THREE #Poem by David Sparenberg

Murder
is an acquired habit.
Once killers kill
and get away with it
they will kill again.

Pause what you are doing.
Tremble with emotion.
Assume silence and solemnity.
Now picture the crime
of three seconds.

A man in a government
uniform with a gun
wearing a mask, cursing obscenely
shoots a mother of three children
three times in the face.

Blood gushes.
Flesh quivers.
The woman is dead.
In three seconds
three children are made motherless.

Once the politics of murder
becomes policy
nobody is safe.
In a society divided
between victims and executioners
there are the killers and the Bosses.
There are the corpses.
And the rest of us
hugging the shadows—waiting.

The killing in Minneapolis *
is a warning.

Pause what you are doing. Commit
to memory:
The agent who committed the
murder, recorded his crime.
He screamed at the woman
a gender obscenity immediately after
squeezing the trigger of his weapon.
In three seconds
three children are left motherless.

Murder
(pointedly political murder)
is an acquired habit. Once authorized
(and socially tolerated)
it will be authorized again.

*On the morning of 7 Jan. 2026, Renee Nichole Good, an American citizen, wasmurdered by ICE agent Johathan Ross. She was shot in the face and head three times within the span of three seconds. Renee Good was an award-winning poet and mother ofthree.

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David Sparenberg is a humanitarian & eco-poet, international essayist and storyteller. He has published four OVI eBooks in 2025, including the most recent, Eco Woke, andTroubadour& the Earth on Fire. OVI eBooks are Free to download, as contributions to global democracy, literacy and cost-free education. While David Sparenberg lives in he Pacific Northwest, he identities not only as a World Citizen but a Citizen of Creation. Democracy first, Biocracy to follow.

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Don't miss David Sparenberg's latest eBook Troubadour and the Earth on fire ,
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The Trumpian hypocrisy of double standards and one dead by Mia Rodríguez

There’s a peculiar and disturbing dissonance in American governance right now that’s impossible to ignore; a president willing to brandish military threats at a distant government for cracking down on demonstrators, while his own administration’s agents shoot and kill people on U.S. soil for daring to protest his immigration policies. For anyone committed to democratic norms or even basic moral symmetry, the contradiction is striking, grotesque even.

Last week in Minneapolis, tens of thousands of Americans took to the streets to express outrage after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents shot and killed a U.S. citizen during a federal immigration operation. Renée Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother, mother of three, poet, volunteer legal observer, community member, was in her car on a residential street when an ICE officer opened fire and killed her. Local authorities and bystander video suggest she posed no clear threat and was attempting to drive away when the fatal shots rang out. Yet the federal narrative was immediate and chilling: she was quickly labeled a “domestic terrorist,” even as video evidence told a far murkier, far more tragic story.

This isn’t an isolated incident. Split-second decisions by federal agents with sweeping immunities have already resulted in multiple deaths during aggressive enforcement actions, and they sit against a backdrop of escalating protests nationwide. Cities from Minneapolis to Portland and New York have erupted in chants, whistles and signs decrying federal overreach and demanding accountability. Now consider what’s happened on the world stage: as Iranians have poured into their own streets, galvanized by economic collapse and longstanding repression, calling for freedom and basic dignity, the American president has declared that Tehran must not shoot its citizens. He has warned the Iranian leadership of severe consequences should they continue to violently suppress demonstrators. “We’ll be hitting them very hard where it hurts… You better not start shooting because we’ll start shooting, too,” he reportedly said, a remark tantamount to threatening war if a foreign government murders its own protestors.

The optics here are jarring. To the outside world, the U.S. posture could easily be read as principled: defending human rights abroad and threatening retaliation if protestors are killed. But to American citizens watching federal agents mow down demonstrators or blame them for their own deaths, the message feels painfully hypocritical. How can Washington lecture Tehran about restraint and the sanctity of protest when right here in the United States, citizens peacefully and legally exercise their democratic rights only to be met with lethal force?

Human rights advocates have long insisted that true moral authority cannot be exported selectively. It cannot be valid to condemn violence elsewhere when you tolerate or, worse, authorize it at home. And that’s where the current moment reveals its deepest contradiction: a nation that grandstands about protecting protestors abroad while its own police powers execute demonstrators without accountability.

We’re not just talking about bluster here. In Minneapolis, the death of Good has prompted fierce denunciations from local leaders who have openly rejected the federal narrative. Minneapolis’s mayor called the Department of Homeland Security’s characterization “bullshit,” and urged federal agents to leave the city. Minnesota’s governor echoed that sentiment, decrying what he described as governance “designed to generate fear, headlines and conflict.” A federal investigation has been taken out of local hands, fueling suspicions of a cover-up.

Across the country, the protests reverberate with a shared conviction, people are not willing to be dismissed, demonized, or shot and then buried in an official narrative that exonerates the shooters before the facts are known. And they are absolutely right to be alarmed. When state agents are given license to use deadly force against civilians protesting federal policies, the boundary between law enforcement and militarized authority blurs in ways that should unsettle any democracy. The right to protest is not a fringe concession, it’s a cornerstone of civil society.

What’s more, the double standard doesn’t just undermine America’s credibility on the world stage it corrupts the moral fabric of its own civic life. Foreign autocrats can now point to the Minneapolis killing as evidence that even the United States resorts to violence against unarmed demonstrators. They can use it to justify their own brutalities. The result is a global banquet of hypocrisy served cold.

There’s a broader lesson here that transcends any single circumstance: condemning violence abroad while tolerating it at home erodes the very foundation of democratic legitimacy. If a government cannot credibly defend the rights of its own citizens to speak and assemble without fear of lethal repercussion, its threats against other nations ring hollow.

So yes, condemning violent crackdowns in Iran is laudable. But it should never be done in isolation from the struggles on Main Street Minneapolis or Portland or wherever Americans demand justice. Moral consistency isn’t a luxury, it’s the only firm ground on which a democracy can stand. If the U.S. is truly serious about defending protestors everywhere, it must first ensure that American citizens can demonstrate against their own government without being shot in the face by federal agents. Otherwise, we’re just trading in the politics of irony and the cost in human lives will only keep rising.

Greenland cracks in the Atlantic ice by Edoardo Moretti

Mark Rutte’s careful distance from Donald Trump’s hostility toward Greenland and by extension, Denmark is more than polite diplomatic choreography. It is a warning flare. A quiet admission that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, long marketed as the world’s most stable military alliance, is no longer held together by shared instinct, but by brittle habit.

When the Secretary General of NATO feels compelled to publicly emphasize respect for a member state’s sovereignty in response to rhetoric from a U.S. president, something fundamental has shifted. This is not about Greenland alone. It is about whether NATO still operates on trust or merely on inertia.

Trump’s fascination with “buying” Greenland was often treated as political theater, a bizarre footnote in an already unconventional presidency. But beneath the absurdity lay something more corrosive, a transactional view of alliances. In that worldview, allies are not partners bound by shared history and mutual defense but assets, liabilities, or obstacles. Denmark, a founding NATO member that has fought alongside the U.S. in Afghanistan and elsewhere, was reduced to an inconvenience blocking a real estate deal.

Rutte’s response to this mentality has been deliberate restraint. He speaks of unity, mutual respect and the indivisibility of allied security. He avoids names. He avoids escalation. But avoidance itself is a message. It says, the alliance’s leader must now manage not only adversaries outside NATO but centrifugal forces within its core.

For decades NATO’s internal disputes were mostly technical, budget targets, troop deployments, command structures. They were arguments within a shared moral frame. Today, the disagreements cut deeper. They question the very premise of the alliance, that an attack on one is an attack on all, not just when convenient, but always.

Trump’s earlier comments about letting “delinquent” allies fend for themselves were not slips of the tongue. They were ideological statements. They suggested that Article 5, NATO’s sacred clause, is conditional. Optional. Negotiable.

Once that idea is introduced, even rhetorically, it does not vanish. It lingers in the calculations of European capitals, defense ministries, and intelligence agencies. It forces small states like Denmark to consider an unthinkable possibility: that loyalty may no longer guarantee protection.

Greenland magnifies this anxiety. The island is not merely a frozen curiosity; it is a strategic keystone in the Arctic, rich in resources and positioned between great powers. U.S. interest in it is understandable. The manner in which that interest was expressed was not. When power speaks without respect, it turns allies into potential adversaries and partnerships into liabilities.

Rutte knows this. His career has been built on consensus politics, on keeping fragile coalitions alive by smoothing edges and lowering voices. But NATO is not a Dutch cabinet. It cannot survive indefinitely on compromise language while its strongest member flirts with unilateralism.

The danger is not an explosion, but erosion.

NATO will not collapse with a dramatic announcement or a flag-lowering ceremony in Brussels. It will thin. It will hollow. It will become a structure that exists on paper but hesitates in practice. A meeting place, not a shield.

European states already behave as if this erosion is underway. Military autonomy is no longer a taboo phrase in Paris or Berlin. Strategic independence is no longer a dream whispered only in academic conferences. It is policy, budgeted and debated. Quietly, methodically, Europe is preparing for a future in which American reliability is no longer assumed, only hoped for.

From Washington’s perspective, this may seem ungrateful. From Europe’s, it is rational.

An alliance that depends on the personality of one leader is not an alliance; it is a gamble. And Trump has shown, repeatedly, that he views unpredictability not as a flaw but as leverage.

Rutte’s distancing is therefore both diplomatic and existential. He is not just protecting Denmark from insult; he is protecting NATO from a precedent. If one ally can be publicly pressured, mocked, or threatened over its territory, then no ally is truly secure.

The tragedy is that NATO’s enemies do not need to destroy it. They only need to watch as its members begin to doubt one another.

Russia, China, and other strategic rivals understand this well. They do not need to defeat the alliance militarily if it can be weakened psychologically, if its members start calculating risks instead of trusting commitments.

Greenland, in this sense, is a metaphor carved in ice: vast, strategically vital, and suddenly contested not by foreign powers, but by the internal contradictions of the Western order.

Rutte’s careful words attempt to freeze those cracks before they spread. But words, however measured, cannot substitute for shared conviction.

If the United States treats alliances as temporary contracts, Europe will eventually do the same. And when every member carries a mental exit plan, NATO becomes something dangerously close to ceremonial.

The alliance was born from fear, strengthened by solidarity, and sustained by trust. Fear still exists. Solidarity is wavering. Trust is thinning.

That is why the distance Rutte keeps from Trump matters. It is not political etiquette. It is structural damage control.

Whether it will be enough is another question entirely.

#eBook: The Haunted Ships by Allan Cunningham

Along the sea of Solway, romantic on the Scottish side, with its woodlands, its bays, its cliffs and headlands - and interesting on the English side, with its many beautiful towns with their shadows on the water, rich pastures, safe harbors, and numerous ships - there still linger many traditional stories of a maritime nature, most of them connected with superstitions singularly wild and unusual.

The Haunted Ships

Allan Cunningham, born December 7, 1784, Keir, Dumfriesshire, Scotland and died October 30, 1842, London, England; was a Scottish poet, a member of the brilliant circle of writers that included Thomas De Quincey, Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, John Keats, and Thomas Hood, who were contributors to the London Magazine in its heyday in the early 1820s.

In Public Domain
First Published 1874
Ovi eBook Publishing 2024

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Ant-sized Culinary #001 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

Ant-biotics is a type of antimicrobial cartoon strip active against boredom’s bacteria.

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Martin Niemoller: After Nazi Violence, Reconciliation Efforts by Rene Wadlow

Martin Niemoller, 14 January 1892 - 6 March 1984, was an anti-Nazi German theologian who after the end of World War II worked for active reconciliation among Germans and then for reconciliation between the West and the USSR. He was one of the six co-presidents of the World Council of Churches (WCC) from 1961 to 1968 - a period when the WCC reached out beyond church circles to raise issues of peace, development and anti-racism. I knew him somewhat during his WCC presidency when he would come to Geneva and often gave talks on his reconciliation efforts.

Martin Niemoller's father was a well-known Protestant pastor who hoped that his son would follow but who left him all freedom to choose. Martin Niemoller's first choice was the military navy, and he became a navel officer and a commander of a submarine, a U-boat. He was a U-boat commander when the 1914-1918 World War broke out. His was a nine-laying sub which mined French harbors causing damage and lose of life.

At the end of the First World War, there was no future for a career in the German military navy, and so Martin Niemoller began theological studies. In the life of an individual, there is often a parting from the original tribal or family consciousness to an awareness that there is a wider socio-historical context. Only after separation can there be a reunion on a deeper and more mature level of relationship. The war experience shaped the thinking of Martin Niemoller in ways that would not have been the case had he started theological studies right after secondary school.

He was ordained in 1929 and became a pastor of the Protestant church in Dahlem, a wealthy suburb of Berlin. He became active in the social welfare projects of the church, the German economy having been largely disrupted after the 1918 defeat, even before the 1929 world-wide depression. At first, Niemoller did not see the dangers of the rise of the Nazi party. He felt that Germany needed a strong leadership to bring the country together. Hitler might provide such strong leadership since for Niemoller, there was no equivalent leader among the liberals or the Left.

It was when Hitler came to power and started putting into practice his racial policies that Martin Niemoller became an outspoken critic. Niemoller's first protests came concerning the Nazi policy toward Christians who had converted from Judaism and even those who had been raised as Christians but who had at least one grandparent a Jew. For the Nazi ideology and its "Aryan Laws", once a Jew, always a Jew. Niemoller spoke out strongly against this policy. Since he was a minister in a well-known church very near Berlin, his views quickly became known to the higher Nazi authorities. From 1934 to 1937, Niemoller was repeatedly arrested and kept in solitary confinement for different lengths of time. In 1937, he was again arrested and put in concentration camps, including Dachau. In 1944, he was moved to a camp in Austria with other political prisoners. The aim was to kill them all before they could be liberated. Fortunately, the camp was liberated by the Allied forces before they could be killed.

At his liberation, he found the German churches deeply disorganized and unsure of what policies to undertake. Leading German theologians who had been his contemporaries had left Germany. Karl Barth (1886 -1968) that Niemoller had known as a professor at Bonn University had left for Switzerland, being a Swiss citizen. Paul Tillich (1886 - 1965) had gone to the USA before the start of the war. Dietrich Bonnhoeffer (1906 -1945) had been killed for his anti-Nazi resistance.

The German Protestants were divided by the zones of occupation, especially between what was to become East Germany and West Germany. Niemoller saw that the first task was reconciliation among the Germans themselves. He opposed the "de-nazification" programs set up by the Allies, maintaining that the churches should not participate. Repentance - as there was a universal, collective guilt - should be an individual examination of conscience and not imposed from outside. He saw that there needed to be all-German reconciliation if Germany was ever to play a positive role in the world society.

He became quickly aware of the dangers of the division between the West and the USSR. In 1952, he went for discussions to the USSR and opposed the re-arming of Western Germany. He again became a minority voice within the German churches.

In 1967 as the US-Vietnam war was increasing, he went to North Vietnam to see on what basis negotiations might be possible. In 1967, President Ho Chi Minh received a number of U.S. and European clergy who were opposed to the U.S. war. The U.S. began its bombing of North Vietnam in February 1965. Although destructive, the bombing had not changed Vietnamese policy. By 1967, however, both the U.S. and North Vietnam felt that lack of contact was potentially dangerous and could lead to greater escalation. Protestant ministers seemed to be a good avenue for contact - opposed to the war but in contact with political leaders in the U.S. and England who might have influence on policy making. Niemoller used his contacts as co-president of the World Council of Churches. However, there is no "fast track" to reconciliation. The war in Vietnam continued until 1975 and reconciliation came even later.

The life of Martin Niemoller is a dramatic reflection of German life from 1914 to the 1970s - a reflection of political currents and intellectual-spiritual movements.

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Note
1) For a good biography, see James Bently. Martin Niemoller, 1892-1984 (New York: Macmillan Free Press, 1984)
For a collection of essays in English of his reconciliation thinking see:
Martin Niemoller. One World or No World (1964)

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Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

Technology – Mind – Health by Vladimir Norov

Ladies and gentlemen,
distinguished colleagues, dear friends, 
It is a pleasure and an honour to join this important gathering devoted to the intersection of technology, the human mind, and public health.  

To this end, my special thanks go to the Global Academy for Future Governance (GAFG) and its global partners consortium (including Modern Diplomacy) – gathered almost 20 speakers of all generations, meridians and professions, and – organised this highly topical and much- needed summit on the future of the human race, enveloped in ever-evolving technology.

In recent years, this triad has moved from an academic question to a central challenge for governments, industries, and societies. 

Today, the ways in which we design, regulate, and apply technologies will increasingly determine not only economic outcomes, but also the psychological resilience and social well-being of entire nations. 

As someone who has spent decades in diplomacy, international cooperation, and now in the development of artificial intelligence ecosystems across Central Asia, I have seen both the immense promise and the profound risks that accompany technological progress.  

The digital revolution has expanded access to knowledge, improved governance, and opened opportunities for millions. 

 At the same time, it has created complex challenges for mental health, social cohesion, and the ethical foundations upon which our societies rest. 

First, let me emphasise that technological development is no longer isolated in the domain of engineers or computer scientists.  

It is a cross-disciplinary endeavour. 

 Artificial intelligence influences behavioural patterns, decision-making, and emotional well-being.  

Digital platforms shape public discourse and can both strengthen and weaken democratic processes.  

And while new medical technologies expand diagnostic capabilities, they also introduce questions of trust, privacy, and equitable access. 

Second, the relationship between technology and the mind has become increasingly asymmetric.  

Machines learn faster, scale instantly, and operate without fatigue. Humans do not. 

 The pace of innovation has begun to surpass the pace of human adaptation.  

This gap is visible not only in education, but also in governance systems and labour markets.  

As leaders, policymakers, and researchers, we must ensure that human capacities—intellectual, emotional, and ethical—remain at the centre of technological development. 

This is where the issue of mental health becomes crucial.  

The World Health Organization now lists mental disorders among the leading causes of disability globally.  

Digital dependence, information saturation, and algorithmic manipulation are emerging factors.  

This brings me to the central issue: mental health. It’s a global crisis, and the digital world is a major contributor.  

We’re seeing the psychological toll of constant connectivity, algorithmic echo chambers, and the anxiety of technological displacement.  

We should not overlook the silent but growing psychological burden created by constant connectivity and the erosion of genuine human contact. 

However, technology—especially AI—can also be part of the solution.  

With proper governance frameworks, AI can strengthen psychological well-being, support early diagnosis of mental disorders, and expand access to quality care in regions where professional resources are limited. 

 In Central Asia, for example, digital tools are already improving telemedicine, multilingual education platforms, and data-driven public health strategies. 

But for such progress to be sustainable, we need shared principles.  

Allow me to highlight three: 

To get this right, we need a new playbook, built on three core pillars: 

First, human-centred design.Technologies must be evaluated not only for efficiency but for their impact on human cognition, behavioural health, and social relationships.  

We must resist the temptation to adopt systems simply because they are powerful or fashionable. 

Second, ethical and inclusive governance. 

Countries at different stages of development should not be left behind. Without inclusive frameworks, digital inequality will deepen, leading to new forms of marginalisation and instability.  

We need global standards and cooperation to ensure no country, no community, is left behind.  

This isn't just about fairness; it's about global stability. 

Third, strengthening resilience. 

Resilience is not merely the capacity to withstand shocks. 

 It is the ability to maintain mental integrity, critical thinking, and emotional well-being amid rapid technological change. 

 This requires interdisciplinary education, digital literacy, and policies that safeguard the mental health of young generations. 

Ladies and gentlemen, 

Our legacy will not be defined by the technology we invent, but by the wisdom we show in governing it.  

The goal is a future where technology doesn't replace us, but elevates us. Where it doesn't overwhelm the mind, but strengthens it. 

Our era is defined not only by technological innovation but by the responsibility to guide it wisely.  

If we succeed, technology will amplify human potential, not diminish it.  

It will reinforce mental health, not compromise it.  

It will empower societies to solve problems, rather than create new ones. 

I believe that the dialogue we have today—among scientists, policymakers, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders—is essential.  

No single institution and no single nation can address these challenges alone.  

But together, we can shape a future in which technological development is aligned with human dignity, ethical values, and social well-being. 

Let us approach this future with confidence, cooperation, and a commitment to placing the human mind at the centre of technological progress. 

Thank you. 

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Vladimir Norov, Foreign Minister of Uzbekistan (2006-2010, 2022), SCO Secretary General (2019-21).

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The Technology–Mind–Healthsummit organised by the Global Academy for Future Governance (GAFG) on 4 December 2025, was a half-day global symposia examining how technological advancement affects mental health and human well-being. It brought together around a dozen speakers, combining senior policymakers, academics, technology and mental-health experts, alongside youth contributors, to promote a human-centred and ethical approach to digital innovation. It also included the Essay competition for the most vulnerable: youth cohort – whereas the youngest participant was 11 years old.

The speakers represented a wide geographic spread, including Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, and the Middle East, ensuring a truly global perspective. The event was also strongly cross-generational, featuring experienced leaders and experts together with younger voices and students from different countries, highlighting how technology’s impact on mental health spans generations and cultures alike.

Its other name is colonization by Robert Perez

There is a particular arrogance to empire when it insists it no longer exists. The language has changed, the uniforms are gone, and the maps look cleaner, but the instinct remains the same. When the White House reportedly begins quiet conversations with oil companies about Venezuelan crude, it is not diplomacy. It is not humanitarian concern. It is the opening move of modern colonization, dressed in corporate suits and justified with familiar rhetoric about stability, markets and security.

This is not about helping Venezuela recover, nor about easing global energy prices for struggling households. It is about control without responsibility. About extracting value while outsourcing chaos. The old empires sent governors and gunboats. The new one sends consultants, contracts, and compliance requirements. The result is the same: a weakened country turned into a resource corridor, its sovereignty slowly hollowed out while officials in Washington congratulate themselves for being pragmatic.

Once oil is back on the table, the rest of the playbook follows naturally. Camps, politely renamed “processing centers,” for the unwanted migrants whose displacement this same system accelerates. Agreements for short-term labor visas that promise opportunity but deliver precarity. Workers imported when needed, discarded when inconvenient, and always kept just temporary enough to never demand belonging. It is slavery with paperwork, exploitation with a press release.

We are told this is realism. That borders must be managed, markets must function, and voters must be reassured. But realism for whom? Certainly not for the Venezuelan farmer watching foreign firms profit from land he can no longer farm. Not for the migrant housed behind fences because their labor is useful but their presence is not. And not for the American worker told to accept lower wages and fewer protections in the name of competitiveness.

What makes this moment especially corrosive is how normal it has become. Camps no longer shock. Cheap labor schemes are debated like technical adjustments. Entire populations are reduced to “flows” and “pressures,” abstract problems to be optimized. The moral cost is carefully excluded from the spreadsheet. This is how societies slide into cruelty without ever announcing it.

The United States likes to imagine itself as a reluctant superpower, dragged into global messes by circumstance. But there is nothing reluctant about negotiating access to another nation’s resources while that nation remains politically and economically strangled. There is nothing accidental about designing migration systems that benefit corporations while breaking human beings into manageable units of work.

And what of consent? Not the kind manufactured through desperate governments or elite agreements, but the consent of the American public. How much will citizens tolerate being implicated in this system? How long before they question why policies carried out “in their name” consistently favor oil companies, private contractors, and security firms, while delivering insecurity and moral erosion at home?

History suggests there is a limit. Empires rarely collapse because of foreign resistance alone. They rot internally, from cynicism, exhaustion, and the quiet realization that the story no longer matches reality. When people sense that ideals have become branding exercises, trust evaporates. Participation turns to resentment. Silence turns to anger.

This is not an argument for isolation or naïveté. It is an argument for honesty. If the United States is choosing a path of resource extraction, labor exploitation, and managed disposability, it should at least stop pretending this is about freedom or democracy. Call it what it is. Admit the tradeoffs. Allow citizens to decide whether this is truly the country they want to be.

The danger is not only what is done abroad, but what is learned at home. When a nation grows comfortable treating others as expendable, it eventually applies the same logic inward. Surveillance justified at borders migrates into cities. Emergency powers become routine. The line between citizen and subject blurs. People are told to be grateful they are not on the other side of the fence, and fear replaces solidarity as the organizing principle of politics.

If there is a next move, it will not be announced loudly. It will arrive as another policy tweak, another pilot program, another necessary compromise. That is how modern empires move: incrementally, until resistance feels futile. The question is whether Americans will notice before the cost is irreversible, or whether they will wake up one day to discover that exploitation abroad has rewritten the social contract at home.

The illusion of an imminent fall by Fahad Kline

To expect the Iranian regime to collapse because of demonstrations and internal weaknesses, by comparing it similar authoritarian regimes of the region of the past, is a dangerous miscalculation. It is comforting even seductive, to believe that history moves in neat patterns, that popular anger inevitably topples entrenched power, that corruption hollows out any state beyond repair, that fear eventually dissolves in the face of courage. But Iran is not Iraq and the Islamic Republic is not merely another brittle dictatorship waiting for the right push. It is something far more deeply embedded, far more entangled with the daily life, psychology and social structures of its people.

The comparison with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq is particularly misleading. Saddam ruled through naked coercion, tribal alliances and a military machine that ultimately depended on loyalty bought with money and fear. When that machine cracked, the state collapsed with it. The Iranian system, by contrast, is not just a government; it is an ecosystem. It has spent more than four decades weaving itself into education, welfare, religion, business, media and even private morality. It does not merely govern society. It inhabits it.

The ayatollahs did not build a regime that floats above the population like a foreign object. They cultivated one that sinks roots into neighborhoods, mosques, charities, universities and families. The Basij is not only a paramilitary force; it is also a social ladder for the rural poor, a source of identity for young men with few alternatives and a gateway to jobs, loans and respect. State-linked foundations distribute food, housing and scholarships. Clerical networks mediate disputes, arrange marriages and provide a sense of moral order. For millions of Iranians, the regime is not an abstract oppressor but the system through which daily life is navigated.

This does not mean the system is loved. It is resented, mocked and cursed with impressive creativity. It is blamed for inflation, isolation, corruption and the slow suffocation of personal freedom. Protest slogans have become bolder, angrier, more explicit. The courage of young Iranians, especially women, is undeniable. Yet resentment is not the same as revolutionary capacity. A society can be deeply unhappy and still profoundly constrained, fragmented and risk-averse.

One of the Islamic Republic’s greatest strengths is its mastery of controlled pluralism. It allows just enough debate, factionalism and ritualized dissent to release pressure without surrendering power. Reformists, conservatives, pragmatists, hardliners, these labels give the impression of choice and motion, while the core remains untouched. Elections are staged not to transfer authority, but to periodically renew the illusion that authority can be negotiated with. The result is a population trained to hope narrowly, complain loudly and act cautiously.

There is also the matter of fear, which in Iran is not crude but calibrated. The state does not need to terrorize everyone all the time. It only needs to make examples, unpredictably and selectively. Prison sentences, disappearances, sudden executions, the quiet destruction of families through blacklisting and social exclusion, these are enough to discipline millions. The message is subtle but clear: protest is possible, resistance is admirable but survival is mandatory.

Unlike Saddam’s Iraq, Iran also possesses an ideological spine that still holds, however crookedly. The revolution of 1979 is not ancient history. It is a living myth, retold in schools, commemorated in murals, revived every year in ceremonies and speeches. The regime presents itself not just as a state, but as the guardian of a cosmic narrative, resistance against Western domination, Shiite martyrdom against injustice, dignity against humiliation. Even those who reject this story are forced to speak its language. It defines the grammar of political life.

Economic misery alone will not undo this architecture. Sanctions, inflation and unemployment erode legitimacy but they also deepen dependence. When the private sector collapses, state-linked institutions expand. When opportunities shrink, ideological loyalty becomes currency. Hardship does not always radicalize; it often exhausts.

This is why predictions of imminent collapse resurface every few years and are proven wrong every time. Outsiders see the crowds, the slogans, the viral videos and mistake visibility for momentum. They underestimate how thoroughly the regime has learned to absorb shock. It bends, retreats tactically, sacrifices a few officials, adjusts the volume of repression and then resumes. Like a seasoned boxer, it knows how to lean into the punch.

None of this means the system is eternal. It is aging, sclerotic, riddled with corruption, and increasingly disconnected from the aspirations of its own youth. Its religious authority is thinner than it once was. Its economic model is unsustainable. Its succession question looms like an unspoken storm. But decay is not collapse and stagnation is not surrender.

Real change in Iran, if it comes, is more likely to be slow, messy and internal, a transformation of the system rather than its sudden demolition. It will emerge from generational shifts, elite fractures, economic reconfiguration, and the gradual erosion of ideological faith. It will not look like Baghdad in 2003 or Tehran in 1979. It will be quieter, more ambiguous, and far less cinematic.

To believe otherwise is to misunderstand the nature of the Islamic Republic and, more importantly, the reality of those who live under it. Hope is not analysis. Anger is not strategy. And history does not repeat itself simply because we wish it would.

A different kind of fire in the dark by John Kato

There are moments in a country’s life when politics stops being about tax brackets and highway funding and becomes something rawer, a fight over the meaning of belonging, power, and fear. America is drifting into one of those moments now. Trump’s shadow still stretches long and thick over the public imagination, and MAGA ideology, simple, angry, intoxicating, keeps teaching millions to confuse dominance with strength and cruelty with truth. In this atmosphere, it is easy to believe that only louder demagogues or more polished cynics can survive. Yet figures like Zohran Mamdani suggest something more unsettling to authoritarians: a different moral rhythm altogether.

Mamdani does not look or sound like the strongmen that history tells us to expect in dangerous times. He is soft-spoken, intellectually restless, shaped by migration and movement rather than nostalgia for a mythic past. And that is precisely why he matters. Authoritarian politics feeds on emotional shortcuts: fear of strangers, reverence for hierarchy, longing for lost greatness. Mamdani’s politics interrupts that circuitry. He speaks of housing as dignity, not charity. Of public safety as community, not vengeance. Of democracy as a daily practice, not a brand to sell at rallies. These are not radical ideas on paper. In practice, they are subversive.

The MAGA worldview thrives on a story of siege “you are under attack, and only I can protect you.” It reduces the nation to a bunker mentality. Mamdani offers a competing story, one of shared vulnerability and shared responsibility. That may sound fragile in an age of roaring slogans, but fragility can be disarming. It asks citizens to grow up emotionally, not regress into tribal reflexes. That alone is revolutionary in a political culture addicted to outrage.

His influence will not come from overpowering Trumpism in sheer volume. It will come from modelling a politics that refuses to mirror its enemy. Every authoritarian movement secretly wants its opponents to become caricatures, screaming, dismissive, elitist, or cynical, so that repression feels justified. Mamdani’s calm insistence on structural justice makes that harder. He does not argue that MAGA voters are monsters. He argues, implicitly, that they are neighbors trapped inside a cruel story about how the world works.

This is dangerous to authoritarianism. Tyranny depends on emotional simplification. Mamdani complicates the emotional landscape. He introduces doubt where certainty is demanded, empathy where rage is profitable. He talks about material conditions, rent, debt, healthcare, transit, not as technical problems but as moral failures of a society that claims to value freedom. In doing so, he exposes the hollowness at the heart of MAGA economics: the promise of dignity through dominance rather than security through solidarity.

There is also the symbolic power of his presence. A Muslim socialist immigrant in American public life is a living contradiction of the “real America” myth. His existence quietly refutes the idea that identity must be narrow to be legitimate. He embodies the future that authoritarian nostalgia fears: plural, messy, unclassifiable, uninterested in racial hierarchy as destiny.

Critics will say that this kind of politics is naive, that authoritarianism cannot be reasoned with, only crushed. But history is not so simple. Authoritarian movements often collapse not just when defeated, but when they lose their narrative monopoly. Mamdani chips away at that monopoly by offering a vision of courage that is not loud, of leadership that is not theatrical, of patriotism that does not require enemies.

His language is especially important. Trumpism survives by turning politics into entertainment and grievance into identity. Mamdani refuses to perform outrage as a personality trait. He speaks like someone who expects adults to think, not chant. That alone can recalibrate what people imagine politics is for. Not to vent, not to humiliate, but to organize life more fairly.

Will this convert hardened MAGA loyalists overnight? Of course not. But influence is not always about conversion. Sometimes it is about keeping an alternative alive long enough for history to need it. In periods of democratic decay, the most powerful act can be to demonstrate that cruelty is not inevitable and that compromise is not weakness.

If Trumpism is a fire fed by fear, Mamdani represents a different kind of flame: slower, steadier, meant to light rooms rather than burn them down. He does not promise greatness. He promises repair. And repair is not glamorous. It does not fit on hats. It does not thrill crowds the way a villain does.

But repair is how societies survive themselves.

In an America drifting toward the theater of authoritarian certainty, Zohran Mamdani’s greatest influence may be this: reminding the country that democracy is not supposed to feel like war. It is supposed to feel difficult, unfinished, and human.

Walk the talk 26#001 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

The term “talk the talk, walk the walk” is a phrase in English
that means a person should support what they say, not just with words,
but also through action. Actions speak louder than words.

For more Walk the talk, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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