Oppressed enforce oppression by Timothy Davies

There is a bitter irony unfolding in America today one that reveals how power and prejudice often recycle themselves, merely changing hands and targets. For decades, African-Americans have been victims of systemic discrimination, institutional violence, and dehumanization. They have been profiled, brutalized, and killed for the color of their skin. They have fought, and still fight, for the most basic recognition of their humanity. Yet now, we find a growing number of African-Americans joining Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE, the very organization notorious for carrying out policies rooted in racial profiling, family separation, and cruelty against the Latino community.

This contradiction is painful to watch because it exposes the cyclical nature of oppression. The story of America has never been linear progress it’s a circle, and sometimes those who have been beaten down rise only to pick up the same whip that once tore their own backs. It’s not because they forget their history, but because the system they rise into rewards conformity, not solidarity.

ICE has long been a symbol of state-sanctioned fear. Raids that rip parents from children, deportations that shatter families, and the cold bureaucracy that turns human beings into case numbers. It’s a machinery of enforcement that operates under the illusion of legality, but its human cost is staggering. And within this system, some African-American agents now stand, wearing the same badge that represents to Latinos what the police badge once represented to their own grandparents: the face of institutional terror.

This is not to say that every Black agent joins with malicious intent. Many likely believe they are serving the country, upholding laws, or seeking stability and opportunity in a tough world. For some, a government job offers the rare promise of security, a paycheck, a pension, respect in a society that still treats Blackness as a threat. Yet that survival instinct, however understandable, places them in a tragic contradiction. They are enforcing the very ideology that once oppressed their own people: the belief that some lives are less American, less worthy, less human.

Racism is an adaptable virus. It doesn’t disappear when laws change or when victims of one era gain some measure of inclusion. It simply mutates, finding new hosts and new targets. The system that once excluded African-Americans now invites them in not to dismantle it, but to keep it running, to give it a new face, a veneer of diversity. “Look,” the system says, “we are fair. We have Black officers, Black ICE agents, Black leadership.” But what good is representation when it is used as camouflage for cruelty?

It is not enough to escape oppression; one must reject the tools of oppression entirely. Otherwise, the legacy of pain merely continues shifted from one group to another, perpetuated under a different flag. When African-American officers participate in raids that terrorize immigrant families, they are not just betraying the memory of their ancestors; they are also validating the false narrative that power equals justice.

There is a haunting symmetry here. The images of ICE agents breaking down doors in the early dawn mirror those grainy black-and-white photos of police dragging civil rights protesters off buses. The faces change, the uniforms change, but the energy, the cold authority of the enforcer remains. The targets today are not Black Americans sitting at lunch counters; they are Latino families hiding in fear, undocumented workers who built the houses and cleaned the offices of the very country that now hunts them.

How can anyone who understands the weight of racial injustice align themselves with an organization that profits from it? Perhaps the answer lies in a desperate human desire—to belong, to be accepted, to finally be seen as legitimate in a nation that has long denied legitimacy to people of color. For some African-Americans, joining the ranks of ICE may feel like crossing a threshold: from marginalized to official, from feared to respected. But the respect earned by enforcing injustice is hollow. It’s a fragile illusion of power built on the suffering of others.

We have to confront this uncomfortable truth: America does not fix racism by diversifying its oppressors. The presence of a Black ICE agent or a Latino Border Patrol officer does not make these institutions more humane. It only proves that the system is clever enough to use diversity as a shield. The question we should be asking isn’t “Who is enforcing the law?” but “What kind of law are they enforcing, and at whose expense?”

There is a moral responsibility that transcends uniforms and paychecks. If the Black struggle for freedom has taught the world anything, it’s that injustice anywhere truly is a threat to justice everywhere. It cannot be selectively applied. You cannot fight for equality on one street corner and enforce discrimination on another. The moral consistency demanded by history is unforgiving.

To the African-Americans now wearing ICE uniforms, one might ask: What do you see when you look into the eyes of the people you detain? Do you see “illegal immigrants,” or do you see reflections of your own grandparents, once branded “undesirable,” once told to “go back where they came from”? Do you hear the echo of your ancestors’ cries when you hear a child scream for their mother as she’s taken away?

This is not an attack on individual character but a plea for collective awareness. Oppression only survives when good people convince themselves that they’re simply doing their jobs. That was the excuse used in every dark chapter of human history, from the overseer’s whip to the segregationist’s badge. “I was just following orders” has never been an honorable defense.

If progress means repeating the sins of the past under new management, then it isn’t progress at all, it’s merely rotation. The moral challenge for African-Americans today is not just to climb the ladder of success, but to question what that ladder leans against. If it stands atop the backs of another oppressed people, then it leads nowhere worth going.

In the end, the story of justice in America is unfinished. It is written not by those who enforce power, but by those who resist its abuses. The real heroes are not those who find safety in uniforms, but those who stand in solidarity with the vulnerable. The dream that Dr. King spoke of wasn’t about integration into systems of injustice, it was about transforming them.

And until that transformation happens, the mirror of injustice will continue to reflect a painful truth: that the oppressed, when invited to join the oppressor, must choose whether to uphold the system that once crushed them or to finally break the cycle.

The leak that hopefully won’t wash away by Emma Schneider

The sea north of Tel Aviv is calm this time of year, which makes it an odd place for the storm now engulfing Israel’s political and military establishment. When Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, until recently the top lawyer in the Israel Defence Forces, was found on that beach alive, shaken, and suddenly a suspect, the country’s headlines trembled. A video had leaked, allegedly showing the brutal abuse of a Palestinian detainee by Israeli soldiers. Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned, claiming responsibility for the leak. A day later, she was in handcuffs.

It would be tempting to read this as a moment of reckoning, a sign that something within the tightly sealed world of military justice and occupation might finally give. But the more likely story is both smaller and sadder; the system is not reeling from what happened in that cell, but from the fact that we saw it happen.

This is a familiar ritual in modern Israel. Outrage over “the footage,” never over the act. A government scandalized not by the violence itself, but by its public exposure. The apparatus will spin, inquiries will be announced, committees will convene. The conclusion, however, is already written: a promise of “review,” a tightening of “protocols,” and a quiet, invisible return to normal. The only lesson learned will be logistical ...how not to get caught next time.

For decades, the military’s legal branch has been both shield and sword: defending soldiers in the field while claiming to uphold “the most moral army in the world.” Tomer-Yerushalmi’s position as Military Advocate General made her the moral accountant of the occupation, balancing rhetoric about international law with the daily realities of checkpoints, raids, and detentions. Her fall from grace says less about her personal integrity than about the impossible contradictions of the role itself. To serve as the conscience of the occupation is to live permanently at war with oneself.

When she resigned, she reportedly said she took “full responsibility” for the leak. That phrase, in the language of bureaucracy, often means something very different: it means she was the last one left holding the bag. The system needed a culprit. The leak, after all, embarrassed too many people. It tore a small hole in a narrative stitched together for years by official spokesmen that misconduct, if it happens, is rare, swiftly punished, and certainly not systemic. A single video can collapse that entire architecture.

In the footage, a Palestinian detainee is seen being beaten, humiliated, perhaps worse. None of it is new, not really. Palestinian prisoners, thousands of them, have been telling similar stories for decades. Human rights groups document them with grim regularity, but most reports are greeted with bureaucratic indifference. The difference this time is that a camera was rolling, and someone inside the system, perhaps disgusted or simply tired, decided that the public had a right to see.

The reaction has been telling. Instead of asking, How could this happen? The establishment asked, Who showed it to us? Leakers, not perpetrators are the enemies. It is a pattern recognizable across many states under stress: transparency is treated as treason, and silence as patriotism. The whistleblower becomes a greater threat than the crime.

Israel’s military culture is built on the notion of self-regulation. It promises to investigate its own, to maintain order without civilian interference. But the closed nature of that system ensures that justice, when it comes, rarely escapes the walls of the barracks. Soldiers are suspended, demoted, occasionally jailed for a few months. Meanwhile, Palestinian prisoners remain where they always were under watch, under suspicion, under someone’s boot.

So will this leak change anything? Unlikely. What it may do is sharpen the choreography of concealment. Cameras will be banned from certain facilities. Phones more closely monitored. Commanders will lecture their units not about ethics, but about discretion. A few training slides will be added on “operational integrity” a euphemism for keeping the ugly parts hidden.

Still, something about this case gnaws at the edges of control. The image of Tomer-Yerushalmi, once the legal guardian of military conduct, walking alone along a beach, hunted not by enemies but by her own institution, has a tragic symmetry. In a country obsessed with loyalty and betrayal, she became both traitor and scapegoat in a single day. Her arrest was less about law than about symbolism. The system needed to show that it could still police itself. And so it did, just not in the direction anyone hoped.

If there is a moral to this unfolding scandal, it’s that moral clarity remains the rarest resource in the region. For Palestinians, the leak confirms what they’ve long known: that suffering in the shadows is part of the design. For Israelis, it’s a mirror briefly held up before being smashed. The truth is too heavy to carry, so it’s buried again beneath layers of national myth and procedural fog.

Yet leaks have a stubborn power. Once something has been seen, it cannot be unseen. The footage will circulate, copied and shared, whispered about in corners of the internet that official censors can’t reach. Young soldiers will see it and feel the uneasy tremor of recognition. So will parents who’ve sent their children into uniform, believing in moral exceptionalism. That is how change begins, not with policy shifts or new legal codes, but with private disquiet, the kind that grows when official stories stop making sense.

Still, disquiet alone does not make justice. It takes courage to speak, and even greater courage to listen. If the past is any guide, this episode will fade into the usual fog of outrage and denial. Another investigation, another quiet absolution. The violence will continue, only more carefully curated.

But every system that relies on silence eventually collapses under the weight of its own secrets. A video leaked today is a crack in tomorrow’s wall. Whether Israel chooses to seal that crack or look through it will say everything about what kind of nation it still hopes to be.

For now, the tide at that Tel Aviv beach keeps rolling in, erasing footprints in the sand. What it cannot wash away is the uneasy knowledge of what’s been seen and what was done in the dark.

Black gold and the orange gambit by John Kato

There’s something oddly familiar about the way Donald Trump picks his fights. The rhythm of his outrage follows a kind of choreography, loud moral condemnation, a show of righteous fury, then a deal waiting quietly in the wings. The script has played out before with China, with Iran, even with NATO allies. But lately, the focus has turned south and across the Atlantic, toward two oil-rich nations that most Americans rarely think about: Venezuela and Nigeria.

On paper, the official reasons are pure enough. Venezuela, according to Trump’s surrogates, remains a bastion of drug cartels and corrupt generals. Nigeria, in turn, is a land supposedly overrun by “Christian killers,” a phrase Trump’s circle has tested in recent months, echoing the language of his most ardent evangelical supporters. It all sounds very principled, even biblical—a crusade against moral rot and lawlessness. But peel back the pious veneer, and the familiar glint of black gold begins to shine through.

Because here’s the thing: both Venezuela and Nigeria are among the richest oil producers on Earth. They sit on vast reserves that the global market, jittery and unsteady, desperately craves. The timing of Trump’s new “concerns” feels a bit too convenient, his sudden moral outrage too rehearsed. The world has seen this act before.

Trump has always had an instinct for opportunity disguised as outrage. His foreign policy, such as it was, functioned like a reality show built on confrontation and deals. Threaten, bluster, insult, then in the chaos, slide a deal across the table. When he talks about “cleaning up” Venezuela, one can almost hear the echo of oil rigs humming in the background, like distant applause. When he warns Nigeria about “Christian murderers,” it’s less about religion and more about leverage. The method is clear, find a moral excuse to twist an arm until someone agrees to sell their crude a little cheaper, or at least to a friendlier buyer.

The world of geopolitics has never been innocent, of course. The great powers have always cloaked economic hunger in moral language. But Trump’s version of it feels both blunter and more theatrical. There’s no pretense of a grand strategy, no Kissingerian complexity. His moves are impulsive, transactional, and dripping with spectacle. What matters is not the long-term stability of a region, but the immediate optics of dominance and, perhaps, the potential of a future oil investment wrapped in an American flag.

Consider Venezuela first. Once the wealthiest nation in Latin America, it’s been reduced to economic rubble, its people queuing for food while its oil infrastructure decays. Under the guise of “fighting cartels,” Trump has recently ramped up threats that sound eerily similar to the prelude of something larger sanctions that squeeze, rhetoric that escalates, and whispers of “humanitarian intervention.” It’s not hard to imagine where that road leads. Oil is the only card Venezuela still holds, and whoever controls that deck controls much more than a single country’s fate.

Nigeria, meanwhile, presents a different puzzle. Africa’s largest economy, a chaotic democracy fueled by crude, corruption, and an irrepressible entrepreneurial spirit. Trump’s sudden fascination with its “Christian murderers” feels like a carefully chosen wedge issue, one that plays well with the conservative base back home while placing pressure on a government that’s been wary of fully opening its energy markets to Western companies. For all the talk of faith, the subtext reads like business. Nigeria’s oil sector has long resisted full American control; a little fear can make negotiations smoother.

It’s easy, almost tempting, to dismiss these moves as bluster, as the empty threats of a man addicted to his own echo. But beneath the noise lies a deliberate logic. Trump’s world is transactional, not ideological. Every threat is a prelude to a deal. Every moral crisis, an opportunity to renegotiate access to resources. He is, in essence, the salesman-in-chief, hawking dominance under the guise of justice.

The genius, if one can use the term, is in how the rhetoric works on multiple levels. To his followers, Trump appears as the tough-talking defender of order, cracking down on criminals and protecting Christians. To foreign leaders, the message is more pragmatic: play ball, or face the wrath of American power. The duality allows him to operate both as a preacher and a bully, often in the same breath.

But there’s a deeper irony at play. The very nations he targets are reminders of how the West has, for decades, written its own energy fortunes through manipulation and extraction. Nigeria’s oil-rich delta was once a British fiefdom of profit; Venezuela’s wealth built the illusion of independence even as it tied the nation to the global petroleum machine. Trump’s saber-rattling, for all its bluster, is simply the latest act in a centuries-old play: empire dressed as outrage.

What’s unsettling is how easily this pattern might escalate. The global energy landscape is shifting, unstable. Wars, sanctions, and green transitions have scrambled the old equations. Whoever can secure cheap, reliable oil in the coming decade will hold a major advantage. And Trump seems to sense that. If the world’s attention is distracted by moral theatrics, the backroom deals can proceed unnoticed.

So when he rails about drugs in Venezuela or faith-based violence in Nigeria, it’s worth asking: is he genuinely concerned about these crises, or merely setting the stage for the next transaction? History leans toward the latter. The man has always been less a builder than a brander, less a visionary than a negotiator. For Trump, every enemy is a potential business partner who just hasn’t agreed to his terms yet.

There’s a kind of brutal consistency in that worldview, a simplicity that makes it dangerous. Because when oil and politics mix under the banner of morality, truth tends to be the first casualty. And as we’ve learned, when Donald Trump reaches for the language of righteousness, somewhere nearby there’s a ledger waiting to be balanced.

If the past few months are any indication, his eyes are once again fixed not on justice, nor even on the global order, but on barrels and leverage. Black gold, the eternal temptation. And in the theater of Trump’s diplomacy, every sermon hides a sale, every threat a price tag. The show may look chaotic, but the hunger behind it remains perfectly clear.

The slow-burning fire by Eze Ogbu

The world rarely glances at Mali anymore. It’s too far, too dry, too complicated, a country where history, geography, and despair conspire to keep outsiders at arm’s length. But in the heart of West Africa, a storm is gathering. Jihadi fighters linked to al Qaeda are inching closer to Bamako, Mali’s capital, carving out pockets of control and leaving behind the ashes of what was once considered a fragile democracy. This is not a sudden eruption; it is the continuation of a fire long smouldering across the Sahel, now threatening to engulf the region and, in time, much of Africa itself.

To understand this creeping catastrophe, one must look beyond the current headlines of “terrorist advances” and “security concerns.” What is unfolding in Mali and in neighbouring Niger, Burkina Faso, and Chad, is the slow unravelling of the postcolonial state system that Europe left behind, stitched together by arbitrary borders and brittle governments. The promise of independence decades ago has soured into a patchwork of coups, juntas, and fragile regimes, all of which now face an emboldened, ideologically ruthless enemy that thrives on chaos.

Al Qaeda’s affiliates in the Sahel are not the ragtag insurgents of yesteryear. They are disciplined, mobile, and remarkably attuned to the social fault lines that define local life. They do not always storm villages with rifles raised. Instead, they infiltrate communities by offering justice where the state has failed, food where the government has stolen, and protection where the army has abused. It is a twisted form of governance but governance nonetheless. For villagers who have seen nothing but neglect from Bamako or Niamey, the fighters offer a perverse kind of order.

Meanwhile, the Malian government ruled by a military junta since 2021, has grown increasingly isolated. After expelling French forces and distancing itself from Western partners, it has leaned heavily on Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group, whose reputation for brutality now rivals that of the jihadists they claim to fight. The result has been a widening circle of bloodshed. Each airstrike that kills a suspected militant also kills a farmer, a shepherd, or a child. Every civilian death plants the seeds for the next generation of recruits.

And so, the map of Mali bleeds outward, one district at a time. Towns that once hosted garrisons now echo with gunfire and sermons. Roads once patrolled by blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers are abandoned to bandits and insurgents. The jihadists do not need to conquer Bamako overnight. They simply need to make it ungovernable, an objective they are perilously close to achieving.

What makes this crisis truly frightening is not its novelty but its familiarity. We’ve seen this pattern before: a weak state collapsing under the weight of corruption and neglect, extremist groups exploiting the vacuum, and the international community arriving too late, with too little understanding. Afghanistan should have taught us this lesson. Somalia should have reminded us. Yet here we are again, watching another region slip through our fingers, our gaze distracted by newer headlines elsewhere.

The Sahel’s instability is not contained by its desert borders. It spills outward, seeping into the porous frontiers of West and Central Africa. Niger, once hailed as a bulwark against extremism, is now under military rule and fighting its own insurgencies. Burkina Faso teeters on the same edge. Chad, that perennial survivor, faces its own internal fractures. And as each government falters, the jihadists expand, linking their networks from Libya to Nigeria, from the Atlantic coast to the Red Sea.

It is tempting for Western policymakers to shrug, to view the Sahel as another endless tragedy—a place too broken to fix. But the costs of inaction will not remain distant. Africa’s population is booming; its young people, restless and connected, will either find hope at home or seek it elsewhere. As violence drives communities from their villages, the waves of displacement will grow, pushing migrants northward across the Sahara and into the Mediterranean. What begins as a security crisis in Mali could easily morph into a humanitarian and political crisis for Europe.

There is also the moral cost. The people of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso are caught between two predators: extremists on one side and predatory regimes on the other. Their schools are closing, their farms abandoned, their children taken as soldiers or brides. To call this merely a “conflict” is to sanitize a slow-motion catastrophe. It is a human disintegration, one the world continues to watch in silence.

What can be done? Certainly not another foreign military intervention, at least not in the old mould. The French experiment has already shown its limits. The answer lies instead in rebuilding trust at the local level, supporting communities rather than regimes, and investing in governance rather than just guns. Mali and its neighbours need legitimacy, not lectures; they need partners who will help them plant seeds instead of drop bombs.

But perhaps the first step is simpler, and harder: attention. The world must start paying attention again. The Sahel is no longer a distant frontier; it is a fault line where climate change, poverty, and extremism collide. Ignoring it will not make it go away. Like a wildfire, it will burn until it reaches the forest.

For now, Bamako still stands its streets crowded and nervous. Markets hum with anxious trade, and radio stations murmur with rumours of approaching columns. The government insists all is under control, as governments always do. But the sense of foreboding is unmistakable, a feeling that the walls are closing in.

If Mali falls, it will not fall in a single dramatic moment, but inch by inch, as faith erodes and fear spreads. And when the fire reaches the capital, it will not be an isolated blaze. It will be the culmination of years of neglect, the inevitable consequence of a world that mistook silence for stability.

The slow-burning fire in the Sahel is not only Mali’s tragedy. It is Africa’s warning and perhaps the world’s, too.

AntySaurus Prick #119 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

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!

---

The Greek ‘squad of truth’ and other Goebbelian stories

Κουλός Γκεμπελισμός και η Ομάδα της αλήθειας

There are moments when political irony stops being amusing and becomes revolting. Greece, a country that once gave the world the concept of democracy, is now watching a private propaganda machine operate under the absurdly Orwellian name “Squad of Truth.” (Ομάδα της αλήθειας). A name so shamelessly self-congratulatory that it could only belong to something rotten at its core.

Let’s not sugarcoat it. The “Squad of Truth” (Ομάδα της αλήθειας) is not about truth. It’s about distortion, manipulation, and obedience. It’s about crafting narratives that glorify one man and his government Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his party, New Democracy΄, while shredding anyone who dares to question them. The squad is not composed of journalists, analysts, or thinkers. It’s a digital militia of wordsmiths-for-hire, churning out filth, spinning scandals into misunderstandings, and turning criticism into treason.

And the best part? They do it all while proudly wrapping themselves in the flag of freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech! What a magnificent shield to hide behind while spitting venom. When others demand transparency, the “Squad” cries censorship. When journalists expose corruption, they call it “fake news.” When citizens protest, they are branded “agents of chaos.” Every time they are accused of slander, manipulation, or hate speech, they howl about their right to speak freely, as if the right to express an opinion also grants them the right to poison public discourse and vomit hatred onto anyone who disagrees.

Let’s be clear, freedom of speech is not freedom from accountability. It is not a weapon for the powerful to silence dissent. It is a shield for the weak, the marginalized, the people who dare to speak truth to power. When a well-funded propaganda company uses it to justify defamation, racism, and digital terrorism, we are not witnessing democracy, we are watching its dismemberment.

The “Squad of Truth” (Ομάδα της αλήθειας) operates mostly online, where shadows thrive and decency dies quickly. An army of anonymous trolls, armed with memes and venom, floods social media platforms with coordinated attacks. Anyone who criticizes the government becomes an enemy of the nation. Artists, academics, journalists, and ordinary citizens, none are safe from their digital claws. Their mission is simple: to drown out every voice that does not echo the government’s line, to reduce public dialogue to a war of insults and fear.

And they are paid handsomely for it.

Here comes the second grotesque layer of this tragedy: this private company is funded, directly or indirectly, by a political party swimming in debt. New Democracy, the self-proclaimed champion of fiscal responsibility, owes Greek banks over half a billion euros. Half a billion. And yet, while small businesses are crushed under taxes and citizens struggle with inflation, the party finds the means to finance a propaganda apparatus to polish its image and demonize its critics.

It’s not just immoral, it’s parasitic.

Imagine the absurdity: a political party that has failed to pay its debts for years still finds money to pay digital mercenaries. A private company that feeds on public contracts, party donations, and hidden sponsorships now masquerades as a defender of truth. The banks, of course, look the other way. No threats, no auctions, no repossessions. Ordinary Greeks lose their homes for a fraction of that debt, but the ruling party’s golden boys are untouchable.

The “Squad of Truth” (Ομάδα της αλήθειας) is more than a propaganda agency. It’s a symptom of a deeper disease, the normalization of corruption through narrative control. Their work is to make scandal seem trivial, to make injustice seem inevitable, to make people believe that there is no alternative. When the prime minister’s name surfaces in a surveillance scandal, they twist the story until the victim becomes the suspect. When public funds vanish into the pockets of friends and contractors, they call it “strategic investment.” When journalists are targeted, they say “the opposition is exaggerating.”

It is Goebbels rebranded for the digital age. Not with brown uniforms and torchlit parades, but with hashtags, influencers, and algorithmic manipulation. A modern ministry of propaganda without the ministry, outsourced, privatized, and comfortably detached from legal and moral responsibility.

And the tragedy is that it works.

The average citizen scrolling through social media, tired of politics and drowned in daily struggle, cannot always distinguish between truth and fabrication. The constant repetition of lies makes them believable. The endless mudslinging against opposition figures makes them appear suspicious. The constant praise of the government creates an illusion of stability and competence. That’s the real goal, not to convince the people that everything is true, but to make them doubt that anything is.

In such an environment, cynicism flourishes. People stop caring. They stop believing that honesty matters. They accept corruption as part of the landscape. “They’re all the same,” they say and that sentence, the death rattle of democracy, is the propaganda machine’s greatest victory.

The “Squad of Truth” thrives on that exhaustion. It doesn’t need to inspire faith; it only needs to destroy trust. When truth becomes just another opinion, when outrage is dismissed as hysteria, when lies become normalized, then power has achieved total control.

But here’s what they underestimate: the Greek people’s capacity for irony. You can fool them for a while, but you cannot make them blind forever. Greeks have lived through dictatorships, through juntas, through censorship and fear. They know propaganda when they smell it, even when it wears a modern suit and speaks the language of marketing.

The “Squad of Truth” (Ομάδα της αλήθειας) might dominate the digital battlefield today, but its victory is temporary. Every lie leaves a residue. Every manipulated story creates a scar. The more they scream about “truth,” the more obvious their deceit becomes.

And one day, when the tide turns and it always turns in this country their excuses will sound pathetic. “We were just doing our job.” “We believed what we said.” “We were defending democracy.” No. They were defending power. They were selling the soul of democracy to the highest bidder, hiding behind slogans and hashtags.

The truth, the real truth, needs no squad. It doesn’t require paid trolls or political sponsorships. It stands on its own, often silent, sometimes slow, but always invincible in the long run.

So let the “Squad of Truth” (Ομάδα της αλήθειας) keep barking about freedom of speech. Let them wave their digital torches and chant their slogans. Because in the end, history has never remembered the propagandists kindly. And when the dust settles, they’ll discover that their greatest enemy was not the opposition, nor the journalists they smeared, but the very truth they thought they could bury.

And the truth, as Greece has proven time and again, always digs its way back to the surface.

Fish Guts #Poem & #Painting by Nikos Laios

 

Where have the public poets gone?
Where have the jazz clubs gone?
The bohemians and the beatniks?

Lost in a sea of bones sloshing
And slapping the oil stained rusted shores
Caught up in floating bottles, rubbish
And used condoms swallowed by
Whales, caught up in the gills,
In the shit-stained bowels of the
Earth.

Where has the inspiration gone?
Where has the mad complicated
Love that inspired the great artists gone?
Where has the madness gone?
I miss the madness most of all,
It made us human.

Sucked up in toasters and microwaves,
PlayStations , lost in credit card statements
And diamond rings while the soul
Of the world sucks cheap wine
Out of a crumpled paper bag
Like some street bum curled up
In a cold back alleyway
Forgotten and neglected.

I miss that world,
That creative world
When poetry, love
And jazz ruled, a world that
Existed before I was born,
But I was fortunate to have lived on
The last intoxicating fumes of
That magical world during my youth.

A world now lost in bleach and fish guts
In the kitchen of some cheap
Down-town Vietnamese restaurant
Or a midnight kebab stand,
Or with the drunk kids on a Saturday night
That smash each other's skulls
With their fists.

Smashing their minds,
The mind, our mind, the most
Powerful tool that humanity
Has ever known that has created so many
Transcendent moments of lyrical beauty
That has defined our existence
And which twinkles in the empty blackness
Of space like a shinning beacon of hope
In the face of impeding death and nothingness;
We have transcended our mortality
Because of our beautiful minds,
And they smash them
With their fists.

I miss Jazz,
I miss the public poets
That were once treated
Like rock stars,
I miss Elvis Presley,
I miss Doris Day,
The happy musicals,
Records, Walkmans
Casey Kasem and the
American top 40 on
The radio.

I miss the 80's
70's of my childhood
And mourn for
The decades before me
That I have not lived;
I miss the innocence,
The Solid Gold Dancers,
The jazz and disco nightclubs,
That became extinct
In the mediocrity of the
Tattooed and pierced 90's.

I miss it all and I
I prefer their poverty
To the soulless riches
Of our days, lost in fish guts
And blood flushed down the sink
Washing the drains flowing out
To the toilet sea,
I miss it all,
I miss it all.

What’s next for Andrew ...citizen? by Sabine Fischer

After all the humiliation, what’s left for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the man once known as “Air Miles Andy”? Once a war hero, a favourite of his late mother, and a visible figure of royal duty, he now drifts in the shadows of a family that can hardly bear to utter his name. The titles may remain technically intact, but the aura of royalty has long since evaporated. What’s left is a man stripped of dignity, direction, and most painfully purpose.

The question now buzzing among palace watchers and gossip columns alike is simple, what’s next for Andrew? A few say he’s plotting revenge, a tell-all that could send Buckingham Palace into crisis mode. Others, less forgiving, imagine his story ending in a courtroom or worse, a prison cell. But the more intriguing whispers circle not around Andrew himself, but around the woman who knows him best, Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York.

Ah, Sarah, forever the survivor, the woman who has fallen and risen more times than the monarchy’s public approval ratings. If anyone can write the next explosive chapter of royal scandal, it’s her. She has the charm, the pen, and the motive. And let’s be honest, she’s never been one to hold her tongue when there’s a chance to mix a bit of truth with a dash of theatre.

Andrew’s own options are bleak. Public rehabilitation is out of the question. His disastrous BBC interview in 2019, arguably the single greatest act of self-immolation in modern royal history cemented his reputation as tone-deaf and delusional. The monarchy’s PR machine swiftly went into damage control, pushing him off the royal stage, quietly removing his duties, and pretending he’d simply “retired.” Retired from what, exactly, no one quite knows. But the exile was clear: Andrew became the family embarrassment, the uncle no one invites to Christmas but can’t quite disown.

Behind palace doors, his presence reportedly remains a nuisance, a reminder of everything the modern monarchy is desperate to move past. King Charles has made it clear he wants a slimmed-down monarchy: fewer working royals, less drama, tighter control. Andrew’s existence is the opposite of all that a scandal in a suit, a living headline.

Yet humiliation breeds strange impulses. And Andrew, by all accounts, remains convinced of his own innocence and importance. There’s a certain delusion to his defiance. Those close to him say he feels betrayed, not by the public or the press, but by his own family. He reportedly believes he was abandoned to protect the institution. And perhaps he’s right. The monarchy’s survival depends on keeping its stains hidden under the velvet drapery.

If Andrew ever does decide to tell his side of the story, the palace will tremble. He might not be a master of public relations, but he knows where the skeletons are buried. From royal finances to personal feuds, he’s had a front-row seat to the family’s most private dramas. Imagine a memoir written in resentment, a mixture of justification, blame, and selective truth. It would be disastrous, yes, but also irresistible.

But the more likely storyteller is Sarah Ferguson. She’s already written multiple books, ranging from children’s tales to semi-autobiographical novels, and she’s cultivated a career out of being both insider and outcast. Unlike Andrew, she understands the game, how to tease the press without burning bridges entirely. And she’s got a unique position: close enough to know everything, far enough to speak freely.

If Sarah decides to write the truth or even her version of it, King Charles and the “royal gang,” as some call them, will have sleepless nights. She’s witnessed their hypocrisies firsthand, from the icy formality of royal life to the quiet cruelties of its hierarchy. A Ferguson memoir could expose not just Andrew’s downfall, but the fractures that have always existed within the House of Windsor. She could portray them as they truly are: a family held together by protocol and self-preservation, not affection.

Still, there’s another side to this saga, a pathetic, human one. Andrew, once full of swagger and privilege, now lives a kind of half-life in Royal Lodge, clinging to what’s left of his title and his past. The man who once rubbed shoulders with the powerful and the glamorous now fights petty battles about security privileges and rent disputes. His fall from grace isn’t just scandalous, it’s Shakespearean.

And yet, the monarchy endures. That’s its genius and its curse. Scandal after scandal, it survives not by transparency, but by endurance. It buries the past under ceremony. It waits out the storm. Andrew is merely the latest royal casualty of that cold calculus.

Still, there’s an undeniable sense that this story isn’t quite over. Whether through a bitter autobiography, a whispered leak, or Sarah’s inevitable pen, something will surface. The British public may no longer care for the Duke himself, but they’ll devour every sordid detail of what comes next. Because that’s the paradox of royal disgrace: we claim to despise it, but we can’t look away.

And if there’s one thing the Windsors have always excelled at, it’s turning their misfortunes into entertainment for the masses. Andrew’s humiliation may have stripped him of dignity, but it’s also given him a new, unasked-for role: the ghost haunting the gilded palace, the scandal that refuses to die.

So what’s next for Prince Andrew? Not redemption, surely. Not prison, most likely. But exposure... yes. Whether it’s through his own misguided attempt at vindication or Sarah’s gleeful confessions, the truth, or at least a version of it, will come crawling out.

And when it does, it won’t just embarrass Charles, it’ll remind the world that behind the gold-trimmed façade, the House of Windsor is, at heart, a deeply human, deeply flawed family. A family forever running from its own reflection.

Berserk Alert! #077 #Cartoon by Tony Zuvela

 

Tony Zuvela and his view of the world around us in a constant berserk alert!
For more Berserk Alert! HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

---

fARTissimo #016 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

fARTissimo is what people do not see when they see a piece of expression
but what they project in what they think they see.

For more fARTissimo, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

---

Merz’s gamble with a draft by chance

The Russian bear is growling again. From the Baltics to the Black Sea, Europe’s nerves are taut and Germany, long content in its post-war pacifist cocoon, is once more facing the cold wind of geopolitics. Friedrich Merz and his center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) have sensed the shift and seized upon it, calling for a massive expansion of the Bundeswehr from its current 182,000 service members to 260,000. The proposal has ignited debate not because Germany wants to strengthen its army, few now argue against that, but because of the way Merz wants to do it... through a lottery.

It’s a plan both audacious and oddly old-fashioned, as if pulled from a dusty chapter of history. Rather than reinstating traditional conscription, Merz wants to fill the ranks by chance; drawing names like numbers in a national raffle, only the “winners” would be drafted into military service.

One can almost hear the sharp intake of breath from both the young and the old. For the younger generation, raised in an era of Erasmus exchanges and climate marches, the idea of being pulled into uniform feels alien, even absurd. For the older generations—those who remember West Germany’s conscription or, more hauntingly, the spectre of what military duty once meant in the 20th century, this lottery has the ring of déjà vu.

And yet, beneath the shock and the symbolism, there lies an uncomfortable truth: Germany’s army is no longer fit for purpose. Equipment shortages, outdated technology, bureaucratic tangles, year after year, reports pile up like the rusting hardware they describe. The Bundeswehr has become a force more symbolic than strategic, a paper tiger under the NATO banner. Even Defence Minister Boris Pistorius admits the situation is dire. In that sense, Merz’s call to rebuild isn’t wrong. But it’s the method that turns heads and stomachs.

A lottery draft sounds democratic on the surface. Everyone has the same odds, everyone shares the burden. It avoids the controversies of a mandatory draft that would force every young man or woman into service regardless of aptitude or conviction. Yet there’s something deeply unsettling about reducing the question of national defence to the spin of a wheel. Citizenship becomes a game of luck, and duty a matter of chance.

What’s more, a lottery draft assumes that randomness is fairness. But is it? Those drawn might come from any background, students, apprentices, single parents, young professionals, people suddenly told to drop their lives for an indefinite “service to the nation.” And while Merz may envision a modern, flexible Bundeswehr, this form of selection risks reproducing the same inequities that conscription once carried. The privileged will always find ways to sidestep service—through health exemptions, educational deferments, or simply influence. The unlucky, often from less connected circles, will shoulder the load.

There’s a deeper irony here. Germany, the country that swore “Nie wieder” (“Never again”) to militarism after the horrors of two world wars, now debates not whether to expand its army, but how best to staff it. That shift speaks volumes about Europe’s changing security climate. Putin’s war in Ukraine has upended decades of comfortable assumptions about peace and diplomacy. The age of disarmament idealism is over. The tanks are rolling again on the continent, and every European capital is scrambling to respond.

Still, Germany’s relationship with its army is uniquely fraught. Unlike France or Britain, whose military traditions survived the 20th century intact, Germany’s identity as a military power was shattered and rebuilt only under NATO supervision. Service in the Bundeswehr has long been regarded with ambivalence, necessary, perhaps, but not something to be proud of. The idea of soldiers marching again under the German flag makes many uneasy, and rightly so.

Merz’s lottery proposal touches that raw nerve. It feels both too casual and too symbolic, a bureaucratic attempt to reconcile guilt with necessity. “If everyone might serve, then no one is truly forced,” the thinking seems to go. But defence policy cannot be built on psychological compromises. The question isn’t who might serve, it’s what Germany wants its army to be.

If the goal is deterrence and readiness, the answer lies not in randomness but in reform. Professional soldiers, better pay, modern equipment, and clear purpose. A voluntary force that attracts through pride and professionalism, not through obligation disguised as chance. In short, a Bundeswehr that people choose to join, not one they win their way into.

Besides, what message does a lottery draft send to young Germans? That defence is a chore best assigned by luck? That national duty is a matter of statistical probability? Such an approach trivializes what should be a sober commitment. Military service, especially in a democracy, isn’t something that happens to citizens; it’s something citizens decide to do, out of conviction or responsibility.

And yet, one must admit, Merz is tapping into a wider unease. The feeling that Germany is unprepared, that Europe is vulnerable, that the world is entering a darker chapter. His plan may be flawed, but his instincts are right: the Bundeswehr must be rebuilt. The question is whether Germany can do so without betraying the values it has spent decades cultivating, peace, restraint, and democracy grounded in choice.

To rebuild the army is not to rebuild the past. It’s to redefine what defence means in a modern, democratic Germany. A nation that leads by example, not by force. If Merz truly wants to make the Bundeswehr fit for service, he should start by restoring faith in its purpose, not by drawing names from a hat.

In the end, the real challenge for Germany is not how to conscript, but how to convince. How to make young people see defence not as a burden of fate but as part of their shared future. For a nation that has long tried to forget its wars, that may be the hardest battle of all.

The Russian bear may growl at Europe’s borders, but Germany must answer with clarity, not chance. Defence cannot be a lottery. It must be a choice, one that defines who the nation wants to be when history calls again.