How Europe’s center-left flirted with the dark side of immigration politics by Marja Heikkinen

For years, socialists, social democrats, and the broader European center-left have struggled with a paralyzing identity crisis. Their traditional voters, industrial workers, lower-middle-class families, the quietly anxious middle strata who once trusted left-leaning parties to defend economic security, have drifted toward nationalist and right-populist movements. In response, many on the left have asked a provocative question: Is Denmark’s hard-line stance on immigration the accidental blueprint for center-left survival? And, in darker corners of the debate: Is turning “evil” against immigration now the only way to stay electorally alive?

It is a question soaked in discomfort, ideological betrayal, and uneasy political arithmetic. And yet it is not going away.

Denmark’s Social Democrats once embodied textbook progressive ideals: welfare universalism, internationalist empathy, moral confidence in the strength of an open society. Then came the seismic political shift. Under Mette Frederiksen, the party embraced some of Europe’s most restrictive immigration policies, policies that rivalled, and in some cases exceeded, those of the right. The move shocked Europe’s center-left, but it also produced an inconvenient truth: the Social Democrats won. They stabilized their base. They proved that a party could wrap a hardened immigration stance inside a still-generous welfare state and remain, at least nominally, progressive.

Other struggling European center-left parties began to look northward with a mix of envy and dread.

But what Denmark pulled off is not a simple trick of political triangulation. It is a philosophical contortion: a socialist party defending a welfare state by walling it off from perceived external pressures. The logic runs like this: Our social model is precious. It only works if we maintain tight social cohesion. That cohesion is threatened by immigration. Therefore, in the name of protecting the welfare state, we must keep people out. It is a reversal of the traditional progressive instinct, which imagined that prosperity could expand to accommodate newcomers.

The question, now, is whether other European center-left parties should follow.

The temptation is obvious. Voters who feel economically or culturally vulnerable often respond to politicians who promise control over borders, over identity, over the pace of societal change. The right has capitalized on this for two decades. Why shouldn’t the left borrow the message, soften the edges, and wrap it in a cardigan of well-meaning social protection?

Yet beneath the surface of this strategy lies a moral corrosion that cannot be politely brushed aside. If the left embraces restrictive immigration as electoral salvation, what remains of its animating ethos? A left that turns immigration into a tool, an acceptable casualty in a larger war for political relevance—risks losing its soul even as it wins votes.

But Europe’s center-left crisis is not just moral; it is structural. Economic transformations, automation, and globalization have hollowed out the old working-class coalition. Social democrats were slow to adapt. They offered technocratic reassurances while right-wing populists offered passion. They defended the European project while voters felt unheard. By the time center-left parties recognized their error, trust had evaporated.

It is within this vacuum that the “Danish model” has become both a warning and a lifeline.

If the left is to consider immigration policy as a survival tactic, it must first examine whether Denmark’s success is truly replicable. Denmark is small, cohesive, linguistically and culturally unified, and deeply consensus-oriented. Its welfare system is robust, its institutions respected. The Danish political psyche places a premium on conformity and equality, conditions that make restrictive immigration policies politically digestible in a way they may not be elsewhere.

Transplanting this model to larger, more diverse countries such as Germany, France, or even Spain would not be a clean operation. In fact, it might produce the opposite effect: inflaming societal divisions, normalizing xenophobia, and lending legitimacy to the far-right’s core narrative rather than neutralizing it.

And yet the center-left cannot pretend the immigration issue will evaporate if ignored.

So what would a morally defensible, electorally viable alternative look like?

It begins with honesty, an admission that the “open-door idealism” of the early 2010s collided with capacity limits, integration failures, and public fears that were not wholly irrational. The left cannot simply tell voters they’re wrong and expect gratitude. It must acknowledge that borders exist, that states manage them, and that immigration policy must be grounded in both humanity and realism.

The center-left can if it chooses, craft a narrative that does not scapegoat immigrants but still addresses anxieties. It can focus on competence rather than cruelty: smarter integration policy, faster asylum procedures, firm but fair border control, and a renewed emphasis on labour-market inclusion. It can frame immigration as manageable, not catastrophic; as an investment, not a threat.

What it cannot do is out-right the right. Not ethically, and not sustainably. Normalizing cruelty corrodes political culture. And once the left walks through that door, the right will always be waiting with something harsher.

Denmark’s model may have delivered short-term survival, but it also carved a permanent scar into the ideological map of European social democracy. The question every center-left party must ask itself is not only whether it wants to win but what kind of victory it seeks. A hollow victory built on borrowed fear may preserve seats, but it will not rebuild trust.

The real blueprint for survival lies not in turning “evil” against immigration, but in reclaiming political courage: the courage to speak plainly about challenges without surrendering principles, to address voters’ concerns without validating prejudice, and to design policies that balance solidarity with pragmatism.

If the center-left cannot find a way to do this, then Denmark’s path may indeed become its default future, not because it is right, but because it is easy. And yet easy paths rarely lead to renewal. They lead, slowly and quietly, to surrender.

Chains that change shape by Virginia Robertson

Why the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery Still Belongs to the 21st Century

Every year, the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery appears on the calendar like a stern reminder that humanity has a very short memory. We commemorate victories—laws passed, chains broken, tyrannies overthrown and then, with disquieting ease, assume the work is finished. But the 21st century excels at reinvention, and slavery is no exception. The chains have changed shape. They are lighter, quieter, digital, contractual, and in many cases, self-concealing. We are living in an age where exploitation dresses up in the language of opportunity and where “freedom” has been reduced to a marketing slogan.

We prefer to think slavery lives only in textbooks and the darker corners of documentaries. It is more comfortable that way. But anyone who has spent time listening, really listening to migrant workers, asylum seekers, or the uncounted army of domestic labourers knows otherwise. Modern slavery is not an aberration; it is an industry. Human trafficking is its most lucrative wing. And while the global economy prides itself on efficiency, it has been equally efficient at absorbing these exploitative systems, smoothing their sharp edges until the atrocities blend seamlessly into supply chains and labour markets.

The International Day for the Abolition of Slavery forces us to confront an inconvenient truth: liberation did not end in the 19th century. It mutated in the 20th and metastasized in the 21st. Today’s traffickers do not need whips and auctions; they have paperwork, debt, forged promises, and the anonymity of the internet. They exploit borders, wars, fragile states, and desperate families. Their victims rarely appear on news cycles, unless discovered in mass graves, shipping containers, or brothels masquerading as wellness studios.

We must resist the urge to interpret modern slavery as something happening “elsewhere.” The geography of exploitation has never respected borders. In fact, the wealthier the country, the more invisible the forced labour tends to be. It hides in the guest room of a well-to-do family employing an undocumented woman under the illusion of kindness. It hides in farms worked by labourers whose passports are conveniently “held for safekeeping.” It hides in construction projects where the workers' names are unknown and their injuries unreported. And, most perniciously, it hides in our digital marketplaces, where human trafficking has found its most streamlined recruiting tool.

This is not simply a moral issue; it is a structural one. We live in a world that rewards exploitation when it is disguised well enough. The 21st century has mastered the art of outsourcing responsibility. As long as the consumer does not see the suffering behind the product, the system functions smoothly. If slavery once relied on physical force, today it thrives on social invisibility, economic vulnerability, and our collective appetite for convenience without consequence.

Yet the conversation around human trafficking is often trapped in clichés. We talk about “raising awareness,” as if awareness alone could dismantle systems that prey on inequity. Awareness without accountability is performative empathy. What we need instead is discomfort, a willingness to look without flinching at how our own societies, our own economies, and yes, even our own daily choices intersect with exploitation. We need to abandon the comforting narrative that trafficking is the result of individual bad actors. It is the outcome of global systems that treat human beings as expendable units of labour.

The International Day for the Abolition of Slavery should force us to reckon not only with moral outrage but with policy and power. If nations truly wanted to confront trafficking, they would strengthen labour protections, enforce transparency in supply chains, provide safe migration pathways, and ensure that victims are treated as victims, not criminals. They would dismantle the loopholes that allow companies to outsource responsibility for labour abuses. They would fund shelters, legal aid, and long-term support for survivors rather than stage photo-op raids that rescue without rebuilding.

But perhaps the most underexplored aspect of modern slavery is its psychological dimension. The old slave systems relied on the overt denial of humanity. Today’s systems rely on something subtler: erasure. Victims disappear not only from legal protections but from public imagination. They are seen only as silhouettes, anonymous workers, nameless migrants, “those people.” The trafficker’s first crime is physical control; the system’s crime is collective indifference.

And so this day, this somber date on the global calendar, demands more from us than ritual acknowledgment. It demands that we admit how much of the modern world is built on the remnants of an old one. The economic hunger that once fueled slave ships has simply recalibrated itself. The logic remains: maximize profit, minimize cost, and rely on the vulnerability of the desperate.

Anyone who believes abolition is a finished project has not been paying attention. Slavery today does not shock because it has been normalized. Human trafficking does not outrage because it has been sanitized. We do not see chains, so we assume no one is bound.

The longest-standing myth about freedom is that it is self-sustaining. It is not. It requires maintenance, vigilance, and, at times, confrontation with the systems we benefit from. If the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery still matters and it does, it is because it reminds us that progress is not linear and justice is not inevitable.

We are still living in the age of abolition. We just haven’t admitted it.

The pilgrim of impossible distances by Edoardo Moretti

Pope Leo’s journey to the Middle East, however the Vatican frames it, however his advisers massage the message, feels less like a diplomatic visit and more like a test of human imagination. How far can one man, wrapped in the white cloth of ancient authority, really go into a region carved by distrust, suspicion, and wounds still open enough to sting? And how far is that region, its people, its leaders, its frayed moral nerves, willing to let him travel, metaphorically or otherwise?

Let’s be clear: the Middle East today is not a single “place” but a constellation of contradictions orbiting around a common gravitational pull of grief. It is modern and medieval, cosmopolitan and sectarian, pragmatic and catastrophically stubborn. It is a region where history is a living organism, breathing, muttering, correcting itself, and often biting.

Into this walks Pope Leo, a figure who, depending on whom you ask, is either a symbol of unity or of something far more complicated. The Church carries centuries of pilgrimage and contradiction in its pockets. No pope arrives anywhere empty-handed; he arrives with the weight of all previous popes stitched into the hem of his cassock. And yet, despite the heavy luggage of theology, Leo steps onto Middle Eastern soil with an almost disarming simplicity: he wants to talk. He wants to listen. He wants to bridge something.

But the region he hopes to bridge is in no mood to behave like a postcard of olive branches and sunlit domes.

Even in the best circumstances, the Middle East mistrusts symbolism. It prefers bread over promises, sovereignty over sermons. The people there are not yearning for a moral lecture from Rome. They are yearning for electricity, stability, security, and above all the cessation of the endless grinding of conflict that has eroded their sense of tomorrow. They need fewer metaphors, not more.

Still, there is something astonishing about the stubbornness of hope. The very fact that Pope Leo believes he can help, not solve, not sanctify but help, is either heroic or naïve, depending on the day and the headline. But hope, in this region, has always been carried by outsiders with improbable dreams: the diplomats who sign treaties nobody believes in, the artists who insist on painting murals in bombed-out streets, the schoolteachers who continue teaching the alphabet while the world rearranges itself in smoke outside their windows.

So the question isn't whether the Middle East is “ready” for Pope Leo. The region does not deal in readiness. It deals in necessity, and necessity is often synonymous with exhaustion. It is tired enough to listen. It may not change, but that’s not his job. His job is to be a mirror, one held up to leaders who prefer not to see themselves, and to citizens who fear, deeply, that the world has forgotten them.

What Pope Leo brings to the region is something strangely rare, moral stubbornness without military backing. In a world where power is almost always measured in weapons or pipelines, the pontiff arrives with neither. His currency is attention, conscience, and the slight possibility that a spiritual gesture can defy the gravitational pull of realpolitik. This is not insignificant. In the Middle East, gestures are not frivolous. They are the first fragile scaffolds of possibility.

But let’s not romanticize him either. He is not a saint parachuting into chaos, nor a philosopher-king armed with delicate insights. He is a religious leader navigating a geopolitical landscape where religion is both a pillar of identity and a powder keg. If he speaks too broadly, he risks sounding irrelevant. If he speaks too sharply, he risks igniting a flame he cannot control. And yet, what choice does he have but to speak?

Perhaps Pope Leo’s greatest challenge is not the danger of being misunderstood but the danger of being understood too well. In the Middle East, where every word is weighed, measured, and cross-examined, he will have to say things that are honest enough to matter yet diplomatic enough not to shatter the room. This is a region where silence can be mistaken for complicity and where clarity can be mistaken for taking sides.

But the truth is that Pope Leo’s trip is not about solving anything. It is about shifting the emotional weather by half a degree. In a region of storm systems that have lasted lifetimes, a half-degree shift is not nothing. Sometimes it’s the difference between another thunderclap and a momentary stillness.

The world, for its part, seems baffled by the gesture. It prefers solutions that can be measured, monetized, weaponized. But Pope Leo’s journey belongs to a different calculus, the mathematics of moral presence, the algebra of showing up in places where presence has been too long absent.

How far can his trip take him? As far as the limits of symbolism can stretch without snapping. How far is the Middle East prepared for him? As far as its exhaustion, its yearning, and its stubborn capacity for listening will allow.

In the end, the question may not be how far he can go, but how long his footsteps will echo after he has left, whether they fade like so many diplomatic itineraries or whether, in some unseen corner of a weary city, someone remembers that for one brief moment, a man in white stood among them and said, simply: I see you.

In the Middle East, that small act may be the longest journey of all.

Levelling the pitch by Kasie Hewitt

For all the confetti-drenched celebrations, the sold-out stadiums, and the well-curated Instagram posts that now accompany women’s football, one truth remains stubbornly immovable: the money hasn’t caught up. Fame has. Cultural relevance has. Viewership numbers astonishingly have. But economic reality? That still lags embarrassingly behind, like an outdated scoreboard blinking the wrong winner.

It’s a peculiar contradiction. We live in a moment when a women’s football match can draw bigger television audiences than men’s games in the same league. Girls walk into schoolyards proudly wearing the jerseys of their favourite female players. Federation executives beam while announcing record-breaking attendance figures, as if such achievements naturally translate into paychecks. And yet, tucked away from the cameras and literally behind the gleaming stadiums, many women footballers are packing their own sandwiches for training or juggling two part-time jobs to afford rent.

Let us state the obvious: no one enters women’s football to get rich. Passion is the currency, resilience the capital. But passion does not pay medical bills. Resilience cannot make up for the years shaved off a player’s career because she lacked the financial security to seek proper rehabilitation. These athletes train with the same ferocious commitment as men, often in worse conditions, sometimes on fields that would make a Sunday league team complain. But when it comes to compensation, they are paid like hobbyists who should feel grateful for the “opportunity.”

The most telling detail is not that women footballers earn less. It’s how we’ve normalized it. Society, with an unsettling blend of politeness and complacency, accepts the discrepancy as though it were a natural law of physics. “Market forces,” we’re told, as if the invisible hand of economics has an inexplicable fondness for masculinised sports and an allergy to women’s athletic excellence. But market forces are not a divine act; they are human decisions, human investments, human distributions of attention and resources. They can change if we choose to change them.

Consider the women who play in the lower or even mid-tier divisions: they may receive stipends rather than salaries. Some must negotiate with employers to adjust work schedules around training sessions. Others quietly retire at twenty-seven, not because their talent evaporated, but because their bank accounts did. The professionalization of women’s football remains partial, uneven, and fragile. A player signing a contract does not mean financial stability; it often means calculated survival.

Of course, there are exceptions that get paraded around, a star player who lands a lucrative sponsorship deal or a national federation proud to announce upgraded bonuses. But these examples function like decorative window displays, masking the cramped, uneven inventory inside. We celebrate the handful of women who break through the financial ceiling without acknowledging the thousands who hit their heads against it daily.

The economic gap is also reflective of a subtler, more insidious narrative: that women’s sports are worthy only when they can be packaged as inspirational, wholesome, or symbolically empowering. The moment we begin talking about money, real, substantial, inconvenient money, people get notably uncomfortable. Women athletes are allowed to inspire the next generation, but demanding fair compensation somehow makes them ungrateful. It’s a bizarre double standard: men’s anger is ambition; women’s ambition is audacity.

And here lies the irony no one wants to admit: women’s football has never been more commercially viable than it is today. Major tournaments draw global audiences. Jerseys sell out. Streaming numbers spike. Kids, boys and girls, idolize these athletes. The appetite is there. What’s missing is the structural courage to treat women athletes not as special projects to be applauded, but as professionals who deserve what professionals earn.

We should also acknowledge that progress is happening, though haltingly. Some leagues are raising minimum salaries. Some clubs are investing in better facilities. A few federations have adopted equal pay structures. These are steps worth celebrating, but cautiously, for they remain uneven and often symbolic. Progress should not be measured against past injustices but against the standard of fairness, a standard still unmet.

There is also a cultural shift underway. Fans are increasingly vocal about the inequity, calling out federations and demanding accountability. Social media has amplified the voices of players who, in previous generations, might have been quietly dismissed. This pressure matters. Change rarely begins in boardrooms; it begins in public conversations like these, in the collective refusal to accept “that’s just how it is.”

Ultimately, the economic undervaluation of women’s football is not merely a sports issue. It is a microcosm of how society assigns worth: who gets rewarded for excellence, who is expected to sacrifice, who is seen as an investment versus an expense. Women footballers are not asking for special treatment. They are asking for the same respect that men receive automatically, the respect of being taken seriously, contractually and financially.

In time, perhaps we’ll look back on this era with a tinge of embarrassment, wondering how we applauded so loudly and paid so little. The day will come when a girl dreaming of becoming a professional footballer will not also be dreaming of a backup job. But that day won’t arrive on its own.

It will arrive when we decide that talent, sweat, and commitment are not gendered commodities and that the game, in all its beauty and brutality, is richer when everyone on the pitch is valued accordingly.

Marx cousins #018 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

Groucho Marx attempts to seduce Karl Marx’s beard,
only to be met with a scathing analysis of capitalism
disguised as a poorly-aimed spittoon.

For more Marx Cousins, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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Dec 2, 1804; The coronation of an empire

The 2nd of December, 1804, was a day of profound contradiction and calculated spectacle. In the soaring, cold nave of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, Napoleon Bonaparte, the son of the Revolution that had guillotined a king, crowned himself Emperor of the French. It was not merely a ceremony; it was a masterful act of political theater, designed to legitimize a new dynasty, consolidate absolute power, and signal the birth of a modern empire built on revolutionary principles and personal ambition.

The Road to the Coronation: From Republic to Empire

To understand the coronation, one must first understand the context. France was exhausted. A decade of revolutionary terror, political instability, and war had left the nation yearning for order, stability, and glory. Napoleon, as First Consul since the 1799 coup d'état, had delivered all three. He had stabilized the economy with the Bank of France, reconciled the state with the Catholic Church through the 1801 Concordat, and codified French law with the Napoleonic Code. Peace treaties with France's enemies had cemented his reputation as a national savior.

By 1804, the question was no longer if he would become a monarch, but how. The revelation of a Royalist plot to assassinate him (involving the Duc d'Enghien, whom Napoleon had executed) provided the final pretext. It was argued that the Republic needed a hereditary ruler to ensure its survival beyond Napoleon's life. A carefully managed referendum was held, and the result, overwhelmingly in favor of establishing an empire, was presented as the will of the people. The Senate officially proclaimed Napoleon Emperor of the French on 18 May 1804.

The Stage is Set: A Calculated Ceremony

Napoleon was determined that his coronation would be unlike any other. It would not be a simple religious rite, but a grand, hybrid spectacle blending classical Roman, Carolingian, and Christian symbolism to create a new, uniquely Napoleonic legitimacy.

Pope Pius VII was summoned from Rome to preside. This was a crucial decision. By having the Pope attend, Napoleon was forcing the spiritual leader of Europe to sanctify his new regime, demonstrating that the Church now bowed to the state, not the other way around. However, he was careful to avoid the appearance of receiving his crown from the Pope, as the Holy Roman Emperors had.

The ceremony itself was meticulously planned by the painters Jacques-Louis David and Jean-Baptiste Isabey. Notre-Dame was transformed with lavish decorations, temporary galleries, and rich tapestries, obscuring the Gothic architecture to resemble a Roman imperial hall. The cost was astronomical, but the message was clear: France was now the center of a new, magnificent empire.

The Act of Defiance: "I Crown Myself"

The climax of the ceremony remains one of the most iconic moments in history. After being anointed with the holy chrism by Pope Pius VII, Napoleon approached the altar where the imperial crowns lay. As the Pope prepared to crown him, Napoleon unexpectedly took the golden laurel wreath of an Roman emperor and placed it upon his own head.

He then turned to his wife, Joséphine, who knelt before him, and placed a smaller crown upon her head, making her Empress.

This single, audacious act was rich with meaning:

• It severed the divine right of kings: He was not a king by the grace of God, bestowed through the Church. His authority was his own, earned by his own merit and the will of the French people.
• It invoked the Roman Republic: The laurel wreath was a symbol of victory and civic honor, linking him to the great generals and emperors of Rome rather than the "failed" Bourbon monarchy.
• It established a new legitimacy: Power flowed from Napoleon himself, the "self-made man" and embodiment of the nation.

While he was subsequently crowned with the more traditional "Crown of Charlemagne," the message had been delivered. The official painting by Jacques-Louis David, The Coronation of Napoleon, immortalizes this moment, though it shows Napoleon crowning Joséphine, a subtle alteration to emphasize his magnanimity rather than his defiance of the Pope.

Symbolism and Legacy: The Birth of the Napoleonic Era

The coronation of 2 December 1804 was a resounding success in its immediate goals. It:

1. Consolidated Napoleon's Power: He was no longer a military dictator or a consul, but a legitimate, hereditary monarch, the equal of any in Europe.
2. Reconciled the Revolution and the Old Order: The ceremony blended revolutionary themes (the "will of the people") with ancient traditions (monarchy, religion), offering something for every faction in France.
3. Projected Power Across Europe: The event was a clear declaration to the monarchies of Britain, Austria, and Russia that the French Revolution had evolved into a permanent, expansionist empire.

However, the legacy is complex. For some, it marked the tragic end of the republican dream, the moment the Revolution was betrayed by its most brilliant general. For others, it was the natural and necessary evolution that brought stability and glory to France.

The empire it created would last for only a decade, culminating in the defeat at Waterloo in 1815. Yet, the institutions, laws, and administrative models born from Napoleon's rule would shape not only France but the entire continent for centuries to come. The coronation at Notre-Dame was the dazzling, deliberate dawn of that era, a day a soldier of the Republic became an Emperor, and in crowning himself, declared that his power, and his new world, were entirely his own creation.

Red ribbons and real reckonings by Shanna Shepard

There’s a day each year when the world briefly lifts its gaze from the next breaking headline to an older, quieter emergency, World HIV/AIDS Day. It arrives every December, polite and persistent, like a reminder note tucked under the world’s windshield wiper. And every year, we repeat the usual motions: the ribbons, the speeches, the statistics, the calls for “continuing awareness.” But beneath the choreography, something deeper deserves our attention, our relationship to long emergencies, the ones that don’t make noise unless we force them to.

HIV/AIDS is one of those crises that taught the world how selective its empathy can be. It exposed our moral priorities, our prejudices, and our bureaucratic sluggishness. And even now, decades after the darkest years, the virus still tests us, not only biologically but ethically. This is the part we forget, the part that World HIV/AIDS Day wants us to remember but struggles to say outright: the world didn’t just survive the epidemic; it survived the mirror it held up.

There’s a particular discomfort in talking about HIV today. Not because it’s taboo, it’s far from that but because it forces us to confront how quickly complacency sets in once a crisis becomes familiar. For many, HIV has faded into the background of public consciousness, tucked alongside other chronic problems we assume modern medicine has outsmarted. But the state of HIV/AIDS in the world today is not a solved equation; it’s an ongoing negotiation between science, society, and attention spans.

Treatments have improved so dramatically that they almost undermine their own urgency. When a disease becomes medically manageable, its moral weight in the public mind often dissolves. It becomes less a threat and more an inconvenience, something people file under “handled,” even when it isn’t. But viruses don’t care about our assumptions, and injustices don’t resolve themselves just because we stop discussing them at dinner.

World HIV/AIDS Day is meant to puncture that complacency, if only for 24 hours. It invites us to remember the millions of lives lost, the communities shaped by grief, the activism born in fury, and the scientific breakthroughs carved out of desperation. But remembering isn’t enough. The question isn’t whether we still care, but whether we care in a way that matters.

In a world conditioned to catastrophe fatigue, HIV/AIDS offers a paradox: a crisis that is both quieter than before yet still alarmingly present. People living with HIV today navigate a terrain that is medically hopeful but socially uneven. Stigma hasn’t vanished; it has simply changed its wardrobe. It appears now in subtler, less public ways, in the whispered assumptions, the bureaucratic hurdles, the disparities in access, the shame that lingers like background noise. If progress is real, it is also conditional. If the future looks brighter, it is unevenly lit.

What’s also uncomfortable to admit is that HIV/AIDS still disproportionately affects communities that society routinely marginalizes, sex workers, intravenous drug users, LGBTQ+ communities, and populations in regions where healthcare is treated as a luxury. The virus survives where inequity thrives. This too is part of the reckoning. HIV is not just a medical phenomenon but a social barometer: it reveals who is protected and who is left waiting outside the gate of compassion.

And then there’s the quieter truth, one we speak about sparingly that the global struggle against HIV/AIDS is also a struggle against time. Not biological time but historical time. Memory fades. Outrage cools. Movements lose momentum. Every year we move slightly further from the era in which HIV was headline news and slightly closer to forgetting what it cost to get where we are.

In that light, World HIV/AIDS Day isn’t a ceremonial nod; it’s a guardrail against forgetting.

It’s also an invitation for something journalism seeks but often mishandles: nuance. HIV/AIDS is both a triumph of science and a testament to ongoing failure. It’s a story of extraordinary medical advancement and stubborn social inequities. It’s a narrative where hope and injustice sit uncomfortably at the same table.

To talk about HIV today is to accept contradiction. Yes, the treatments are effective—but access is uneven. Yes, public awareness exists but superficiality flourishes. Yes, stigma has diminished but not dissolved. We live in the in-between, and World HIV/AIDS Day asks us not to rush past it.

If there’s an opinion worth asserting today, it’s this: the future of HIV/AIDS will depend less on laboratories and more on attention. Science can save lives only when society lets it. The virus persists where information is scarce, healthcare is uneven, and silence is culturally enforced. The greatest breakthroughs are useless if they don’t reach the people who need them.

This day, this single day, won’t change the world. But it can challenge the complacency that threatens progress more than the virus itself. It can remind us that long emergencies require long memory. It can nudge us to treat surviving crises not as closed chapters but as responsibilities inherited.

World HIV/AIDS Day shouldn’t be a moment of somber ritual but a reminder that society does its best work when it refuses to look away. And in a world trained to look away quickly, that refusal might be the most radical act we have left.

Ovi History #eMagazine #14: Rosa Parks bus boycott

 

We live in critical times and a period were historical facts and victories have been buried under populism and strong right-wing demagogy. So remembering Rosa Parks and the 1955 bus boycott becomes essential because we might have to ...repeat it!

The 1955 Montgomery bus boycott was a 381-day mass protest against racial segregation on public buses in Montgomery, Alabama, sparked by Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger on December 1, 1955.

Her arrest led to the boycott, coordinated by the Montgomery Improvement Association and led by Martin Luther King Jr. The boycott, which involved thousands of Black citizens, severely impacted the city's bus system and ended after the Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional in November 13, 1956.

The boycott desegregated Montgomery's buses and became a pivotal event in the broader American civil rights movement.

Rosa Parks became an icon of dignity and resistance, and her quiet strength became a symbol of how individual acts can inspire monumental change.

Also in this issue a historical fiction short story from Nneka Solomon.

So,
Read the Ovi History e-Zine it online HERE!
View, read itonline or download it in PDF - epub or mobi format HERE!
And enjoy viewing &reading itonline ordownload in PDF format HERE!
Remember, all eMagazines and eBooks downloads are FREE!

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

Thanos Kalamidas

Manish Zodiac Predictions for December 2025 #Horoscope by Manish Kumar Arora

Aries ( 21 March – 19 April  ) –You are inspired creatively, artistically, or spiritually at this time. Your imagination, intuition, and psychic sensitivity are high now, and you find yourself wanting to paint or listen to music, daydream, or fantasize rather than concentrate on practical matters. Romance has strong emotional trends this month. Avoid splashy expenditures to impress as they may have just the opposite effect.Relationships with people around will be calm and friendly. Durable relationship will stand the test and prove its substantiality again.Friendship and cooperative endeavours will flourish now. Favorable Dates – Dec 4, 7, 13, 16, 22, 25 Favorable Colors – Red & Blue

Taurus ( 20 April – 20 May ) -. You will attempt to significantly improve your work and career at this time. You may seek new employment, a promotion, or request an increase in your salary.Everything to the spirit of a complete freedom to move would be there. The field is ready for love, and there'll be either a new affair, or some fresh enthusiasm towards the current relationship.You'll feel attraction to partners that make you admire them by their cultural knowledge or spiritual potential, as well as those who belong to different places or social structures. Favorable Dates – Dec1, 3, 10, 13, 21, 28 Favorable Colors – White & Yellow

Gemini ( 21 May – 20 June) - You'll probably manifest more interest in the financial area but under conditions of stress  can result in restlessness or carelessness. This is the perfect time to make a wish and practise the law of attraction. Look out for someone who comes in to your life around these dates who can help you. It may be someone who’s successful in their career, a private benefactor or some other guardian angel. This person has the power to help you more than you can imagine and you feel as if you’ve known them for ever. Favorable Dates – Dec1, 9, 10, 18, 27, 28 Favorable Colors – Red & Yellow

Cancer( 21 June – 22 July )  - The career, the ambition to advance and succeed socially will consume a lot of your physical and mental energy. Connections will be one of the strengths, whether it's about collaboration and alliances or contacts with counsellors, clients or the public. You'll benefit from taking joint action at the material or social level.Committed relations promise to be tender, cheerful and nice. The sentimental availability will increase and, along with it, the receptivity and benevolence towards each other. You'll use your personal charm, diplomacy and connections. Favorable Dates – Dec 2, 8, 11, 17, 20, 26 Favorable Colors – Blue & Green

Leo  ( 23 July – 22 August )  - You will be better able to manage your financial and money affairs than you have in the past due to easier communication and a more solid and secure foundation from which to operate. Now is the time to put your plans into action and to get things moving because contacts you make during this time will be more open to what you are wanting.Romance may require some investment, some patienceand a bit more talking than normal. Be willing to 'do the work' necessary to fix, foster and find. Favorable Dates – Dec1, 3, 10, 12, 18, 28 Favorable Colors – Red & White

Virgo ( 23 August – 22 September )   - The work atmosphere will be tense and conflicts might arise. Irritations, conflicts with the people you relate to on a daily basis, and a generalized feeling of impatience or edginess characterize this period. Because you are not feeling very obliging or compromising, this is not a good time to try to come to an agreement with another. Errors made in haste, speaking too forcefully, sharp words spoken on impulse, or accidents occurring due to restlessness and impatience are all possible at this time. If single, this is not the time to search love. Favorable Dates – Dec3, 5, 14, 21, 23, 30 Favorable Colors – Green & White

Libra ( 23 September – 22 October )  - If you started a project at the end of last month, keep going with it and don’t give up, especially if its work or health related. You have a few more months yet to bring your bigger goals to fruition. Anything you begin on or around this date promises financial reward. There are significant opportunities to make connections, exchange information, and to learn something through a meeting or chance encounter.Whatever’s not working in a relationship, here’s your chance to find a way forward, even if you agree ornot. Favorable Dates – Dec2, 5, 11, 14, 20, 29 Favorable Colors – Purple & White

Scorpio ( 23 October – 21 November )  - Good cooperation, especially with co-workers and financial issues in the first week may allow you to get projects rolling or wrap them up, depending upon your current status. You're going through a very promising period regarding creativity, expression and talents, excellent for promoting your own image and works. You will make your social relationships and personal charm will flourish. Everything will come easier now, people will be nice to you and  you'll get collaborations and advantageous contracts. Favorable Dates – Dec2, 5, 11, 14, 23, 29 Favorable Colors – Purple &White

Sagittarius ( 22November -21 December ) - You'll show a lot of ambition and determination, and the most appropriate thing would be to use them for initiatives requiring strength and tenacity, such as laborious, long-term projects.  Collective activities will favor you.  You'll be able to find the necessary resources to carry out your plans, provided that you have clearly defined objectives and you build strategies to help you reach them. You might also have to handle some confrontations or situations in which you have to persuade, insist, fight, maybe even face competition or rivalry. Favorable Dates – Dec2, 3, 11, 12, 20, 29 Favorable Colors – Red & White

Capricorn ( 22 December – 19 January ) - You will experience some major personal changes which will benefit your way of life. Your energy levels will remain high over the next few weeks. Channel your imagination into something creative.  Something in the field of music will appeal. In terms of romance you are likely to be a little flighty and reluctant to be tied down, but there’s nothing wrong with just enjoying yourself. Opportunities in career-related, may be a little unnerving. You may not be quite ready to embrace the new, but it  shouldsoon soothe many doubts. Favorable Dates – Dec1, 3, 10, 12, 21, 28 Favorable Colors – Red & Yellow

Aquarius ( 20 January – 18 February )  - The months ahead could start with you taking too much on, and then getting despondent because things don’t go your way. However, your impressive levels of insight and intuition will guide you through to a workable alternative, as long as you don’t give up. To your friends or loved ones, you may express a more reasonable and competent side that allows you to show those around you, that you are willing to offer solutions. If in a relationship, your ability to compromise and make concessions will keep things going smooth. Favorable Dates – Dec3, 8,  12, 17, 21, 26 Favorable Colors – White & Yellow

Pisces ( 19 February – 20 March ) - You’re likely to be feeling as though you need to make your mark,  perhaps someone inspires you or you feel you’re not making the most of your talents, but there are some original and creative ideas just waiting to be tapped. You are grounded in the material plane yet you can reach into higher planes of consciousness through your connection with nature. Changes in your personal relationships, which will ultimately be positive, feature heavily. Romantically, the laterpart of the month will bring plenty of chances to meet new people, Favorable Dates – Dec1, 8, 10, 17, 19, 26 Favorable Colors – Red & Yellow

Sceptic feathers #119 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

Cynicism with feathers on thin wires.

For more Sceptic feathers, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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Goodbye Facebook by Nikos Laios

Three weeks, ago I decided to delete my Facebook account, deleted nearly 18 years of virtual attachments. It was giving up an addiction and hard to do. This article is a reflection of social media in the 21st Century and how desensitising social media has made the human experience and how it distorts the human condition. This is written from this writer’s personal experience.

Like most people I joined Facebook as a way of keeping in touch with family and friends around the world. In the early days of Facebook, the experience was new and novel and it really felt like a good way to connect and build online communities. A big reason for this writer was my family and friends overseas in Europe and America.

I’ve lived most of my life in Australia and also lived for a period of time in Greece as a young boy in the 70’s during the dictatorship era of Greece. My family lived in the highlands of Epirus, a rustic throwback to another era more akin to the 19th century. We had no electricity, no running water, used kerosene lamps for lighting, potbelly stoves for cooking and a fireplace for heating. The winters were bitterly cold and the mountains snowcapped . After we migrated to Australia and many years later with my first paycheques from work, I started regular annual migrations back to Greece for the European summers during my four weeks of vacation from work. The desire to reconnect with the homeland was great.

The decades passed and in 2005 Facebook arrived in Australia, and at the time it felt like it was a great way to keep in touch with family back home and rebuild our community as a virtual community. From 2005 till 2020 my trips back to Greece became more interesting, balancing time spent with family to touring archaeological sites, watching ancient Greek plays in ancient theatres, and regular extravagant partying at Santorini, Mykonos, Paros and Naxos. It felt like a drug, sharing my adventures on Facebook. Every time it felt like an ephedrine rush.

Then any time I lived life - be it in Europe or Australia - subconsciously the motivation was not only to share life’s adventures with family and friends, but also with the world. To gain existential validation and a boost to the ego, and slowly, the majority of people I knew on Facebook did the same. It became an addiction for us all, and then the algorithm.

A constant bombardment of posts and reels;  on death, violence, conflicts, war, protests, unrest, Palestinians, Israel, the incessant struggle of the left versus the right in Europe and the US, Sudan, Nigeria, religion, ego and vacuous shallow influencers, and the supposed death of the planet due to greenhouse gas emissions and identity politics. Yet the reality for the majority of humans on this planet is a constant struggle for survival, to provide food, shelter and a future for themselves and their families. They have no time for existential masturbation. Only a fraction of the western world has the luxury, comfort and security to reflect on and ruminate on the meaning of life. To construct meanings and juxtapose their own value systems on the rest of the world through postmodernist ideologies; and the algorithms on social media enable this, it creates a false illusion and a narrative - contrary to the lives of the majority of people on this planet, or what is also referred to as the ‘developing world.’

In the last five years, the addiction to Facebook became acute, more hours spent at night scrolling posts and reels, and the perception was that if one didn’t keep connected on Facebook, that one was living the life of a misanthrope - regardless of the real world physical interactions with family and circles of friends. Even back home in Greece, some relatives (who shall remain anonymous) - simple hillbilly rustic highland shepherds joined Facebook and started to share their lives.

But the photos and content were the same every time; photos of the same countryside, the same festivals, small moments that justified their own illusory glories, buttressing the delusions of their life meaning. It became sad and pathetic, idealised lives masking some dark undercurrents of Greek society; and these obvious contradictions caused me to experience cognitive dissonance. That became the catalyst for the motivation to consider deleting Facebook. Also the obvious difference between life in Europe and life in the new world, in Australia.

Firstly, I’ll briefly touch upon life in Australia, and then explore some of the dark undercurrents of modern Greece, to provide some context. What can I say about life in Australia? It’s a new world, a successful multicultural society, and that’s one of the best qualities about life in Australia. One leaves the old world behind and upon arriving in Australia it’s an opportunity to throw away old world hatreds, baggage, civilisational clashes, misogyny and patriarchal biases, ideas of class structure, religious orthodoxy and attitudes.

For this writer, this is the glorious aspect of living life here. An opportunity to reinvent oneself. Then there is the thoroughly healthy, outdoors and fitness-oriented living, the warmth and friendliness of everyday Australians, and the politics in Australia is refreshing. No polemic and combative left-right politics like in Europe and the US. Here there are centre-left and centre-right parties, and whoever wins an election, they then rule for all Australians from a centrist position, and Australians then get right behind the elected government. Then finally, there is the geography of Australia, located at the bottom of the world, part of the Asia-Pacific region. Away from the troubles of the northern hemisphere, and the attention in respect to what happens in the news for Australians is what happens here and to our northern Asia-Pacific neighbours. Besides a very tiny minority who spend their lives on social media - the majority of Australians couldn’t care less regarding what happens in Europe, Africa, the Middle East or the US.

Then we have some of the dark civilisational undercurrents of Modern Greece, undercurrents that need light shed on. On the surface, Greece is a magical and beautiful place, rich in history. But Greece is also suffocating under the burden and dead weight of its own history. A suffocating monoculture with unwritten strict norms and a societal pressure to conform.

Greece is still a very patriarchal society - and has been so continuously since the ancient times - with higher misogyny and femicide rates than the European average. Discourse in public can be overtly sexist, with unfiltered hate speech and misogyny being prevalent in social media and online spaces. While the rest of Europe went through a reformation and the enlightenment, in Greece - except for the Ionian Islands ( where my late mother is from) and which was ruled mostly by Venice and briefly by France since the fall of Constantinople - the rest of Greece was under Ottoman rule, and one can tell the difference. Where Italy is known for a north-south divide, in Greece the divide is western Greece versus the rest of Greece.

This writer’s late father would call my late mother not by her name, but by ‘woman’; not once by her first name. She was an asset and a housemaid, while he was a working class card playing misogynist-patriarchal undeducted yokel bumpkin from the hills who imagined himself as some kind of modern day shepherd-Homeric hero resisting the modern world, Whilst my late mother came from an educated classical world due to her famous middle-upper class trading family from Cephalonia.  As a girl she learned deportment, the Walz, listened to theatre and opera, and tuning in to Italian radio stations was her favourite activity. This writer witnessed many moments of cruelty and greed, experiences that were and are still being experienced today by many women in Greece. The last straw for this writer and the majority of my siblings was when my mother died in 2021 in Australia. We decided on cremation rather than a traditional ‘big-fat Greek funeral’, and the reaction from Greek family overseas and the Greek community here cemented the decision to delete Facebook.

We were ostracised by the majority of the Greek community here in Australia, and a huge chunk of relatives back in Greece stopped talking to us altogether. All because we chose against the peer pressure to conform with the religious and societal expectations of a suffocating monocular, because we are progressive and separate church and state in our lives here in this new world.

The above is this writer’s societal observations on the mental and psychological affects of an addiction to Facebook, and one that many today silently suffer. Also on the illusion that it creates in regards to online communities based on family and friends (who some in fact never were that). It’s been three weeks now since I deleted Facebook, and pressure has lifted. I now experience life for myself and feel happier. Hopefully this story will help others reflect on and seek a more authentic life rooted in the real world. Carl Jung once said: “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are”, and only by engaging with the real physical world, not the online world can this happen.

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Digital painting and cover by Nikos Laios

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Check Nikos Laios' eBOOK, HERE!