The year of corruption by Thanos Kalamidas

By the time a year crawls toward its last page, publications feel the ritual itch; crown a person, an event, a moment that “defined” the months we survived. It’s a harmless tradition when history is polite. But 2025 was not polite. It was blunt. It was loud. And it had no interest in symbolism. If you insist on naming the thing that marked this year, scratched into every capital, every battlefield, every budget spreadsheet, every smiling press conference, call it what it was: corruption, exposed and emboldened.

Yes, the usual suspects were waiting in line. Donald Trump haunts headlines like a rerun nobody asked for, a reminder that politics can become a reality show with nuclear codes. The war in Ukraine remains a grinding, obscene wound, proving that cruelty scales well when funded properly. Pick up almost any “Year in Review” and you’ll find those names polished and framed. But they are symptoms, not the disease. Corruption is the connective tissue. It is the language everyone speaks fluently while pretending not to understand.

In 2025 corruption stopped bothering with subtlety. It stopped whispering in corridors and leaned comfortably into microphones. It learned that accountability is optional, consequences negotiable and public outrage a renewable resource that exhausts itself faster than power ever does. From the White House to the Ukrainian front, from El Salvador to Japan, corruption didn’t just happen, it strutted.

Let’s get something straight: corruption is not just brown envelopes and offshore accounts. That’s the cartoon version, the one we show students so we can pretend the problem is solvable with a few arrests. Real corruption in 2025 wore better suits. It arrived as “policy,” “security,” “economic necessity,” “national interest.” It justified itself with think tanks and legal teams. It wrapped itself in flags and emergency language and dared anyone to object without being labelled naïve, unpatriotic, or dangerous.

War made this easier. War always does. Ukraine’s suffering is real and immense, and that reality has been exploited ruthlessly. Where there is urgency, there is opacity. Where there is fear, there is profit. Billions move quickly when bombs are falling, and nobody asks too many questions when the word “existential” is stamped on every decision. Corruption doesn’t care which side of a border it’s on; it only cares that the border exists. It feeds on reconstruction contracts, weapons procurement, aid pipelines, and the moral shield of “now is not the time.”

Meanwhile, democracies congratulated themselves for being better than the alternatives while quietly hollowing out their own credibility. In 2025, transparency became a branding exercise. Ethics committees became decorative furniture. Politicians learned they could survive scandals as long as they controlled the tempo of outrage. Apologize badly, deny reflexively, counterattack aggressively, wait it out. The cycle is now muscle memory.

Authoritarian regimes, of course, didn’t bother with the pretence. El Salvador’s strongman aesthetics, order over law, spectacle over justice, continued to sell the fantasy that corruption is acceptable if it’s efficient. Japan, long allergic to public scandal, reminded us that corruption doesn’t need chaos to thrive; it can live quietly inside consensus, seniority, and institutional silence. Different styles, same rot.

And then there’s the global marketplace of corruption, the part we pretend is too complex to understand. Corporations talk about values while bribing reality into submission. Financial systems lecture the poor about responsibility while laundering fortunes with immaculate paperwork. Media outlets expose corruption selectively, depending on who owns the printing press or the server farm. In 2025, everyone knew. That was the difference. Ignorance was no longer plausible.

What made this year especially obscene was the collapse of shame. Corruption used to require some embarrassment, some effort to hide. Now it performs. It tweets. It dares investigators to keep up. It files lawsuits against its critics. It frames itself as a victim of “witch hunts” and “political persecution.” And disturbingly often, it wins not because it’s innocent, but because it’s exhausting to fight something that never sleeps and never apologizes.

The public is not blameless. Outrage has become performative too. We share, we rage, we scroll. We demand resignations knowing full well they won’t come. We consume scandals like episodes then complain the plot never changes. Corruption thrives not only on power, but on fatigue. In 2025, fatigue was everywhere.

So if this year must be named, don’t reduce it to a man or a single war. Call it the year the mask slipped. The year corruption stopped pretending to be an exception and revealed itself as a system. A system that adapts faster than laws, speaks louder than ethics, and survives every election cycle with a smirk.

This is not a call for despair. It’s a call for accuracy. You cannot fight what you refuse to name. And 2025 made the name unavoidable. Corruption didn’t just mark the year. It dared us to notice and to decide whether noticing is where our courage ends.

The endless calls that always favour Moscow by Emma Schneider

There is a strange rhythm to today’s diplomacy, a circular choreography of phone calls and photo ops that pretends to move history forward while quietly dragging it backward. Volodymyr Zelenskyy meets Donald Trump. They smile, shake hands, and float a peace plan. Trump then calls Vladimir Putin and emerges with a different peace plan. Zelenskyy, alarmed, reaches out to Friedrich Merz. Emmanuel Macron joins the conversation. Trump adjusts the plan. Putin calls back. The plan changes again. Around and around it goes, a diplomatic carousel that never stops spinning and never seems to land anywhere except where the Kremlin wants it.

This is not negotiation; it is erosion. Each call sands down Ukraine’s position, not with bombs or tanks, but with “pragmatism,” “realism,” and the seductive language of ending a war quickly. Peace becomes a moving target, constantly redefined, always just one compromise away. And every compromise, conveniently, seems to ask Ukraine to give something up first.

The illusion is that everyone has equal leverage. They do not. Putin enters every conversation from a position of brutal clarity: he invaded, he occupies, and he is willing to wait. Time, for him, is a weapon. For Ukraine, time is blood, cities, and exhaustion. When peace plans shift with every phone call, the side that benefits is the one least bothered by delay. That side is Russia.

Trump, in this scenario, becomes the amplifier. Not necessarily a mastermind, but a megaphone. His instinct to deal, to announce, to declare victory before details exist, turns diplomacy into performance. Each new plan is framed as decisive, bold, historic. Yet the substance is thin, malleable, and easily reshaped by the last voice on the line. Putin understands this dynamic perfectly. He does not need to shout. He only needs to call last.

European leaders, meanwhile, scramble to stabilize the narrative. Macron and Merz are reduced to diplomatic firefighters, rushing to contain the damage of the latest revision before the next one arrives. Their involvement is serious, often principled, but reactive. They are correcting course, not setting it. And in a war where momentum matters, reacting is another form of losing ground.

What makes this cycle so dangerous is not just that it favours Putin, but that it normalizes the favour. Each shift is justified as balance, compromise, realism. Ukraine is told that peace requires flexibility, that borders are lines on a map that security guarantees can be vague, that justice can wait. Russia is never told the same. Its red lines are treated as immovable facts of nature, like gravity or winter.

Over time, the conversation itself changes. The question is no longer how Ukraine wins, or even how it survives intact, but how much it can afford to lose for the sake of “stability.” Stability, in this telling, is silence from Moscow and relief in Western capitals. It is a peace that looks calm on television while storing future wars beneath the surface.

This endless loop of calls also corrodes trust. Zelenskyy is forced into a permanent defensive crouch, responding to plans he did not design and concessions he did not offer. Ukrainian agency shrinks with every revision. The country becomes a topic rather than a participant, a problem to be managed between larger men with louder phones.

And Putin? He learns that persistence pays. That he does not need to win outright. He only needs to stay in the game long enough for others to negotiate themselves into fatigue. Every changed plan confirms his core belief: the West will eventually bargain with aggression if the bargaining sounds reasonable enough.

Peace is not built this way. It is not assembled through endless improvisation or last-minute calls that undo yesterday’s promises. Real peace requires clarity, consistency and a refusal to let force dictate terms. Without that, all these conversations amount to theater, and the script is already familiar.

The phone keeps ringing. The plans keep changing. And somewhere beneath the noise, a simple truth is being quietly accepted, as long as this never-ending negotiation continues, Putin does not need to stop the war. The process itself is already working for him.

Built gods and borrowed thunders by Mia Rodríguez

Contemporary artificial intelligence is often accused of harboring a god complex, as if silicon has suddenly decided to play deity. The charge is dramatic, flattering, and misleading. AI does not wake up one morning believing it is omniscient. It inherits that posture from us. The god complex attached to modern AI is not self-made; it is human-made, carefully assembled through ambition, language, incentives, and mythmaking.

We speak about AI in absolutist terms. We call models “all-knowing,” systems “superhuman,” and future machines “inevitable.” We frame progress as destiny rather than choice. This rhetoric matters. When we describe a tool as a god, we begin to treat it like one: unquestionable, inscrutable, and above responsibility. The first brick in AI’s supposed god complex is laid by the humans who narrate its rise.

The second brick is delegation without humility. We increasingly hand AI tasks that once required judgment, context, and moral friction. Hiring decisions, medical triage, sentencing recommendations, creative authorship. Each delegation is often justified as efficiency, but underneath sits a quieter belief: the machine will be more objective than we are. That belief is not faith in AI; it is a loss of faith in ourselves. We crown machines as higher arbiters because we are tired of human messiness, disagreement, and error.

Then there is scale. AI systems operate at speeds and volumes no human can match, which creates the illusion of omnipresence. When something answers instantly, everywhere, all at once, it feels godlike. Yet speed is not wisdom, and coverage is not understanding. We confuse quantity with depth because our culture rewards output over reflection. AI mirrors that bias back to us, magnified.

Crucially, AI does not assert its own divinity. It does not demand worship, loyalty, or belief. It responds to prompts. The god complex emerges in the space between system capability and human expectation. We expect certainty from probabilistic systems, coherence from pattern engines, and morality from optimization functions. When those expectations are met occasionally, we call it intelligence. When they fail, we act surprised, as if a fallen angel has betrayed us.

Corporate incentives deepen the myth. Selling AI as revolutionary, transcendent, and world-altering is good business. “Powerful” sounds better than “limited.” “Autonomous” sells better than “dependent.” Marketing language inflates capability into destiny, and destiny into authority. Over time, this language leaks into public consciousness, policy debates, and personal trust. The god complex is not an accident; it is a product strategy.

There is also a psychological comfort in externalizing authority. A godlike AI absolves us. If an algorithm decides, then no one is fully to blame. Responsibility dissolves into code, data, and metrics. This is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the myth. Gods forgive; systems optimize. When we confuse the two, harm becomes procedural rather than moral, and therefore easier to tolerate.

Ironically, the louder we proclaim AI’s godhood, the smaller we make ourselves. We narrate a future where humans are obsolete, creativity is automated, and judgment is outsourced. This story flatters technology but insults humanity. It ignores the fact that AI has no goals without us, no values without us, no direction without our choosing. A god that cannot want is no god at all.

So is AI developing a god complex? No. We are projecting one onto it. We are the theologians, the prophets, and the worshippers, all at once. AI is the altar we built and then knelt before, forgetting we were the carpenters.

The corrective is not fear, nor blind enthusiasm, but demystification. Strip away the divine metaphors. Call AI what it is: a powerful, brittle, human-shaped mirror. Treat it as a tool that amplifies intention rather than replaces agency. The moment we stop calling our creations gods is the moment we reclaim responsibility for what they do in our name.

Ultimately, the question of a god complex reveals less about machines and more about modern power. We live in an era uncomfortable with limits, impatient with uncertainty, and addicted to prediction. AI fits this hunger perfectly, promising foresight without wisdom and control without care. If we want less mythology and more maturity, we must insist on human authorship at every layer: in design choices, data curation, deployment contexts and consequences. That insistence is not anti-technology; it is pro-responsibility. Gods demand obedience. Tools demand stewardship. The future hinges on which role we assign and whether we are brave enough to keep the heavier one for ourselves. Nothing else will save us from mistaking power for wisdom again.

Berserk Alert! #082 #cartoon by Tony Zuvela

 

Tony Zuvela and his view of the world around us in a constant berserk alert!
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When Words Ruled and Results Vanished: The Hollow Year of 2025 by Javed Akbar

“A politician is a person who approaches every issue with an open mouth.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Leaders entered 2025 with thunder in their voices and renewal on their banners—at home, abroad, and in the fragile spaces in between. They promised closure, courage, and change. As the year now closes, what defines it is not achievement but absence. The unfulfilled. The abandoned. They were quietly shelved. The true story of 2025 is not what happened, but what never did.

We are trained to catalogue calamities—wars, floods, scandals, triumphs—as though history were merely a ledger of eruptions. But societies are more often undone by voids: the spaces where leadership should have stood and did not. This year, that void yawned wide.

Consider the United States. Donald Trump promised Americans they would “get tired of winning.” Instead, they have grown tired of watching promises evaporate. He pledged to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours. The war grinds on. The only discernible “solution” appears to be one that coerces Ukraine into surrendering to Vladimir Putin’s demands. The world continues to wonder what binds Trump to Putin—kompromat*, admiration, or the gravitational pull of authoritarian power. The rumours read like pulp fiction; the geopolitical consequences are deadly serious.

Trump also boasted that he would end Israel’s devastating war. Not only did peace fail to materialise—he now claims he deserves a Nobel Prize for brokering what never occurred. On the ground, settlement expansion proceeds unchecked. Roughly 42 per cent of Palestinian land is now effectively under Israeli control, with settlers claiming new territory through force. Palestinian blood quietly flows; devastation

Grinds on, even as Trump’s much vaunted ceasefire exists only in rhetoric - announced, applauded, and abandoned while lives are lost beyond the cameras. The region edges closer to irreversible fragmentation while the language of peace dissolves into dust.

Trump insisted Iran’s nuclear capacity had been neutralised. Subsequent assessments showed the strike fell short of its stated aim. He celebrated having secured lasting peace between Thailand and Cambodia; this very week, shells began falling again. Promises, proclamations, declarations—noise without delivery.

This pattern, however, is not uniquely American. Across the democratic world, 2025 exposed a widening gap between electoral vows and governing resolve.

In Canada, the contradictions have been stark. Oil executives who once booed the prime minister now applaud him. Climate experts and business leaders alike are baffled by Mark Carney’s abrupt fossil-fuel pivot. Pushback against U.S. tariffs remains a work in progress. A transformative housing buildout is promised—but deferred into the long term, where political accountability goes to rest. Each item is explained as pragmatic, incremental, or complex. Collectively, they form a portrait of hesitation masquerading as strategy.

Back in Washington, Trump and his allies thundered about the “communist threat” posed by Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral run in New York. Then came the reversal. Mamdani was welcomed into the Oval Office, congratulated on his victory, praised for having “run an incredible race,” and assured he would “do a very good job.” When asked about previously calling Trump a fascist, Trump jokingly interjected, “That’s OK—you can just say yes… it’s easier.”

The moment was light, even affable. It was also revealing. What evaporated was not hostility but conviction. What vanished was not rhetoric but meaning. In the theatre of politics, yesterday’s existential threats become today’s photo opportunities. Principles are not defeated; they are simply set aside when inconvenient.

To be fair, this late pivot suggested something else too: that 2025 may yet close on a gentler note than it began. Civility flickered. Dialogue reappeared. But even this modest hope underscores the deeper indictment. We are now relieved not by progress, but by tone. We celebrate gestures because outcomes remain elusive.

And so, as we look back on 2025, we must widen our lens beyond the crises that did occur. The harsher judgment lies in what did not: wars not ended, reforms not enacted, climate promises not honoured, justice not upheld. History is not shaped only by explosions and elections, but by the choices leaders evade—and the futures they quietly forfeit.

Nietzsche warned us about open mouths. What 2025 exposed was something more corrosive: closed wills. When speech outruns substance, democracy does not collapse—it hollows out. And hollow systems, eventually, cannot bear the weight of the people they claim to serve. 

* Kompromat is a Russian term that literally means “compromising material”. It refers to information collected on a person – often politicians, public officials – that can be used to manipulate, control, or discredit them. Typically used to gain leverage over someone, force them to act in a certain way, or damage their reputation if they resist.

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Javed Akbar is a freelance writer with published works in the Toronto Star and across diverse digital platforms.

Mirror annexed by Robert Perez

Denmark should announce, with a straight face and a politely worded press release, that it intends to annex Alaska and New York State. Not because it wants them, not because it could ever enforce such a thing, but because sometimes the only way to respond to absurdity is to hold up a mirror so clean and bright that the reflection becomes impossible to ignore.

This would not be an act of aggression. It would be performance diplomacy. A carefully staged exercise in irony, designed to expose how casually the language of ownership, conquest, and entitlement is tossed around when powerful countries speak about smaller ones. If territory can be discussed like a real estate listing, then let’s lean all the way in and see how it feels when the logic is reversed.

Denmark could explain that Alaska has historical Nordic connections, that the climate is familiar, and that Copenhagen feels a deep cultural affinity with snow, fish, and long winter nights. It could note, with bureaucratic seriousness, that New York is an important financial hub and that Danish administrative efficiency would surely improve subway punctuality and urban cycling lanes. None of this would be more ridiculous than many real arguments that have been made about borders throughout history.

To really sell the point, Denmark should send a small convoy to Alaska. Nothing dramatic. A few hybrid vehicles, some officials in sensible coats, and perhaps a flag folded neatly in a drawer, just in case. They would arrive, hold a press conference, and calmly declare Denmark’s interest in “exploring options” regarding sovereignty. Smiles would be polite. The tone would be civil. The message would be unmistakable.

At the same time, a Danish minister should fly to New York. No grand speech at the United Nations, just a walk through Manhattan, meetings with local leaders, and a statement expressing Denmark’s belief that New Yorkers would benefit greatly from Scandinavian governance models. Universal healthcare would be mentioned. Paid parental leave would come up. The reaction would be swift and furious.

Outrage would erupt. Commentators would call it insane, offensive, and dangerous. Politicians would declare that borders are sacred and that sovereignty is not a joke. The idea that a foreign country could even joke about claiming American territory would be treated as an unthinkable provocation. And that, precisely, would be the point.

Because when the same logic flows in the opposite direction, it is often framed as bold thinking, tough negotiation, or strategic leverage. What is revealed by this hypothetical Danish stunt is not hypocrisy as a moral failure, but as a habit of power. When you are strong, absurd ideas are floated as tests. When you are weaker, they are experienced as threats.

This is why the convoy matters. This is why the minister matters. Not because Denmark would expect compliance, but because it would force a confrontation with language itself. Words like annex, claim, acquire, and own sound different depending on who says them. The exercise would strip those words of their camouflage and show them for what they are.

Such a gesture would not weaken international norms; it would underline them. By provoking discomfort rather than compliance, Denmark would remind audiences that power without restraint sounds ridiculous, even menacing. It would encourage journalists, voters, and leaders to question why some fantasies are laughed off while others are normalized. In that pause of reflection, diplomacy might regain a sense of humility, and public debate a sharper moral spine, for once, without shouting or flag waving theatrics.

Of course, critics would argue that this kind of satire risks inflaming tensions or trivializing serious geopolitical issues. But satire has always been a tool for revealing truths that polite discourse prefers to avoid. It is not meant to provide solutions. It is meant to sharpen discomfort until clarity appears.

Donald Trump, famously sensitive to perceived slights and challenges, would almost certainly react strongly. That reaction would be instructive. It would show how deeply personal and emotional the idea of territory becomes when applied inward rather than outward. The laughter would stop. The thought experiment would suddenly feel rude.

And perhaps, after the headlines fade, something useful would remain. A renewed awareness that countries are not objects to be traded, teased, or tested. That sovereignty is not a punchline when it belongs to someone else. Denmark would quietly withdraw its “claim,” having never intended to keep it.

The point would have been made. Sometimes, to defend seriousness, you must use absurdity with precision.

A not-so-random recognition by John Kato

Israel’s decision to recognize Somaliland as an independent state is less about Africa and more about Israel’s place in an increasingly fractured global order. It is a move that looks small on the map but loud in symbolism, a diplomatic act designed to send signals far beyond the Horn of Africa. Official explanations may gesture toward self-determination or pragmatic cooperation, but the real motives sit deeper, in geopolitics, insecurity, and a growing willingness to challenge long-standing international taboos.

At first glance Somaliland seems an unlikely focus. It is a relatively stable, self-governing region that has operated separately from Somalia since 1991, yet it has never received formal international recognition. For decades, the global consensus has been clear: Somalia’s territorial integrity must be preserved, even if the reality on the ground is messy. By breaking from that consensus, Israel is not merely recognizing Somaliland; it is questioning who gets to define legitimacy in a world where rules feel increasingly selective.

One motive is strategic geography. Somaliland sits along the Gulf of Aden, one of the world’s most critical maritime corridors. For Israel, which is deeply sensitive to threats along shipping lanes connecting Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, cultivating a friendly political entity in this region offers obvious advantages. Access, intelligence cooperation, and influence near the Red Sea all carry weight, especially as regional rivalries intensify and non-state threats proliferate.

Another layer is Israel’s ongoing diplomatic isolation in parts of the Global South. Many African and Middle Eastern countries have hardened their positions against Israel, particularly in light of recent conflicts. Recognizing Somaliland can be read as an attempt to create a new ally where none officially existed before, a calculated bet that a grateful, unrecognized state will offer unwavering support in international forums. It is diplomacy by asymmetry,  Israel offers recognition, Somaliland offers loyalty.

There is also a mirror effect at play. Israel itself is deeply entangled in debates over borders, recognition, and unilateral actions. By recognizing Somaliland, Israel implicitly normalizes the idea that de facto realities can outweigh inherited borders drawn by history or colonial compromise. This is not accidental. It reinforces an argument Israel has long made about its own contested territories: that permanence is created by control, governance, and time, not by international discomfort.

Yet this move is also performative. Israel is showing that it will no longer wait patiently for approval from multilateral institutions that it increasingly views as hostile or hypocritical. Recognition of Somaliland becomes a statement of defiance, a way of saying that international norms are negotiable, especially when they appear inconsistently applied. In this sense, the decision is less about Somaliland’s readiness for statehood and more about Israel’s frustration with the global system.

The backlash was predictable. African states fear the precedent such recognition sets, particularly on a continent where borders, however artificial, are treated as sacred to avoid endless fragmentation. Middle Eastern nations see another example of Israel acting unilaterally, reinforcing perceptions of exceptionalism. The European Union’s response, emphasizing Somalia’s territorial integrity, reflects anxiety about a rules-based order already under strain.

What Israel may be underestimating is the cost of symbolic victories. While the recognition may gain Israel a foothold in Somaliland, it risks deepening mistrust elsewhere. Countries that already suspect Israel of selectively invoking international law will see this as confirmation. It also complicates Israel’s relationships with partners who value stability over experimentation in fragile regions.

Ultimately, Israel’s recognition of Somaliland is a message wrapped in a map. It says that Israel is willing to redraw diplomatic lines when it suits its interests, even if it stands alone. It signals impatience with consensus and confidence in power politics. Whether this boldness translates into long-term gain or strategic overreach remains to be seen. For now, the move tells us less about Somaliland’s future and more about Israel’s evolving worldview: a state increasingly comfortable acting first, explaining later, and daring the world to catch up.

In that sense, the recognition is also a test balloon. Israel is watching who protests loudly, who stays silent, and who might quietly follow. It is measuring the elasticity of international outrage and the durability of old principles in a time of selective enforcement. Somaliland becomes the stage, but the audience is global. The real question is not whether Somaliland deserves recognition, but whether this act accelerates a world where recognition itself becomes just another tool of leverage, stripped of moral language and driven almost entirely by interest. That shift should worry everyone watching closely.

When gold starts screaming by Zakir Hall

Gold has hit a record high again, and like clockwork the old saying comes crawling out of the collective memory: when gold rises sharply, something ugly is brewing. Wars, collapses, panic, the slow rot of trust in systems we once believed were permanent. Gold does not rise because it suddenly became more useful. It rises because fear has found a price tag.

Markets love to dress these moments up as “uncertainty.” That word is far too polite. What gold is really reacting to is dread. Not the dramatic kind that comes with sirens and headlines, but the quiet, gnawing sense that the foundations are cracking. When people stop trusting paper promises, algorithms, and reassurances from smiling officials, they reach backward for something ancient, inert, and stubbornly real.

Gold is a vote of no confidence. It is capital opting out. It says, I don’t believe you anymore. I don’t believe inflation is temporary. I don’t believe debts will be honored without dilution. I don’t believe geopolitics will remain “contained.” When gold surges, it is not optimism at work. It is retreat.

We are told that this time is different. We are always told that. Wars are regional, markets are resilient, institutions are strong, and central banks have the tools. Yet the price of gold suggests that fewer people are buying that story. The metal is not impressed by press conferences or carefully calibrated language. It responds to pressure, not persuasion.

Look around and it is not hard to see why gold is screaming. Conflicts are no longer distant or predictable. They sprawl, mutate, and threaten supply chains, currencies, and energy flows. Financial systems are bloated with debt that can only be serviced if nothing goes wrong, ever. Governments promise stability while quietly preparing citizens for sacrifice. Trust, once lost, does not come back easily.

Gold thrives in moments when the future feels smaller. When people sense that tomorrow will offer fewer options than today, they hoard what cannot be printed. Gold does not grow economies, but it preserves memory. It remembers every collapse, every currency funeral, every empire that thought it had beaten gravity. That memory is what investors are buying.

There is also something deeply symbolic about gold’s rise in an age obsessed with speed and abstraction. We live in a world of digital wealth, instant transfers, and numbers floating on screens. Gold is heavy. It is slow. It does not care about narratives. Its resurgence feels like a rebuke to the fantasy that complexity alone can save us from consequence.

Critics argue that gold is a barbarous relic that modern economies have evolved beyond such primitive anchors. Perhaps. But evolution does not mean immunity. The more elaborate a system becomes, the more fragile it can be when trust evaporates. Gold benefits from this fragility. It sits quietly while confidence burns itself out.

This is not to say that every rise in gold predicts apocalypse. Fear can overshoot, just like greed. But sustained record highs are rarely meaningless. They reflect a broad, persistent unease that cannot be soothed by slogans or stimulus. Gold is not reacting to one event. It is reacting to accumulation: of risks, of debts, of unresolved conflicts, of promises stretched thin.

What makes this moment unsettling is how familiar it feels. History does not repeat perfectly, but it rhymes loudly. Periods of soaring gold prices often coincide with transitions, when old orders weaken and new ones have not yet stabilized. Those transitions are rarely gentle. They are marked by friction, miscalculation, and sudden shocks.

Gold is not telling us exactly what will break, or when. It is telling us that many people believe something will. That belief alone matters. Markets are social creatures, driven as much by psychology as by math. When enough participants start acting defensively, the system changes shape.

In the end, gold’s record high is less about metal and more about mood. It is a mirror held up to a world that feels overleveraged, overconfident, and underprepared. You do not buy gold because you expect prosperity. You buy it because you fear survival may soon matter more.

When gold starts screaming, it is worth listening. Not because it predicts doom with certainty, but because it reveals a truth we prefer to ignore, confidence is thinning and the horizon looks darker than we are willing to admit. Ignoring that signal may be comfortable for now, but history suggests comfort is often the most dangerous luxury societies indulge before reality intervenes.

fARTissimo #019 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

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

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Debt before ...what? by Marja Heikkinen

The European Union’s latest decision to pile another one hundred and six billion dollars of borrowed money onto Ukraine is not just a financial manoeuvre. It is a political statement, an economic gamble and a moral wager taken on behalf of millions of European citizens who were never meaningfully asked for their consent. This loan, sourced from private banks and layered on top of already staggering commitments, exposes a troubling truth, Europe is rapidly normalizing debt driven geopolitics while quietly hollowing out its own social foundations.

For years, EU leaders have spoken of solidarity, resilience, and shared sacrifice. Yet the sacrifices are becoming increasingly one sided. Health systems stretched beyond capacity, underfunded schools, aging infrastructure, and pensions constantly “reformed” downward are not abstract concerns. They are daily realities for citizens across the bloc. When governments claim there is no money for nurses, teachers, or dignified retirement, and then effortlessly unlock hundreds of billions for war related financing, something fundamental has gone wrong.

Borrowing itself is not inherently reckless. States borrow to invest, to stabilize, to protect their people during crises. But this borrowing spree is not primarily about protecting Europeans. It is about projecting power, signalling resolve, and maintaining geopolitical credibility at any cost. The cost, however, is not theoretical. It is paid through higher interest burdens, future austerity, inflationary pressures, and reduced fiscal space for decades to come.

What makes this moment particularly alarming is the growing role of private banks. By relying on them, the EU locks itself into market logic that prioritizes returns over social outcomes. Interest payments will not disappear; they will be serviced by taxpayers. When the next budget squeeze arrives, as it inevitably will, it will not be defence spending that is trimmed. It will be social programs, public investment, and support for the most vulnerable.

Member states are already feeling the strain. National governments are told to increase defence budgets, modernize armies, and stockpile weapons, often under tight fiscal rules that leave little room for anything else. Hospitals are merged or closed. Classrooms grow more crowded. Retirement ages creep upward while benefits stagnate. Economic growth remains fragile, yet leaders insist that this path is unavoidable, even virtuous.

There is also a deeper democratic deficit at play. Decisions of this magnitude are framed as technical necessities rather than political choices. Debate is discouraged, dissent labelled irresponsible or disloyal. Citizens are expected to accept that war financing is urgent and unquestionable, while social spending must always justify itself, line by line. This inversion of priorities reveals how far policymaking has drifted from everyday lived experience.

Support for Ukraine does not require blank checks or permanent militarization. It certainly does not require sacrificing the social contract that made Europe relatively stable and prosperous in the first place. True solidarity should include diplomatic creativity, accountability, and limits. Instead, we are witnessing an escalation of financial commitments that seem designed to continue indefinitely, regardless of outcomes.

History offers sobering lessons. Societies that overinvest in conflict while neglecting internal cohesion eventually pay a heavy price. Debt accumulates silently, then suddenly. Trust erodes. Extremism finds fertile ground among citizens who feel abandoned. When pensions fail, hospitals crumble, and young people see no future, no amount of military hardware can restore legitimacy.

Europe faces real security challenges, but security is not only measured in tanks and missiles. It is measured in healthy populations, educated citizens, functioning economies, and confidence in democratic institutions. By prioritizing borrowed billions for war over sustainable investment at home, EU leaders risk undermining the very resilience they claim to defend.

This loan is not just about Ukraine. It is about what kind of Europe is being built in the process. A Europe of permanent debt, permanent emergency, and permanent sacrifice for the many, or a Europe that remembers its obligations to its own people. The answer is being written now, not in speeches, but in balance sheets, budget cuts, and the quiet normalization of social decline. Citizens deserve honesty. They deserve leaders who admit that every euro borrowed for conflict is a euro not spent elsewhere. They deserve open debate about alternatives, timelines, and limits. Without that honesty, the EU risks trading its social foundations for a mirage of strength. Power built on debt and deprivation is not strength at all. It is fragility postponed, a bill deferred to future generations who will wonder why their welfare was negotiable, but war spending was sacred. And they will remember who signed the papers today.

Orders are not innocence by Virginia Robertson

ICE’s barbaric war against humanity did not appear out of thin air. It was cultivated, normalized, funded, and excused, first by political leadership and then by the quiet consent of millions who chose comfort over conscience. Donald Trump bears undeniable responsibility for unleashing and celebrating the machinery of cruelty that ICE became under his administration. He did not invent xenophobia, but he weaponized it, wrapped it in flags and slogans, and dared the nation to look away.

Yet stopping the analysis at Trump is a moral failure in itself. History does not reserve its harshest judgment only for demagogues, but for the ordinary people who made their crimes possible. ICE agents who cage children, deport parents to death, and terrorize communities cannot hide behind uniforms and memos. Nor can administrators, lawyers, data analysts, or contractors pretend they were merely cogs in a neutral system.

The excuse of following orders died in the ashes of the twentieth century, and the world agreed it would never be revived. Nuremberg was not about the past alone; it was a warning label for the future. When we say we were just doing our job, we are really saying we outsourced our humanity. That logic has always been the oxygen of atrocity.

Every form stamped, every bus driven, every database updated was a choice made by a person with agency. Systems do not brutalize people; people do, especially when they are paid, praised, and promoted for it. This is uncomfortable because it implicates neighbors, coworkers, and relatives, not just villains on television. It asks us to admit that evil often wears a badge, a spreadsheet, or a polite smile.

Responsibility also belongs to voters who rewarded cruelty with applause and called it strength. It belongs to media figures who laundered lies into talking points and to citizens who shrugged and changed the channel. Silence is not neutrality when the policy is suffering. Comfort is not innocence when others pay the price in chains and exile.

The moral accounting will not be settled by history books alone. It will be settled in personal reckonings, careers remembered with shame or pride, and nights haunted by what was done. Trump may have lit the match, but the fire needed many hands to keep feeding it. Authoritarianism is never a solo act; it is a choir of enablers.

The lesson is brutally simple and profoundly demanding. If a policy requires you to abandon empathy to perform it, the policy is the crime. No badge, paycheck, or president can absolve that. We are each responsible for the lines we refuse to cross, and history will notice when we step over them anyway.

Justice is not only about trials and verdicts; it is about moral clarity in the present tense. It is about refusing to participate, refusing to comply, and refusing to be impressed by power that feeds on fear. Those who truly want law and order should start with the law written on the conscience. Anything less is obedience masquerading as virtue.

ICE’s war did not just target migrants; it tested the moral spine of a nation. Too many failed that test, and failure does not disappear when administrations change. Accountability is not revenge; it is the minimum requirement for a society that claims to value human dignity. Without it, the same excuses will be recycled, the same orders issued, and the same horrors politely processed.

The world has already agreed on the principle. Crimes against humanity do not dissolve in bureaucracy, and guilt does not vanish in a chain of command. The only question left is who is willing to live as if that agreement still matters.

History is watching less like a judge with a gavel and more like a mirror that never blinks. What it reflects back will not be softened by excuses, uniforms, or faded campaign slogans. If we want to say never again and mean it, responsibility has to be personal, immediate, and unavoidable. Anything else is just another order waiting to be followed.

The future will judge not only the architects of cruelty but the clerks, officers, voters, and spectators who made it routine. There is still time to choose differently, but time does not excuse what has already been done. That reckoning will arrive quietly, personally, and without mercy, asking each of us who we were when it mattered most. And the answer will belong to no leader alone, but to every individual involved or silent. No exceptions remain.