An Economy for Every Bangladeshi: Reforming with Purpose By MohammadMasud Alam and Habib Siddiqui

Bangladesh stands at a pivotal moment in its economic evolution. With a new government in place and a renewed commitment to reform, the opportunity to reshape the nation’s economic and institutional architecture has never been more urgent. The White Paper on the State of the Economy (December 1, 2024) offered a candid assessment of past missteps and a blueprint for building an economy that serves the people—not just the powerful. It revealed that corruption has been a chronic affliction, costing the nation an estimated USD 234 billion over the past fifteen years. These funds could have been invested in employment-generating projects, lifting millions out of poverty.

To recover this stolen wealth, a Presidential National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) must be enacted urgently, by the establishment of a powerful National Accountability Bureau (NAB). This body should be operational within two months and begin asset recovery efforts by the third.

Successful models exist. Pakistan’s NAB, for instance, has recovered USD 20 billion in stolen assets over the past two years alone. Bangladesh can adapt such frameworks to its own context, ensuring swift and impartial justice.

Reimagining Anti-Corruption Infrastructure in Bangladesh

Bangladesh’s existing anti-corruption body—the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC)—was established to investigate and prosecute corruption. However, its credibility has eroded, often accused of targeting opposition figures while shielding ruling party affiliates. This politicization has rendered the ACC ineffective, necessitating a structural overhaul.

The proposed NAB, inspired by Pakistan’s NAO framework, is envisioned as a transformative institution—independent, professionally managed, and empowered by a robust legal framework. It would investigate major offenses such as embezzlement, abuse of authority, and money laundering, and operate under the principle of “Accountability for All.”

Key features include:

• A dedicated Accountability Court for swift justice
• Authority to arrest suspects, freeze assets, and access financial records
• Provisions for voluntary asset return and pardon of accomplices to expedite recovery
• International cooperation for cross-border corruption cases

This framework would restore public trust and institutional integrity—if backed by genuine political will and public oversight.

Economic Progress Under the New Government

Since assuming office in August 2024, the current government has made measurable progress in stabilizing key economic indicators. According to data from the Bangladesh Bank:

• The trade deficit narrowed by USD 2 billion
• Foreign exchange reserves increased by USD 5 billion
• Inflation declined by 3.11% (point-to-point)
• Home remittances rose by USD 6 billion

These improvements, achieved amid global economic headwinds, reflect prudent fiscal management and a renewed commitment to reform. GDP growth in 2024 was 4.22%, compared to 5.78% in 2023. However, this figure spans two administrations—seven months under the previous government and five under the current one. The full-year 2025 data will offer a more accurate reflection of the current government's impact.

Growth is expected to remain moderate due to the burden of non-performing loans in the banking sector, inherited from the previous administration. These liabilities may necessitate austerity measures, limiting development expenditure and dampening economic momentum.

Post-Uprising Economic Stabilization: A Comparative Perspective

Bangladesh’s post-transition recovery has drawn attention for its relative resilience. Unlike other countries that experienced regime upheavals—such as Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Iran, and Russia—Bangladesh has thus far avoided hyperinflation, mass poverty, or prolonged instability.

This outcome is largely attributed to a series of decisive policy interventions implemented by the interim government, including:

• Tightening monetary and fiscal policies
• Conducting asset quality reviews
• Recovering misappropriated assets
• Ensuring banking sector liquidity
• Reforming revenue collection by separating tax policy from administration

These measures helped stabilize inflation, restore investor confidence, and prevent a deeper economic collapse. The policy interest rate was raised to 10%, anchoring the exchange rate and curbing inflationary pressures.

Bangladesh’s experience underscores the importance of institutional reform, transparency, and decisive governance in navigating post-crisis recovery. It also reinforces the broader argument for structural transformation laid out in this article.

Navigating Fiscal and External Challenges

The government faces a delicate balancing act between managing the budget deficit and the balance of payments. On the expenditure side, while foreign debt costs are fixed, domestic borrowing costs can be reduced by retiring high-interest bonds and issuing lower-coupon alternatives. A 200 basis point interest rate cut could save USD 2.16 billion annually, stimulating growth with minimal inflationary impact.

On the revenue side, a progressive property tax structure should be introduced. Raising the rate from the universal 5% to 8–10% for wealthy individuals could generate significant revenue, though exact estimates require further analysis.

To ease pressure on the balance of payments, Bangladesh should explore reducing its USD 300 million vehicle import bill and USD 330 million edible oil imports. Promoting public transportation and domestic cultivation of oil-producing crops could cut these costs by half, enhancing self-reliance.

Citizen Ownership: A Path to Inclusive Prosperity

Bangladesh belongs to its people. To democratize economic growth, the government should consider allocating partial ownership of selected state assets directly to citizens. Inspired by Norway’s sovereign wealth model, this initiative could provide annual dividends, reduce inequality, and foster national stewardship.

A National Citizen Wealth Fund could be established, seeded with revenues from strategic sectors like energy, telecom, and infrastructure. Managed transparently, this fund would empower citizens economically and strengthen civic engagement.

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Conclusion: Building an Economy for the People

The road to economic justice and prosperity in Bangladesh is long but navigable. By institutionalizing accountability, rationalizing fiscal policies, and empowering citizens through equitable asset ownership, the nation can move beyond short-term fixes toward sustainable development. The vision must be clear: an economy not just measured by growth figures, but by the well-being, dignity, and opportunity it provides to every Bangladeshi. The time to act is now.

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References:

1. https://bdplatform4sdgs.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Final-Draft_Unedited_0911-hrs_Compiled-Report-without-Front-and-Back-Cover.pdf
2. https://khalidzafar.com/wp-content/files_mf/1527157757NationalAccountabilityBureauOrdinance1999.pdf
3. https://nab.gov.pk/recoveries/
4. https://www.arabnews.com/node/2611227/amp
5. https://www.bb.org.bd/en/index.php/econdata/bopindex
6. Bangladesh's Economy After Mass Uprising | Bangladesh’s economic performance has been unique post-uprising

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About the authors:

Mohammad Masud Alam is a retired banker having worked in Societe Generale Bank, Bank of Montreal, National Bank of Oman and United Bank Limited.

Dr. Habib Siddiqui is a peace and human rights activist and author who has successfully deployed Operational Excellence initiative within four major multinational corporations.

The Medal, the Message, and the Madness by Timothy Davies

This week, a small but telling story broke through the political noise. A West Point alumni group quietly cancelled an award ceremony that was meant to honor actor and veterans advocate Tom Hanks. The group had chosen Hanks for his longstanding work supporting veterans, his portrayals of American grit on screen, and his visible role as a voice of empathy in a divided culture. Yet at the last moment, the honor was yanked away. Why? Because Hanks has also been visible in another way: he’s a Democrat, he’s spoken against authoritarian drift, and he has backed leaders that former President Donald Trump and his followers despise.

Almost immediately, Trump took to praise the cancellation, lobbing the word “WOKE” like a grenade. His message: “We don’t need destructive, WOKE recipients getting our cherished American Awards!!!” The exclamation marks alone tell you everything about the posture. This wasn’t about the nuances of Hanks’ advocacy, or any substantive objection to the award. It was about culture war, about drawing a line between “real Americans” and the supposedly dangerous others who dare to think differently.

What’s happening here is bigger than Tom Hanks. It’s a window into how polarized America has become, and how casually a former President of the United States fans the flames. Words from that perch, even now, have consequences. They ripple through the country, energizing factions, justifying cruelty, and reinforcing the message that some citizens simply don’t count as “American enough.” In this climate, cancellation of a ceremony isn’t just an alumni group’s decision; it’s another brushstroke on a canvas of national division.

Let’s pause on the absurdity: Tom Hanks, of all people, is now too radical for recognition? The man who embodied Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan, who gave us the stoic endurance of Apollo 13, who narrated Band of Brothers with reverence for sacrifice? This is the figure painted as a threat to America’s honor? If Hanks, the perennial “America’s Dad,” isn’t safe from political labeling, then the message is clear: no one is. The culture war has reached into even the safest corners of American identity.

And yet, Trump’s response is not just ridiculous, it’s dangerous. He treats every honor, every award, every act of recognition as if it belongs to his political tribe alone. It is a tribalism that leaves no space for dissent, no room for pluralism, and certainly no tolerance for nuance. By praising the cancellation, he is not only condoning the erasure of a man’s work with veterans; he is training his supporters to see compassion, advocacy, and difference as threats.

This is not harmless rhetoric. In a country already cracked down the middle, where political figures face real threats of violence, dismissing a veteran advocate as “destructive” simply because of his politics pours accelerant on a smoldering fire. It’s not hard to draw a line between words that demonize and actions that destroy. In a society where guns are plentiful, conspiracy theories circulate like wildfire, and mistrust is the currency of politics, words like Trump’s are not merely commentary, they are permission slips.

The alumni group that cancelled the award may have told themselves they were keeping politics out of West Point’s orbit. But in truth, they did the opposite. They capitulated to it. The moment they chose to treat Hanks’ political leanings as disqualifying, they cemented the message that military honor itself is partisan property. The irony? The military is one of the last institutions that, in principle, belongs to all Americans, regardless of party. Soldiers don’t check voter registration cards before pulling a buddy out of danger. Yet here we are, politicizing even an alumni honor.

What does this say to the young cadet looking ahead to service? That their sacrifice will be valued only if they align with the right political team? That recognition of their future work will hinge not on bravery or selflessness but on whether they speak the “approved” language of the moment? If that’s the lesson we are teaching, then the corrosion is already deep.

We need to name the larger pattern. This is how polarization becomes permanent: through thousands of small decisions like this one, where organizations bow to pressure, where words of division go unchecked, and where figures of authority normalize the idea that empathy itself is suspicious. Today it’s Tom Hanks losing an award. Tomorrow, it’s a decorated veteran shunned because he cast the wrong ballot.

The tragedy is that this cycle erodes exactly what Hanks himself has often tried to highlight: the shared humanity of Americans across differences. In his work with veterans, he has focused on telling stories that honor sacrifice without erasing complexity. That work, whether or not you like his politics, strengthens the civic fabric. Canceling him doesn’t defend West Point’s integrity, it cheapens it.

We should be able to honor contributions without demanding ideological conformity. We should be able to say, “I disagree with this person’s politics, but their work here matters.” That’s how mature democracies operate. But maturity is not the mood of the moment. Instead, a former President cheers as the walls between us grow taller.

This is where responsibility matters most. Trump is not a man in the corner muttering to himself. He is a figure with millions of followers, a microphone that reaches everywhere. When he belittles, when he sneers, when he paints half the nation as enemies, he signals to those inclined toward hate that their hostility is righteous. That is the real danger. It isn’t just the cancellation of an award. It’s the corrosion of restraint. It’s the normalization of contempt.

And contempt, once normalized, does not stay on the page. It leaks into action. It makes violence more imaginable. It turns words into weapons. A society that cannot honor a man like Tom Hanks for his work with veterans without descending into tribal panic is a society already staggering on its feet.

If we can’t stop ourselves here, if we can’t resist the madness of treating compassion as treason, then the medals don’t matter. The message is already lost.

A lion without teeth by John Kato

Argentine politics has never lacked drama, but this week’s provincial election results delivered a sharp slap across the face of President Javier Milei and his young libertarian experiment. In Buenos Aires province, the country’s largest and most politically decisive district, the opposition Peronists secured 47% of the vote, while Milei’s La Libertad Avanza limped behind with just 34%. Milei, in an unusually sober moment, admitted his party’s “clear defeat.” He promised to accept, process, and correct his “political mistakes” but insisted he would not back down from his reform agenda “one millimeter.”

The problem is not a matter of inches or millimeters. The problem is that Javier Milei is the president of Argentina at all.

For nearly a year, Milei has governed like a man who mistook a television studio for the Casa Rosada. His campaign persona, the roaring libertarian lion who promised to chainsaw the state into oblivion, may have thrilled disenchanted voters tired of inflation, corruption, and decades of stagnant politics. But governing a nation of forty-five million people requires more than shouting about freedom and waving a chainsaw onstage. It requires coalition-building, discipline, and at least some grasp of reality. Milei has shown little of any of these.

His enemies are not only the entrenched Peronist machine, though that alone would be a formidable obstacle. His enemies are also the facts on the ground. Inflation continues to batter families, wages remain insufficient, and the cost of living spirals beyond comprehension. Milei’s answer is always the same: “more market, less state.” But that mantra, repeated like scripture, does little to calm a mother trying to feed her children when prices double in months. Argentina’s economic crisis is real, and Milei’s economic theories, borrowed from textbooks and libertarian podcasts, are not enough.

Worse still, Milei governs as though his mandate were absolute, when in reality his party never commanded more than a minority. He was elected president, yes, but he has no legislative majority, no provincial governors in his corner, and no durable coalition beyond a circle of loyal ideologues. Governing Argentina requires compromise, not tantrums. Yet Milei seems incapable of distinguishing between the two. His defeats in Congress have been numerous, his decrees challenged in courts, and his reforms slowed to a crawl. The election results in Buenos Aires province merely confirm what was already obvious: Milei is a lion who roars loudly but cannot bite.

Still, the spectacle has been captivating. He insults foreign leaders one day, threatens the local media the next, and accuses his opponents of plotting communist conspiracies from the shadows. He treats politics as combat, a zero-sum game in which every critic is an enemy of liberty. This strategy may energize a narrow base of diehards, but it alienates the majority of Argentines who want solutions, not theatrics. People can endure eccentricity from a comedian or a shock jock. From a president, eccentricity without results quickly turns into farce.

The Buenos Aires defeat should be Milei’s moment of reckoning. The province represents nearly 40% of Argentina’s voters and has long been the crucible of national power. To lose so decisively there is not simply a stumble; it is an earthquake that shakes the legitimacy of his project. Milei acknowledged mistakes, but the question is whether he truly understands them. The mistake is not that his speeches were too fiery or his strategy insufficiently cunning. The mistake is more profound: Argentina entrusted its highest office to a man who confuses ideology with governance, slogans with policy, and enemies with citizens.

The tragedy is that Argentina did not arrive here by accident. Milei’s rise was fueled by anger at decades of broken promises from Peronists and conservatives alike. Corruption scandals, inflationary spirals, and political dynasties treating the nation as their inheritance paved the way for an outsider who claimed he would smash the whole rotten system. That anger was justified. But Argentina leapt from one disaster into another, mistaking fury for vision. Milei is less a solution than a symptom of a deeper democratic fatigue.

Now, Argentina faces the consequences. The Peronists, with their long history of populism and patronage, are ascendant again. Milei, for all his thunder, has weakened his own credibility and inadvertently revived the very forces he promised to bury. If he continues down this path, isolated, stubborn, and convinced of his own prophetic genius, his presidency may end not with reform but with irrelevance. And Argentines, once again, will be left paying the price of political theater.

What Argentina needs is not a showman, not a chainsaw, not another messianic figure promising salvation. It needs a leader willing to do the hard, unglamorous work of building consensus, stabilizing the economy, and restoring trust in institutions. That leader is not Javier Milei. He was always a protest vote in presidential clothing, a symbol of rage mistaken for a program of change. The longer he clings to power with the same dogmatic fervor, the clearer it becomes: Argentina’s biggest political mistake is not his policies, nor his defeats, but his very presence in the presidential chair.

A lion without teeth can still roar, but eventually, the people stop listening. The Buenos Aires elections show that Argentines are already tuning out.

Worming #116 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

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

For more Worming, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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A murder in the mirror by Robert Perez

The assassination of Charlie Kirk is more than a tragic headline. It is a reflection, a mirror of where America now stands: fractured, polarized, and armed to the teeth with fury that has been carefully stoked, nurtured, and monetized. For years, the language of American politics has become more violent, more absolute, more unwilling to accept even the possibility of compromise. Kirk’s death, shocking as it is, feels like the collision point of that rhetoric with reality. It is not just a sign. It is proof.

Donald Trump’s America did not invent polarization, but it perfected it. His years in office, and his refusal to let go afterward, have been a furnace where division was melted down and recast into weapons. Every rally, every social media post, every sneering comment about enemies “destroying” the country added kindling. The flames were irresistible to those who craved certainty, to those who wanted villains instead of neighbors, to those who wanted to be told not just that they were right but that the other side was evil.

Charlie Kirk built his career at the epicenter of that movement. He thrived in its spotlight. His brand was defiance; his business model was outrage. To some, he was a hero. To others, a caricature. But regardless of where one stood, his presence symbolized the larger culture war that has taken hold of every corner of American life. His murder, brutal and real, collapses the line between metaphorical battle and literal bloodshed. What was once political theater has spilled into crime scenes.

That is the point too many refuse to acknowledge: this did not come from nowhere. It is not an isolated act of madness. It is the fruit of years of seeding division, of framing politics as a zero-sum fight where the only options are triumph or annihilation. When leaders and media figures repeat, day after day, that the nation is at war with itself, someone eventually believes them enough to act.

And here lies the most frightening part, this act will not be the end. In a country where every spark becomes a wildfire, where both sides are primed to answer violence with more violence, the immediate future looks dark. One side will cry martyrdom, fueling further anger. The other side, bruised and emboldened, will respond in kind. It is a cycle as predictable as it is destructive. The more each faction hardens its story, the less room there is for the common language of citizenship.

Trump’s contribution to this climate cannot be dismissed or softened. He made politics an identity cult, where disagreement is betrayal and loyalty is blind. His mastery of insult and his encouragement of grievance normalized the idea that anger was not just acceptable but noble. He reduced democracy to a loyalty test. And when he lost, he refused to accept loss itself, teaching millions to believe that defeat was fraud, that opponents were not just rivals but existential threats. This corrosion did not vanish with him leaving office. It seeped deep into the culture, into institutions, into the way Americans view each other at the dinner table and on the street corner.

Kirk’s killing is horrifying precisely because it feels like the logical endpoint of that path. If politics is war, then why not casualties? If compromise is surrender, then why not escalation? The language of political tribes has been steeped in apocalypse for years; someone was always going to pick up a weapon. The surprise is not that it happened but that it took this long.

Where does America go from here? That is the haunting question. If the reaction is vengeance, if the cycle tightens instead of breaks, then the country is on the edge of something far worse. Each side believes it is protecting democracy by crushing the other, when in truth both are dismantling it by refusing to share it. The Republic cannot survive as a gladiatorial arena. It was never designed to.

What is needed, though deeply unfashionable, is restraint. Restraint in language, restraint in action, restraint in how leaders and citizens interpret tragedy. This does not mean silence in the face of violence, nor does it mean excusing its causes. But it means refusing to let one murder become the next justification for more blood. It means remembering that the people across the aisle are still people, not targets. It means confronting the temptation to answer fury with fury, because that is exactly the trap that keeps America spiraling downward.

The murder of Charlie Kirk is not a footnote. It is a wake-up call. It exposes how the nation’s most powerful figures have profited from rage while ignoring its consequences. It shows how media ecosystems thrive on hostility without ever cleaning up the wreckage left behind. And it forces every American, whether they loved Kirk, loathed him, or barely knew his name, to ask whether the country wants to keep walking deeper into this cycle.

History is full of moments when nations face themselves honestly, when they recognize that the real danger is not just the enemy outside but the hatred within. America is standing at such a moment now. The question is whether it will hear its own warning in the blood on the ground, or whether it will look away until the next victim forces the lesson again.

Charlie Kirk is gone. What remains is the decision of what to do with the proof his death provides. Proof that the lines have hardened, that words have consequences, and that unless the spiral is broken, America may not like where it lands.

Charlie Kirk’s Death Deserves a Deeper Analysis by Henry Giroux

The killing of Charlie Kirk is reprehensible and indefensible. It is a cruel and horrendous act of violence. Moreover, political violence regardless of the source is an act of violence against all Americans. And while such violence is not limited to one ideology, at the current moment in history the greatest threat of violence and its normalization comes from not only far right-extremists, but from a government that uses the threat of violence as a tool of political power.

The mainstream media is mostly focusing on Kirk's death and in doing so rightly condemns his killing as a horrific act of violence. At the same time, they are ignoring a deeper truth: violence is not an aberration in the United States, it has become central to the politics of Trump and his regime. Moreover, much of the coverage of Kirk reduces him to a sharp debater, a youth organizer, or a rising figure in the far right. What is largely ignored is the substance of his arguments, arguments that helped normalize a culture of hate, white nationalism, authoritarianism, and violence itself.

Kirk’s record is clear. He called George Floyd a “scumbag,” dismissed Martin Luther King Jr. as “awful,” and labeled the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a “mistake.” He claimed the racist “Great Replacement” theory is real, argued that immigration exists to diminish white demographics, and mocked the very idea of white privilege. He “compared pandemic vaccine requirements to apartheid during a 2021 interview with Tucker Carlson.” He argued that  Israel was not starving Gazans,” in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  He spread a vicious falsehood about Yusef Salaam of the Central Park Five, wrongly insisting he had taken part in a gang rape, an attack that was not only defamatory but also part of a long pattern of criminalizing Black men as predators. He smeared gay people and “encouraged students and parents to report professors whom they suspected of embracing … gender ideology.” He trafficked in antisemitic stereotypes about “Jewish money.”

Perhaps most chilling was his defense of mass gun violence. Kirk declared that some gun deaths, including those of children, are simply the “price of liberty” to protect the Second Amendment. At a time when classrooms have become sites of recurring carnage, such remarks treat murdered children as collateral damage, erasing the human cost of America’s obsession with guns and elevating ideology over life itself.

These are not isolated remarks; they form a worldview that dehumanizes, divides, and elevates cruelty into a political principle. To remember Kirk only for his debating skills or his reach among young conservatives is to miss the darker truth: he championed ideas that normalized hate and legitimized violence as a way of governing. His murder, tragic and senseless, cannot be separated from the broader American landscape in which violence has become the grammar of politics, hatred is given more weight than compassion, and truth itself is sacrificed at the altar of power. In this climate, the needs of ordinary people and the promise of the common good are not only neglected but treated with disdain.

To confront this reality is not to deny grief, but to name honestly the world we now inhabit, one in which the struggle for justice and human dignity has never been more urgent. Kirk's murder is part of a larger script in America, one in which violence has become central to politics, hatred has more currency than compassion, truth has become a casualty of authoritarianism, and human needs and the common good are viewed with contempt.

That is no mere rhetorical flourish. Drawing on Reuters’ data, the United States is now in its most sustained stretch of political violence since the 1970s: more than 300 politically motivated attacks have erupted since January 6, 2021. In just the first half of 2025, nearly 150 such incidents have been recorded—almost double the number during the same period last year, according to University of Maryland researcher Michael Jensen. This is not simply a wave but a storm, and as journalist Aris Hadjistefanou warns, its meaning runs deeper still:

the National Institute of Justice recently proved that in the US, since 1990, the far right has carried out 227 attacks with ideological motivations that claimed 520 lives. During the same period, there were 42 attacks of ideological content that were attributed to the far left with 78 victims. The difference may be even greater if we take into account the institutional refusal of the American judiciary to recognize far-right groups as such, as well as the fact that police and FBI investigations have targeted the left for years, leaving the actions of the far right unscathed.

What is clear is that Trump’s claim, and that of his supporters, that political violence is primarily the work of the left is pure fabrication. It is both baseless and a smear that reproduces a rhetoric of desperation. It functions less as a serious argument than as a pretext for legitimizing state repression. This is quite evident in the fact that Trump and many in the MAGA movement are openly calling for violence against the left, seizing on the tragic death of Charlie Kirk to peddle baseless accusations that his killing was the work of progressives. As Time Magazine reports, such scapegoating reveals the larger strategy: any event, no matter how tenuous, will be weaponized to justify crackdowns on dissent. What this exposes is not concern for truth or justice but the naked readiness of the Trump regime to unleash violence against critics. This is fascism stripped of disguise, fascism on steroids.

And it is hardly without precedent. On the anniversary of 9/11, it is worth recalling that what followed those attacks was not a defense of democracy but an endless reign of state violence: the devastating invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, torture programs and extraordinary renditions, secret CIA prisons, and the horror of Guantánamo. As Nikos Bogiopoulos warned, this marked the rise of a “global junta.” The lesson is unmistakable: the machinery of political and state violence has long been driven by those in power—not the left.

This is the climate in which Kirk lived and spoke; to grieve his death honestly is to reckon with the country that made such violence thinkable. Yet alarms, even in the progressive press, have too often turned the assassination into a warning aimed not at Trump and his allies but at Democrats, liberals, and the left—cautioning them not to be “too harsh” in criticizing Kirk’s ideology lest it fuel Trump’s threat to dismantle democracy. Even worse, some commentators have rushed to defend the abstract principle of free speech while ignoring the substance of Kirk’s far-right beliefs and the culture of cruelty he helped to spread. The implicit suggestion is that if liberals and progressives provide “balance” and soften their rhetoric, the cycle of violence will somehow abate.

Such arguments miss the point. They deflect responsibility away from Trump, whose hateful rhetoric has both normalized and legitimized political violence, and place the burden instead on his critics. To imagine that silencing dissent or softening critique will stop the advance of authoritarian violence is not only naïve but dangerous. Trump does not need to fabricate a story about Kirk’s death being attributed to the left; he already thrives on scapegoating and weaponizing tragedy to deepen his culture of fear. As the Greek journalist, Aris Hadjistefanou reminds us, the lesson of this moment lies not in silencing critique but in naming the forces that make such violence possible. He writes:

The idea that Trump needs more excuses to consolidate his power ignores the fact that democracy and the rule of law in the US have been dismantled for months . Tanks are rolling around Washington, people are being imprisoned and deported en masse for the color of their skin, their origin, or their political positions ( especially if they contradict Israel's positions ). At the same time, the Trump regime is bringing or arresting local rulers and judges who refuse to implement its illegal decisions.

Kirk's death is not only about the tragic loss of one human life; it is also a grim signal of something far larger. Like a canary in the coal mine, this death warns us that the air sustaining American democracy is poisoned by a culture of violence. It is a symptom of a deeper decay: the corrosion of civic life, the normalization of cruelty, and the slow death of a republic that once imagined itself, however misleading, as a beacon of freedom. To dismiss this moment as a private tragedy is to miss its greater meaning: it is a harbinger that the foundations of democracy are under siege and collapsing before our eyes.

That collapse is neither accidental nor abstract. It has been fueled by Trump’s poisonous rhetoric, which has turned politics into a theatre of humiliation and cruelty. His demonization of opponents has moved from the fringes into the mainstream, shaping a culture where enemies are to be destroyed rather than debated. His blanket pardons of the January 6 insurrectionists and his unrelenting vilification of critics send a clear message: violence is no longer the exception but the rule. In this climate, the very air of public life grows toxic, turning grievance into license and dissent into a target.

As Robert Pape warns, US politics may be on the brink “of an extremely violent era … The more public support there is for political violence, the more common it is.” When the culture itself becomes a breeding ground for violence—supercharged by an addiction to guns and the spectacle of cruelty—every killing echoes as more than personal loss. Kirk’s death is not just another entry in the ledger of political violence; it is an omen. It tells us that a republic drunk on resentment and hatred cannot breathe freely, that the poison Trump has released into the cultural bloodstream is not easily contained. If this moment is ignored, if it is seen only as the misfortune of one man rather than the symptom of a larger sickness, then the canary’s warning will have come too late.

Echoes of a bullet by Edoardo Moretti

The assassination of Charlie Kirk did not just take one man’s life. It cracked open a fault line already trembling beneath the surface of political discourse, not only in the United States but across Europe as well. His death has been instantly transformed into a symbol, a rallying cry, and a warning. The man who built his career on agitation, provocation, and loyalty to a populist cause has now, in death, been recast as a martyr.

What strikes me is not only the grief and rage swelling within the MAGA movement but how that fury now seeps across borders. It spills into a Europe where political emotions are already running dangerously high, and where the memory of bullets and bombs punctuating democracy is never far from the surface. Europe knows assassinations; they have shaped its past and twisted its politics. From the shot in Sarajevo that triggered World War I, to the killing of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, to the murders of journalists and activists across the continent in more recent years, the history is both bloody and instructive.

The parallels are unsettling. In the United States, Kirk’s assassination electrifies a movement that thrives on a sense of siege. It feeds the narrative that enemies lurk everywhere: the media, the elites, the left, the globalists. Now, with his blood on the ground, that suspicion hardens into a demand for vengeance. In Europe, where populist currents are already boiling, the symbolism of such a killing resonates like an imported virus.

It is not that Europe has lacked its own combustible conditions. Migrant crises, economic inequalities, rural versus urban divides, and the dizzying fragmentation of political parties have all created a landscape where polarization thrives. Add to this the growth of populist parties from Italy to Poland; from Hungary to the Netherlands, and you have a continent primed for emotional contagion. The Kirk assassination, though geographically distant, offers exactly the kind of trigger that extremists here are eager to exploit.

But Europe’s danger is subtler than mere imitation. The assassination provides a template, a story of betrayal, sacrifice, and righteous anger. Every movement seeking to harden its grip on the imagination of disenchanted voters can use such a tale. “If they can kill one of ours, what will they do to you?” is the whisper that creeps through Telegram channels, town square speeches, and darkened pubs where grievances ferment.

Here lies the peril: the normalization of revenge. Democracy is never safe when politics becomes soaked in blood. Once martyrdom enters the vocabulary, opponents are not adversaries but enemies. And once enemies are defined, violence is never far behind. Kirk’s assassination risks becoming a myth, retold and reshaped, carrying with it the possibility of copycat attacks and retaliatory fantasies.

Europe is particularly vulnerable because its institutions, while robust, are also weary. The European Union, mired in bureaucracy, often struggles to address the raw emotions that nationalism manipulates so effectively. Parliaments and presidents can debate endlessly about inflation targets or agricultural subsidies, but a single act of political violence speaks to people in a language more visceral than policy. It awakens tribal instincts. It reopens old wounds of “us versus them,” a dichotomy that has fueled Europe’s darkest chapters.

It is precisely this shadow that makes the current moment so volatile. The assassination lands in a climate where suspicion of elites and contempt for compromise are already growing. It reinforces the idea that politics is not about persuasion but survival. That is not democracy; that is the language of civil war.

One must resist the temptation to dismiss this as mere American importation. Europe has its own traditions of political violence, its own ghosts eager to be awakened. The 1970s and 80s saw the Red Brigades in Italy and the Baader-Meinhof Group in Germany take lives in the name of ideology. The Irish Troubles scarred generations with bombs and bullets. Even the supposed calm of Northern Europe has been shaken by targeted killings. Europe has walked this road before, and the warning signs now flash in red.

The question is whether Europe’s leaders, and indeed its citizens, can remember these lessons before it is too late. Mourning Kirk should not mean mirroring America’s cycles of rage. Instead, it should push Europe to confront its own vulnerabilities: the growing radicalization online, the shrinking spaces for civil dialogue, and the lazy assumption that “it cannot happen here.”

In truth, it can and it has. Political violence never really disappears; it hibernates, waiting for the right mix of anger and opportunity. What Kirk’s death offers to extremists in both America and Europe is the opportunity to turn grievance into action. To romanticize revenge. To call for retribution instead of restraint.

There is no easy remedy. But one can at least say this: Europe cannot afford to import America’s worst political instincts. To do so would be to add fuel to a fire already smouldering beneath its democracies. Kirk’s assassination is not a European tragedy, but its echoes may well become one.

The bullet that killed him was fired in America, but its reverberations will test Europe’s ability to remember its past and resist repeating it. The choice now is stark, learn from the darkness, or stumble back into it.

Walk the talk 25#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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Puppi & Caesar #31 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

Another cartoon with a mean and know-all of a bully cat, Puppi and her intellectual, pompous companion categorically-I-know-all, Caesar the squirrel!  

For more Puppi & Caesar, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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The Union against itself by Sabine Fischer

For decades, the European Union has sold itself as the grand project of peace, prosperity, and unity. It was the antidote to centuries of war, the guardian of economic growth, and the promise of a European identity that transcended the old, bloody borders. But what happens when the guardians themselves begin to turn on the project? What happens when the citizens of the Union, weary and sceptical, start to place their trust in leaders who see Brussels not as a temple of cooperation but as a fortress of hypocrisy?

That is no longer a hypothetical. Across Europe, far-right and euro-sceptic parties are not merely fringe irritants, they are winning. In France, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Hungary, and beyond, they are either in power, part of ruling coalitions, or leading the polls. These are not voices from the margins anymore; they are increasingly the voices of the mainstream. The irony is almost painful: the Union, once hailed as the inevitable future, is now threatened most by the very democratic processes it championed.

The rise of the far-right is not a sudden storm but a slow-building earthquake. Its causes are both external and internal. Externally, the shocks of globalization, financial crises, migration waves, and the war in Ukraine have left voters craving certainty, order, and protection. Internally, the EU itself has offered fertile ground for discontent. It has spoken the language of unity but practiced the politics of bureaucracy. It has trumpeted solidarity but too often delivered division. It has promised shared prosperity but left many citizens with the bitter aftertaste of stagnation and inequality.

At its heart, the EU was always a fragile experiment. Born out of the ashes of war, it tied nations together not only with treaties and markets but with the dream that old rivalries could be dissolved in shared institutions. But the dream required faith. Faith that Brussels knew best. Faith that national sovereignty could bend without breaking. Faith that European identity was stronger than local grievances. Over time, that faith has been worn thin. And now, the far-right is reaping the dividends of disillusionment.

Consider the rhetoric of today’s euro-sceptics: they do not hide their disdain. To them, Brussels is a bureaucratic machine detached from reality, a smug elite that enforces rules on farmers, migrants, and budgets while ignoring the struggles of ordinary people. Whether or not one agrees, the message resonates because it taps into lived experience. When farmers block roads in Poland or France, they are not reciting abstract arguments about the single market—they are voicing their exhaustion at regulations that feel imposed from above. When workers in southern Europe remember austerity, they do not recall solidarity; they recall dictates from distant technocrats. When voters see endless summits on migration with little resolution, they do not see competence; they see impotence.

The EU’s failures are not failures of ambition but of distance. The project became too grand, too self-referential, too convinced of its inevitability. Instead of adapting, it often lectured. Instead of listening, it dictated. It told citizens that being European meant being cosmopolitan, tolerant, and open, worthy ideals, yes, but ones that rang hollow to those who felt their communities overwhelmed, their jobs threatened, and their traditions eroded. For many, Europe did not feel like a safety net but like a straitjacket.

And so here we are: the paradox of a Union under siege from within. The far-right does not necessarily dream of dismantling it overnight. They are too savvy for that. What they envision instead is a hollowed-out Europe: a Europe of borders, of nations first, of sovereignty restored. A Europe that still wears the EU’s clothes but strips them of meaning. If this path prevails, the Union will not collapse dramatically; it will wither quietly. Decisions will drift back to capitals. The Parliament in Strasbourg will become a stage for nationalist theatre. The Commission will be reduced to an advisory board. And the great dream of “ever closer union” will fade into memory.

Some will call this democracy correcting itself, others will call it betrayal. Both may be right. But let us not pretend the EU is a mere victim of hostile forces. Much of this crisis is self-inflicted. It was the EU’s own failures, its aloofness, its overreach, its inability to reconcile diversity with unity, that opened the door for its critics. The far-right did not create the cracks; they merely walked through them.

What future, then, for a Union ruled or at least dominated by euro-sceptics? Paradoxically, perhaps survival of a different kind. The EU may not vanish, but it may transform into something more modest: a common market with fewer political ambitions, a pragmatic alliance rather than a federalist dream. It may cling to unity where it matters most, defence, trade, currency but surrender the illusion of forging a singular European identity. For some, that would be a tragedy. For others, a liberation.

The tragedy is that the Union, once the world’s boldest political experiment, seems unable to inspire anymore. It is not that citizens have forgotten the horrors of war or the benefits of cooperation. It is that they no longer believe the EU speaks for them. Until it can, until Brussels learns to listen as much as it commands, until it stops treating scepticism as ignorance and starts treating it as a legitimate voice, the far-right will keep winning. And Europe will keep losing its dream.

In the end, the EU’s greatest enemy is not nationalism or populism. It is its own complacency. The far-right may be the symptom, but the disease is the Union against itself.

The Hollow Stage by John Reid

It’s one of the strangest paradoxes of our time: a man as divisive as Donald Trump, as theatrically polarizing, as endlessly exhausting, still manages to dominate the American stage. He is despised not only by Democrats, independents, and disaffected conservatives, but even by the minor acolytes who parade under the banner of Make America Great Again yet whisper their doubts in private. And yet, despite the contempt that surrounds him, Trump remains the gravitational force at the center of politics. Why? Because there is no one of comparable size to rival him.

America has had its giants of charisma and presence. Barack Obama was one of them, a figure who could electrify a room before speaking a word, a politician who fused intellect and empathy into an image of something larger than life. He wasn’t flawless, but he was a star in the true sense: someone who could bend attention, command silence, and leave both allies and adversaries spellbound. Against him, Trump looks small, petty, loud, but he still plays the main character because there is no Obama-like figure on the stage today.

That absence is everything. In politics, contempt alone does not dethrone someone. Loathing creates energy, yes, but without a champion to channel it, without a singular voice to capture the exasperation of millions, disdain becomes background noise. What Trump understands what he thrives on, is that the vacuum of personality is his greatest ally. He doesn’t need to be admired; he only needs to be unavoidable.

Even the challengers who do exist, whether within the Republican field or from the Democratic side, struggle to scale the mountain of presence that Trump inhabits. They debate policy, they present reason, they issue their critiques. But politics, especially in this era of endless screens and shortened attention spans, is not primarily about reason. It is about story. It is about magnetism. It is about making people believe that in following you, they become part of something larger than themselves.

Obama had it. Trump, in his twisted, chaotic, and destructive way, has it. And yet no one else seems to. The rest are either too careful, too rehearsed, too forgettable or worse, they mistake competence for charisma, assuming that people will vote for a résumé rather than a spectacle.

And then there are those who seem promising, the “Newtons” of our era, the thinkers, the reformers, the serious leaders. They may bring intellect or moral clarity, but intellect alone cannot eclipse a showman. Newton might explain the laws of motion, but Trump throws the apple at your head and dares you not to look. The spectacle wins every time.

This imbalance is not just a quirk of media culture. It is a genuine threat to democracy. Democracies require counterweights, figures who can rise to meet demagogues and pull the public imagination toward something higher. When no such figure exists, the demagogue thrives unopposed, not in policy, not in morality, but in aura. And aura matters. It matters more than most of us want to admit.

Trump’s staying power is not a testament to his genius; it is a testament to the emptiness around him. Imagine a boxing ring where one fighter is hated by the entire crowd, yet still wins because no worthy opponent enters. The audience boos, hurls insults, demands his exit but when the bell rings, he is the only one standing. That is the American political stage right now.

The tragedy is that contempt is plentiful but courage is rare. Everyone is willing to criticize Trump in vague terms. Everyone is willing to point out his absurdities, his contradictions, his failures. But few are willing to risk stepping into the gladiator’s pit where the fight is not about facts but about fire. To challenge Trump is to challenge the machinery of spectacle itself. It is to risk humiliation, ridicule, and the endless churn of headlines designed to destroy anyone who dares to stand tall. Most politicians, cautious by nature, shrink from that test.

What the country aches for is not just a policy alternative but a personality alternative, a presence who can absorb the fear, the anger, the hope, and redirect it toward something that feels less toxic and more durable. Someone who can cut through the noise with a voice that is not only critical but commanding. Without that, Trump doesn’t just survive; he thrives, precisely because everyone despises him but no one can eclipse him.

It is easy to forget that politics, for all its machinery of polling, legislation, and strategy, is still a human drama. It is theater. And theater requires leading roles. Right now, Trump has taken the spotlight, not because he deserves it, not because his message elevates anyone, but because his opposition has failed to produce a protagonist of equal scale. Until one emerges, the stage will remain his, even as the audience groans.

The uncomfortable truth is that America doesn’t need another policy white paper or another carefully rehearsed debate line. It needs a voice that can seize the imagination, someone whose very presence makes Trump seem suddenly small. That figure has not yet arrived. Until then, contempt will echo in empty halls, and Trump, loathed, mocked, and yet unchallenged in stature, will continue to rule the narrative.