of existence, only to discover that the ultimate question of civilisation was apparently: Who owns the trademark on the third rock from the Sun?
But there is a darker joke beneath the absurdity.
A democracy becomes particularly dangerous when political power starts behaving like personal property. When public institutions become props, national symbols become branding opportunities and the distinction between government and personal vanity begins to evaporate.
Eventually, even the planet itself risks becoming another campaign accessory.
The good news is that Earth has survived worse than Donald Trump.
Asteroids.
Ice ages.
Volcanoes.
Dinosaurs.
And, remarkably, humanity.
So perhaps the planet will survive Planet Trump too.
The real concern is what happens afterward.
Because if Trump ever succeeds in trademarking Earth, every alien civilisation approaching our solar system may receive the same message:
WELCOME TO PLANET TRUMP.
PLEASE HAVE YOUR PASSPORT, TAX RETURN AND LAWYER READY.
And somewhere behind Saturn, an alien commander will quietly turn his spaceship around.
There is something especially disturbing about a government striking a fishing boat from the shadows. A warship is visible. A battlefield is recognisable. Even a conventional airstrike carries, however imperfectly, the architecture of accountability. But a small drone arriving over an apparently ordinary fishing vessel, followed by an explosion and silence, belongs to a darker category, violence without a public explanation.
That is why the reported CIA operation against Ecuadorian fishing boats near the Galápagos Islands should alarm anyone who still believes that international law is supposed to restrain powerful states rather than merely inconvenience weak ones. The Washington Post has reported that the mysterious attacks earlier this year were connected to a covert CIA programme. Survivors of two March attacks described drones dropping explosives onto their boats, while another vessel disappeared in January with eight crew members still missing.
The obvious question is whether these fishermen were legitimate targets. If the answer is no and the available accounts certainly raise profound doubts, then Washington has a very serious problem.
The United States may call the campaign counter-narcotics. It may invoke intelligence, national security, terrorism or the increasingly elastic vocabulary of the war on drugs. But labels do not magically transform fishermen into combatants. Nor does the CIA badge provide a special exemption from international law.
Indeed, secrecy may make the legal problem worse. Covert action is not synonymous with lawlessness. Intelligence agencies can conduct secret operations that are lawful. But secrecy cannot be used as a substitute for legal authority. If lethal force is employed against civilians outside an armed conflict, the justification must be exceptionally strong. If people are deliberately targeted without sufficient evidence that they pose an imminent threat, the questions become considerably darker.
And then there is the problem of what happened afterward. Survivors have described being intercepted, restrained, hooded and transported before eventually being handed over to Salvadoran authorities. Reuters has separately reported accounts from fishermen who say their boats were searched by Ecuadorian authorities and found not to contain drugs before being attacked.
If those accounts are accurate, this is not merely a story about mistaken intelligence. It is a story about the consequences of allowing secret military power to operate beyond public scrutiny.
America has spent decades lecturing other countries about sovereignty, human rights and the rules-based international order. Those principles cannot become optional when Washington finds the enemy sufficiently unpleasant. The rules-based order is not a subscription service available only to friendly governments.
Nor should Ecuador's cooperation with the United States be mistaken for a blank cheque. A sovereign government cannot outsource responsibility for violence on its territory—or against its citizens at sea—simply because the operation is politically embarrassing.
There is also a strategic absurdity here. Destroying a fishing boat may produce an impressive explosion. It does not destroy the economic conditions, criminal networks and corruption that sustain drug trafficking. Criminal organisations replace boats and recruits far more easily than governments replace trust.
The greatest danger is therefore not only what happened in the Pacific. It is what such operations teach future presidents.
Once governments become comfortable killing first and explaining later, the threshold for violence quietly falls. The secret operation becomes the normal operation. The extraordinary becomes routine. Accountability becomes an obstacle rather than a principle.
That is how democracies drift into the fog. The fishermen of Ecuador deserve answers. So does Congress. So does Ecuador. And, ultimately, so does the American public. A government powerful enough to kill in secret must also be accountable enough to explain why.
The term “talk the talk, walk the walk” is a phrase in English that means a person should support what they say, not just with words, but also through action. Actions speak louder than words.
For more Walk the talk, HERE! For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!
My friend, Tunde Ishamuko, is an Ijesha man. He typifies what most Yoruba know about Ijesha people: they are business-minded and stubborn. When you owe an Ijesha money, no matter who you are, be sure he will collect it. His method is simple but effective. He will stay with you, embarrassing you at every turn until you wear out. It is called the -osomalo- debt-collection system. Osomalo crouches before the debtor for as long as necessary to recover the debt.
A few days before the just-concluded Osun governorship election, Tunde Ishamuko sought advice on our common WhatsApp platform, which he set up for friends who are equally stubborn. He wanted to know if he should travel from Ibadan to Ilesha to vote. I told him to go. No matter the reported violence in Osun, he must exercise his franchise.
About two or three days to the election, he posted that he had received a call from his uncle, a -Kabiyesi- in a prominent town in the state. The uncle advised him not to travel home to vote. “I don’t want to lose you,” he said. Around the same time, Tunde said his ATM card had gone missing. He suspected someone in his household had hidden it to prevent him from having money to travel. Fear was rife that Osun would go up in flames.
I immediately reviewed my first advice. If a Kabiyesi had warned him not to go, and if a member of his household, possibly his wife, had hidden his ATM to stop him from traveling, he should consider it wise not to travel. I don’t think he did.
The Osun election has been concluded — though INEC says so, while the APC is threatening to go to court. It had all the trappings of an election that could end Nigeria’s fledgling democracy. Governor Ademola Adeleke, whom the APC wants out of power, warned that if the APC used federal power to manipulate the election, the 1983 post-election violence that helped bring down the Shagari administration and terminate Nigeria’s Second Republic would be “child’s play.”
A few days before the election, INEC said about 40 persons had been murdered on both sides of the divide, APC and Accord. On the eve of the election, scheduled for August 15, it was rumoured that the contractor who designed and printed Accord party face caps had been killed in Ilesha, and that his young family had been moved to another town for safety.
Almost all police commissioners in the 36 states were deployed to Osun to join the state commissioner and take charge of security. There were 25,000 security personnel across the state. Even with that, none of the combatants trusted INEC, the election umpire, or the police. Nigerians across the country stayed glued to their television sets for live coverage. Luckily, apart from a member of the State House of Assembly reportedly arrested with 146 voter cards, there was no major incident. The election went on peacefully under the watchful eyes of the electorate.
The APC marshaled its federal might and deployed a lot of money to crush Ademola Adeleke. It used propaganda to psyche people in and out of the state. It accused the sitting governor of not being serious enough to govern. The APC said he was always dancing and therefore incapable of governing a resource-constrained state in need of urgent attention.
APC leaders imported from the federal level accused Adeleke of neglecting to tar the road into Osogbo, the state capital, from Ibadan. When Senate President Godswill Akpabio said the road that brought him to Osogbo from Ibadan was full of potholes and that Adeleke should be punished, he forgot that it is a federal road and that he is part of the federal team that should take the blame. Akpabio could forget, but Osun citizens who ply that road daily and have lost relatives to accidents did not. They punished the APC with their votes.
The people’s awareness of the issues in their state and who was responsible for what was further demonstrated when they booed the visiting APC governors as they left the state at night after the election. Citizens were captured on camera deriding these governors as they sped out in glittering SUVs.
We must draw lessons from that election for the rest of the country. Nigerians can no longer be taken for granted in political sophistication. Even where formal education is low, political awareness has grown over the years. The North, where citizens have been tied down by various forms of deception and religious fanaticism, should take note. As Osun showed, the people are aware. Through social media they know what is happening in other parts of the country, and they can rise against the leadership of their state. The consequences of a revolt would be devastating for the North.
Osun people were directly affected by 12 years of APC misrule: unpaid salaries and the arbitrary sack of civil servants. When they saw a difference under Adeleke, they decided not to return to the “slavery” of APC. They said it on social media, discussed it in their homes, and voted accordingly. They monitored their votes.
They stood with the man they believed liberated them. Osun shows that issue-based politics is gaining ground in Nigeria. For the first time, we saw a campaign dominated by issues, not abuse and mudslinging — a campaign that gave account of policies.
The election also saw the downfall of men and women who had long dominated the state’s political space.
Former Osun State governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola was rejected even by his people in Ilesha. A politician I met a week before the election noted the absence of the usual crowd at Aregbesola’s house. “I saw about seven cows tied, but the usual dining crowd was absent,” he told a political discussion group I belong to. The group thought it might be because Aregbesola was more in Abuja due to his new role in the ADC, the opposition party he was helping to build after defecting from APC.
But the result in Aregbesola’s polling unit in his Ilesha home tells the truth: it is no longer time to rabble-rouse people with songs by failed politicians. The time and style of Aregbesola and his type have ended in Nigerian politics. He was beaten — he lost in his polling unit and in his town. As a former governor, he failed to serve the people, and they did not forget.
Olagunsoye Oyinlola, also a former governor of Osun who was drafted into the APC after traversing virtually all political parties in the country, was trounced in his polling unit in Okuku. Oyinlola danced and spoke deep proverbs, but the people refused to listen. They went with the man they thought served them better, the man who paid salaries and pensions.
Iyiola Omisore made no impact in Ife, his town. It was not because the APC denied him the governorship ticket. It was because citizens knew his record as former deputy governor, chronicled in the autobiography of Chief Bisi Akande, the governor with whom Omisore served. And though President Bola Tinubu covered for him, and so did former APC Chairman Abdullahi Adamu, the people of Osun knew what led to his removal as APC National Secretary. They were not willing to entrust such a character with their affairs again.
In the Osun election, we see a new Nigeria forming. No more intimidation by an octopus presidency. No tolerance for an indolent INEC. Zero tolerance for a partisan security apparatus. President Tinubu had to call an overzealous EFCC to order after it froze accounts a few days to the election — apparently in fear of the people’s wrath. The wrath was withdrawn, but it is waiting for any president, governor, minister, or local government chairman who will toy with the interest of Nigerians henceforth.
First Published in METRO
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Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.
There is something almost childishly comic about Donald Trump’s latest contribution to the US-Canadian trade war, if Canada will not bend, perhaps its geography can be punished instead. After negotiations collapsed and Washington imposed 50 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods, Trump suggested that Lake Ontario should henceforth be called “Lake America.” It is the sort of gesture one might expect from a five-year-old who, after losing an argument over a toy, announces that the toy has been renamed in his honour.
Except that the five-year-old is the President of the United States. That distinction turns the joke into something darker. That is the difference between a powerful state and a powerful personality abroad.
A lake does not care what it is called. Lake Ontario, shared by Canada and the United States, has been there considerably longer than either country’s political quarrels. Its name cannot be changed by presidential sulking any more than a child can redraw a border with a crayon. Yet the impulse behind the proposal matters because it reveals a particular conception of power: if something resists you, make it symbolically yours.
This is not diplomacy. It is domination reduced to branding. Trump’s political imagination has always been unusually attracted to names. Names become trophies, declarations of ownership, evidence that the powerful have prevailed. But international relations are not a real-estate brochure. He cannot compel Canadians, international organisations or the rest of the world to abandon a name embedded in history and common usage.
More importantly, the lake is merely the punchline. The serious business is the tariff war. The United States and Canada have spent decades constructing one of the world’s most integrated economic relationships. Cars cross the border several times during production. Energy, metals, agriculture and manufactured goods move through supply chains so interwoven that pretending the two economies can simply be separated is rather like proposing that Siamese twins solve an argument by moving to different houses.
Tariffs are not insults written on envelopes. They become higher costs, disrupted investment, nervous employers and eventually more expensive goods. Canada will suffer. So will US businesses and consumers.
And yet Trump appears to treat every disagreement as a test of personal obedience. Canada is not merely another trading partner; it becomes a defendant. Its refusal to accept Washington’s terms becomes evidence of insolence. The vocabulary shifts from negotiation to submission: fall in line, punish, retaliate, rename.
This is where the childishness becomes dangerous. A spoiled child can throw a tantrum and break a lamp. A president can throw a tantrum and damage alliances, markets and the assumptions on which international stability depends. The United States possesses extraordinary economic, military and diplomatic power. When its president treats that power as an extension of his personal temperament, the world is entitled to worry.
Perhaps Lake Ontario will remain Lake Ontario. Canadians will continue calling it that, and the water will carry on doing what lakes do.
But the episode leaves behind a more troubling question: how much of American power should be devoted to winning arguments that never needed to become wars in the first place?
The answer should be, considerably less. Great powers demonstrate strength by knowing when not to use it. They do not need to rename the lake when they have already got the navy.
Dolly Parton was a country singer in roughly the same way that the Atlantic Ocean is a puddle. Yes, country music was her native language. She came from the Tennessee mountains, carried the accent, the rhinestones, the enormous hair and the apparently indestructible smile. She could have walked into a cartoonist’s office labelled “Country Music Star” and emerged looking exactly like the finished drawing. Yet to describe her merely as a country singer is to confuse the wrapping paper with the present.
Dolly Parton was a global cultural phenomenon. And perhaps the most remarkable thing about her was that she understood the joke before anyone else did.
Everything about her appearance seemed designed to invite ridicule: the wigs, the costumes, the impossible eyelashes, the exaggerated femininity, the calculated glamour. But the joke was frequently on the audience. Behind the Dolly caricature was one of the most formidable creative minds American popular culture produced. She wrote songs with the emotional economy of great short stories. Love, jealousy, poverty, ambition, loneliness, ageing, work and heartbreak passed through her music without requiring intellectual decoration.
She could write “Jolene” and make desperation sound elegant. She could write “9 to 5” and turn workplace frustration into a pop anthem. She could write “I Will Always Love You” and somehow create a song so durable that another singer could transform it into an entirely different cultural event.
That is not simply country music. That is songwriting. But Parton’s extraordinary achievement was not confined to music. She understood something that modern America increasingly seems to forget: fame is not necessarily a moral achievement, but what one does with fame can be.
Her philanthropy was almost startling in its practicality. She did not merely talk about children; she gave them books. Her Imagination Library, inspired partly by her father’s inability to read, became an international literacy programme, sending free books to young children regardless of their families’ income.
There is something wonderfully subversive about that. A woman who became an icon of glitter and commercial entertainment spent decades quietly putting books into children’s hands.
And then there was her peculiar American genius for kindness without ideological packaging. Parton has repeatedly demonstrated sympathy for people who do not necessarily fit comfortably inside the conservative cultural world from which she emerged. Her openness towards LGBT people and others subjected to prejudice has made her an unusual figure in an America increasingly addicted to sorting human beings into political tribes.
She did not need to become a professional political warrior. She simply behaved as though kindness were not a partisan position.That may be why she became so difficult to hate.
Parton understood that America contains contradictions. A poor girl from rural Tennessee could become fabulously wealthy without forgetting poverty. A woman who looked like the ultimate stereotype could become one of the culture’s great dismantlers of stereotypes. Someone apparently manufactured from rhinestones and show business could possess a remarkably serious understanding of human vulnerability.
Today’s America has no shortage of billionaires, celebrities, influencers and politicians telling us how much they care about ordinary people.
Dolly Parton actually did something. That is the difference. Her greatest creation may therefore not be a song, a film, a theme park or even a brand. It may be the character called Dolly Parton, deliberately larger than life, apparently ridiculous, genuinely brilliant, profoundly American and underneath all those rhinestones, unexpectedly humane.
USA made an extraordinary wager on the future of the automobile. It did not merely invest in electric vehicles; it invested its imagination in Elon Musk. The billionaire was cast as the great US disruptor, the man who would drag Detroit into the electric age, turn batteries into the new oil and make the United States the undisputed author of the next automotive revolution.
And then China won. Not completely, not permanently and certainly not without qualifications. But enough to make the USA strategy look painfully narrow.
Tesla was supposed to be America's electric-car answer to Toyota, Volkswagen and the rising Chinese manufacturers. Instead, BYD has overtaken Tesla as the world's biggest seller of battery-electric vehicles, while Chinese manufacturers have multiplied into a formidable industrial ecosystem. BYD sold roughly 2.26m battery-electric vehicles in 2025, compared with Tesla's 1.64m.
The uncomfortable lesson is that America confused a brilliant company with an industrial strategy. Musk deserves enormous credit. Tesla made electric cars desirable rather than worthy. It demonstrated that batteries could power vehicles people actually wanted to drive. It forced established manufacturers to take electrification seriously. But America increasingly treated Tesla as though it were the American electric-car industry itself.
That was the mistake. China did something much less glamorous. It built an ecosystem. Factories. Batteries. Minerals. Components. Software. Charging networks. Supply chains. Engineers. Domestic demand. Aggressive competition. Government support. Manufacturers willing to fight ferociously over price.
China did not wait for one visionary entrepreneur to reinvent the automobile. It created an arena in which hundreds of companies could try, fail, copy, improve and occasionally succeed.
That is rather less cinematic than Musk launching rockets or promising robotaxis. It is also how manufacturing revolutions tend to happen.
The irony is delicious. Tesla entered China partly because China offered precisely the industrial machinery America was struggling to assemble. Shanghai became one of Tesla's most important production centres. Today, Tesla remains deeply dependent on Chinese manufacturing and suppliers even as Chinese competitors increasingly challenge it. Tesla's Shanghai operation recorded strong growth in July, yet BYD continued to outpace Tesla globally.
America's response has too often been defensive: tariffs, subsidies, restrictions and political arguments about whether Chinese cars should be allowed anywhere near American consumers.
Some protection is understandable. National security matters. So do domestic jobs and resilient supply chains. But protection cannot become a substitute for competitiveness.
The real danger is not that a Chinese driver buys a Chinese electric car. It is that an American engineer eventually has to buy one. There is a broader lesson here about American capitalism. Washington has become remarkably comfortable with the idea that technological leadership means producing a spectacular entrepreneur and giving him enormous financial and political oxygen. Yet industrial leadership requires something more mundane: thousands of suppliers, competent infrastructure, patient capital, skilled workers and relentless competition.
China understood that. USA preferred the hero. And heroes, inconveniently, do not manufacture batteries.
The electric-car race is therefore not simply a contest between Musk and BYD. It is a referendum on two competing models of economic power. One celebrates disruption; the other builds industrial depth.
America can still win. Its universities, entrepreneurs, capital markets and technological culture remain formidable. But it will have to stop believing that the future arrives in the shape of one charismatic billionaire. The future is usually assembled in factories. And right now, many of those factories are in China.
Do ignorant and unjust people govern the world? Are the so-called global leaders outcome of mental and psychological disorder? The trajectory of insanity is boundless. Intents and purposes of encroaching and destroying innocent mankind for greed and glory are never debated in public affairs. Evil and insanity are not imaginary but real and happening across Palestine and Ukraine and must be stopped to protect innocent human lives. The dynamic syntax propels animosity, hatred and insanity of violence to kill innocent people, forcibly displace the vulnerable and occupy their homes - the American and Israeli agenda seem to govern the world affairs without any formidable challenge to cruelty on Earth.
Warmongers andweapon profiteers claim to be peacemakers but reality reveals reckless crimes against humanity, continuous wars, destruction of earth and human habitats and political wickedness and frauds hostile to peace and global harmony. Arab-Muslim leaders detached from reality and divided for individual survival appear delusional and defeated. In crisis, intelligent leaders opt for facts of life and when facts warrant a change, responsible leaders pursue a navigational change. Public advisory is rare and non-existence across the Arab-Muslim governance. The overwhelming reality of war in Palestine reflects a cataclysm that afflicted the entire Arab-Muslim world. Russia and Ukraine continued to bomb their major business centers and public domains , killing and tormenting thousands daily. When hope is replaced by tyranny and terror, people lose sense of rational thinking and direction.
The US-Israel war has broader strategic objectives to conquer the Arab world and make Israel a mini superpower of the Middle East.The war has its hidden objectives, to annihilate the whole of the Arab oil producing region, massacre anyone opposing the war and asking for peace , freedom and justice and to make Israel the new superpower of the Middle East. Israel under PM Netanyahu and extremists face no hurdle to evolve “Greater Israel”, no law and no civilized challenge to stop the march for putting finished answers to Palestine. The West European and the US leaders used to propel an imaginary Utopian world of human rights, peace without war and to foresee the “succeeding generations free of the scourge of war” as a legal and political responsibility. Not so, they have all failed miserably to protect the entrenched mankind. The imagination of a promising glorious future simply turned by the few against many as an inferno of horrors, killings and utter devastation throughout Palestine and Persian Gulf.
Do the warmongers know the reality of this universe and how their actions could undermine the present and future of humanity, its survival and sustainable future?
The Earth is a Divine Trust to Humanity, Not a Political Entity to be Bombed
Did you not see the Solar Eclipse recently across Western Europe and North America to know how Earth rotates against Sun and functions? The Earth ( a living entity) being bombed is the earth given to mankind by God as a "TRUST." DO YOU NOT SEE IT FLOATING IN SPACE JUST BY THE COMMAND OF GOD? WHEREVER THERE IS A TRUST, THERE MUST BE ACCOUNTABILITY. When evil-mongers and wrong-doers violate the sanctity of the Laws of God, they are held accountable - history tells without any prejudice. This author has walked through the ancient graveyards of so many great nations of the past used to claim being the “most powerful” on this earth - dead bones and silent forever and nothing else. The succeeding generations would CURSE them for their crimes against humanity. The global institutions of peace and security appear fractured and dysfunctional to be relevant to crisis management and peace-making. The US-Israel have dropped equal to "THREE Hiroshima-Nagasaki" nuclear arsenals on the innocent people of Gaza- Palestine. If you don’t believe in the encompassing truth, just view the real “genocide pictures” presented by Editor Rosa on Transcend Media, September 8, 2025: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2025/09/genocide-in-pictures-worth-a-trillion-words-66/
Global Leaders and the Consequences of their Fault Lines
The former European imperialists sucked out the oil resources from the Arab world and now intend on dismantling the Arab-Muslim world- narrates Dr. Jan Oberg, a peace researcher from Sweden, and former British Diplomat Ian Proud: “The “West” Is Imploding Faster after This”TRANSCEND MediaService: 4/8/25:https://www.transcend.org/tms/2025/04/the-west-is-imploding-faster-after-this/The signs are not just on the wall but written in the skies and the oceans too. The entire “western” narrative, its repressive dominance, and its hubris are about to collapse and take many of its established institutions down with it. And the kakistrocratic (aka imbecile) leadership doesn’t even realise it. If they did, they wouldn’t be driving Europe into that giant iceberg.
Watching dreadful apparatus of fire and brimstone, We, the People are horrified by the crimes against humanity happening across Gaza, occupied West Bank- Palestine and Ukraine. The Ukraine elite hopes for a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement whereas Russia is pushing for more territorial gains and destabilization of Ukraine. President Trump, too confused and lacking foresight and capacity to manage diverse conflicts, is waiting to end his term of presidency soon and would not admit his own shortcomings. If Putin, Trump and Zelenskyy could meet, peace could be worked out between Russia and Ukraine. Trump and Netanyahu using no system and no obligation to the global community as the way to manage time and history of their own fault lines. When people of role and responsibility meet, it creates an amicable momentum for dialogue and better understanding. Western leadership cultures have not learned to relinquish history of pride and prejudice to restore reason encompassing reality. Leadership is an art and it could be improved and changed for the good of humanity. Do intelligent leaders listen to voices of reason and make a navigational change for peace and harmony when facts of life warrant an urgent change in attitudes, policies and behaviors?
You cannot pretend to think and behave like animals. Animals live and do not reflect on the imperatives of life whereas, we, the human beings cannot act like animals as we are supposed to be intelligent and responsible species on this Earth. At the edge of reason, the notion of evil leads to realization of evil and tyranny of genocide must be stopped by all means to restore the manifestation of equal rights, peace, justice and security for all. Intelligent people, leaders and nations always readily accept advice:
The followers of Moses – the generations of Israelite are reminded by God (The Quran 2: 84-85 ):
And remember, We took a Covenant from the Children of Israel (progeny of Jacob), Worship none but God; ….shed no blood amongst you, Nor displace people from homes: and Ye solemnly ratified, And to this ye can bear witness…. It was not lawful for you to banish another party, then it is only a part of the Book that ye believe in…. And on the Day of Judgment they shall be consigned to the most grievous penalty, For God is not unmindful what ye do
Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution and has spent several academic years across the Russian-Ukrainian and Central Asian regions knowing the people, diverse cultures of thinking and political governance and a keen interest in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including: Global Humanity and Remaking of Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution for the 21st Century and Beyond, Barnes and Noble Press, USA, 2025https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/global-humanity-and-remaking-of-peace-security-and-conflict-resolution-for-the-21st-century-and-beyond-mahboob-a-khawaja/1147150197and We, The People in Search of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution. Kindle Direct Publishing-Amazon, 05/2025 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F6V6CH5W
Check Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD. eBOOK, Wars on Humanity: Ukraine, Palestine and the role of Global Leaders HERE!
Vladimir Putin has a talent for turning geography into theatre. His recent visit to the disputed Kuril Islands was not merely a presidential tour of a hospital, a school and a fish-processing plant. It was a carefully staged reminder that Moscow intends to treat the islands as settled Russian territory, whatever Tokyo thinks of the matter.
Japan, naturally, thinks rather differently. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi called the visit “absolutely unacceptable”, while Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi reaffirmed that the four southernmost islands are Japanese territory “both historically and under international law”. Russia, in turn, insists that the matter is closed. Both sides are therefore talking about the same rocks while inhabiting entirely different legal universes.
The dispute has a peculiar resemblance to Britain and Argentina’s argument over the Falkland Islands. In both cases, geography, history, national identity and military strategy have become inseparable. But there is an important difference: the Kurils sit beside one of the most strategically consequential regions on earth. They are not merely a symbol. They are a military and maritime asset controlling approaches to the Sea of Okhotsk and the Pacific.
That makes Putin’s visit more than a historical grievance tour. It is a message. The timing matters. Japan has aligned itself firmly with the West over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, imposed sanctions and deepened its security relationship with America and other Indo-Pacific democracies. Moscow has responded by viewing Japan less as a potential diplomatic partner and more as part of an increasingly hostile coalition.
Putin’s appearance on Iturup therefore looked rather like the geopolitical equivalent of planting a flag on the table and asking everyone else whether they had noticed. They had.
Yet Tokyo should be careful about what comes next. Japan is entirely entitled to maintain its territorial claim. Indeed, abandoning it would be politically extraordinary after generations of insisting that the Northern Territories remain Japanese. But diplomacy sometimes requires distinguishing between defending a claim and pretending that repeating it will magically change reality.
Russia has administered the islands for more than eight decades. Russian citizens live there. Moscow has invested in infrastructure and, increasingly, military facilities. Putin visiting a school does not settle sovereignty, but neither does a Japanese diplomatic protest overturn Russian control.
This is the uncomfortable lesson of territorial disputes: international law matters, but power matters too. And power is precisely what is changing in the northern Pacific.
Japan is already watching China, North Korea and Russia with increasing concern. The last thing Tokyo needs is another territorial dispute becoming an arena for military signalling. Moscow, meanwhile, would be foolish to assume that Japan's restraint is weakness. A country that spends more on defence, strengthens alliances and watches Russia's Pacific movements with growing suspicion is not likely to forget what happened in 1945—or simply shrug at Russian provocations.
The danger is not that Putin's visit will start a war. It probably will not. The greater danger is that it will make compromise politically impossible.
The Kurils have survived empires, wars, revolutions and changing borders. They can probably survive another presidential photo opportunity.
What they may not survive is the disappearance of diplomacy. The tragedy of disputed territory is that eventually the rocks become less important than the pride attached to them. At that point, nobody is negotiating over islands. They are negotiating over national honour. And honour, unlike territory, has no obvious border.
