Humanity Encroached by Insanity of Few Ignorant Leaders by Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD.

 

Political Wickedness is the Characteristic of Western Politicians

Political wickedness is not the art of glory and success or piety and popularity but obsessed insanity to glorify egoistic insanity by the few against all. Evil and insanity are not imaginary but real and happening across Gaza, South Lebanon, Occupied West Bank-Palestine and  must be stopped to protect innocent human lives. Pre-planned Zionist policies are working as they want to occupy and manage all the Arab natural resources, lives and lands. The US Trump administration is an integral part of the scheme- from Palestine, Jordan to Saudi Arabia to make Greater Israel. Do the Arab-Muslim leaders possess any understanding of this fallacy of claim? The US-Israel alliance views Arab-Muslims as mindless, robotic and submissive for all their security and survival aspirations. The near future could unleash havoc cries of political challenges to princely and authoritarian rulers and faze them out.

The US-Israeli are colonial manipulators not defenders of human rights, freedom or democracy. They defy voices of reason for a navigational change and people-oriented governance. America and Israel wanted the Arabs and Iranians to fight and end themselves. One wonders! How the Arab world lookalike in few years? Sinisterism obsessed with unacknowledged motives propels allusion and distortion if the Arab-Muslim leaders knew the impulse of time and history to defend themselves. They are not free to think of time and future-making. Oil and gas production is fast becoming a turbulent phenomenon (“Fitna”) not wealth or  sustainable resources. Arab leaders seek security for their individualistic rule not the people or Islam. They failed to learn from history and continued to live in conflicting time zones between people and palaces. Shamefully, Arab-Muslim leaders failed to protect their people and culture from Western instigated aggression. Despite the so-called ceasefire, Israeli and American attacks are on-going across Gaza, Lebanon and between Iran and the US.

Targeted killing of innocent people and civilian displacement are the hallmark of aggression and crimes against humanity. Comparative analysis often unfolds hidden truths about human nature and its wickedness. Global institutions of peace and security are lost by political intrigues, deception and continuous multiple conflicts. Mankind and individual states are left to guesswork of peace and conflict resolution. Palestine and Lebanon are essentially the Arab region to be protected by all means. No political institutions exist to hold the failed Arab-Muslim leaders accountable for their indifference and ignorance of responsibility. There is a vital issue of ethnicity and Arabs were and remained colonized by the Western world. Are there any international organizations to help avert the catastrophic bloodbath in progress across Gaza, Lebanon and the rest of the Middle East? Were the Geneva Conventions and International Humanitarian Laws just paper-based, dry inked narratives without any power to serve the cause of humanity?

The Earth (A LIVING ENTITY) being bombed is the earth given to mankind by God as a "TRUST." DO YOU NOT SEE IT FLOATING IN SPACE JUST BY THE COMMAND OF GOD? WHEREVER THERE IS A TRUST, THERE MUST BE ACCOUNTABILITY.When evil-mongers and wrong-doers violate the sanctity of the Laws of God, they are held accountable - history tells without any prejudice. This author has walked through the ancient graveyards of so many nations used to claim being the "most powerful"on this earth - dead bones and silent forever and nothing else.  The succeeding generations CURSE them for their crimes against humanity.  THE GLOBAL INSTITUTIONS APPEAR BROKEN AND DYSFUNCTIONAL TO STOP THE INSANITY. The US-Israel have dropped equal to "THREE Hiroshima-Nagasaki" nuclear arsenals on the innocent people of Gaza- Palestine. If you don’t believe in the encompassing truth, just view the real “genocide pictures” presented by Editor Rosa on Transcend Media, September 8, 2025: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2025/09/genocide-in-pictures-worth-a-trillion-words-66/

Mike Adams (“Dystopian Nightmare: Ten Unbelievable Things that Will Happen Soon if We Don’t Stop the March of Tyranny and the Enslavement of Humanity.” (Transcend Media), warns of dire consequences to mankind.(https://www.transcend.org/tms/2023/06/dystopian-nightmare-10-unbelievable-things-that-will-happen-soon-if-we-dont-stop-the-march-of-tyranny-and-the-enslavement-of Humanity now faces a critical choice: We either choose the path of total enslavement under an authoritarian, techno-fascist dictatorship, or we choose to instead embrace decentralized finance, free speech, rationality and the rule of law.

Do the US-Israeli Leaders Have Impunity from Accountability?

PM Netanyahu is keen to be re-elected and would do anything and all even putting Israel at the mercy of others to remain in power. It is an extremist group of powermaniacs to do all and everything for their wrong aims and aspirations. Israeli masses are awakening to reality of their origin and faith to challenge Netanyahu and his extremists stance against Palestinians. Since 2023 Gaza war, according to Haarath newspaper (Israel), almost half of a million Israelis have left the country. The besieged 2.4 million people of Gaza by Israeli forces blocking food, fuel, water, medicine and bombed hospitals portray clear pictures of tormenting pains, horrors and massive devastation planned and carried out as the global community witnesses in deaf silence as if the masses of Gaza are not normal human beings. The world is not infinite but subject to time and destiny. God, The All Knowing and Merciful has defined the roles and responsibilities of its creations. Remember! Those challenging the Laws of God are chastised by the Laws of God without exception. Are they waiting to meet the same end as did Pharaoh at the Red Sea? The Egyptians, Qataris, the UAE’s and Saudis and others carry no strength or political value in global context and appear morally, intellectually and politically bankrupt as a scum floating on a torrentof naive puppets and discredited leaders. Please see more:https://realovi.wordpress.com/2025/03/14/howarab-muslim-leaders-betrayed-the-people-by-mahboob-a-khawaja-phd/

Western Imperialism Ignores the Consequences of Wrong Actions

The former European imperialists sucked out the oil resources from the Arab world and now intend on dismantling the Arab-Muslim world- narrates Dr. Jan Oberg, a peace researcher from Sweden, and former British Diplomat Ian Proud: “The “West” Is Imploding Faster after This”TRANSCEND Media Service: 4/8/25: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2025/04/the-west-is-imploding-faster-after-this/ The signs are not just on the wall but written in the skies and the oceans too. The entire “western” narrative, its repressive dominance, and its hubris are about to collapse and take many of its established institutions down with it. And the kakistrocratic (aka imbecile) leadership doesn’t even realize it. If they did, they wouldn’t be driving Europe into that giant iceberg.

Watching dreadful apparatus of fire and brimstone, We, the People are horrified by the on-going crimes against humanity and genocide happening across Palestine, Lebanon and the war between Iran and the US. The UNO and global institutions appear lost forever. PM Netanyahu and President Trump, both leaders lack the moral, intellectual and legal capacity to understand the consequences of their wrong thinking and actions against humanity. Leadership is an art and it could be improved and changed for the good of humanity. Do intelligent leaders listen to voices of reason and make a navigational change when facts of life warrant an urgent change in attitudes, policies and behavior? The Divine Revelations (the Quran: 40: 21) offer a stern warning to conscientious leaders and nations:

Do they not travel through the earth and see
What was the End of those before them. They were even superior to them in strength
And in the traces they have left on the earth. But God did call them to account for their sins
And none had they to defend them against God.

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Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution and has spent several academic years across the Russian-Ukrainian and Central Asian regions knowing the people, diverse cultures of thinking and political governance and a keen interest in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including:Global Humanity and Remaking of Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution for the 21st Century and Beyond, Barnes and Noble Press, USA, 2025 https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/global-humanity-and-remaking-of-peace-security-and-conflict-resolution-for-the-21st-century-and-beyond-mahboob-a-khawaja/1147150197 and We, The People in Search of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution. Kindle Direct Publishing-Amazon, 05/2025 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F6V6CH5W

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Check Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD. eBOOK,
Wars on Humanity:
Ukraine, Palestine and the role of Global Leaders
HERE!

Kite #Poem by Abigail George

 

I am quiet now
Dew in my hands,
I am quiet, as quiet
as a bird in flight
I lay on the green
floor of the garden
I turn inward
My pain dissolves
in the clouds of tea
What matters is this
The sea rushing towards me
The birdsong,
the dew turns into
the remnants of a bitter
volcano. I ate avocado
in a salad. It turns
into a sun in
my belly. I pull the
wave over my head
It makes me smile
It makes me remember
my mother’s love
from childhood

#eBook: The Great Emu War by Ovi History

 

How Australia lost a war to flightless birds and found a national fable. The battlefield was the parched wheatbelt of Western Australia, a land of saltbush and sorrow.

The enemy was Dromaius novaehollandiae, the emu, standing six feet tall, weighing as much as a soldier’s kit, and capable of outrunning a horse. Twenty thousand of them had descended upon the newly cleared farmland like a feathered plague, devouring wheat that returning Great War veterans had staked their futures on. When fences failed and bounties proved too slow, the farmers did what farmers have always done: they begged the government to shoot the problem away.

And the government, in its infinite wisdom, obliged. Major Meredith of the Royal Australian Artillery was dispatched with two men and a Lewis light machine gun. His orders were simple: kill the emus, save the crops, and prove that the Empire’s military might extended to the kingdom of fauna.
He lost. Twice.

Ovi History eBook
May 2026

Ovi eBook Publishing 2026

The Great Emu War

Read it online or download HERE!
Read it online & downloading it as PDF or EPUB HERE!
Or enjoy reading it online & downloading it as PDF HERE!
All downloads are FREE!

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For more eBooks check Ovi eBookshelves HERE!

Ghostin’ #129 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

They are like neighbours we are aware of,
except we are NOT aware of and
they have absolutely nothing to do with Halloween.

For more Ghostin’, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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The shenanigans of internal party democracy by Tunde Akande

Internal democracy in Nigeria is fraught with many shenanigans and has not prevented and cannot prevent imposition of candidates. It is the reason why only the worst people get to leadership.

Shenanigans has always been in the dictionary but its use became widespread when the nation returned to democracy in 1999. Nigerian politicians, ever so fascinated with jaw breaking words throw it at one another. In this piece we are going to throw it at them collectively. According to Meta AI, shenanigans means sneaky, mischievous or dishonest behaviours, usually playful or causing trouble. Nigeria’s politicians of the current time have given shenanigans a political colouration.

But an early philosopher, Socrates, hated democracy, which he saw as unfit system of government that would ultimately destroy itself. Socrates denounced democracy as a means of recruiting leadership. He felt democracy would help thieves find leadership if they wanted it. He thinks when a man needs medical help he doesn’t go to the crowd but to the specialists. He asked, therefore, why people should consign the most important task of constituting a government to the crowd.

In Nigeria, democracy has destroyed itself and the earlier it is tinkered with by serious domestic thinking the better for the nation. An aspect that is seriously affected is what the politicians call ‘internal party democracy’. By that they mean recruitment by political parties into leadership by democratic means. This they say will not allow anybody or group of persons to hold sway over the party by imposing candidates. They clamour for it with every shred of fiber in their muscles, and you would think they meant it. But they don’t, and it works perfectly well for them to impose candidates. It allows bad candidates to emerge to continue the pillage of the nation’s resources.

I write as one who just had the opportunity to witness the party primary of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in my local area in Ibadan. It was a rare privilege as I have never witnessed any in my whole life. I live in the inner city. All politics is local, as they say. This is where the real politicking takes place. This is an area inhabited by the poorest of the poor, many of whom live and die there. This is the area where you have a thick population. Because poverty is massive there and the population is huge the politicians don’t joke with them especially in times of election.

The ruling party APC prides itself as democratic. President Bola Tinubu projects himself as a democrat. He shows it so much that you wonder what democracy is and you say to yourself that if what Bola Tinubu does is democracy, then it is not worth the effort of the nation or that of any nation. Bola Tinubu is not a democrat, neither is democracy in the way it is copied from the West good for emerging African countries.

Democracy on Tinubu’s terms means taking 1 trillion naira from the people to contest the presidential election. As reported in some of the nation’s media, the 31 governors of the APC, many of them conscripted into the party from other parties by offers of largesse, allegedly contributed 26 billion naira each to the Renewed Hope Ambassador account which is the account that will fund the election of the president. Since the report was published by the media only the Southeast has denied it, saying it was not true. But it is possible because all the subsidies Tinubu removed from the oil are paid to the state governments, swelling the state’s coffers controlled by the governors. With one hand the president gives them this money and with another he takes some of it back into his electioneering war chest.

The president also reportedly hopes to collect another 1 trillion naira from the private sector which will together give him a 2 trillion electoral war chest. In a nation where people are so poor and need money for food especially, not even the big spender Atiku Abubakar will be able to match Tinubu naira for naira. With that huge war chest, Tinubu will buy all the emirs in the north, all the Alfas, Sheiks and Imams whose instruction the north obey without questioning. Those who think Tinubu will not win a second term are living in a dream world.

In my area, I have a colleague that has been in politics since the nation returned to democracy in 1999 and has worked with all the high and mighty. He had been a local government chairman and held office as Special Adviser to a governor. He has also been a kingmaker in one Southwest state. When I tell him he doesn’t tell me lies he tells me he doesn’t tell lies generally. I found out that he is different from other politicians. But he hardly talks; there is nothing you can do to get him to talk. By staying around him I get some truthful information about what is going on in politics. There is nothing like internal democracy. All elections are pre-arranged. My friend termed it “arrangee,” a local parlance for forgery. Election results, especially for these primaries are pre-written. He was in PDP, he was instrumental to the election of the sitting governor. There was a disagreement that made the governor ditch him and he crossed to APC. He was at all the elections of delegates to the primaries and each time they went to the election he would tell me, —”We have the results already.” When Tinubu decreed that the election of party candidates must be by direct primary, the pre-writing of results continued.

I have a cousin that contested to return to the House of Representatives. Because this cousin would not distribute her constituency project fund freely among the leaders in her constituency, she was hated. At the first consensus meeting they had, she was chosen despite the anger of the majority against her. The members protested demanding for a direct primary. In the direct primary, according to my friend, my cousin placed fifth, but the pre-written result placed her first. The real votes were announced to me on the day of the election but by the second day it had changed to favour my cousin.

The Oyo governorship contest followed the same pattern. The candidate backed by Bola Tinubu was unlikely to lose, since the local leadership generally deferred to him. They know the consequences of not being in the good books of the president. Even though the second candidate put in a very determined effort, the tide was against him. The results, I was again told, had been pre-written. Even at the time of writing, the APC Oyo governorship primary result has not been released, even though it was held a day before the presidential primaries, was released Sunday, 23rd May, 2026, yet the governorship result has not been released. Despite that, the first man Tinubu endorsed I was told will win. Even his supporters have taken their congratulatory message to the radio, even though the results have not been released. As to why they did that, I was told they were so sure of what was pre-written. Tinubu too was deliberately pitted against an unknown Hon. Stanley Osifo from Edo State to make it look like a freely contested position. I am sure somebody gave little known Hon. Osifo the 100 million naira for nomination form and perhaps another huge sum for his efforts and obedience. In an obviously contrived result, Tinubu was assigned over ten million votes with the hapless Osifo having only a little over 16, 000.00 votes. Who is fooling who?

Internal democracy in Nigeria is fraught with many shenanigans and has not prevented and cannot prevent imposition of candidates. It is the reason why only the worst people get to leadership. The best thing is to allow each party to choose its candidates by its own methods and live or die by it. How did Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe do it? How did Obafemi Awolowo do it? How did Ahmadu Bello do it? They did not use internal democracy. They were kingmakers. They knew good and credible people in the society. They knew good and committed teachers. They selected one and asked them to run. It was when Obafemi Awolowo began to practice internal democracy that the house of Oduduwa began to fall apart until the military returned again.

First Published in METRO

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Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.

The coup fantasy nobody wants to admit out loud by John Reid

There is something almost surreal about the idea that the United States and Israel could ever imagine Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the acceptable face of a post-clerical Iran. It sounds less like geopolitics and more like the setup to a cynical late-night comedy sketch. The man spent years branding America as the “Great Satan,” denying the Holocaust, antagonizing Israel at every opportunity, and becoming the international symbol of Iranian hard-line populism. Yet in the twisted logic of regime-change politics, yesterday’s monster can suddenly become tomorrow’s “stabilizing figure.”

That is the part the public is rarely supposed to see. Foreign policy elites often divide the world into categories that have little to do with morality and everything to do with utility. The question is not whether someone is good, democratic, moderate or even sane. The real question is whether they are manageable. Ahmadinejad, despite his rhetoric, was always a creature of the system. He understood the machinery of the Islamic Republic, knew the power centers, and had nationalist credibility among ordinary Iranians that exiled opposition figures simply do not possess.

And that is the uncomfortable truth haunting every fantasy about “decapitating” the Iranian regime. You cannot bomb a political order out of existence and then replace it with Instagram activists, monarchist dreamers in Los Angeles, or Western-approved technocrats with no roots inside the country. Power vacuums do not stay empty for long. They get filled by the people who already know how the state works, how the security apparatus operates, and how fear can be converted into loyalty.

Ahmadinejad fits that description far more than many would like to admit. The irony becomes almost absurd. After decades of presenting him as the embodiment of Iranian extremism, the same strategic minds could easily convince themselves that he represents “continuity,” “order,” or “controlled transition.” In the language of intelligence agencies and military planners, these euphemisms are endlessly reusable. One year a man is a threat to civilization; the next he becomes the least bad option.

History is crowded with these contradictions. Washington has armed dictators before denouncing them. It has overthrown allies before rehabilitating former enemies. Israel, too, has often prioritized tactical survival over ideological consistency. States are not loyal to narratives. They are loyal to interests.

What makes the Ahmadinejad scenario particularly grotesque is how perfectly it captures the bankruptcy of modern interventionism. The public is sold moral clarity while governments operate through layers of cold pragmatism. Citizens hear speeches about democracy and liberation. Behind closed doors, officials debate which authoritarian figure might best prevent chaos after missiles stop falling.

And chaos is always the unspoken fear. Because the nightmare for outside powers is not merely an anti-Western Iran. It is an uncontrollable Iran: fractured militias, collapsing institutions, loose weapons, civil war, refugee waves, and regional fires nobody can extinguish. In that environment, even a former firebrand suddenly starts looking “responsible.”

That does not make the idea smart. It makes it revealing. The possibility alone exposes how shallow the rhetoric surrounding regime change has always been. The same powers that spend years demonizing certain leaders are often the first to recycle them when reality intrudes on ideology. In the end, geopolitics is not a morality play. It is a marketplace of contradictions where enemies become assets, principles become slogans, and yesterday’s villain can quietly re-emerge as tomorrow’s solution.

Exile arithmetic by Marissa Washington

Donald Trump announced that he would expand asylum opportunities for white South Africans, specifically Afrikaners, while again invoking the fantasy of “white genocide,” a phrase with the emotional subtlety of a burning tire. The claim has been repeatedly discredited, yet Trump continues to present it as though he alone possesses forbidden knowledge hidden from diplomats, journalists, judges and the millions of South Africans living ordinary, complicated lives.

What makes the proposal particularly revealing is not only the racial selectivity of it, but the contradiction at its core. Trump built his political mythology on the idea that America was collapsing under the weight of migrants, refugees, and desperate outsiders. Now he proposes a special refugee carveout for a group he imagines as culturally compatible, politically useful, and symbolically white. Refugees, apparently, are dangerous until they resemble the donors at a golf resort luncheon.

The deeper irony is that many Afrikaners who accepted the invitation to relocate have reportedly discovered that refugee life in America bears little resemblance to the mythology sold during campaign speeches. In South Africa, many belonged to stable communities with social networks, familiar institutions, domestic help, private security, and the cultural confidence that comes from understanding the rhythms of daily life. In America they arrived not as prosperous settlers but as political props, entering a country with punishing healthcare costs, expensive housing, bureaucratic confusion, and the lonely humiliation that shadows displacement everywhere.

The MAGA imagination treats America as the automatic summit of human civilization, a place so universally desirable that anyone admitted should immediately fall to their knees with gratitude. But migration does not erase comparison. Some Afrikaners reportedly miss the landscapes, language, social familiarity, and relative comfort they left behind. Even anxiety about crime, a real issue in South Africa, does not automatically convert into affection for suburban isolation in Arizona or motel anonymity in Texas.

Trump’s proposal also exposes the racial coding embedded within modern refugee politics. When brown or black refugees arrive from war zones, conservatives suddenly become experts in cultural preservation, fiscal restraint, and border sovereignty. But when white applicants can be framed as victims of multicultural disorder, the rhetoric transforms overnight into humanitarian urgency. It is less an immigration policy than a casting decision.

None of this means South Africa is free from violence, racial tension, corruption, or economic instability. It plainly is not. But reducing an enormously complex democracy into an apocalyptic fable about white extermination requires the kind of political dishonesty that flourishes best inside algorithmic outrage. Trump understands that the phrase itself matters more than evidence. It activates fear, tribal identity, and the intoxicating fantasy that white people, despite centuries of global dominance, are civilization’s most endangered species.

In the end, the proposal says less about South Africa than about America itself. A nation once confident enough to absorb difference now increasingly sorts human beings through the crude arithmetic of race, usefulness, and television optics. Trump has always understood that modern politics rewards spectacle over coherence. The tragedy is not merely that people believe him. It is that entire immigration debates are now staged like reality television auditions, with suffering reduced to branding.

And somewhere beneath the noise, beneath the slogans and campaign applause, actual refugees from every continent continue waiting in camps, embassies, and shattered cities, learning again that compassion in modern politics is rarely universal. It is selective, performative, and always calibrated toward cameras.

The price tag by Mathew Walls

Donald Trump’s remarks about Taiwan before leaving for Beijing, made with the casual swagger of a man discussing casino leverage rather than democratic survival, offered precisely such a moment. For Taiwan, they were not merely unsettling. They were clarifying.

For decades, America’s relationship with Taiwan has rested on a delicate architecture of ambiguity. Washington officially recognizes Beijing, while simultaneously arming and informally protecting Taipei. It is an arrangement held together not by sentimentality, but by credibility. The point was never that America loved Taiwan. The point was that America’s word meant something.

Trump, characteristically, treats that word as negotiable. His suggestion that arms sales to Taiwan could be folded into a broader bargain with Xi Jinping revealed an instinct that has always defined his worldview, everything is transactional, and everything has a price. Alliances become invoices. Security guarantees become poker chips. Small democracies become useful objects to slide across the table during negotiations between powerful men.

To many in Taiwan, the deeper shock was not ideological but existential. The island has spent years strengthening ties with Washington under the assumption that, despite partisan shifts, the United States broadly understood what Taiwan represents. Not merely a strategic node in the Pacific, but a thriving democracy existing under constant authoritarian pressure. Trump’s comments implied something colder: that Taiwan is less a partner than a negotiable asset.

And then came the most dangerous remark of all, his portrayal of President Lai Ching-te as a reckless nationalist trying to drag America into war. Beijing has spent years constructing precisely that narrative. China insists Taiwan’s leaders are provocateurs whose democratic aspirations threaten regional stability. Hearing echoes of that argument from a former American president and perhaps a future one, sent a chill through Taipei that no weapons package can erase.

The problem is not simply Trump’s unpredictability. America has survived unpredictable presidents before. The problem is that Trump instinctively admires power unconstrained by liberal principles. He speaks the language of strongmen fluently because he views international politics less as a contest of values than as a hierarchy of dominance. Xi Jinping understands this perfectly. To authoritarian leaders, Trump often sounds less like an adversary than a familiar species.

Taiwan, by contrast, complicates Trump’s worldview. It is messy, democratic, argumentative, technologically sophisticated, and defiantly independent in spirit even if not formally in law. It cannot be bullied into obedience without consequence. And because it occupies the uncomfortable intersection of morality and strategy, it demands something Trump has rarely shown interest in: consistency.

There is another irony here. Trump prides himself on projecting strength, yet uncertainty about America’s commitment to Taiwan makes conflict more likely, not less. Deterrence depends on clarity of resolve. Once Beijing begins to suspect that Washington’s support can be traded away during tariff negotiations or summit theatrics, the calculus changes dangerously.

Taiwan understands this. That is why Trump’s comments landed not as diplomatic improvisation but as a warning about a broader American drift. Great powers decline not only through military weakness, but through moral unreliability—through the gradual corrosion of trust among allies who begin to wonder whether principles still survive beneath the spectacle.

For Taiwan, the fear is no longer simply China’s ambitions. It is the possibility that America itself may cease to distinguish between democracy and leverage.

Screws & Chips #126 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

In a galaxy far, far away, intelligence demonstrated by screws and chips,
boldly gone where no robot has gone before!

For more Screws & Chips, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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The United Nations Peacekeeping Forces, Weak but Necessary by Rene Wadlow

29 May is the International Day of the United Nations Peacekeepers. The day was chosen in memory of the creation of the first UN interposition force in the Middle East. In the years since, 3,800 have lost their lives. Today there are 14 operations. The most difficult are in Africa where there has been large scale breakdown of State structures such as the Central African Republic, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The deployment of U.N. peace-keeping forces is only one aspect of conflict resolution and peace building.  However U.N. peace-keeping forces are the most visible (and expensive) aspect of the U.N. peace-building efforts. Thus our attention must be justly given to the role, the financing, and the practice of U.N. peace-keeping forces.

How effective are U.N. peacekeeping operations in preventing and stopping violence? Are there alternatives to the ways that U.N. and regional organizations currently carry out peacekeeping operations?  How effective are peacekeeping operations in addressing the root causes of conflicts?  How does one measure the effectiveness of peacekeeping operations?  We must ask questions of their effectiveness and if these military personnel should  not be complemented by other forms of peace-building. 

There have been  reports of U.N. Peace operations in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo and in South Sudan which  highlight the systematic rape of women in the area and the inability or unwillingness of U.N. Troops to stop the rapes which have become standard practice in the areas  on the part of both members of the armed insurgencies as well as by members of the regular army.  There are also other examples when “failure” is the key word in such evaluations of U.N. Forces.

The first reality is that there is no permanent U.N. trained and motivated troops.  There are only national units loaned by some national governments but paid for by all U.N. Member States. Each government trains its army in its own spirit and values, though there is still an original English ethos as many U.N. troops come from India,Pakistan,Bangladesh,Nepal, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Nigeria.  Now China is starting to provide troops with a non-English tradition.

There have been proposals by some governments and non-governmental representatives such as the Association of World Citizens for the creation of a permanent UN standby force.  This has been rejected, usually on grounds of cost ( although it would be only a fraction of what is now spent on national armies.)  There has also been an alternative proposal of creating within  national armies specially-trained forces for UN use.  In light of the fact that the great majority of UN troops come from south Asia, speak English and were originally formed in an English tradition, the creation of such units ready for quick use is a real possibility.

Moreover, there is no such thing as consistency and predictability in U.N. actions o preserve order.  The world is too complex, and the UN Security Council  resolutions are voted on the basis of national interest and political power considerations. U.N. “blue helmet” operations have grown both in numbers and complexity.  Even with the best planning, the situation in which one deploys troops will always be fluid, and the assumption on which the planning was based may change.

To be successful, U.N. Peacekeeping operations need to have clear objectives, but uch objectives cannot be set by the force commanders themselves.  Peacekeeping forces are temporary measures that should give time for political leaders to work out a political agreement.  The parties in conflict need to have a sense of urgency about resolving the conflict.  Without that sense of urgency, peacekeeping operations can become eternal as they have in Cyprus and Lebanon.

U.N. Forces are one important element in a peacemakers tool kit, but there needs to be a wide range of peace building techniques available.  There must be concerted efforts by both diplomatic representatives and non-governmental organizations to resolve the conflicts where U.N. troops serve. Policemen, civilian political officers, human rights monitors, refugee and humanitarian aid workers and  specialists   in anthropology all play important roles along with the military.  Yet non-military personnel are difficult to recruit.

In addition, it is difficult to control the impact of humanitarian aid and action as it ipples through a local society and economy because powerful factors in the conflict environment such as the presence of armed militias, acute political and ethnic polarization, the struggle over resources in a war economy will have unintended consequences.

As we honor the International Day of U.N. Peacekeepers, we need to put more effort on the prevention of armed conflicts, on improving techniques of mediation, and  creating groups which cross the divides of class, religion, and ethnicity.

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Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

Passport theater by Emma Schneider

There is something almost touching about the speed with which European leaders rediscover nationalism the moment their poll numbers begin to sag. One week they are lecturing voters about the dangers of emotional politics and the next they are standing before microphones, grim-faced, warning citizens about the moral contamination of crossing borders. Germany’s Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has now entered this familiar phase of political improvisation with a flourish dramatic enough to deserve its own stage lighting.

“I would not advise my children today to go to the U.S.,” Merz told students this week, citing the supposedly dangerous “social climate” under President Donald Trump. America, in this telling, has become too polarized, too volatile, too ideologically combustible for civilized Europeans to comfortably inhabit. One could almost picture terrified German exchange students fleeing Manhattan coffee shops while constitutional crises erupt beside the pastry counter.

The remark was not merely clumsy. It was revealing. Europe’s political establishment has spent nearly a decade constructing Trump as a kind of roaming atmospheric condition, a democratic hurricane permanently threatening Western civilization. Every disagreement becomes existential. Every election becomes “the most important in modern history.” And every politician struggling at home eventually discovers that criticizing America is a convenient substitute for solving domestic problems.

Merz appears to have noticed what Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, already understands instinctively: anti-Trump rhetoric still performs remarkably well among elite audiences. There is a reliable applause line available in almost every university hall, newsroom, and transatlantic conference room. Mention Trump with sufficient alarm and one immediately acquires the aura of democratic heroism without the inconvenience of actual political courage.

But imitation is difficult when the original performance is already beginning to wear thin. The irony is impossible to ignore. Germany itself is hardly radiating social stability. The country is wrestling with economic stagnation, rising political fragmentation, energy anxieties, immigration tensions, and a widening disconnect between governing elites and ordinary voters. Across Europe, governments increasingly confront electorates that no longer trust institutions speaking in the language of moral superiority. Yet instead of addressing those fractures directly, leaders often externalize the anxiety. America becomes the symbolic villain onto which broader Western unease can be projected.

It is a curious form of dependency: Europe simultaneously condemns and obsesses over the United States. Trump, especially, functions less as a foreign leader than as a psychological weather system for Europe’s governing class. He is discussed with the intensity once reserved for invading armies or theological schisms. Entire political identities are now built around opposition to a single American politician.

Meanwhile, millions of Europeans continue visiting, studying, working, investing, and vacationing in the United States without incident. American universities remain magnets for global talent. American companies still dominate sectors Europeans struggle to compete in. New York, Boston, Austin, and San Francisco have not descended into dystopian collapse despite the feverish rhetoric of international commentators.

What makes Merz’s comments particularly unfortunate is the underlying paternalism. Young Germans do not require political guardians warning them away from democratic societies because elections produced undesirable outcomes. The implication that America is somehow culturally unsafe because its politics are contentious, reveals a remarkably fragile understanding of democracy itself. Democracies are noisy. They are argumentative. They are occasionally vulgar. That is not evidence of collapse. Often it is evidence they are still alive.

There is also something strategically foolish in Europe’s increasingly fashionable habit of publicly sneering at its most important ally. Alliances survive on interests, certainly, but also on cultural goodwill. Leaders who casually encourage distrust toward America may discover later that contempt, once normalized, rarely remains selective.

Merz likely intended his comments as moral seriousness. Instead they sounded like continental performance art: elite anxiety disguised as parental concern, delivered at precisely the moment his own political standing appears increasingly uncertain. Europe’s voters have seen this play before. The scenery changes. The villain remains Trump. And the applause grows slightly weaker every season.