Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s political Houdini, has built an entire career around turning political disasters into personal survival. With more than 90% of the vote counted and his bloc holding 53 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, the arithmetic is brutally simple: Netanyahu has neither a mandate nor a comfortable parliamentary majority. Yet counting his political obituaries has become one of the most dangerous occupations in Israeli politics.
The question is no longer whether Netanyahu has won. It is how he might survive losing. Israel’s electoral system, with its proportional representation and fragmented parliamentary landscape, offers endless opportunities for political bargaining, ideological prostitution and coalition gymnastics. A few desperate partners, some carefully distributed ministerial chairs, a handful of political promises and the familiar invocation of national security can transform parliamentary weakness into governmental survival. Netanyahu understands this machinery better than almost anybody. He has spent decades mastering the art of making political desperation look like leadership.
But the implications extend beyond Israel. Donald Trump, who has developed his own peculiar relationship with democratic legitimacy, political accountability and the inconvenient arithmetic of elections, might eventually find Netanyahu’s survival strategy instructive. Not because the American system is identical to Israel’s, but because the underlying political instinct is remarkably familiar: when institutions become obstacles, bend them; when allies become liabilities, bargain with them; when legitimacy becomes questionable, manufacture a crisis that makes the question appear irrelevant.
Netanyahu and Trump share something more consequential than political friendship. Both understand that personal power can be maintained by converting every political confrontation into an existential battle. Every defeat becomes persecution. Every investigation becomes conspiracy. Every opponent becomes an enemy of the nation. Politics stops being a competition over policies and becomes a permanent struggle over who has the right to rule.
The danger is that Netanyahu’s possible survival could reinforce precisely this model of political leadership. If a leader can remain in power despite a fractured electoral mandate, mounting public distrust and an increasingly exhausted political environment, then the lesson for ambitious authoritarians is obvious: winning elections is desirable, but controlling the political aftermath is considerably more important.
Of course, Israel is not America, and Netanyahu is not Trump. The Israeli parliamentary system permits coalition arrangements that the American constitutional system does not. Trump cannot simply assemble a congressional coalition of ideological extremists and bargain his way into another presidential term. But constitutional limitations have never stopped political ambition from testing the boundaries of democratic institutions.
Ultimately, the Netanyahu question is bigger than Netanyahu himself. It concerns whether democracy is merely the mechanism through which leaders acquire power or the principle that determines when they must surrender it.
A political leader who treats defeat as a temporary inconvenience rather than a democratic verdict is not simply negotiating a coalition. He is negotiating with democracy itself.
And if Netanyahu finds another parliamentary escape hatch, Trump may discover that the most useful political manual is not about winning elections. It is about surviving them.
We used to follow trends. Now trends follow us, watch us, measure us, manipulate us and, eventually, tell us what we are supposed to like. Welcome to the brave new world of algorithmic taste, where originality is tolerated only if it performs well.
There was a time when discovering something beautiful meant stumbling across it. A photograph in a forgotten magazine, a painting in a small gallery, an unusual dress in a crowded street, a piece of music nobody around you had heard. Taste was an adventure, sometimes an accident, occasionally a rebellion. Today, apparently, we need an algorithm to tell us what is beautiful. How wonderfully pathetic.
Social media has turned global taste into a gigantic automated popularity contest. Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest and their digital cousins are no longer simply platforms where people share images and ideas. They are powerful cultural gatekeepers, quietly determining what receives attention, what disappears into obscurity and what millions of people will suddenly consider fashionable, desirable or aesthetically acceptable.
And the great trick is that we willingly participate. The algorithm does not particularly care whether a photograph is original, whether a painting has artistic depth or whether a fashion trend represents genuine creativity. It cares about engagement. Likes, comments, shares, viewing time and repetition become the currency of cultural relevance. The more predictable the reaction, the easier the content becomes to distribute. Consequently, creators increasingly learn to produce what the machine rewards rather than what their imagination demands.
The result is an extraordinary global aesthetic conformity disguised as individual expression. Scroll through different countries and cities and observe the visual similarities. The same minimalist interiors, identical coffee presentations, carefully manufactured imperfections, familiar fashion silhouettes, pastel colours, identical holiday photographs and faces arranged for maximum digital approval. Different languages, different cultures, different backgrounds, but remarkably similar visual ambitions.
Apparently, the entire planet has decided that originality means having the same original idea. This is not merely a question of fashion. Algorithmic curation influences architecture, photography, graphic design, beauty standards, food presentation, popular art and even the way ordinary people experience their surroundings. A restaurant designs its interior to become Instagram-friendly. A photographer frames a landscape according to what performs best on a small screen. An artist considers whether a painting will attract attention before considering what it communicates.
Creativity becomes content. Culture becomes marketing. Taste becomes data. Naturally, social media companies will defend their systems by arguing that algorithms simply respond to public preferences. There is some truth in that. They help people discover creators, communities and artistic movements that traditional cultural institutions might ignore. Independent artists can reach international audiences without waiting for the approval of galleries, publishers or commercial establishments.
But there is a rather important difference between helping people discover something and repeatedly showing them what the system has already decided they should see.
Algorithms do not simply reflect taste. They help manufacture it. And the consequences extend beyond aesthetics. When visibility becomes the principal measure of cultural value, less commercially attractive traditions, experimental art and unfamiliar visual languages struggle to compete. Cultural diversity does not necessarily disappear, but it becomes increasingly packaged into easily digestible, marketable fragments.
The most disturbing development is the gradual disappearance of curiosity. We stop exploring because the feed has already prepared our next discovery. We stop looking for the unfamiliar because familiarity produces comfortable engagement. We mistake popularity for quality and repetition for importance.
Meanwhile, creators become unpaid employees of an invisible cultural production line, constantly adjusting their work to satisfy an unpredictable machine. Yesterday's successful aesthetic becomes tomorrow's compulsory imitation. Even rebellion acquires a template, a hashtag and a recommended posting time.
Perhaps the greatest irony is that a technology supposedly designed to connect the world's cultures is helping manufacture a universal visual monoculture. We do not need to abandon social media. Nor should we romanticise an imaginary past in which artistic recognition was democratic. It never was. But we desperately need to recover the distinction between visibility and value, between popularity and originality, between discovering beauty and being instructed to admire it.
The algorithm can recommend a thousand photographs of the same sunset. It cannot tell us why one particular sunset makes us feel something. At least, not yet. And when it finally does, perhaps we should be worried.
Dino is a vegetarian virgin dinosaur and his best friend is Anty, a carnivorous nymphomaniac ant. They call themselves the AntySaurus Prick and they are still here waiting for the comet to come!
For more AntySaurus Prick, HERE! For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!
Humanity Victims of Leaders Who Even cannot Think for Themselves
People pretending to be popular leaders display ill-informed conscience and dubious character on the global stage. In mid-term US election campaigns, you can view Trump in vengeance and recently across Israel you witnessed Netanyahu projecting an egoistic image of absolute political maneuvering. He blamed Arabs for “fraudulent and stolen” election outcomes. Conscientious Israelis question Netanyahu’s political motives, integrity and animosities toward the Arab population. Israel looks for election surprises and political change. In 2020, Trump refused to transfer power to Biden. Would Netanyahu play the same dirty politics? Discarding cynicism, effective leaders are always people of knowledge, wisdom and open to listening and learning. They know their strengths and weaknesses and advisors around them and when facts of life warrant a change, they make navigational change for the best of people’s interest. Greed of power and inherent wickedness overwhelm Trump- Netanyahu’s character and public behavior. There is no fair role model of truthful characteristics of these leaders in doing their jobs to safeguard the entrenched humanity and future generations “from the scourge of war.” They utter hollow speeches and fake claims of serving the public, peace and humanity.
An evil is inseparable from the claimed political good of people. What Israeli elections revealed and what is coming up in two days during the US midterm election could well illustrate how dreadful tragedies victimize innocent public consciousness. In a recent article (“How Egomaniac Leaders Call to End Civilized Humanity?” The Ovi Magazine, Sweden: 4/9/25,https://realovi.wordpress.com/2025/04/09/how-egomaniac-leaders-call-to-end-civilized-mankind-by-mahboob-a-khawaja-phd/), this author described President Trump and PM Netanyahu as mindless anarchists having ignored the voices of reason and subjected mankind to genocide and crimes against humanity. They behave in arrogance and insolently like the Pharaoh. Do they not stand to meet the same ending as did Pharaoh? God created human beings as moral beings unlike other animals and beasts, with a Divine Trust and Accountability for actions on this planet? Leaders enriched with moral, intellectual and spiritual values know life has a purpose, trust and meaning and act responsibly but the 21st century global leaders are steeped in their own folly and perpetuated ignorance. Insanity is powerless and transitory.
The Warriors are Opportunists to Victimize Humanity:
Power and politics is a game of acquisitiveness engrossed in inordinate and monopolistic adventures. Something evocative and hauntingly familiar about the 21st century’s leaders claiming to be intelligent but act foolishly to bomb mother earth under pretext of conquests and imperial domination. Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst, regular author for Global Research, and a former Economist at the World Bank (https://www.globalresearch.ca/chaos-life-death-awakening/5936941?), offers a penetrating insight:If they had their way,chaos is for culling the population, slowly and as painlessly as possible.....And if they don’t, why not? Because they are considering themselves better than us, the People, who must – and will – fend for ourselves, for our lives and freedom. Be sure. That is why chaos is a three-way sword: Life, Death or Awakening. We MUST choose Awakening. Please see more:https://realovi.wordpress.com/2026/10/12/global-humanity-vs-insanity-of-perpetuated-animosities-by-mahboob-a-khawaja-phd/
The leaders having unbridled ambitions and power unleash violent assumptions of hatred, secret intrigues and animosities and killings overwhelm the daily thinking process, a society – a nation no matter how normal claims to be, cannot function as normal beings to co-exist with their own self, the surroundings – in the human culture and make any positive contributions to human change and progress. Israel and America are no exception. This state of affairs reflects complete societal breakdown and march towards self-annihilation. Despite hollow claims, no moral and ethical behavior is seen in the sudden and inexplicable plunge to human wickedness. Nobody takes Trump’s America seriously on its commitment and behavior. President Trump foiled the Ukraine peace plan by agreeing to get diesel from Russia. He blames Zellensky but sees no fault lines in his unpredictable behavior. Russia and Ukraine are engaged in a self-destructive folly of their own making. The EU leaders simply watch and witness daily horrors, killings of civilians and devastation of habitats across Ukraine and Russia. It was a test lab for Western mythologists, not a pursuit to end the conflict for peacemaking and harmony. There are no conscientious Arab leaders claiming normalcy and accountability, so would they be phased out by the scenario of “greater Israel” as an emerging concept of US-Israel combined politics?
We, the People are Guardian of Earth, Not Despotic Leaders
The Earth is not a property of the US or Israel but a Divine hub of human Life, Survival and a Trust, Those Bombing and Destroying it are mentally sick and defy the Divine Truth. It looks as if the US and Israeli leaders do not believe in life and death and accountability to God -The Creator of Universe. Propelled by irresistible and irrational statements by Trump, Israel under Netanyahu has so far dropped more than 90,000 ton of bombs on Gaza- more insane than what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War 2. Perhaps, the Israeli and American leaders do not believe in life and death and accountability to God for their actions. The Torah and Bible fully reflect on this core human responsibility and punishment to those who violate the Divine Covenants: And killing of innocent people is prohibited in the Ten Commandments (Torah): “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus. 20:13; also Deut. 5:17). Is human intelligence still intact to understand this reality? Wherever there is trust, there is accountability. All human beings are accountable for their actions. The Divine warning (The Quran:7:56), warns: Do no mischief on the Earth after it hath been set in order, but call on God with fear and longing in hearts; For the Mercy of God is always near to those who do good. “
Are we witnessing a TIME when most precautionary vigilance is liable to consequential surprises? How foolish and stupid they are, assuming superior ethnicity, nationalism, economic power and invincible armed forces have bombed Mother Earth again and again for petty things of their own wrong thinking. Please see: https://realovi.wordpress.com/2025/07/02/mother-earth-cries-they-bombed-me-again-by-mahboob-a-khawaja-phd/ and “Leaders, Time and Accountability for War and Peace. “Gaza and Ukraine Portray the Reality”https://www.globalresearch.ca/leaders-time-accountability-war-peace/5889803-andhttps://www.globalresearch.ca/war-gaza-arab-muslim-leadership-complicity/5865073
An unknown author of “Your Dimension of Greatness” (Free Thought Manifesto) shared this poem:
No one can know the potential, Of a life that is committed to win; With courage - the challenge it faces, To achieve great success in the end!
So, explore the Dimension of Greatness, And believe that the world CAN be won; By a mind that is fully committed, KNOWING the task can be done!
Your world has no place for the skeptic, No room for the DOUBTER to stand; To weaken your firm resolution That you CAN EXCEL in this land!
We must have VISION TO SEE our potential, And FAITH TO BELIEVE that we can; Then COURAGE TO ACT with conviction, To become what GOD MEANT us to be!
So, possess the strength and the courage.
Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution and has spent several academic years across the Russian-Ukrainian and Central Asian regions knowing the people, diverse cultures of thinking and political governance and a keen interest in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including: One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution 2019; and Global Humanity and Remaking of Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution for the 21st Century and Beyond, Barnes and Noble Press, USA, 2025 https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/global-humanity-and-remaking-of-peace-security-and-conflict-resolution-for-the-21st-century-and-beyond-mahboob-a-khawaja/1147150197?ean=9798317619374
Check Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD. eBOOK, Wars on Humanity: Ukraine, Palestine and the role of Global Leaders HERE!
There is something almost comical about the spectacle of Washington telling Europe to calm down about Russia. For years, American administrations lectured European governments about defence spending, strategic responsibility and the need to stop treating NATO as a comfortable American security blanket. Now that some European capitals are finally discovering the vocabulary of military determination, Washington appears to be asking them to lower their voices. Apparently, Europe should be armed, alert and frightened, but preferably quiet.
Welcome to the Pentagon’s paradox. The reported private pressure on several NATO allies to moderate their rhetoric towards Moscow exposes an uncomfortable contradiction at the heart of the transatlantic alliance. European governments are being encouraged to take responsibility for their own security while simultaneously being warned not to sound too enthusiastic about defending it. Washington wants European military muscle without European political unpredictability. It wants deterrence without the dangerous consequences of actually believing its own slogans.
There is a legitimate strategic argument behind American caution. Nuclear-armed Russia is not an ordinary adversary, and careless language between nuclear powers can create misunderstandings with potentially catastrophic consequences. Military signalling is not a competition in testosterone. A government that threatens more than it can deliver risks undermining its credibility, inviting miscalculation and creating expectations that its armed forces may be unable or unwilling to fulfil.
But there is another side to this story, and it is considerably less flattering to Washington. European governments have spent years watching Russian aggression become an increasingly direct threat to continental security. They have witnessed the invasion of Ukraine, the destruction of cities, the weaponisation of energy, cyberattacks, intimidation and the systematic exploitation of Western hesitation. For countries geographically closer to Russia, particularly those in northern and eastern Europe, this is not an academic discussion conducted over expensive lunches in Washington. It is a matter of national survival.
Telling these governments to moderate their language without offering convincing strategic reassurance is not diplomacy. It is asking them to manage their anxiety for the convenience of somebody else's political calculations.
The real problem is that Washington and European capitals increasingly appear to be playing different strategic games. European leaders need to demonstrate that aggression carries consequences. American policymakers, meanwhile, must calculate escalation risks, domestic political pressures, military commitments and the possibility of being dragged into a confrontation they cannot easily control.
Neither calculation is necessarily irrational. The problem emerges when the two become disconnected. Deterrence depends on credibility. If Moscow believes that European threats are theatrical, it may become more adventurous. If it believes that Washington will restrain its European allies whenever their language becomes uncomfortable, it may conclude that NATO's unity has an invisible ceiling. That is precisely the sort of strategic ambiguity that an adversary can exploit.
Of course, European hawks should also examine their own performances. There is a difference between determination and political grandstanding. Announcing military ambitions without the industrial capacity, ammunition stocks, trained personnel and political commitment to support them is not strength. It is expensive theatre. Europe cannot defend itself through press conferences, dramatic speeches and photographs of leaders standing beside military equipment.
But neither can it defend itself by whispering. The United States must understand that European security cannot remain permanently dependent on the changing moods of American administrations. Washington may wish to avoid escalation today, but European governments must prepare for the possibility that tomorrow's White House will be even less interested in European security. The continent cannot build its future around the assumption that American strategic patience will always coincide with European needs.
There is also a fundamental distinction between avoiding war and avoiding responsibility. The first is an essential objective. The second is a recipe for disaster.
The Pentagon may be right to demand discipline in NATO's public messaging. Military strategy requires sober language, credible commitments and carefully constructed communication channels. But restraint must be mutual, and it must be accompanied by substance: clearer security guarantees, stronger European capabilities, coordinated military planning and an unmistakable understanding that Russian aggression will not be rewarded.
Otherwise, Washington risks creating an alliance in which Europe is expected to provide the soldiers, the money, the geographical exposure and the political consequences, while America reserves the right to decide how loudly everybody is permitted to complain.
That is not burden-sharing. That is strategic babysitting. Ultimately, the question is not whether European leaders should sound more aggressive or more diplomatic. It is whether NATO can maintain a common strategic purpose when its members increasingly disagree about the risks they are prepared to accept.
Russia does not need NATO to collapse. It only needs NATO to hesitate, contradict itself and become increasingly uncertain about what its own commitments actually mean. Europe should not confuse recklessness with courage. But Washington should not confuse silence with stability. And perhaps somebody in the Pentagon should explain one elementary geopolitical truth to the politicians across the Atlantic: you cannot spend decades telling Europe to grow up, then complain when it finally raises its voice.
The West thought sanctions would isolate Russia. Instead, they helped accelerate a financial rebellion. And Africa, long treated as an economic playground by competing powers, has begun examining the exits.
The Russia-Africa Summit is therefore about considerably more than diplomatic handshakes, military contracts and carefully choreographed photographs of smiling presidents. Beneath the diplomatic theatre lies a much more consequential contest: who controls the financial plumbing of the twenty-first century?
And Africa, rather than merely watching, is beginning to calculate its options. For decades, the international financial architecture has operated under Western dominance. Access to capital, international payments, credit institutions and financial infrastructure has largely depended on systems whose rules were established and defended by powerful Western economies. The dollar became the world's indispensable currency, while sanctions transformed financial connectivity into an instrument of geopolitical punishment.
Russia's exclusion from substantial parts of this architecture demonstrated something that many governments had previously preferred not to contemplate: economic interdependence can become economic vulnerability.
That lesson has not been lost on African capitals. But let us not confuse African pragmatism with Russian generosity. Moscow is not organising a financial revolution out of affection for African sovereignty. It has its own war to finance, its own sanctions to circumvent and its own international isolation to weaken. Alternative payment systems are not simply instruments of liberation; they are also instruments of survival for a Russian economy under extraordinary external pressure.
The distinction matters. The proposed expansion of national-currency settlements, connections between Russian financial messaging infrastructure and African payment networks, and the development of digital financial platforms could reduce transaction costs and dependence on Western-controlled intermediaries. That is a legitimate economic ambition. But who controls these systems? Who guarantees their security? What happens when political relationships deteriorate? And what protection does an African business have when its new financial lifeline becomes another geopolitical hostage?
There is another uncomfortable question: debt. Africa does not need another collection of powerful creditors arriving with revolutionary slogans, attractive infrastructure proposals and contracts written in somebody else's interests. It has already experienced the consequences of resource extraction dressed up as development. Replacing Western financial dependence with Russian or Chinese dependence would not constitute liberation. It would simply change the landlord.
Russia's ambitions must also be measured against its economic capacity. Despite the summit's grand rhetoric, Russian-African trade remains modest compared with Africa's enormous commercial relationships with China and Europe. Agreements, announcements and presidential promises are not factories, electricity networks or functioning industrial economies.
And this is precisely where African governments must demonstrate political maturity. They should welcome competition between financial powers, negotiate hard and refuse to become anybody's geopolitical infantry. They should demand technology transfer, local employment, transparent lending, industrial investment and meaningful participation in the ownership of the infrastructure being built.
The same applies to artificial intelligence and digital economies. Africa must not become merely a market for imported algorithms, surveillance technologies and foreign-controlled data centres. Digital sovereignty means owning infrastructure, developing expertise and establishing rules that protect citizens rather than enriching distant corporations or authoritarian governments.
Ultimately, the most interesting development is not that Russia wants to challenge Western financial dominance. It is that African governments increasingly understand they have bargaining power in a world where competing economic blocs desperately need their markets, minerals, agricultural potential and diplomatic support.
But multipolarity is not automatically democracy. Nor does the disappearance of Western monopoly guarantee the arrival of economic justice.
Africa should certainly escape the financial architecture that has too often treated it as a subordinate participant. However, it must resist the temptation to exchange one master for another. The next financial revolution should not have a Russian, American, Chinese or European owner. It should have African shareholders, African regulators and African beneficiaries.
Otherwise, the grand new architecture will be another colonial building with a different flag above the entrance. And Africa has already paid far too much rent.
The West thought sanctions would isolate Russia. Instead, they helped accelerate a financial rebellion. And Africa, long treated as an economic playground by competing powers, has begun examining the exits.
The Russia-Africa Summit is therefore about considerably more than diplomatic handshakes, military contracts and carefully choreographed photographs of smiling presidents. Beneath the diplomatic theatre lies a much more consequential contest: who controls the financial plumbing of the twenty-first century?
And Africa, rather than merely watching, is beginning to calculate its options. For decades, the international financial architecture has operated under Western dominance. Access to capital, international payments, credit institutions and financial infrastructure has largely depended on systems whose rules were established and defended by powerful Western economies. The dollar became the world's indispensable currency, while sanctions transformed financial connectivity into an instrument of geopolitical punishment.
Russia's exclusion from substantial parts of this architecture demonstrated something that many governments had previously preferred not to contemplate: economic interdependence can become economic vulnerability.
That lesson has not been lost on African capitals. But let us not confuse African pragmatism with Russian generosity. Moscow is not organising a financial revolution out of affection for African sovereignty. It has its own war to finance, its own sanctions to circumvent and its own international isolation to weaken. Alternative payment systems are not simply instruments of liberation; they are also instruments of survival for a Russian economy under extraordinary external pressure.
The distinction matters. The proposed expansion of national-currency settlements, connections between Russian financial messaging infrastructure and African payment networks, and the development of digital financial platforms could reduce transaction costs and dependence on Western-controlled intermediaries. That is a legitimate economic ambition. But who controls these systems? Who guarantees their security? What happens when political relationships deteriorate? And what protection does an African business have when its new financial lifeline becomes another geopolitical hostage?
There is another uncomfortable question: debt. Africa does not need another collection of powerful creditors arriving with revolutionary slogans, attractive infrastructure proposals and contracts written in somebody else's interests. It has already experienced the consequences of resource extraction dressed up as development. Replacing Western financial dependence with Russian or Chinese dependence would not constitute liberation. It would simply change the landlord.
Russia's ambitions must also be measured against its economic capacity. Despite the summit's grand rhetoric, Russian-African trade remains modest compared with Africa's enormous commercial relationships with China and Europe. Agreements, announcements and presidential promises are not factories, electricity networks or functioning industrial economies.
And this is precisely where African governments must demonstrate political maturity. They should welcome competition between financial powers, negotiate hard and refuse to become anybody's geopolitical infantry. They should demand technology transfer, local employment, transparent lending, industrial investment and meaningful participation in the ownership of the infrastructure being built.
The same applies to artificial intelligence and digital economies. Africa must not become merely a market for imported algorithms, surveillance technologies and foreign-controlled data centres. Digital sovereignty means owning infrastructure, developing expertise and establishing rules that protect citizens rather than enriching distant corporations or authoritarian governments.
Ultimately, the most interesting development is not that Russia wants to challenge Western financial dominance. It is that African governments increasingly understand they have bargaining power in a world where competing economic blocs desperately need their markets, minerals, agricultural potential and diplomatic support.
But multipolarity is not automatically democracy. Nor does the disappearance of Western monopoly guarantee the arrival of economic justice.
Africa should certainly escape the financial architecture that has too often treated it as a subordinate participant. However, it must resist the temptation to exchange one master for another. The next financial revolution should not have a Russian, American, Chinese or European owner. It should have African shareholders, African regulators and African beneficiaries.
Otherwise, the grand new architecture will be another colonial building with a different flag above the entrance. And Africa has already paid far too much rent.
The indigenous people of the world have spent centuries protecting the forests, rivers and ecosystems that international bureaucrats now promise to save. Yet, when the powerful gather to discuss biodiversity, they are still expected to sit politely, tell their stories and leave the decisions to somebody else. Enough of this environmental colonialism.
The presence and leadership demands of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities at the UN Biodiversity Conference, COP17, in Yerevan should expose an uncomfortable truth: the people who have protected biodiversity for generations are still fighting to be treated as legitimate decision-makers in the institutions supposedly dedicated to protecting it.
This is not merely an issue of representation. It is an issue of power. For centuries, indigenous communities have managed forests, wetlands, grasslands, mountains and coastal ecosystems through systems built around collective responsibility, seasonal knowledge and an understanding that nature is not an endless supermarket. Their relationship with the land is not necessarily romantic, primitive or uncomplicated. It is practical, historical and often rooted in survival. They understand that destroying the ecosystem sustaining a community is not economic development. It is collective suicide with a business plan.
Meanwhile, international environmental governance has perfected the art of announcing targets without confronting the structures responsible for destroying them.
Governments promise to protect thirty per cent of the planet while allowing destructive extraction, industrial expansion and land grabbing to continue. Corporations discover biodiversity as a fashionable investment opportunity. Consultants manufacture impressive sustainability vocabulary. And indigenous communities are expected to demonstrate patience while somebody else negotiates the future of their ancestral territories.
The hypocrisy is staggering. You cannot protect biodiversity by excluding the people who have protected it. You cannot discuss conservation while denying communities secure land rights. And you certainly cannot call an environmental agreement historic if those whose livelihoods depend on its success have no meaningful authority over its implementation.
The solution is not another Indigenous Peoples advisory committee, another consultation mechanism or another beautifully worded declaration. The solution is legally enforceable recognition of indigenous territorial rights, meaningful participation in governance, and the principle of free, prior and informed consent.
Indigenous communities must have the authority to determine what happens on their lands, challenge destructive projects and participate directly in the distribution of conservation funding. Their knowledge must be recognised alongside scientific expertise, not treated as colourful cultural decoration during conference proceedings.
Of course, indigenous stewardship is not automatically perfect. Communities are diverse, political disagreements exist, and traditional institutions can also require accountability. But that is an argument for genuine partnership, not continued exclusion.
The international community must also abandon its comfortable habit of treating indigenous people as environmental mascots. They are not there to provide moral legitimacy for decisions already taken behind closed doors. They are political actors with rights, interests, knowledge and the authority to say no.
COP17 must confront this fundamental question: who owns the future of biodiversity? Because the answer cannot continue to be those with the biggest delegations, the most expensive lawyers and the strongest corporate connections.
The people who have kept ecosystems alive should not have to beg for permission to protect them. Perhaps it is time for the international environmental establishment to try something revolutionary. Instead of inviting Indigenous Peoples to another panel, hand them the gavel. And, for once, let the people who know how to protect the planet decide what happens next.
The dead have had centuries to tell their version of history. Perhaps it is time we allowed the living to answer back. Suddenly, the guardians of civilisation emerge from their velvet-lined caves, clutching their cultural inheritance as if somebody had threatened to nationalise their grandmothers. Art must remain untouched, they declare. History must be respected. The masters must be protected.
Protected from what, exactly? Questions? Uncomfortable truths? The possibility that the magnificent world they painted was never quite as innocent as the museum labels would have us believe?
The controversy surrounding contemporary interventions into classical art, including Yinka Shonibare's dialogue with historical European imagery, exposes an old cultural anxiety dressed up as aesthetic principle. The problem is not that contemporary artists are destroying history. The problem is that they are refusing to let history remain comfortably silent.
And that is precisely what makes their work necessary. For centuries, European art history has been presented as a procession of genius: magnificent painters, aristocratic patrons, beautiful estates, elegant portraits and the supposedly universal values of Western civilisation. Yet behind those silk dresses, polished silverware and pastoral landscapes stood empires, colonial commerce, slavery and vast inequalities of wealth. The painting might depict a gentleman enjoying his estate, but the origins of that estate's prosperity rarely receive equal billing.
The canvas survives. The inconvenient context often disappears. Thomas Gainsborough painted the people and landscapes of eighteenth-century Britain with extraordinary skill. His portraits and pastoral scenes remain important achievements of European art. Recognising that greatness requires no historical amnesia. But neither does admiring Gainsborough require us to pretend that the society surrounding his work existed outside the machinery of empire.
This is where contemporary artists enter the argument, armed not with paintbrushes alone but with questions that traditional institutions have spent decades learning how to avoid.
Shonibare's artistic language, which engages with colonialism, class, cultural identity and the entangled histories of Europe and Africa, challenges the artificial borders through which museums have traditionally organised civilisation. His interventions make the past collide with the present. They remind audiences that identity is constructed, power has an aesthetic, and the history of European refinement cannot always be separated from the global systems that helped sustain it.
Naturally, somebody will complain that this is politics invading art. As if art had ever been innocent of politics. Who commissioned the portraits? Who could afford to sit for them? Whose bodies became objects of fascination, whose labour created the wealth represented on canvas, and whose lives were considered unworthy of artistic attention? These are not fashionable questions invented by contemporary activists. They are questions about how culture acquires prestige, who controls its institutions and whose experiences are permitted to become universal.
The real political intervention was never simply to question the masterpiece. It was to pretend that the masterpiece required no questions.
Museums, meanwhile, must decide whether they are temples dedicated to the preservation of established authority or public institutions capable of confronting complicated truths. Preservation matters. Historical accuracy matters. The original artwork must not become a disposable prop in somebody else's ideological performance. But preservation is not the same as intellectual paralysis, and respect does not mean compulsory silence.
There is a difference between erasing history and expanding its meaning. Erasure conceals evidence, suppresses voices and closes discussion. Critical recontextualisation introduces evidence, recovers neglected perspectives and opens discussion. Confusing the two is either a remarkable intellectual failure or a convenient strategy for avoiding uncomfortable conversations.
Not every contemporary intervention is brilliant. Some are superficial, some are clumsy, and some mistake provocation for insight. Contemporary artists deserve criticism just as much as their predecessors. The answer, however, is to judge the work, not to declare the past a forbidden territory into which the present must never venture.
Art history is not a family heirloom belonging exclusively to the people who inherited the keys to the gallery. It belongs to the public, including those whose ancestors appear in the historical record only as servants, commodities, anonymous labourers or distant figures at the edge of somebody else's magnificent composition.
When contemporary artists confront classical imagery with the realities of global identity, they do not necessarily diminish the old masters. They make the encounter more demanding. A painting can remain beautiful while becoming historically uncomfortable. Indeed, its beauty may become even more revealing when we understand the world that produced it.
The greatest masterpieces do not need to be embalmed to survive. They can withstand scrutiny, disagreement and the unruly presence of new generations. Perhaps the real threat to classical art is not the contemporary artist who dares to challenge it. Perhaps it is the museum visitor who leaves believing that nothing more needs to be said. Let the paintings remain. Let the history remain. But let the arguments begin. The masters have earned their place in history. They have not earned immunity from it.
While ordinary North Koreans live under an economic prison, the regime's digital criminals apparently enjoy a rather different lifestyle: stealing billions, laundering cryptocurrency and financing a dictatorship that has perfected the art of international extortion. Welcome to the brave new world of digital capitalism, where the bank robber no longer needs a gun, a getaway car or even a passport. Just a keyboard, a few compromised systems and the protection of a sovereign state.
The reported $6.3 billion Binance crypto theft, attributed in the proposed scenario to North Korean state-backed cyber actors, represents something considerably more dangerous than another spectacular financial crime. It exposes the transformation of cryptocurrency into an instrument of geopolitical warfare. The hackers are not simply criminals looking for a quick fortune. They are potentially extensions of a government, operating in the comfortable darkness between international law, technological ignorance and financial irresponsibility.
And that is where the real scandal begins. For years, cryptocurrency enthusiasts sold us a beautiful technological fairy tale. Decentralisation would liberate money from governments, banks and bureaucratic dinosaurs. Blockchain would create transparency. Digital currencies would democratise finance. No middlemen, no borders, no financial gatekeepers. Wonderful! Except that somewhere between the utopian sales pitch and the reality of global finance, somebody forgot to explain that criminals, dictatorships and intelligence services also enjoy technological freedom.
Decentralisation does not mean immunity from organised crime. An anonymous digital wallet does not become morally superior because it has no physical address. And blockchain transparency is hardly reassuring when the people responsible for stealing the money are three steps ahead of the institutions supposedly protecting it.
North Korea has understood something that Western governments and financial regulators have been embarrassingly slow to recognise: cybercrime can become an export industry. When sanctions restrict access to international banking, sophisticated digital theft offers an alternative revenue stream. When conventional financial institutions become difficult to penetrate, decentralised platforms provide new opportunities. The internet becomes a borderless battlefield, and cryptocurrency becomes the ammunition, the battlefield economy and the escape vehicle.
But let us not pretend that Pyongyang is the only villain in this theatre. The cryptocurrency industry has spent years celebrating its freedom from regulation while demanding public confidence, institutional investment and mainstream legitimacy. It wants to be treated like conventional finance when attracting customers, but frequently behaves like an offshore casino when accountability comes knocking.
You cannot demand the privileges of the financial system while rejecting its responsibilities. You cannot advertise security, promise financial independence and then shrug your shoulders when ordinary investors discover that their digital savings have disappeared into an international criminal network.
The victims are not abstract numbers on a blockchain explorer. They are people who trusted platforms, invested savings and believed that technological sophistication meant technological security. Their money can become collateral damage in a geopolitical conflict they never agreed to join.
Governments, meanwhile, continue to approach cybercrime with the enthusiasm of firefighters discussing a burning building while negotiating who should pay for the water. International cooperation remains painfully inadequate, regulations lag behind technological developments, and the financial industry keeps inventing new vocabulary to describe old-fashioned greed.
The uncomfortable truth is that cryptocurrency has become a strategic vulnerability. A state-sponsored hacker does not need to defeat an army, occupy territory or blockade a port. A successful digital operation can generate enormous resources, undermine confidence in financial institutions and help a sanctioned regime finance its survival.
This is not financial freedom. It is financial insecurity with excellent marketing. The answer is not necessarily to abolish cryptocurrency or surrender technological innovation to government bureaucracies. It is to stop confusing innovation with irresponsibility. Exchanges must face meaningful security obligations, cross-border financial intelligence must become more effective, and governments must treat state-sponsored financial cybercrime as a serious national and international security threat.
And perhaps the crypto evangelists should finally abandon their adolescent fantasy that technology automatically makes humanity more honest. A blockchain cannot manufacture democracy. A digital wallet cannot create accountability. And decentralisation cannot protect a society from a dictatorship that has discovered how to turn the world's financial infrastructure into its personal cash machine.
The Wild West had its outlaws, its sheriffs and its occasional hanging. The digital Wild West has something considerably more frightening: outlaws with state sponsorship, global infrastructure and nuclear-armed employers. And somewhere in Pyongyang, somebody is probably checking the balance. The revolution was supposed to liberate our money. Instead, it may have built the world's most convenient ATM for rogue states.
