The maple leaf and a circle of stars by Thanos Kalamidas

The idea drifts in and out of the transatlantic imagination like a polite but persistent dinner guest, what if Canada joined the European Union? It sounds at first like a geography joke, an annexation by sentiment rather than by sea. And yet, after Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at the Davos assembly rekindled the speculation the notion refuses to retreat to the realm of cocktail-party provocation. It lingers and not without reason.

Canada, after all, has always been European-adjacent in temperament. Its parliamentary system is a Westminster heirloom; its head of state still resides in Buckingham Palace; its bilingualism is a daily negotiation between English pragmatism and French abstraction. The country’s political culture, cautious, managerial, faintly technocratic, would not feel out of place in Brussels. If anything, it might thrive there. Carney himself, with his central banker’s poise and Davos-ready diction, seemed less like a supplicant at NATO than a bridge, Atlantic in geography, European in sensibility.

But should Canada actually join? On paper, the case has a certain elegance. The European Union is not merely a market; it is a club of regulatory harmonization, of shared standards and mutual constraint. Canada already trades deeply with Europe and has signed comprehensive agreements that align its rules with the E.U.’s in everything from food safety to digital privacy. The economic architecture is partially built. One could imagine the maple leaf nestling comfortably among the circle of stars, another social democracy committed to climate targets, multilateralism and the art of compromise.

More compelling, perhaps, is the geopolitical mood. The United States, Canada’s immense and indispensable neighbour, has grown unpredictable. Washington oscillates between global stewardship and inward recoil. For Ottawa, that volatility is not an abstraction; it is an existential question. When your economy is braided with a superpower that periodically threatens tariffs as casually as tweets, diversification stops being a slogan and becomes a strategy.

Joining the E.U. would be the boldest conceivable form of diversification. It would tether Canada to a bloc that prizes rules over impulses, institutions over personalities. It would signal that the Atlantic is not a moat but a bridge. And it would quietly rebalance Canada’s foreign policy identity, from the perpetual junior partner of the United States to a co-architect of a larger democratic project.

Yet the romance of the idea collides with the stubbornness of geography. The European Union is not merely a values club; it is a territorial union. Its cohesion depends, in part, on proximity, on trains that cross borders in an afternoon, on truck routes that weave through three countries before lunch. Canada is separated from Europe by an ocean and from the rest of the EU by time zones that would make parliamentary votes a test of circadian endurance. The logistics alone would strain the very notion of “union.”

There is also the question of sovereignty, ironically sharper in Europe than in Canada. The EU is a delicate organism, forever negotiating the balance between national prerogative and supranational authority. To admit Canada would not simply be to add another member; it would be to redefine the union’s spatial and political boundaries. Would Turkey’s long-stalled candidacy look different in a world where Canada is welcomed? Would the EU become less a European project and more a global alliance of liberal democracies? If so, is that evolution desirable or destabilizing?

For Canada the calculus is equally complex. The country’s economic gravity still tilts overwhelmingly south. Its supply chains, energy exports, and cultural industries are entwined with the United States in ways that no treaty with Brussels could undo. To join the EU would not sever those ties but it would complicate them. Trade rules, regulatory standards, and agricultural quotas would need renegotiation on a scale that would make Brexit look almost tidy.

And yet, perhaps the point of this debate is not accession but aspiration. The fact that Canada can plausibly be imagined as an EU member says something about its political character. It says that Canada is seen as compatible with a bloc defined by social welfare states, carbon pricing and a wary respect for history. It says that, in a fracturing ‘west’, there remains a desire for coalitions of the steady.

Carney’s speech did not propose membership outright but it evoked a shared destiny of democracies that must pool resources to defend not only territory but norms. In that framing, the question is less “Should Canada join the European Union?” and more “How porous can the Atlantic become?”

Perhaps the future lies not in formal membership but in something more imaginative: a transatlantic compact that binds Canada and Europe in defence, climate policy and digital governance without redrawing maps. The E.U. could remain European in name and geography while expanding its strategic perimeter. Canada could deepen integration without submitting to Brussels’ full acquis.

Still, the fantasy endures because it captures a mood. It imagines a Canada less defined by its proximity to American power and more by its affinity with European restraint. It imagines an Atlantic community that resists fragmentation not with nostalgia but with structure.

The maple leaf may never fly in Brussels’ institutional breeze. But the conversation itself is a quiet act of positioning, a reminder that in a world of shifting alliances, identity is as much about who you choose to stand beside as where you happen to stand.

Post bots & by-lines #thoughts by Theodore K. Nasos

Is Jeff Bezos planning to replace journalists with robots and AIs at The Washington Post like he unleashed automation armies inside Amazon? That depends. Do robots drink newsroom coffee that tastes like burnt regret? Can an algorithm glare meaningfully at a city council member? And most importantly: can a chatbot survive a budget meeting?

Let’s start with what we know. Jeff Bezos did buy The Washington Post in 2013. He also built Amazon into a place where robots glide across warehouse floors like obedient Roombas with performance reviews. So naturally, every time someone hears the word “AI,” they imagine a metallic columnist named “OpinionBot 3000” firing out hot takes at 40,000 words per minute while human reporters are gently escorted out with a commemorative tote bag.

But here’s the thing, warehouses and newsrooms are not the same ecosystem. In a warehouse, the goal is to move a box from A to B without existential dread. In a newsroom, the goal is to move a fact from A to B while navigating lawyers, ethics, sources who whisper “off the record” like it’s a spell and editors who ask for “just one more rewrite” at 11:58 p.m.

Could AI write news? Sure. It can already summarize earnings reports, draft sports recaps, and generate headlines like, “Local Man Discovers Consequences.” But journalism isn’t just typing. It’s calling a source who won’t pick up. It’s noticing that the mayor’s “transparency initiative” involves fog machines. It’s asking the second question after the official statement. That second question is where the trouble and the truth lives.

Now imagine Bezos standing in a sleek glass office, stroking a white cat made entirely of cloud computing. “Release the reporters,” he whispers. “Deploy the bots.” Dramatic? Yes. Realistic? Probably not in the cartoonish way people fear. Media companies everywhere are experimenting with AI tools, mostly because ignoring them would be like pretending email is a fad. But replacing every journalist with a blinking server rack? That’s less strategy, more sci-fi villain monologue.

Also, consider the liability. An AI that hallucinates in a poetry slam is charming. An AI that hallucinates in an investigative piece about corruption is a lawsuit wearing a necktie. Human journalists may be messy, caffeinated, and occasionally melodramatic, but they understand nuance and when they don’t, at least they can be held accountable in ways that don’t involve unplugging them.

There’s also the brand to consider. The Washington Post’s slogan is “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” It loses a bit of gravitas if the byline reads “By GPT-Editorial Unit 7.3 (Beta).” Democracy might still die in darkness but now it’s illuminated by the soft glow of a server farm in Virginia.

More likely? AI becomes the intern who never sleeps. It drafts, transcribes, analyzes data, suggests trends. The humans still argue about commas and ethics and whether “shocking” is too strong for a zoning dispute. Robots don’t replace journalists; they join them, like that one overachieving colleague who finishes spreadsheets before lunch but can’t interpret sarcasm.

So no, there’s no grand robot coup, at least not yet. If Bezos ever does replace the newsroom with androids, it probably won’t start with a dramatic purge. It’ll start with a memo about “efficiency enhancements.” And somewhere, a reporter will read it, sigh deeply, and begin investigating.

A Review Of Techniques In Managing Your Depression by Stan Popovich

Some people have a difficult time in managing their depression which can make things very challenging.

When you are in this situation, it is important to know what to do so that your mental health issues do not overwhelm you.

As a result, here are seven ways that a person can use to help conquer their depression in their life.

1. Learn how to manage your thoughts: One of the ways to overcome your depression is to challenge your negative thinking with positive statements and realistic thinking. When encountering thoughts that make you fearful, challenge those thoughts by asking yourself questions that will maintain objectivity and common sense. Your fearful thoughts are usually not based on reality.

2. Take a break: Some people get depressed and have a difficult time getting through the day. When this happens, a person should take a deep breath and try to find something to do to get their mind off of the problem. A person could take a walk, listen to some music, read the newspaper, or do an activity that will give them a fresh perspective on things.

3. Use Self-Visualization: Sometimes, we can get anxious over a task that we will have to perform in the near future. When this happens, visualize yourself doing the task in your mind. For instance, you have to play in the championship volleyball game in front of a large group of people in the next few days. Before the big day comes, imagine yourself playing the game in your mind.  By doing this, you will be better prepared when the time comes.

4. Carry a small notebook of positive statements with you: Another technique that is very helpful is to have a small notebook of positive statements that makes you feel good. Whenever you come across an affirmation that relaxes you, write it down in a small notebook that you can carry around with you in your pocket. Whenever you feel depressed, open up your small notebook and read those statements.

5. Worrying makes it worse: A lot of times, our worrying can make the problem even worse. All the worrying in the world will not change anything. All you can do is to do your best each day, hope for the best, and when something does happen, take it in stride.

6. Take it one day at a time: Instead of worrying about how you will get through the rest of the week or month, try to focus on today. Each day can provide us with different opportunities to learn new things and that includes learning how to deal with your problems. You never know when the answers you are looking for will come to your doorstep.

7. Take advantage of the help that is available around you: If possible, talk to a professional who can help you manage your fears and anxieties. They will be able to provide you with additional advice and insights on how to deal with your current problem. By talking to a professional, a person will be helping themselves in the long run because they will become better able to deal with their problems in the future.

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Stan Popovich is the author of the popular managing fear book, “A Layman’s Guide to Managing Fear”. For more information about Stan’s book and to get some more free mental health advice, please visit Stan’s website at http://www.managingfear.com

Berserk Alert! #087 #Cartoon by Tony Zuvela

 

Tony Zuvela and his view of the world around us in a constant berserk alert!
For more Berserk Alert! HERE!
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Wendell L. Willkie: One World by Rene Wadlow

Wendell Willkie 18 February 1892 - 8 October 1944

Wendell Willkie, whose birth anniversary we mark on 18 February, was one of those shooting-star figures that occasionally cross the sky of the United States, a corporation lawyer known to the few concerned with corporation law as the able defender of big business, especially power and light companies against government regulations.  As the power and light companies had never been noted for their social conscience, such a background was hardly a useful start for a political career in 1939 when people were still climbing out of a long economic depression.

It was Russell Davenport, the editor of Fortune, the magazine edited for those whose main interest was money, who was Willkie's major champion and chief speech writer during the 1940 Presidential campaign against President Franklin Roosevelt.  Davenport's then wife, Marcia Davenport was also deeply involved in the Willkie team and gives a description of Willkie at the time "He was an old-fashioned, hell-raising, hard-wrangling liberal, with some of the evangelism of John Brown and the Boston abolitionists.  But his concept of American democracy was middle-western.  He was the small-town Indiana grandson of German immigrants who had fled Europe in the revolutionary upheavals of 1848.  He was a Democrat, a man of the people, well-educated, self-made, belligerently independent, the antithesis in birth, temperament, tradition and education to the Hudson River Valley patroon in the White House."  (2)

The 1940 election took place against the backdrop of the war which had begun with the invasion of Poland on the first of September 1939.  The United States was neutral, and the American public strongly divided as to what role the US should play, divided between those who were considered 'isolationists' and those who wanted to help Britain(3). Willkie was defeated, but he polled the biggest popular vote a Republican had ever won.  However, the "Old Guard Republicans" feared and hated Willkie more after the 1940 election than they had before.  They did their utmost to insure that no such a maverick would ever rise again.  By 1944 Willkie was pushed out of politics and died in 1944 at the age of 52.

In order to show the unity of the American people, Republicans and Democrats, once the US had entered the Second World War, President Roosevelt asked Willkie to go on a "good will mission" to the Middle and Far East with a stop-over in the USSR to see Joseph Stalin.

The result of the trip - a short one by today's round-the-world standards - was the book One World. "Today" Willkie began his book "because of military and other censorship, America is like a beleaguered city that lives within high walls through which there passes only an occasional courier to tell what is happening outside.   I have been outside these walls. And I have found that nothing outside is exactly what it seems to those within."

Willkie foresaw the rise of the colonial peoples and their need for a higher standard of living.  He did not predict how bitter this rise was going to be.  There are several chapters devoted to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, but only a paragraph to his conversations with Chou En-lai. "This excellent, sober and sincere man ...of obvious ability."

Willkie, with his long association with the business community, early recognized the importance of economic organization.  He wrote "Political internationalism without economic internationalism is a house built upon sand."  He called for a "new society of independent nations, free alike of the economic injustice of the West and the political malpractices of the East."

One World quickly sold some two million copies, and the title became part of the political vocabulary.  People were called "one worlders" indicating that we all live in "one world" and that our social and political structures have not caught up with the fact. Wendell Willkie's One World is rarely read today, but the term "one world" has passed into the common vocabulary - a sign that world consciousness exists in many unexpected places.

Notes:
1. Wendell L. Willkie. One World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1943)
2. Marcia Davenport. Too Strong For Fantasy (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1967)
3. For a good picture of the issues in the 1940 campaign see Susan Dunn. 1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindberg, Hitler: the Election Amid the Storm (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2013)

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Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

Walk the talk 26#003 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

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!

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Guilt by association in the age of political machinery by Jemma Norman

There is a particular smell to modern political scandal. It is less about revelation and more about amplification. The question surrounding Peter Mandelson’s past associations with Jeffrey Epstein is not simply whether they are unseemly, politically damaging or morally questionable. It is whether they are, on their own, powerful enough to destabilise Keir Starmer’s position at Downing Street or whether something more coordinated and ideological is at play.

Scandals rarely exist in a vacuum. They become meaningful only when someone gives them velocity.

On paper, Mandelson’s past brush with Epstein is awkward. Epstein’s shadow is radioactive; proximity alone can scorch reputations. But Mandelson is not the prime minister. He is a seasoned political operator whose career has survived multiple reinventions, resignations and returns. His resilience is almost part of his brand. To suggest that his past associations alone could topple a sitting prime minister assumes that the British public views politics through a purely linear moral lens: contact equals contamination equals collapse. That is not how power works.

The deeper question is who benefits from keeping the story alive. In today’s political ecosystem, scandal is rarely just scandal. It becomes a tool. It is sharpened, framed, and distributed through networks that understand outrage as currency. There is a visible convergence between segments of the British populist right and a broader transatlantic style of politics, grievance-driven, anti-establishment, suspicious of institutions. Figures like Nigel Farage have long thrived in this ecosystem, cultivating distrust toward what they portray as a closed, elitist political class. Add to that the rhetorical influence of Donald Trump and his brand of relentless attack politics, and you have a blueprint: repeat the allegation, imply rot at the centre, frame it as proof of systemic corruption.

The point is not necessarily to prove wrongdoing. It is to erode trust. That does not mean there is a secret command centre orchestrating headlines. Modern political machinery is subtler than that. It operates through sympathetic media platforms, social media ecosystems, and influencers who understand that insinuation often works better than accusation. The Epstein name is particularly potent because it triggers moral disgust. It bypasses rational analysis. It becomes shorthand for elite decadence, for hidden networks, for “they are all in it together.”

Once that narrative takes hold, Mandelson’s specific actions matter less than the symbolism. But here lies the difficulty for Starmer’s government. Labour positioned itself as a party of seriousness, probity, and professional competence after years of Conservative chaos. It asked voters to trust it with stability. That promise creates higher vulnerability to perception of ethical murkiness. Even indirect associations can clash with the image of clean governance. Opponents know this.

Still, is this enough to bring down a prime minister? History suggests otherwise. Governments fall over policy failures, economic crises, party rebellions, or direct personal scandal. They rarely collapse because of the historical associations of an adviser, however controversial. The British electorate has shown itself capable of distinguishing between proximity and culpability, at least when the economy is not in freefall.

What may be more dangerous is the slow drip effect. Not a dramatic fall, but a steady corrosion. If the narrative becomes that Labour is simply another node in a globalised, self-protecting elite network, it chips away at Starmer’s central claim to represent sober, reformist change. In that sense, the scandal is less about Mandelson’s past and more about narrative framing.

There is also a paradox. Those amplifying the issue often come from political traditions that are themselves entangled with wealthy donors, opaque funding structures and controversial alliances. Yet in the populist playbook, consistency is less important than emotional clarity. The enemy must look decadent; the establishment must look morally suspect. Epstein’s name serves that theatre perfectly.

This does not absolve Labour of scrutiny. Transparency matters. Political leaders must answer legitimate questions about associations, however distant. Public trust depends on it. But scrutiny is not the same as strategic weaponisation.

The real story, then, may not be Mandelson at all. It may be about the transformation of British political culture into something more Americanised, permanent campaign mode, scandal as spectacle, loyalty tests enforced through viral outrage. In that environment, any vulnerability becomes an opportunity for amplification.

Starmer’s survival will depend less on Mandelson’s past and more on whether voters see tangible competence in the present. If living standards improve, if public services stabilise, if economic direction feels credible, the noise will fade. If not, even minor controversies can become symbols of larger disappointment.

Scandals are sparks. They ignite only when political oxygen is plentiful. The machinery may fan the flames, but it cannot create fire without combustible material. The real danger to a prime minister is not association. It is erosion of authority. And that is built or lost, far beyond a single name in a headline.

Moors in a corset by Felix Laursen

Every few years, Wuthering Heights is exhumed, dusted off and handed back to us as a love story. Not a brutal love story. Not a metaphysical fever dream disguised as rural melodrama. Just ...love. The kind that sells tickets, soundtracks and close-ups of beautiful people suffering beautifully. The latest cinematic resurrection promises passion and revenge, though one suspects the emphasis, once again, will fall on passion rendered in flattering light. Emily Brontë, who wrote a novel as jagged as the Yorkshire wind, must be wondering how her feral child keeps getting sent to finishing school.

The novel, published in 1847, has always resisted polite company. Its author, Emily Brontë, did not write a romance in the conventional sense; she wrote a psychological storm system. Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff are not star-crossed lovers in the perfumed tradition of tragic devotion. They are two halves of the same wound. Their attachment is less a courtship than a combustion. To reduce their bond to yearning glances and swelling violins is to mistake a lightning strike for candlelight.

Yet Hollywood, ever optimistic about the redemptive power of cheekbones, appears ready to try again. Casting Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as Catherine and Heathcliff feels less like interpretation and more like translation into a language Brontë never spoke: the dialect of aspirational glamour. These are performers of undeniable magnetism, but magnetism is not menace. Catherine is not a fashion editorial in emotional distress; she is willful, cruel, ecstatic and self-destructive. Heathcliff is not merely brooding; he is elemental, closer to a force of nature than to a Byronic heartthrob. To make him sleek is to declaw him.

There is a curious cultural habit of sanding down the rough edges of classics until they fit contemporary appetites. In this case, the appetite is unmistakably shaped by the confectionary success of Bridgerton, a series that has perfected the art of packaging longing as luxury. But Wuthering Heights is not luxury. It is mud and rot and resentment fermenting over decades. It is about inheritance and social exclusion and the corrosive effects of humiliation. Heathcliff’s outsider status, racially ambiguous, economically dispossessed, perpetually reminded of his inferiority, is not a romantic inconvenience; it is the engine of his vengeance. Without that, he becomes merely misunderstood. And Heathcliff is not misunderstood. He is understood all too well by those he punishes.

Brontë’s novel is structurally audacious, layered with narrators who mediate, distort and sometimes trivialize the events they recount. Lockwood and Nelly Dean are not neutral guides; they are participants in the moral fog. The story we receive is already filtered, already compromised. That complexity matters. It forces the reader to question not only the characters but the act of storytelling itself. Film adaptations, by necessity, streamline. But when streamlining becomes simplification essential is lost, the sense that this tale is not a single thread of doomed love but a tapestry of obsession, cruelty, class anxiety and generational trauma.

Catherine Earnshaw is frequently mistaken for a romantic heroine when she is, in fact, a study in divided identity. “I am Heathcliff,” she declares, not as a swoon, but as a metaphysical claim. She recognizes in him a shared wildness that the genteel world of Thrushcross Grange cannot accommodate. Her decision to marry Edgar Linton is not merely a betrayal of love; it is a capitulation to social aspiration. She chooses comfort, status and the illusion of refinement over the savage equality she shares with Heathcliff. The tragedy is not that she cannot be with the man she loves; it is that she cannot reconcile the two selves she inhabits. Any adaptation that treats her as a victim of circumstance rather than as an architect of her own ruin does her a grave disservice.

And Heathcliff, poor, demonized Heathcliff, has suffered perhaps the most from romantic revisionism. He has been reimagined as a dark prince, a wounded antihero whose cruelty is but a mask for tenderness. But Brontë gives us little comfort here. Heathcliff is abused, yes, but he also becomes an abuser. He weaponizes marriage, inheritance law and emotional dependency with chilling precision. His revenge is not operatic; it is bureaucratic. He destroys lives through contracts and confinements as much as through rage. To frame him as merely lovesick is to excuse what the novel painstakingly exposes, the way suffering can metastasize into tyranny.

There is also the question of landscape, which in Brontë is not backdrop but bloodstream. The moors are not scenic; they are spiritual territory. They mirror the characters’ excesses, their refusal to be domesticated. The house itself, Wuthering Heights, is less a home than a pressure chamber. One wonders how this will survive the modern camera’s tendency to aestheticize everything it touches. The moors are not meant to be pretty. They are meant to be inhospitable.

Of course, adaptation is interpretation. No film owes us fidelity in the pedantic sense. But there is a difference between reimagining and rebranding. To tilt the story decisively toward “love,” as if that word alone could contain the novel’s ferocity, is to participate in a long-standing misunderstanding. Wuthering Heights is not about the triumph of passion; it is about the cost of it. It asks what happens when desire is unmoored from conscience, when pride curdles into revenge, when social hierarchies distort the most intimate bonds.

Emily Brontë did not write a love story designed to console. She wrote a novel that unsettles, even repels, before it seduces. To honour that is to resist the urge to prettify it. The moors, after all, were never meant to be comfortable.

The poisoned state by Timothy Davies

The death of Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison cell feels less like a tragedy than a grim confirmation. For years his life had been reduced to a countdown, first from nerve agent exposure, then from courtroom to courtroom, then from penal colony to penal colony, each more remote, more punishing, more designed to erase not just the man but the idea of him. When news broke that he had died after being poisoned ...again, this time allegedly with a toxin reminiscent of the lethal compounds found in the skin of Ecuadorian dart frogs, it seemed almost grotesquely symbolic. In Russia, dissent is not merely silenced. It is studied, refined, and extinguished with theatrical cruelty.

Navalny understood the theatre of it all. He built his political identity in the open air of the Internet, wielding investigations like lanterns in a country grown accustomed to darkness. He named names. He traced yachts to oligarchs, palaces to presidents, bribes to bureaucrats. And for this, he was not merely opposed; he was hunted. The first poisoning, on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow, was the kind of modern parable that only Russia seems capable of producing, a reformer collapsing midair, saved by emergency landing, revived in a foreign hospital and then astonishingly, returning home to certain imprisonment. It was either bravery or fatalism. Perhaps both.

To die in prison is to be denied even the illusion of fair combat. It is the state saying: we own the ending. The alleged use of an exotic toxin evokes a kind of medieval pageantry, an empire flexing its capacity not just to kill but to do so with narrative flourish. There is a message embedded in such excess. It is not enough that Navalny be gone. His removal must reverberate. It must discourage imitation. It must whisper to every ambitious provincial mayor, every restless student, every quietly disillusioned civil servant: this is what hope costs.

And yet the question persists, stubborn as frost: will Russia ever change? History tempts us with cycles. Tsars fall. Commissars rise. Reformers appear in brief, incandescent intervals before being swept aside by reaction. There were moments, perestroika, the early 1990s, when democracy seemed less like a foreign import and more like a fragile domestic experiment. But fragility, in Russia, is rarely allowed to mature. The institutions that safeguard democratic life, independent courts, free media, regional autonomy, were never granted time to harden into habit. They remained provisional, easily reversed.

Navalny’s genius was not that he promised a Western-style liberal utopia. It was that he translated corruption into personal insult. He made it intimate. He showed ordinary Russians that stolen billions were not abstract, they were unpaid pensions, collapsing hospitals, unpaved roads. He spoke in the language of theft, not ideology. That made him dangerous.

His death, therefore, is not merely about one man. It is about the signal it sends regarding the durability of authoritarianism in the twenty-first century. Russia’s current political order has perfected a model of managed repression: elections without uncertainty, media without independence, courts without autonomy. It does not need mass terror on a Stalinist scale. It requires only selective brutality, high-profile punishments administered strategically enough to sustain fear but sparingly enough to maintain deniability.

The international response, predictably, oscillates between condemnation and resignation. Sanctions are announced. Statements are drafted. Yet there is a creeping sense that the world has adjusted to the spectacle of Russian impunity. The poisoning of dissidents, the imprisonment of journalists, the quiet elimination of rivals, these have become episodes in a long-running drama, shocking but no longer surprising.

And still, regimes built on fear carry within them a particular brittleness. They rely on choreography. They depend on the belief that change is impossible. The moment that belief cracks, even slightly, the architecture begins to tremble. Authoritarian systems appear immovable until, suddenly, they are not. Few predicted the rapid unraveling of the Soviet Union. Few foresaw the speed with which Eastern Europe reoriented itself. History, especially in that region, has a taste for abruptness.

Will Russia see a democratic better? The honest answer is that no outsider can decree it. Change, if it comes, will emerge not from sanctions or speeches but from generational shifts, economic pressures, elite fractures, and the quiet accumulation of private discontent. It may not resemble the democracy imagined by Western observers. It may be slower, messier, compromised.

Navalny once said that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing, a paraphrase borrowed and repurposed, but fitting nonetheless. His wager was that Russians would eventually tire of doing nothing. His death tests that wager. It challenges a nation to decide whether fear remains the governing emotion of public life.

Poison can silence a body. It cannot, on its own, extinguish the idea that animated it. The state may own the ending of a man’s story. It does not automatically own the future.

Maples & Oranges #060 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

Taunting oranges in the midst of other fruity links,
constantly spreading the wares of their juicy gloom.

For more Maples & Oranges, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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The real-time electronic transmission of election results controversy by Tunde Akande

Recently the Senate rejected plans that the election results for the upcoming 2027 elections be transmitted in real-time. Before the 2023 election, it seemed the Senate of Nigeria had approved that mode of electronic vote transmission, and many Nigerians like me were very happy that rigging would be reduced substantially, at least if it could not be eliminated. But as the election took place, our hopes were dashed when we began to hear the complaints from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that the election umpire had experienced glitches, a word that many Nigerians were not familiar with before that time. But the dictionary was useful. INEC reported that its machines had been massively hacked, and so results would be filed both manually and by electronic transmission.

Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party, believes till today that if the election had been electronically transmitted, he would have won the election. I did not share that feeling either then or now. In Ibadan about two weeks ago, where he was invited to launch a book written by a public intellectual, Professor Akinyemi Onigbinde, a retired professor of philosophy, Peter was still cracking jokes about how he was rigged out. As he was going round the hall cracking jokes, he saw Jimi Agbaje, who contested the Lagos State governorship election against former Lagos State governor Raji Fashola in his second term bid. He joked that he was going to appoint Jimi Agbaje as Special Adviser on rigging because he had been rigged out and so should know how to plug rigging methods. Rigging is a Nigerian thing, and it is going to take serious innovation and dealings to solve it. In my family, we decided to handle the choice of our family Mogaji (Head) through an election. We jettisoned the traditional system used by our fathers since we are all very educated. Surprisingly, one of the contestants had planned to smuggle in extended family members so that they would vote for him, and he carried it out. He had also offered money to buy some people’s votes. This is an ordinary family election to choose the family Mogaji. We have a long way to go in Nigeria.

This disapproval by the Senate led to public outrage. All the notable names in activism in Nigeria came out to protest the Senate position. Omoyele Sowore, now the most vocal civil rights activist in Nigeria, was in the trenches immediately, shouting with his other colleagues that Senate President Godswill Akpabio must give Nigeria real-time electronic transmission of election results. Rotimi Amaechi, a former governor of oil-rich Rivers State and a former minister of transport under the Muhammadu Buhari administration who used Nigerian money to build a railway to Maradi in the Niger Republic, which Nigerians denounced as a monumental waste of the country’s resources to satisfy his boss, Buhari, who is said to have family links in the Niger Republic, added a new dimension to protests in Nigeria: he brought along his first son, who he said is a medical doctor. He had brought him; he told a Channels Television interviewer to tell Nigerians that he, as a politician, was not just drafting other people’s children outside to face government guns during protests but that his children also joined the crusade.

But Rotimi Amaechi, who wants to be president in 2027, looked so frail. Rotimi Amaechi is only 60, but he could hardly stand erect. Obi Ezekwesili, a minister under the administration of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and a fierce public commentator, was also part of the protest. Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential flagbearer in 2023, led another team to protest the approval of electronic transmission of election results. The protesters cried and howled outside the precints of the Senate. But on Tuesday, February 10th, 2026, the Senate convened again to respond to the public outcry. What did it do? It played it safe by approving electronic transmission of results, which at the same time allows manual filing of election results. The Senate therefore mandates that election results be transmitted electronically to INEC Elections results Viewing Portal (IReV) after the appropriate result forms have been duly filled and signed by the INEC officer in charge and party agents where available. The safety net in the Senate is that where there is a failure of electronic transmission, the manual system will serve. That, in the view of many commentators, is to prevent situations where the machines will fail, thereby preventing real-time transmission of results. Many experts in technology, including Elon Musk of the United States of America, did not recommend electronic voting. They would rather have paper ballots that will be counted and manually filed. Elon Musk, a frontline investor in tech, agrees that any computer can be hacked. In Nigeria, the problem is more prevalent because of the grave infrastructural deficit in the country. Electricity supply is in fits and starts, cyber security infrastructure is deficient, most rural areas have poor network reception, and the population is great in those places. By this analysis of these experts, especially that of Elon Musk, it is not safe to depend on real-time transmission of results. In a way, Senate President Godswill Akpabio and his Senate have saved Nigeria from a potential problem from which the nation may not recover if there is a technology failure and there is no alternative to real-time transmission of results. Some have felt it could lead to a logjam that the courts or any other institution may not be able to resolve. Those who hold this opinion even think that those who are agitating for real-time electronic transmission are laying mines to destroy democracy in the country.

It is possible, but it is also necessary to discern the hearts of the current leadership and those before them, at least since 1999. Why have leaders not given good attention to the nation’s decaying infrastructure? President Tinubu went so far as to cajole Nigerians during his 2023 campaign by saying that if he did not provide electricity to the nation and especially solve the problem of estimated bills by the various discos, Nigerians should not give him a second term. Those who listened to him then, including this writer, did not bother to find out that the reason Tinubu did not present to them an actual blueprint for electricity infrastructure was that he had no idea. It is not enough to say you would do it “anyhow.” Anyhow is not how. Now three years into his administration, the electricity situation is far worse despite all the stratification of electricity consumption that transfers supply from the poor to the rich that his Minister of Power Adebayo Adelabu designed. When the leader pays no attention to infrastructure, they are preparing for the next election. You and I would think leaders would want to please us by giving us excellent infrastructure, but they know better that if they do, we will have elections that they will not win. If they don’t, they will lie about bad infrastructure to provide an electoral process that they can easily manipulate. It is as simple as that. And that really is the reason why leaders have not paid good attention to good infrastructure.

When President Bola Tinubu wanted the Lagos-Calabar coastal road, he knew how to accomplish it. He knew how to connect with his friend Gilbert Chagoury because they know how to do deals. When the late president Muhammadu Buhari wanted the railway extended to the Niger Republic, his place of origin, he knew how to take a loan from China and cajole Rotimi Amaechi to execute the job. Now relations between the Republic of Niger and Nigeria are at an all time low. And yet generations of Nigerians yet unborn will pay off that loan to China. We can have these infrastructure problems solved within an administration, but it doesn’t pay the politicians. One prominent politician friend in Ibadan told me politicians don’t want change, but he agreed that change can be compelled by God. How? Nigerians will have to quit their timidity and rise against the self-interest of the politicians. We are in a tunnel, and we may never see the light at the end of the tunnel. 2027 is already here, and the results seem apparent. The election will be rigged because there is no infrastructure to support a rigging-proof election. Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, Rabiu Musa Kwankwanso, Rotimi Amaechi, and others have handed over the presidency to Tinubu again. The courts will again make tons of millions of naira giving the elections to those who have not won them.

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.