When JD Vance meet his own logic under his own roof by Howard Morton

There are moments in politics when hypocrisy doesn’t just knock politely on the door it smashes it down, dances on the carpet, and dares anyone to mention the smell. JD Vance, the Vice President who has made a career out of victimhood disguised as patriotism, has just given us one such moment. In a recent interview, Vance found it “totally reasonable and acceptable” for Americans not to want neighbors who don’t speak English. He even added that his sympathy “deepens” if those neighbors come from a “totally different culture.”

And there it is, the sentence that could have been lifted straight out of a 1950s segregation pamphlet, polished with modern populist varnish, and sold as “common sense.” But this time, the irony didn’t just linger in the air, it exploded, because JD Vance is married to someone from a totally different culture. His wife, Usha Vance (née Chilukuri), is the daughter of Indian immigrants, a woman whose background, language, and traditions are precisely what Vance now claims make people “understandably uncomfortable.”

The sheer gall of it is almost impressive. Here we have a man who built his political persona on being the voice of the forgotten white working class, now leaning into the same exclusionary rhetoric that has poisoned every populist movement since time immemorial. It’s not just offensive, it’s astonishingly self-destructive. Because when Vance says Americans are justified in not wanting to live near people from “a totally different culture,” he’s not just giving permission for xenophobia. He’s throwing his own family under the bus.

Let’s not mince words. This isn’t about language or neighborhoods. This is about identity politics in its crudest, most dangerous form, the idea that purity of culture, of tongue, of custom somehow guarantees moral superiority or social harmony. Vance’s statement is the ideological cousin of every movement that ever built walls, banned books, or turned “foreign” into a synonym for “inferior.”

And the fact that this rhetoric comes from a man married to a woman whose parents’ accent might have once been the target of his supporters’ suspicion makes it all the more grotesque. It’s political cannibalism, devouring your own credibility in the desperate attempt to feed the beast of populist resentment.

What Vance is really saying is that fear is a reasonable organizing principle for society. That if someone speaks another language, eats food that smells different, or celebrates a festival you don’t understand, you have every right to prefer their absence. That intolerance, when politely phrased, becomes an act of patriotism. And this is precisely the type of moral rot that corrodes nations from within. Because once you start categorizing who is acceptable as a neighbor, you inevitably end up deciding who is acceptable as a citizen, as a colleague, as a human being.

But let’s return to the delicious irony of it all. JD Vance, self-declared champion of “real Americans,” sits comfortably in a household that is, by his own metric, a cultural hybrid. His children have a mother whose heritage comes from halfway across the world. His own family gatherings, if they include a dash of Indian flavor or a word of Telugu, would be enough, by Vance’s own definition, to make some of his “totally reasonable” supporters want to move away.

The hypocrisy here isn’t a footnote, it’s the whole story. You can’t marry into a “totally different culture” and then turn around and tell Americans it’s fine to fear those cultures. You can’t use your wife’s heritage when it suits your image, the tolerant conservative, the modern nationalist with a multicultural twist and then throw that same heritage under the bus when the cameras turn your way.

This is what populism always does. It feeds on division until it starts consuming itself. Today it’s the non-English-speaking neighbor. Tomorrow it’s the neighbor with a different religion. The day after that, it’s the neighbor who doesn’t vote the “right” way. The boundaries of exclusion keep shrinking until nobody, not even the hypocrites who drew them, can escape their own poison.

Vance’s remarks also expose a deep insecurity within the American right, a movement that claims to defend freedom while constantly fearing the presence of anyone different. They talk about “real Americans” as if citizenship were measured not by commitment to a country’s ideals, but by the color of one’s skin or the rhythm of one’s accent. They worship an imaginary past where everyone looked, prayed, and spoke the same, a past that never truly existed.

If JD Vance were truly honest, he’d admit that America’s strength lies precisely in those “totally different cultures” colliding, mixing, and reshaping one another. That the English language itself is a Frankenstein’s monster of borrowed words and foreign roots. That the food, music, and science that built the United States were gifts from people who spoke, thought, and dreamed differently.

Instead, we get this cheap, cowardly fearmongering. And for what? Votes. Applause from the most narrow-minded corners of society. The false comfort of belonging to a crowd that mistakes prejudice for patriotism.

But there’s something poetic about the backlash. The internet, as always, has a nose for hypocrisy sharper than a bloodhound’s. The moment Vance’s words hit the airwaves, the world remembered who he married. And suddenly, everyone became “sympathetic” to his wife, not out of pity, but because she’s become the living contradiction to her husband’s shallow rhetoric. She’s the human reminder that diversity isn’t a threat; it’s the antidote to the ignorance her husband now peddles.

JD Vance’s defenders will say he’s merely reflecting “how people feel.” That he’s speaking uncomfortable truths. But that’s the lazy man’s excuse for cowardice. Leadership isn’t about validating prejudice; it’s about challenging it. It’s about reminding people that discomfort with difference isn’t virtue, it’s a weakness to be overcome.

The tragedy is that Vance once seemed capable of nuance. Hillbilly Elegy was full of introspection, even empathy. Now, that empathy has curdled into cynicism. He’s no longer writing about a broken America, he’s helping to break it further.

In the end, his “totally reasonable” comment reveals something much deeper about the modern populist psyche. It’s not about protecting culture or language, it’s about protecting the fragile egos of those who can’t handle change. It’s about turning fear into a political identity.

But here’s the irony he’ll never escape: JD Vance doesn’t live next to a “totally different culture.” He sleeps beside one. And that’s what makes his words not just hypocritical, but pathetic. Because even in his own home, his ideology collapses under the weight of reality, a reality that proves, every single day, that the only truly un-American thing is fearing the neighbor who speaks with a different tongue.

And perhaps, if Vance listened a little less to his echo chamber and a little more to his wife, he might realize that the world doesn’t need fewer “different cultures.” It needs fewer politicians who can’t see the beauty in them.

Giuseppe Antonio Borgese: Common Cause by Rene Wadlow

Giuseppe Antonio Borgese (1882 -1952) whose birth anniversary we note on 12 November, was an Italian-born professor of literature at the University of Chicago and a leading world citizen in the late 1940s.  In 1931, Borgese was a visiting professor at the University of California when Mussolini announced that an oath of allegiance to the Italian Fascist state would be  required of all Italian professors.  Borgese did not go back and wrote to Mussolini: “My dwelling place can only be where it is permitted a writer to be truly a writer.”

Borgese published “Goliath: The March of Fascism” (1937) when few in the United States were following political events in Italy.  He developed further his views as the Second  World War developed in “Common Cause.” (1)

In 1939 he married Elizabeth Mann, youngest daughter of the German writer Thomas Mann, who was living in exile in Princeton, New Jersey. In the mid-1970s, I knew Elizabeth Mann Borgese, who had become a specialist on law of the sea issues.

G.A. Borgese was a leading member of the University of Chicago-based Committee to Frame a World Constitution which wrote the “Preliminary Draft of a World Constitution” (1948) (2)  As Borgese wrote:

“The popular assumption that the present movement toward world unity originates essentially in the technological revolution as applied to ‘ weapons of mass destruction ‘ is a fallacy derived from the superstition of our time, which is the adoration of the tool, the cult of the material causes.  Techniques and tools are the product of spiritual evolution which in successive waves of reactions and actions they become contributing factors.  They are not the first causes.  It was not the Legion that made Rome, not the phalanx that built Macedonia, but conversely.  For the age of nations, after a span of six centuries was as good as dead for reasons far deeper and more complex than any technological change, in 1914 – when uranium was quietly number 92 on the periodic table, and plutonium was nothing and nowhere.”

For Giuseppe Antonio Borgese, we need to change the way we think of ourselves and each other, not as members of separate nations but as citizens of one planet with justice as a core value.  Justice is a timeless and universal idea whose historical appearances and demands are variously and progressively determined by the various configurations of the ages.  At a time when there is injustice in many parts of the world, it is useful to recall the vital efforts of Giuseppe Antonio Borgese.

Notes.
1) G.A. Borgese. Common Cause (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1943)
2) G.A. Borgese. The Foundations of the World Republic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953)

 *************************************

Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

Sceptic feathers #118 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

Cynicism with feathers on thin wires.

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A blade in the nation’s mind by Emma Schneider

Once again, Britain bleeds on a train. Once again, the headlines scream “not terrorism.” Once again, the authorities rush to wrap the carnage in sterile language, as if semantics can staunch a wound. Eleven people stabbed, several fighting for their lives and a man, Anthony Williams, 32, screaming “Kill me!” as he was tasered to the ground. But what truly haunts this scene isn’t only the blood or the chaos; it’s the unsettling question of what is happening to Britain itself.

Because whether we call it terrorism, madness, or “a lone incident,” the pattern is unmistakable: Britain is rotting from within. The violence, once sporadic and shocking, has become numbing in its regularity. Each week brings another stabbing, another rampage, another eruption of fury from a man who feels the world has abandoned him. And underneath it all, there’s a toxic undercurrent that keeps bubbling up, the far-right’s steady, festering rage that has been left to metastasize into an epidemic.

We are watching a nation disintegrate, not at the edges but at the very core of its identity.

It’s remarkable how quickly officials ruled out terrorism in this case. It’s as if the mere act of saying the word would make it contagious. Yet what is terrorism if not the deliberate spreading of fear for ideological, emotional, or tribal validation? The British authorities have become masters at defining terror only when it fits their preferred narrative, brown-skinned, foreign, shouting “Allahu Akbar.” If it’s a white man named Anthony with a knife on a train, then it must be “mental health issues.” Convenient. Predictable. Dangerous.

But what if this too is terrorism, only of a different breed? A terrorism born not from foreign doctrines but from the domestic decay of compassion and community. A terrorism cultivated in chatrooms, pubs, and despairing corners of neglected towns. One doesn’t need a political manifesto to be the outcome of a radicalized nation. Sometimes the ideology is simply hatred itself, hatred fed by those who profit from division.

This is not an isolated act. It is a symptom. Knife attacks in Britain have been rising steadily for years, now reaching levels that would make a warzone blush. Yet the national conversation has become so numb, so desensitized, that we treat this like a weather forecast “Cloudy with a chance of stabbing.”

The far-right’s violence has mutated. It no longer always wears the visible symbols of nationalism or racial hate. It hides behind “mental health” excuses, behind lonely men, behind narratives of frustration. But scratch the surface, and you’ll see the same old demons, xenophobia, misogyny, paranoia, and a deep resentment toward modernity. The same voices that scream about “taking back control” have created a generation of men who can’t even control themselves.

The far-right in Britain has learned to thrive in the chaos. They don’t need to organize marches anymore; they simply need to whisper into the void. The rest takes care of itself. When life feels meaningless, when society offers no dignity, when politicians trade in cruelty as currency, violence becomes the ultimate form of expression.

It is no accident that the rise of far-right anger coincides with the erosion of public empathy. Britain’s public discourse has become a feeding ground for resentment. Social media algorithms amplify outrage; tabloids feed daily doses of “othering”; politicians, in their cheap quest for votes, have replaced policy with scapegoating. The poison seeps down.

When you normalize hate speech, you normalize hate acts. When every problem—from unemployment to immigration, is framed as an invasion, you shouldn’t be surprised when people pick up knives to “defend” something. What’s truly terrifying isn’t just the violence itself—it’s how unsurprised we’ve become by it.

We’ve reached a point where eleven people stabbed on a train barely shake the national psyche. That is how civilizations erode, not with a bang, but with a shrug.

Anthony Williams may never have read a far-right manifesto. But he has lived in a society that has been quietly radicalized by years of cultural cruelty. The endless demonization of the poor, the foreign, the different, it all adds up. Britain has built a psychological pressure cooker, and it’s beginning to explode in carriages, pubs, and quiet suburban streets.

The police may be right that this isn’t terrorism in the technical sense. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t ideological. When a man screams “Kill me!” after stabbing strangers, what we are witnessing isn’t just personal despair, it’s the reflection of a national one.

Britain is sick. And like all illnesses, the first step toward recovery is admitting it. But that’s the one thing the establishment refuses to do. Instead, it sanitizes, compartmentalizes, and distracts. Anything to avoid asking the real questions: What kind of society breeds men who see violence as the only language left? What happens to a country when rage replaces solidarity?

We can keep pretending these incidents are random. We can keep calling them “isolated” until the next one happens, and the next, and the next. But sooner or later, Britain will have to confront its demons. The far-right’s rhetoric, once confined to the margins, now seeps through mainstream veins. The government’s cold indifference to the social collapse beneath it fuels the despair that turns ordinary men into monsters.

A man with a knife on a train is not the disease. He’s the symptom. The real sickness lies in the applause lines for cruelty, the smirking politicians who trade humanity for populism, and the media that finds profit in perpetual outrage.

The truth is simple and brutal: Britain’s epidemic of violence isn’t just about knives, it’s about identity. It’s about a nation that has forgotten how to care, how to listen, how to heal.

Anthony Williams’ rampage may fade from the headlines in a few days, as they all do. But the wound he represents will remain open, festering, until Britain looks in the mirror and admits what it has become.

A nation with a blade pressed not against others but against its own throat.

The mirage of the blue wave by John Reid

For weeks now, cable news and political Twitter have been buzzing with one seductive phrase: the blue wave. Democrats, they say, are on the march again, energized, organized, and riding a crest of public frustration. The polls seem to hint at momentum. The fundraising numbers sparkle. The grassroots buzz hums with the sound of small donors clicking “donate” in rhythmic unison. Yet, beneath all this optimism, a sobering truth lingers: waves are as unpredictable as the tides, and politics has a way of turning high water into low ebb before anyone even sees the shoreline.

It’s true that Democrats have reasons to feel buoyed. After years of defensive politics, the party appears newly confident. They’ve gained ground with suburban voters who once drifted rightward. They’ve made cultural inroads with younger voters who are increasingly disillusioned with conservative politics. Even some independents, those elusive creatures of American democracy have started leaning blue again. It feels, for the moment, like Democrats are finally speaking to the pulse of an anxious nation.

But before anyone starts printing victory posters for 2026 or dreaming about 2028, it’s worth remembering just how volatile the American electorate can be. Political fortunes in this country change faster than the news cycle. What looks like a wave today might look like a puddle tomorrow.

Let’s start with the basics: it’s still a long road to the midterms, and an even longer one to the next presidential election. The national mood has a habit of shifting dramatically once the political temperature rises. Economic uncertainty, global instability, and even the unpredictable churn of social media can upend narratives overnight. Voters are not static, they react to their lived experience, and that experience is constantly in flux. The average American doesn’t think in terms of party strategies or polling trends; they think about their rent, their job, their sense of safety, and whether their leaders seem to understand any of it.

At the moment, Democrats have the advantage of appearing like the “normal” party, the steady hand in a chaotic era. But the trouble with being the steady hand is that stability doesn’t always inspire excitement. Passion wins elections as much as policy does, and Republicans—fragmented though they may seem, still know how to stir passion. From grievance politics to the culture wars, they’ve mastered the art of emotional mobilization. Anger and fear, for better or worse, remain powerful motivators at the ballot box.

So while Democrats talk about climate investment, education, and reproductive rights, Republicans are busy crafting narratives that tap into identity, resentment, and nostalgia. In America’s current political landscape, that emotional contrast can easily eclipse the policy debate. Democrats win when voters feel hope; Republicans win when voters feel threatened. And right now, both emotions are simmering in equal measure.

There’s another challenge for Democrats: the illusion of momentum. Social media bubbles can create echo chambers that make support seem broader than it actually is. A viral post or a rally crowd doesn’t necessarily translate into votes in crucial swing states. National enthusiasm can hide regional weaknesses, especially in areas where Democrats have lost touch with working-class voters who once formed the backbone of their coalition. For every energized college-educated liberal in a city center, there’s a frustrated blue-collar voter in a small town who feels abandoned by both parties.

And that’s where the so-called blue wave often falters, on the shoals of geography and turnout. Democrats can win the popular vote by millions and still lose the Electoral College. They can dominate urban centers and still find themselves outnumbered in key congressional districts. The American system rewards consistency and reach, not just enthusiasm. A party that wants to surf a wave needs to know where the shoreline actually is.

Still, there’s a case to be made that the Democrats have learned a few lessons from recent history. They’ve grown more disciplined in messaging, less afraid of boldness, and somewhat more attuned to the cultural anxieties that define the modern electorate. There’s an emerging recognition that “safe” politics no longer excites anyone. Voters crave authenticity, even when it comes wrapped in controversy. Democrats who can speak plainly, without rehearsed sound bites or sanitized slogans have a chance to reach voters across the spectrum. That’s the secret sauce of modern political appeal: sounding real in an age of artifice.

But authenticity is a double-edged sword. It demands consistency, and consistency is hard to maintain in a big-tent party where progressives and moderates often clash. The internal tension within the Democratic Party remains one of its biggest vulnerabilities. Progressives push for rapid change; centrists preach patience. Both sides have valid points but the resulting noise can make the party appear divided, even rudderless, to an already cynical public.

Meanwhile, Republicans are watching. They may seem fractured now, but history suggests they have a remarkable ability to regroup when power is at stake. One charismatic figure, one populist message, one well-timed backlash and the tide can turn quickly. The Democrats’ task isn’t merely to ride a wave but to build a seawall strong enough to withstand the next storm.

So, are the Democrats riding a blue wave to victory? Perhaps. Or perhaps they’re simply feeling the spray of temporary momentum. The truth is, politics in America is not about waves, it’s about endurance. It’s about surviving the long stretches between moments of enthusiasm. It’s about connecting policies to people’s lives in ways that don’t evaporate after a good week of polling.

The next few months will test whether Democrats can translate their current optimism into something lasting. If they can maintain discipline, broaden their message, and resist the trap of complacency, the blue wave might yet carry them further than expected. But if they mistake enthusiasm for inevitability, they’ll learn once again that waves crash as easily as they rise.

For now, the ocean is restless. The tide is uncertain. And the Democrats, for all their newfound momentum, would do well to remember that every political wave eventually meets the shore.

Ovi History #eMagazine #13: Armistice

 

The lucky 13th... well it is an Armistice so we will .see!

The Armistice of November 11, 1918, marked the dramatic and long-awaited cessation of hostilities on the Western Front, effectively ending the First World War. Signed in the early hours of the morning in a railway carriage in the Compiègne Forest, the agreement between the Allied powers and a defeated Germany called for a ceasefire to begin at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. The news sparked immediate and immense relief and celebration across the war-weary nations, as the guns finally fell silent after four years of unprecedented conflict and staggering human cost.

While the Armistice itself was a ceasefire and not a formal surrender, its terms were designed to make it impossible for Germany to resume fighting. It required the German withdrawal from all occupied territories, the surrender of vast amounts of war matériel, and the evacuation of territory west of the Rhine. This day of relief and remembrance, first commemorated as Armistice Day, has since evolved into Veterans Day in the United States and Remembrance Day in Commonwealth nations, serving as a poignant annual tribute to the military personnel who died in the line of duty.

This issue of Ovi History explores an Armistice that might prologues a second world war.

Also in this issue two historical fiction short stories, one from Martha Radcliffe, one from Lucas Durand and a poem from Jan Sand.

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

Thanos Kalamidas

America’s impending war with Nigeria by Tunde Akande

Trump said the blasphemy laws of the Muslims have resulted in the death of many Christians. Some say no, it is not only Christians that are being killed but Muslims too are killed by the terrorists.

When America’s Donald Trump thundered that he was going to send America’s boots to Nigeria’s soil to solve a problem Nigeria has had now for about 15 years, there are Nigerians who felt by the way those words were crafted they could not have been made by President Trump. A friend responded when I placed the words on a common WhatsApp platform we share. “It is too pedestrian,” he said, “Trump won’t speak like that.” It didn’t take long before experts in the use of the internet flooded the platform with the link to the statement, which was made on the Truth platform. My friend just expressed a fear, he just wanted to push off the evil day. Now those days are with us. Our country may be at war with America any moment from now. And that war, hold your breath, is the solution to Nigeria’s political problems, which gave rise to our current religious and insecurity problems. There is no reason for Trump not to make good his threat. He must prove himself a man of his word. He is not our president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, whose love for policy flip-flops is now common knowledge. Trump is a man of his word, he spoke very rashly to Tinubu, to Nigeria, and he will make it come to pass. Time was when Nigeria too spoke rashly to the UK when Nigeria nationalized British Petroleum because of its policy on South Africa during apartheid. It was during the reign of tough-talking Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher did not counter the hot words and Nigeria won accolades of nations, especially nations in Africa.

But times have changed. Then Nigeria had money, plenty of it. Naira was freely spent on the streets of London like the US dollar is now more acceptable on the streets of Lagos and Abuja than our naira. It was an era General Yakubu Gowon, former head of state, said money was not the problem of Nigeria but how to spend it. But times have changed, Nigeria has squandered her money, she has no electricity, literacy is very low among its people and the youths are running to all manner of nations to escape from the hell which home has become. In Indonesia, Nigerian youths are daily slaughtered for drug offences. I remember during my postgraduate studies at the University of Lagos where I was on a university scholarship, a form was given to me by my head of department. It was from a university in Indonesia. It was a cylostyled copy. I took one look at it, squeezed it and threw it in the trash can. I said within myself “me, go for PhD in Indonesia, God forbid.” Nigerians were proud then, we went to universities in the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Germany and most parts of the West. But today, even Malaysia is restraining our students from admission into their universities. Things have really gone sour in our beloved country. I never knew that the Fulani can be afraid, I don't know they could plead for peace and love in the nation. They are this peacockish humans who look you with one eye, ask you if you know what it means to come from Sokoto, or Daura or Katsina, and before you know vanish. All you need to see to appreciate the grand Fulani pride is to take a look at Emir Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, one of the two emirs in Kano. Somebody gives him a walking stick as he alights from his Rolls Royce, he takes it and walks with majestic stride. A horde of dogari or palace guards run after him, and in a nation where all are constitutionally said to be equal. Somebody stays beside him adjusting his flowing babanriga which are in several layers, he wears a designer's pair of shoes, and even when he is on a platform giving a lecture the man adjusting his babanriga stays permanently behind him. Even the king of England, Charles Arthur George will be green with envy, it is royal grandeur at its best.

That is the attitude the Fulani brings to everything, their great grandfather owns Nigeria; every other Nigerian is a slave. In offices they look down on everybody. They let others do the job and they take the credit for it. They come to office when they like and close when they like. They are untouchable. Remove them from a government department today and the next day they are in another better government job. But when Donald Trump threatened to bring his soldiers to our shores in Nigeria, Fulani began to scamper for safety. The whole of social media was filled with posts accusing the US of one ulterior motive or the other for wanting to attack Nigeria. One Fulani lady particularly said she is from a family where there are Christians and Muslims and they have been living with one another peacefully. She appealed to Nigerians to reject the scheme of President Trump. Arewa Consultative Forum, which is an instrument of Fulani in the country kept mute, the Northern Elders Council has nothing to say to Trump. The usually garrulous Hakeem Baba Ahmed is not speaking. When they speak on social media it is to appeal for oneness which they think we already have. The Sharia Council appealed to Nigerians not to allow any foreign lies to divide the nation. That amused me. So the Fulani thinks there is unity in Nigeria which they don’t want Trump to destroy. They must be living in a dream world or trying to deceive other Nigerians. If Nigeria has unity or peace at all, it is unity and peace of the graveyard, unity and peace that favours only the Fulani.

Donald Trump has shattered the myth of untouchability around Fulani. They know that if Trump makes good his threat and they know he is a tough man who carries out his threats, it is in the north of Nigeria that the “guns will blaze” as Trump said. That is the part of the country where the problem of religious freedom is, the part of the nation where the laws of the country are never obeyed. So they also spin all kinds of conspiracy theories. Trump is only interested in the gold and lithium and other minerals of the north. But they don’t tell us who has been stealing the minerals before now. They don’t tell us about the complicity of some governors of the north because of their arrogance and religious threats, which is why the federal government has not been able to curb them. They did not tell us that the illegal mining of these minerals gave birth to banditry in Zamfara State, which spread to other parts of the north and remain till today. The leaders insist on practicing Sharia. The foremost leader of the north, Sir Ahmadu Bello refused all the entreaties of the imams during his time to proclaim the Sharia on the north, rather he went to Pakistan to borrow the penal code which worked fairly in the north.

That is why in a country that the Fulanis are now calling one and where there is love in their view, there are two sets of law, the penal code in the north and the criminal code in the south. So where is our unity, one country; two sets of law. Even Ahmadu Bello did not listen to the Imams that building hotels are not Islamic. He argued that if the north did not have hotels the Muslims will be discriminated against. So he established guest houses in the north. They not only accommodated guests, they also sold beer. Today that is gone, these religious bigots are destroying beer in beer parlours. And it so happens that those who sell the beer are Igbo who are mostly Christians. It so happens that the Igbo have some of these Sharia bigots who patronize them. Yet in the open they break their beer bottles as Sharia punishment. Yet they say we are one nation with freedom of religion. Freedom of religion must mean that other Nigerians who are non-Muslims will be able to live their lives as they deem fit without breaking the laws of the nation. Even Muslims who want can drink alcohol as long as they are not forcing any other person to join them.

Trump did not mince words like we mince them when we discuss here so the gods of Fulani will not be angry. Trump said the blasphemy laws of the Muslims have resulted in the death of many Christians. Some say no, it is not only Christians that are being killed but Muslims too are killed by the terrorists. But what is the comparative number? Nobody has given us the statistics.

Deborah Samuel Yakubu, 19-year-old student of Shehu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto was brutally murdered by a mob of Moslem students on May 12, 2022 in Sokoto because she acknowledged Jesus as the one that helped her to pass her exams where others failed. Her Muslim classmates deemed her blasphemous. For God’s sake, Deborah did not abuse Prophet Mohammed, the prophet of Islam, she only acknowledged her own Jesus. For that reason, and without trial she was stoned to death and burnt. And some, even Tinubu’s government will have us believe that there is religious freedom in our constitution as proof that there is religious freedom in Nigeria. What is the value of a constitutional provision of freedom that did not cover Deborah Samuel. Even Muslims would be wrong to kill a fellow Muslim for blasphemy. All Nigerians ought to speak up to protest such killings. Blasphemy law must be according to our constitution. It is a breach on the fundamental right to free speech.

Religion must not be by force. The Muslims must also speak up. I must not be forced to go to heaven. If Allah expects me to be brought before him in heaven at the forcible behest of another person, then I’m not worshipping Him of my own volition. Allah had me because my Imam or my emir or my sheikh forced me. Then the reward for such will be to the one that forced me to heaven before Allah and not to me. But the sacrifice must be personal so that the reward also will be personal. Any other way is illogical. But that is the choice of these Sharia bigots. And they say there is religious freedom in Nigeria. Is it freedom to be harnessed by force. No, there is no freedom in such situation and it is right to declare there is no religious freedom in Nigeria. Is there Christian genocide in Nigeria? First, there must be no kind of genocide in Nigeria, Christian, Muslim or ethnic. There must be no killing and our constitution proscribes capital punishment for murder. But what would you call the murder of 156 adults and scores of children killed in one day in a village in Plateau State, all who are Christians, to which the surving villagers have built a monument listing their names on a pillar. The people who survived said the killers came from neighbouring countries and some states in Nigeria, Bauchi, Kaduna, Gombe etc. When they killed them they take over their lands and settle there. What is that? In simple language it is premediated and targeted murder and has a purpose to displace the people; it is genocide.

The motives that have been ascribed to Trump does not matter. What matters is: are people wantonly killed? Was Deborah Samuel killed? Leah Sharibu was kidnapped along with 109 other girls from her school in Dapchi, Yobe State, in February 2018. Leah Sharibu’s case is distinct as she remained in captivity after the other Dapchi girls were released, reportedly due to her refusal to convert to Islam. What has the government done since the Buhari era to get justice for Deborah Samuel and to rescue Leah? Nothing! Was Gideon Akaluka beheaded in Kano by these Sharia people? Yes he was. Gideon Akaluka was a 30-year-old Igbo trader who was brutally murdered in Kano on November 2, 1995. His death was sparked by allegations of blasphemy, after he was accussed of using sheets of the Quran to wrap items for a woman believed to be his wife. There are many cases. Which of them has attracted the attention of our law. Which of them has been punished. None. So how can President Tinubu tell the world there is religious freedom in Nigeria.

Daniel Bwala, Tinubu’s political communication advisor appeared before a Russian Television to make a case for existence of religious freedom in Nigeria. Toward the end of the interview, you heard the interviewer saying “ thanks for the interview, your view has been heard in the necessary quarters.” You get the impression that government was directly recruiting Russia into the fray. The Chinese embassy has also written that China takes exception to America’s interference in Nigeria’s internal affairs. In Chad the government has drafted its soldiers to its border with Nigeria to stop all bandits from crossing over to its territory. Cheering news at the threat of Trump, the terrorists that Nigeria’s government has not been able to conquer are already running away.

We have been shamed and China and Russia cannot help us except we want our nation reduced to rubbles like Ukraine. We are in this shame because we have not built a country of our dreams. Bwala blames the IPOB separatists for prodding United States of America to declare Nigeria a nation of particular concern. What does he expect the separatists to do? To continue to be second rate people in a nation they call their own. President Tinubu has eaten the humble pie and is begging. That’s how low we have brought ourselves. We are called a disgraced country. And some are crying. Empty patriotism, text book patriotism. We are a disgraced nation because we cannot guarantee three square meals for our citizens, because we cannot provide education for our citizens, because we cannot guarantee freedom for our citizens, because though we are rich in resources, our leaders steal them, we are disgraced because we cannot get justice in our courts because our judges sell justice.

We need Trump to tame the Fulani. The war will certainly start from the north and I don’t think any part of the country will receive those Fulani who will flee because they don’t have any friends anywhere. Whatever anyone will say we must make bold to say the Fulani are the chief problem of Nigeria. Their pride and domineering attitude reach to high heavens; they must humble themselves and come to the table of brotherhood so we chat a path of mutual respect that will get the nation going in the right direction.

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.

Ant-biotics #069 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

Ant-biotics is a type of antimicrobial cartoon strip active against boredom’s bacteria.

For more Ant-biotics HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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The specter of 1934, are we seeing shadows or storms? By Zakir Hall

There’s a certain hum in the air these days; low, uneasy, and familiar. The kind that comes before a storm or at least before the collective belief that one is coming. Economists, political commentators, and those self-appointed prophets of Wall Street have started whispering, and then shouting, about a déjà vu moment for America. The headlines pulse with it: “Echoes of 1934,” “The Next Great Crash,” and, inevitably, “Trump’s Economic Apocalypse.”

It’s a haunting thought, that history, with its merciless sense of irony, might be preparing a rerun. The notion that America could once again stumble into the same economic pit that nearly swallowed it nearly a century ago has the power to grip even the most rational minds. But as with all prophecies, one must ask: is this foresight, or fearmongering dressed in academic language?

Let’s start with the obvious. Donald Trump’s reemergence on the political stage has been more than a political event; it’s an economic Rorschach test. His supporters see him as the strongman savior of American industry, a businessman-president who once presided over “the greatest economy the world has ever seen.” His critics, on the other hand, see something closer to a demolition contractor with an affection for dynamite. Every tariff, every threat to the Fed, every boast about “replacing the globalist elite” is read as a line in a coming tragedy.

And perhaps that’s the problem. In this country, we don’t debate policy anymore—we trade in omens.

Economists warning about a “1934 repeat” know the emotional weight of that year. 1934 was not the crash itself, that was 1929, but the long, cold aftermath of it. The world had settled into its depression like a chronic illness. Factories were closing, banks were collapsing, and the once-proud American experiment was gasping for breath. The parallels some now draw, rising populism, political instability, global trade friction, and financial speculation, feel uncomfortably resonant.

But resonance doesn’t equal inevitability.

Today’s economy, for all its flaws, is not 1934’s. The U.S. has tools Franklin Roosevelt couldn’t have dreamed of, monetary firepower, globalized supply chains, instant market response. The Federal Reserve can print money until the presses overheat; the government can send relief to your bank account with a few lines of code. Even the specter of unemployment no longer carries the same dread, because the gig economy and digital work have created a new kind of resilience, albeit a precarious one.

And yet, one can understand the unease. The U.S. economy feels inflated not just by capital, but by hubris. The national debt hovers above $35 trillion, like an anvil held up by faith and fiscal improvisation. Stock valuations are detached from any reasonable definition of reality, tech monopolies have replaced factories as the engines of wealth, and housing prices defy gravity while wages crawl. We are, in essence, living in an economy built on confidence and confidence, history tells us, is the first thing to flee when the lights flicker.

Enter Trump, the chaos candidate turned chaos brand. To his critics, his return threatens precisely that fragile confidence. The markets like predictability, and Trump is a walking uncertainty machine. Trade wars, abrupt policy shifts, rhetorical assaults on the Federal Reserve, these are not comforting habits for investors. Nor are they recipes for economic stability.

But to dismiss all talk of a “second crash” as partisan hysteria would be just as blind. There is something deeply fragile about the current American order. Trump didn’t invent that fragility, he exposed it. The wealth gap has become an abyss. The middle class is stretched thin, paying for the luxuries of the few and the debts of the many. The political class talks about growth as if it were a universal blessing, but the average American hasn’t felt its warmth in decades.

And when that’s the reality, populism stops being a political movement and becomes a survival mechanism. Trump’s economic message however bombastic taps into that wound. He speaks not to economists or financiers, but to people who feel left behind by the numbers that supposedly prove America’s greatness.

That tension between numbers and reality is what gives these warnings of “economic apocalypse” their eerie power. It’s not about whether Trump wins or loses, but about what his rise signifies: a nation where faith in the system has eroded to the point that any strongman promising revival seems worth the risk.

So perhaps the question isn’t whether the economists are right, but whether we are listening to them for the right reasons. When analysts invoke 1934, what they’re really talking about is the fragility of democracy under economic duress. That year marked the moment when economic despair began feeding political extremism across the world. Sound familiar?

If Trump’s policies or his unpredictability, spark the next downturn, it will not be because of a single decision or tweet, but because the system is already brittle. We’ve been inflating an illusion of prosperity while ignoring the widening cracks beneath it. The markets rise not on productivity, but on speculation. The political class keeps borrowing against tomorrow. And the working class, once the heart of the American dream, is now asked to endure another cycle of promises that evaporate on contact with reality.

Whether this ends in another “big crash” or simply another long disillusionment, the signs are there. But fear can be as destructive as failure. If we convince ourselves that apocalypse is inevitable, we might just act as if it is, hoarding wealth, voting out of vengeance, abandoning faith in institutions.

And so, we return to that hum in the air. Maybe it’s the beginning of a storm. Or maybe it’s the echo of our own anxiety, amplified by memories of history we barely understand.

America isn’t reliving 1934. Not yet. But it’s flirting with the same ghosts, fear, division, greed, and the seductive pull of a man who claims only he can fix it. And if history has taught us anything, it’s that civilizations don’t fall when the markets crash, they fall when they start believing the crash is deserved.

EU’s surrender to Donald’s Silicon Valley by Gabriele Schmitt

Once again, the European Commission has shown that when faced with real pressure from Washington and the titans of Silicon Valley, it prefers capitulation over conviction. The much-touted promise of a “European way” in regulating artificial intelligence, ethical, fair, and citizen-centred, has withered under the glare of American lobbying and geopolitical intimidation. What should have been a bold stand for European sovereignty and democratic control over technology has turned into yet another act of deference to the United States and its corporate aristocracy.

For years, Europe prided itself on leading the world in data protection and digital rights. The GDPR was hailed as a modern Magna Carta for privacy, proving that the EU could resist the intrusive business models of the tech giants. Yet when the moment arrived to extend that same courage to AI, the Commission blinked. Instead of standing firm, it watered down, delayed, and diluted. The European AI Act, initially envisioned as a safeguard against unaccountable algorithms, now reads like a polite invitation to self-regulate.

The reasoning behind this retreat is depressingly familiar. Officials whisper about “competitiveness,” about the need to avoid “stifling innovation.” They speak in the language of economic pragmatism, pretending that Silicon Valley’s dominance is a natural force rather than the result of decades of political indulgence. But let us not be fooled: this was not a technical compromise, it was a political submission. Europe’s leaders chose to bend the knee to the United States, to Donald Trump’s brash nationalism and to the venture capital barons who orbit his rhetoric like satellites.

Trump’s renewed swagger on the world stage has clearly left its mark. The Commission’s sudden caution around enforcing AI regulations coincides suspiciously with Washington’s renewed pressure on its allies to “align” on digital policy. The message is simple: don’t get in America’s way. Don’t make life harder for our companies. And once again, Brussels complied, as though European values were negotiable when the White House scowls.

The irony is bitter. AI is already reshaping European society, from workplace automation to predictive policing, from automated hiring to the manipulation of online discourse. Citizens are increasingly governed not by laws, but by algorithms. Yet the Commission, entrusted with defending them, has chosen to hand the keys of this new technological order to the very corporations that built it. The same companies that harvested personal data without consent now get to shape how machines interpret, classify, and decide our fates.

European citizens did not vote for this algorithmic future. They were promised transparency, fairness, and control. Instead, they are offered “partnerships” with American tech giants, as if democracy itself were an inconvenient detail to be subcontracted. The Commission speaks of “dialogue” with industry, but what it really means is deference. The loudest voices in Brussels today are not citizens’ groups, ethicists, or academics; they are lobbyists with Silicon Valley expense accounts.

It is striking how swiftly the Commission abandoned its own rhetoric of “human-centred AI.” When push came to shove, the “human” was reduced to a marketing slogan. Every clause that might have imposed genuine accountability, independent audits, strict bans on biometric surveillance, hard caps on automated decision-making was quietly softened. The justification? Europe must “remain competitive.” But competitive with whom? With the very companies that undermine European labour markets, avoid European taxes, and exploit European data?

Europe’s leaders seem to have forgotten that regulation is not the enemy of innovation—it is the condition for trust. Without clear rules, AI becomes a race to the bottom, a contest of who can deploy faster and ask forgiveness later. By failing to regulate decisively, Brussels hasn’t made Europe more innovative; it has made it more vulnerable. The continent risks becoming a mere testing ground for technologies conceived elsewhere and accountable to no one here.

Behind closed doors, EU officials may comfort themselves with the illusion of pragmatism. They imagine that by compromising, they are keeping Europe “in the game.” But the truth is harsher: you cannot win a game when you are playing by someone else’s rules. The United States and its corporate proxies have already written the playbook. The EU’s job, it seems, is merely to nod along and pretend that it still holds the moral high ground.

This failure goes deeper than policy, it’s a philosophical defeat. Europe once imagined itself as the conscience of the digital world, offering an alternative to the libertarian excesses of Silicon Valley and the surveillance authoritarianism of Beijing. That vision depended on courage: the courage to say no, to chart a path that put human dignity above profit. But when the time came to defend that principle, Europe’s political class flinched. They chose to be liked in Washington rather than trusted in Warsaw, Paris, or Lisbon.

Meanwhile, ordinary Europeans continue to live with the consequences. AI systems are deciding who gets a loan, who is flagged for “risk” at the border, who gets a job interview, and who is denied insurance. These are not abstract ethical puzzles; they are daily realities. Yet the institutions meant to defend citizens’ rights have outsourced those decisions to opaque algorithms run by companies headquartered 9,000 kilometres away.

It would be naïve to think this submission will go unnoticed. Europe’s democratic deficit deepens every time Brussels bows to foreign pressure. Citizens grow cynical, populists grow louder, and the European project loses a bit more of its soul. Regulation was never just about technology, it was about trust about proving that the EU could stand up for its people against forces larger than any single nation. That promise has now been broken.

The Commission may try to spin this as a strategic pause, a “balanced approach.” But history will remember it differently. It will remember that when the opportunity came to shape the digital age on Europe’s own terms, its leaders chose timidity over transformation. They had a chance to prove that democracy could tame technology. Instead, they chose to let technology tame democracy.

Europe did not need to be America’s apprentice. It could have been its equal partner, proud, independent, and guided by its own principles. Instead, it bowed. And in doing so, it may have lost not only the AI race, but something far more precious: the belief that Europe still stands for something more than convenience.e of the future. That war will decide more than any tank on parade ever could.

The roar of the dangerous few by Jemma Norman

There was a time when Britain prided itself on quiet decency, on reasoned debate, on tolerance, on that steady, understated confidence that didn’t need to shout. But that time feels like a distant memory now. Today, the air is thick with the thundering voices of the few loud, angry, and relentless drowning out the quiet majority who still believe in fairness, openness, and the rule of law. This minority, emboldened by demagogues like Nigel Farage, has learned that in the age of outrage, volume is power. And Britain, once a nation of thoughtful moderation, now teeters on the cliff’s edge of dark populism.

Farage is not new to the game. He’s been playing it for decades, the performance of the “everyman,” pint in hand, talking about “taking back control” and “the will of the people.” It’s a script written in resentment and applause lines, not in policy or principle. What makes him so dangerous is not his intellect, which is limited but his instinct. He understands fear. He knows how to turn complex realities into simple enemies: migrants, elites, the EU, anyone different or inconvenient. His genius lies not in leadership but in manipulation, in sensing what people are angry about and making that anger his own currency.

And make no mistake this kind of populism is a moral corrosion. It eats away at empathy, civility, and truth itself. It replaces dialogue with slogans, nuance with noise. When Farage or his imitators speak of “freedom,” what they really mean is the freedom to insult, to exclude, to divide. When they invoke “the people,” they mean only a certain kind of people, angry, nostalgic, easily frightened, easily flattered. The rest are dismissed as “traitors,” “globalists,” or “woke elites.” It’s a chillingly effective linguistic trick: strip your opponents of humanity, and you no longer need to listen to them.

Britain has always been a nation of contradictions, empire and emancipation, privilege and protest, conservatism and compassion. But at its best, it found a balance. Today that balance is gone. The shouting has become the soundtrack. The Faragean right thrives on chaos, because chaos creates attention, and attention creates power. They don’t need to win the argument, only to make sure no one else can speak. The strategy is painfully familiar across the world: dominate the narrative, discredit the media, flood the airwaves with outrage.

The tragedy is that it works. Social media amplifies anger like a megaphone in a cave. The more absurd the claim, the more viral it becomes. Farage and his ilk have learned that truth is optional in modern politics; all that matters is emotional resonance. Say it loudly, say it repeatedly, and people will believe it or at least believe that “there must be something to it.” Meanwhile, those who value facts and reason sound boring, academic, elitist. In an age of noise, calmness looks like weakness.

But beneath all the shouting lies something even more dangerous: exhaustion. Millions of Britons are simply tired, tired of division, tired of politics as performance, tired of being told who to hate. And yet their fatigue is the populist’s greatest weapon. When people tune out, the loudest voices are left to rule the room. When moderates retreat, extremists advance. Silence, in this context, is not neutrality; it’s surrender.

Farage thrives on that silence. Every time decent people shrug and say “what’s the point,” he wins a little more ground. Every time lies go unchallenged, the public sphere corrodes a little further. What began as an act, the pub-room patriot railing against elites, has metastasized into a genuine movement that bends national discourse around its anger. The poison has seeped deep. You can see it in the normalization of xenophobia, in the disdain for expertise, in the casual cruelty of online mobs. It’s not that Britain has suddenly become a nation of bigots; it’s that bigotry has found its microphone.

And where is the opposition to this ugliness? Too often, muted, afraid of offending, still believing that reason alone can outlast rage. But you cannot whisper your way through a storm. You have to speak firmly, clearly, without apology. You have to name the danger for what it is: not “populism,” which sounds almost democratic, but a creeping authoritarianism wrapped in the language of patriotism. The populist does not want democracy; he wants domination. He does not want dialogue; he wants obedience.

The Britain that once exported democracy, literature, and law to the world is now flirting with the politics of menace and mockery. And it didn’t happen overnight. It happened gradually, with every joke at the expense of “do-gooders,” every headline scapegoating refugees, every politician too cowardly to call out hate for fear of losing votes. The descent into darkness never begins with a march; it begins with a shrug.

Still, not all hope is lost. The strength of Britain has never come from its loudest citizens, but from its quiet ones, those who believe in decency, in fairness, in looking out for one another. They are still here, even if their voices are drowned for now. The challenge is to make them heard again, to remind the country that compassion is not weakness, and that the true measure of patriotism is not who you exclude, but who you protect.

The noise machine will not stop. It will roar and rage and ridicule. But it cannot build; it can only destroy. The task now is for Britain to rediscover its courage not the blustering, flag-waving kind, but the quiet, stubborn kind that built a democracy worth defending.

Because if the country continues to mistake volume for vision, it will wake up one day to find that the shouting has stopped, not because the bullies were defeated, but because there is no one left who dares to speak.

And by then, Britain’s silence will not be peace. It will be the sound of something precious — its moral compass  finally breaking.