Is The Arab Time Capsule Out of Time? by Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD.

Authoritarianism and Tainted Foods Changed the Arab Mindset

The US and Israel are aligned to divide, defeat and destroy the Arab states. America has just announced a 33 pages New Security Strategy to pursue and accomplish. It is a plan to belittle the European allies and make America great as a White Superpower. The Arab rulers imagining American security help breathe oxygen in a fool’s paradise. The former tribal agents turned kings, princes and queens wanted palaces and prosperity to enjoy life and nothing else.

Blind terror and hatred of Arabs and Islam blends the American and Israeli conquest plans for “Greater Israel”, a catastrophic abnormality taking shape and form without any deterrence. Despite the so-called UN International Law and its Security Council’s Chartered assigned vigilance against aggression, crimes against humanity, genocide and forcible displacement of 2.5 million civilians are daily events. Western mythologists describe the Arab authoritarian leaders as “camel jockeys” and others as moderate and friendly. Moderate Arabs are a food for after dinner hollow laughter in Western political circles. While Arab people and leaders are entrenched in the fraudulent phenomenon of oil-run prosperity, PM Netanyahu continued to attack, occupy and destabilize neighboring Lebanon, Syria and effective control over Gaza and occupied West Bank-Palestine. Phony Arab princes and kings talk of mediation, peace and Gaza free of Israeli occupation. Deceptive assertions negate the prevalent truth on the ground. If the Arab leaders would see the mirror, they would see the enemy. When cold blooded massacres are a daily event, foods and medicines are blocked and starvation becomes a weapon to dehumanize mankind, no conscientious leaders dare to stop the Israeli insanity as if Palestinians are not normal human beings. Does inhumanity and insanity have another definition? Editor Antonio Rosa (Transcend Media: 11/10/25), exposes the reality of the on-going genocide in Gaza and other parts of Palestine: “Genocide in Pictures: Worth a Trillion Words.”

https://www.transcend.org/tms/2025/11/genocide-in-pictures-worth-a-trillion-words-74/

The oil enriched Arab leaders lost the Islamic history of moral obligations, compassion and intellect and wanted to buy wisdom with wealth. The Western nations fed the Arabian societies with contaminated foods for a long time to change their thinking and behaviors and make them robotic machines to enjoy sports, pleasures and palaces. The Arab masses live in discontent and despair not knowing the reality of upcoming future – crimes and genocide by Israel enlarged to cover the Arabian Peninsula. “The World Wonders! Where are the Arab Leaders”,

https://realovi.wordpress.com/2025/07/20/the-world-wonders-where-are-the-arab-leaders-by-mahboob-a-khawaja-phd/

When crimes against humanity and genocide in Gaza were in progress, Jennifer Lopaez's musical concert enticed the Royal Saudi audience in obscenity and nudity. How ignorant and indifferent would you call the UAE rulers organizing the World Climate Conference to entertain the aggressors and killers of Gaza with $2B spent on performance? Israel bulldozed Rafah Crossing and Egyptians kept watching silently. You wonder what went wrong with the Arab leaders -are they humans or dead rituals on display. Israel needs conflicts for its survival and the USAID, and Netanyahu and Trump collaborate to make it happen. Bombing of Gaza, Syria and Lebanon go unabated as if all the Arab-Muslim leaders are mindless robots.

Crimes against Humanity and Global Community

Global community witnesses the on-going American supported Israeli war on Palestine as ethnic cleansing and genocide happening without any international legal accountability. Some Arab rulers paid billions of dollars to America to acquire fake sense of defense arrangements and security. America supplies the bomb and Israel drops it on innocent people in Gaza. Those dropping bombs on earth are not normal beings, they have no microscope to read their minds – human beings acting like wild animals as if Palestinians are not equal human beings and something else. “America-Israel War on Gaza a Prelude to Conquest of the Arab World.” https://www.uncommonthought.com/mtblog/archives/2024/01/05/america-israels-war-on-gaza-a-prelude-to-conquest-of-the-arab-world.php and https://realovi.wordpress.com/2025/06/22/crusade-against-iran-and-the-complicity-of-western-decadent-civilizations-by-mahboob-a-khawaja-phd/

History never witnessed such a decadent culture of Arab moral, intellectual and political behavior. When would they learn from the living history to distinguish between foes and friends? For 2.5 millions people of Gaza there is nowhere to go, nowhere to find a place of safety and life protection. Every day is a killing day- bombardments of innocent civilians, places of worship, hospitals and UNRWA’s school shelters. The 21^st century world of morality and humanity appears to be lost forever.

Is the 21^st Century Age of Consciousness Coming to an End?

Gaza and West Bank are obliterated by Israeli war over 22 months of continued bombardments of civilian infrastructures. Why would they buy weapons worth $100B from the US as none of the Arabs have leadership or armies to fight. If the leading Arab leaders had capacity and moral-intellectual foresight, they should have challenged the insanity of war and protected the innocent masses of Gaza. The Arab leaders appear morally, intellectually and politically bankrupt as a scum floating on a torrent of naive puppets and discredited leaders. The Divine injunction is clear: “God does not change the condition of people what any people may have until they change whatever they themselves have.”(The Quran: 13:8).

God created you as human beings – the most intelligent creation on this planet with moral and intellectual capacity, obligations and accountability. If you defy the Laws of God, you will be held accountable like other aggressors in the past. You cannot pretend to think and behave like animals. Animals live and do not reflect on the imperatives of life whereas, we, the human beings cannot act like animals as we are supposed to be intelligent and responsible species on this Earth. At the edge of reason, the notion of evil leads to realization of evil and tyranny of war must be stopped by all means and those responsible for the genocide and crimes against humanity must be held accountable to restore the manifestation of peace, justice and security for all. Intelligent people, leaders and nations always readily accept advice: The followers of Moses - the generations of Israelite (progeny of Jacob) are reminded by God (The Quran 2: 84-85):

And remember, We took a Covenant from the Children of Israel (progeny of Jacob), Worship none but God; ….shed no blood amongst you, Nor displace people from homes: and Ye solemnly ratified, And to this ye can bear witness…. It was not lawful for you to banish another party, then it is only a part of the Book that ye believe in…. And on the Day of Judgment they shall be consigned to the most grievous penalty, For God is not unmindful what ye do.

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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?ean=9798317619374 and We, The People in Search of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution. KDP-Amazon.com, 05/2025 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F6V6CH5

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

The mask slipped by Jemma Norman

Racism allegations are now swirling around Nigel Farage’s latest political crusade, threatening to derail his bid to become Britain’s next prime minister. But let’s not pretend any of this is new, surprising, or revelatory. Farage has spent decades cultivating an image built on winks, dog whistles, and deniable provocations; he has offered just enough plausible ambiguity to let supporters insist he’s merely “anti-establishment” or “anti-elite.” Yet there comes a point when the mask slips so often that the public must finally acknowledge what has been hiding underneath all along. Farage is, and has always been, a racist demagogue whose politics thrive on division, resentment, and manufactured cultural fault lines. If anything, the current allegations don’t expose a hidden truth, they simply confirm what has been in plain sight.

Farage’s political life has been a long, looping performance of outrage. For years he presented himself as the cheeky outsider railing against the establishment, a man ready to say “what others are too afraid to say.” But when those forbidden words consistently align with xenophobic tropes, anti-immigrant conspiracies, and a thinly veiled nostalgia for an England that never existed, it becomes clear that the controversy is not accidental, it is the core product.

His movement, like all populist movements, relies on projection. Everything they accuse others of elitism, dishonesty, manipulation, is precisely what their own politics depend upon. They shout about “taking back control” while building a political culture that thrives on chaos. They condemn “identity politics,” yet weaponize national, cultural, and racial identity at every turn. They claim to defend “British values,” but those values curiously shrink to exclude anyone who doesn’t fit their narrow definition of who truly belongs.

Brexit, in many ways, was Farage’s masterpiece, the grand stage upon which he elevated dog-whistle rhetoric to a national referendum. The campaign was saturated with imagery that suggested Britain was being overrun: lines of migrants marching toward the border, shadowy figures waiting to take advantage of the country’s generosity, and sweeping predictions of disaster if immigration wasn’t halted. It wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t sophisticated. It was fear politics, pure and simple.

And it worked not because it persuaded a rational electorate with well-grounded economic arguments, but because it tapped into simmering anxieties about identity and belonging. Brexit became, for many, an emotional outlet rather than a policy decision. Farage didn’t create those emotions, but he stoked them, shaped them, and then presented himself as their champion. Brexit became the alibi, the cloak, the convenient national crisis that allowed prejudice to parade as patriotism.

Now, as he positions himself for the highest office in the country, the façade is cracking. Racism allegations are no longer dismissed as the overreactions of critics, they are becoming impossible to separate from the man himself. Farage’s defenders insist these are unfair smears, that he is simply “telling uncomfortable truths.” Yet if those truths always seem to target the same communities, if they always punch down, if they always reinforce the same narrative of cultural threat, then it’s fair to ask whether these are truths at all or just ideological obsessions presented as courage.

The bigger question is not whether Farage holds racist views; his record speaks loudly enough. The question is how Britain, a country that prides itself on tolerance, finds itself repeatedly flirting with leaders who thrive on intolerance. There is a cultural weariness, a sense of political exhaustion, that populists expertly exploit. In the face of economic stagnation, public service decline, and international uncertainty, the promise of a simple enemy is tempting. Farage’s genius has always been identifying that enemy and making it feel personal.

But leadership built on resentment can never unify a nation. It can only divide it further. Farage’s vision of Britain, exclusive, insular, suspicious of outsiders is fundamentally at odds with the realities of a modern, interconnected society. Britain cannot wall itself off from the world. It cannot return to an imagined past. It cannot build a thriving future by scapegoating minorities for institutional failures.

The current allegations should serve as a turning point. They should force Britain to confront not just Farage’s record but the deeper rot within its political conversation. When racism becomes the subtext of a national campaign, it corrodes the entire democratic process. When populist leaders normalize inflammatory rhetoric, they drag the political center with them. And when voters accept xenophobia wrapped in the language of “common sense,” they risk losing far more than they think they’re gaining.

In truth, Farage has not changed. He has not evolved. He has not hidden who he is. Britain simply allowed him, for far too long, to masquerade as something less dangerous than he has always been. Now, as he stands closer than ever to real power, the country must confront that reality.

Some masks slip. Others were never really on.

Pyotr Kropotkin (1842-1921) Sociability as a law of Nature by Rene Wadlow

The history of human thought recalls the swinging of a pendulum which takes centuries to swing. After a long period of slumber comes a moment of awakening.  Then thought frees herself from the chains with which those interested − rulers, lawyers, clerics − have enwound her. - P. Kropotkin

9 December is the birth anniversary of Prince Pyotr Kropotkin who dropped the aristocratic title of Prince when he was 12, and having lived much of his adult life in Switzerland and England is often called Peter.  Although from an early age he was against hierarchies and bureaucratic control of society, he first followed in the footsteps of his father and became a military officer.  But his real love was geography and exploration, and he used his military position to explore Siberia and Manchuria.  He was particularly interested in observing wild life − animals and birds and their interaction with their setting − an ecologist before his time.

After his explorations for the military, he gave up his military office in 1867 to work full time as a geographer. His father, angered by his decision, disinherited him and cut off any financing. Pyotr had already been interested in and sympathetic to the peasantry he had met. He was increasingly drawn to ideas of a cooperative society based on self-sufficiency and solidarity.  As many Russians of his class and time, he wanted to see what was being done in Western Europe.  Thus in 1872, he went to Switzerland, and there met leaders of the Jura Federation − mostly watchmakers who had organized themselves into a sort of trade union.  However, they called themselves anarchists, a title that Kropotkin welcomed.

On his return to Russia, he tried to organize anarchist groups, working for the creation of cooperatives and forms of mutual aid.  However, for the Tsarist police, anarchists were bomb-throwers, and he was arrested. After two years in prison where his title of Prince gave him some possibilities to write on geographic subjects, he escaped and returned to Switzerland where he helped edit the anarchist newspaper “Those in Revolt”.

In 1881, the Tsar Alexander II was assassinated, and the Swiss police, who were generally conservative in any case, saw the anarchists as bomb-throwers and asked him to leave.  Thus he moved to the French side of the Lake of Geneva, to Thonon, once the capitol of the Dukes of Savoy. However, the French police had the same view of anarchists as the Swiss police but had the possibilities of using even more repressive legislation. Kropotkin was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison. Fortunately, there were human rights defenders, some of whom were in the French Chamber of Deputies.  They argued that a person should not be put in prison for his ideas.  After two years, Kropotkin was released and expelled from the country.

Thus he moved to England and lived there until 1917 near London.  Having seen enough of prisons, he devoted himself to writing and became increasingly active in English intellectual life.  The turn of the century in England was a time of active debate, much of it concerning the social implications of the theories of evolution of Charles Darwin.  Thomas Huxley, a biologist by training, had been a champion of Darwin's ideas on the nature of natural selection and evolution.  However, there was at the time, the growth of “social Darwinism”  which was a defense based on the “natural law” of evolution of competition and of industrial capitalism.  Huxley wrote a widely read book of social Darwinism The Struggle for existence and its bearing upon man.  Kropotkin read the book and saw that it was a defense of a centralized State, of authoritarian government and an attack on the workers' efforts to organize for better conditions, with examples from animal life as a justification. Kropotkin felt strongly that an answer to Huxley had to be made. Thus in 1902, Kropotkin published his most lasting book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution.  Kropotkin did not deny that there was competition in animal life, but rather he stressed that there was also mutual aid and limits to violence among animals of the same species, and thus that there should be mutual aid among humans and limits to violence. “We may safely say that mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle, but that as a factor of evolution, mutual aid most probably has a far greater importance, in as much it favors the development of such habits and character as insure the maintenance and future development of the species.”

In 1917, during the first phase of the Russian Revolution, he decided to return to Russia in the hope of encouraging the cooperative aspects. However, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks came to power, he quickly saw the authoritarian elements in Lenin's thought and argued strongly against it, including in personal letters to Lenin. Lenin personally allowed a public funeral for Kropotkin in 1921, the last time that the Russian anarchists could parade. Lenin's police had the same view of anarchists as those of Switzerland and France and had even more repressive legislation with which to act.  But in the shadows of the world, there always remains a certain cooperative spirit and the idea that mutual aid rather than selfish egoism might be a motor of evolution.

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Note: For a recent biography see: Brian Morris: Kropotkin. The Political Community (Humanity Press, 2004)

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Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

 

Alfredo & CO #040 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

As the saying goes, it may be the rooster that does all the crowing
but it’s the turtle, the dog, the cat and perhaps the dog that deliver the goods.

For more Alfredo & CO, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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Anniversary of the Genocide Convention: 9 December 1948 by Rene Wadlow

An Unused but not Forgotten Standard of World Law

Genocide is the most extreme consequence of racial discrimination and ethnic hatred. Genocide has as its aim the destruction, wholly or in part, of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such.  The term was proposed by the legal scholar Raphael Lemkin, drawing on the Greek genos (people or tribe) and the Latin cide (to kill).(1)  The policies and war crimes of the Nazi German government were foremost on the minds of those who drafted the Genocide Convention, but the policy was not limited to the Nazi. (2)

The Genocide Convention is a landmark in the efforts to develop a system of universally accepted standards which promote an equitable world order for all members of the human family to live in dignity.  Four articles are at the heart of this Convention and are here quoted in full to understand the process of implementation proposed by the Association of World Citizens, especially of the need for an improved early warning system.

Article I

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a)   Killing members of the group;
(b)   Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c)   Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d)   Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e)   Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Unlike most humanitarian international law which sets out standards but does not establish punishment, Article III sets out that the following acts shall be punishable:

(a)   Genocide;
(b)   Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c)   Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d)   Attempt to commit genocide;
(e)   Complicity in genocide

Article IV

Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.

Article VIII

Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III.

Numerous reports have reached the Secretariat of the United Nations of actual, or potential, situations of genocide: mass killings; cases of slavery and slavery-like practices, in many instances with a strong racial, ethnic and religious connotation — with children as the main victims, in the sense of article II (b) and (c). Despite factual evidence of these genocides and mass killings as in Sudan, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone and in other places, no Contracting Party to the Genocide Convention has called for any action under article VIII of the Convention.

As Mr Nicodene Ruhashyankiko of the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities wrote in his study of proposed mechanisms for the study of information on genocide and genocidal practices “A number of allegations of genocide have been made since the adoption of the 1948 Convention.  In the absence of a prompt investigation of these allegations by an impartial body, it has not been possible to determine whether they were well-founded.  Either they have given rise to sterile controversy or, because of the political circumstances, nothing further has been heard about them.”

Yet the need for speedy preventive measures has been repeatedly underlined by United Nations Officials.  On 8 December 1998, in his address at UNESCO, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said “Many thought, no doubt, that the horrors of the Second World War — the camps, the cruelty, the exterminations, the Holocaust — could not happen again.  And yet they have, in Cambodia, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, In Rwanda.  Our time — this decade even — has shown us that man’s capacity for evil knows no limits.  Genocide — the destruction of an entire people on the basis of ethnic or national origins — is now a word of our time, too, a stark and haunting reminder of why our vigilance must be eternal.”

In her address Translating words into action to the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1998, the then High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, declared “ The international community’s record in responding to, let alone preventing, gross human rights abuses does not give grounds for encouragement.  Genocide is the most flagrant abuse of human rights imaginable.  Genocide was vivid in the minds of those who framed the Universal Declaration, working as they did in the aftermath of the Second World War.  The slogan then was ‘never again’. Yet genocide and mass killing have happened again — and have happened before the  eyes of us all — in Rwanda, Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia and other parts of the globe.”

We need to heed the early warning signs of genocide.  Officially-directed massacres of civilians of whatever numbers cannot be tolerated, for the organizers of genocide must not believe that more widespread killing will be ignored. Yet killing is not the only warning sign.  The Convention drafters, recalling the radio addresses of Hitler and the constant flow of words and images, set out as punishable acts “direct and public incitement to commit genocide”.  The Genocide Convention, in its provisions concerning public incitement, sets the limits of political discourse.  It is well documented that public incitement — whether by Governments or certain non-governmental actors, including political movements — to discriminate against, to separate forcibly, to deport or physically eliminate large categories of the population of a given State, or the population of a State in its entirety, just because they belong to certain racial, ethnic or religious groups, sooner or later leads to war.  It is also evident that, at the present time, in a globalized world, even local conflicts have a direct impact on international peace and security in general.  Therefore, the Genocide Convention is also a constant reminder of the need to moderate political discourse, especially constant and repeated accusations against a religious, ethnic and social category of persons.  Had this been done in Rwanda, with regard to the radio Mille Collines, perhaps that premeditated and announced genocide could have been avoided or mitigated.

For the United Nations to be effective in the prevention of genocide, there needs to be an authoritative body which can investigate and monitor a situation well in advance of the outbreak of violence. As has been noted, any Party to the Genocide Convention (and most States are Parties) can bring evidence to the UN Security Council, but none has.  In the light of repeated failures and due to pressure from non-governmental organizations, the Secretary-General has named an individual advisor on genocide to the UN Secretariat.  However, he is one advisor among many, and there is no public access to the information that he may receive.

Therefore, a relevant existing body must be strengthened to be able to deal with the first signs of tensions, especially ‘direct and public incitement to commit genocide.”  The Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) created to monitor the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination would be the appropriate body to strengthen, especially by increasing its resources and the number of UN Secretariat members which service the CERD.  Through its urgent procedures mechanisms, CERD has the possibility of taking early-warning measures aimed at preventing existing strife from escalating into conflicts, and to respond to problems requiring immediate attention. A stronger CERD more able to investigate fully situations should mark the world’s commitment to the high standards of world law set out in the Genocide Convention.

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Notes
1)      Raphael Lemkin. Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for World Peace, 1944).
2)      For a good overview  see: Samantha Power. A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002)
3)      E/CN.4/Sub.2/1778/416   Para 614

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René Wadlow, Representative to the United Nations, Geneva, Association of World Citizens

Echoes across the Atlantic by Nadine Moreau

When the Trump administration released its 33-page National Security Strategy declaring that Europe risked “civilisational erasure,” many saw it as yet another jolt to an already fragile transatlantic relationship. But beneath the headline phrase lies something deeper and far more troubling, the growing sense that the United States, once the self-appointed steward of the Western democratic order, has become ambivalent if not openly hostile, toward the very partners it helped rebuild after the WWII.

To understand the weight of that rhetoric, one must recognize the broader context. Donald Trump’s approach to Europe has always been defined by suspicion, impatience, and, at times, outright disdain. He has repeatedly portrayed European nations as burdens rather than allies, institutions like NATO as lopsided and outdated, and the European Union as little more than a trade adversary. His speeches, interviews, and policy signals have consistently reinforced a worldview in which Europe is not a partner to be cultivated, but a continent to be lectured.

For many Europeans, the warning of “civilisational erasure” did not feel like a protective call to arms but rather a rebuke, a blunt accusation that Europe had failed in its duty to maintain cultural, political, and strategic strength. Critics argue that Trump’s language echoed far-right talking points popular among nationalist and ultraconservative movements across the continent: narratives of cultural decline, demographic fear, and the collapse of traditional identity. This resonance has led some observers to accuse Trump of amplifying, intentionally or not, the messaging of European extremist parties, groups that celebrate his rhetoric as validation of their own.

But stepping back from the political noise, one thing is undeniable: Trump’s language marked a stark departure from the tone of every modern American president before him. There was no subtlety, no diplomatic varnish, no attempt to present the U.S. as a steady hand guiding a shared future. Instead, the strategy document served as a reminder that Trump’s foreign policy instincts were shaped less by alliances and multilateralism, and more by confrontation, grievance, and a belief that America’s partners were perpetually taking advantage of its generosity.

The effect was immediate. Across European capitals, diplomats and officials privately expressed frustration and fatigue. For decades, the United States and Europe had shared more than treaties; they shared an idea of the West as something worth defending: a union of democratic principles, economic cooperation, and collective security. Trump’s framing suggested not only that Europe was failing, but that its failure threatened the very core of Western civilization. It was a dramatic narrative, dramatic enough to play well with his domestic political base, but destabilizing for the partners expected to stand alongside the U.S. in matters of global security.

Yet the tension here does not lie solely in Trump’s harshness. It lies in the vacuum of constructive vision. Criticism of allies can be healthy; democracies need honesty. But Trump’s worldview offered little sense of how partnerships should evolve, how shared challenges should be met, or how the West should adapt to a multipolar 21st-century landscape. Instead, it traded in fear, decline, and the imagery of a world slipping away. This rhetoric may galvanize some, but it does not build coalitions. It divides them.

Europe today is indeed facing profound challenges: rising nationalism, migration pressures, economic disparities, and geopolitical vulnerabilities. But to frame these challenges as signs of impending erasure is not analysis, it is alarmism. It feeds on impulse rather than strategy. More importantly, it ignores the nuance that Europe is not a monolith but a mosaic of democracies constantly negotiating their identities. The continent’s struggles do not signify its disappearance; they signify its evolution.

Opinion pieces often risk overstating the symbolic weight of political documents. But in this case, Trump’s National Security Strategy mattered because it crystallized what many had sensed for years: that for the first time in modern memory, the United States had a president who questioned not just Europe’s performance, but Europe’s value. The American voice that once reassured now unsettled. The hand that once guided now pointed accusatorially.

As the world navigates a future fraught with uncertainty from technological upheaval to authoritarian resurgence, the strength of the Western alliance depends on clarity, mutual respect, and shared purpose. Trump’s rhetoric, intentionally or not, fractured that foundation. Europe may endure its crises, as it has countless times before, but the transatlantic bond will not repair itself through nostalgia or lectures.

If anything is at risk of “erasure,” it is not Europe’s civilization, but the cooperative spirit that once defined the West. And rebuilding that will require a different tone, a different vision, and a renewed understanding that allies are strengthened not by fear, but by trust.

Hong Kong’s fire has ignited more than just flames by Mary Long

The fire that tore through a Hong Kong neighborhood this week did more than claim lives and property, it lit yet another spark in a city already smoldering with frustration. To outsiders, it may look like an unfortunate tragedy in an urban center where high-rise blazes are, sadly, not unheard of. But to Hongkongers who have lived through the past five years, the fire feels like one more indictment of a governing structure imposed on them rather than chosen by them. The fury is no longer about a single event; it is about the cumulative weight of policies, controls, and silenced voices that have reshaped the city’s soul.

Hong Kong was once sold to the world as a hybrid promise Chinese heritage paired with freedoms that allowed it to flourish as Asia’s most dynamic financial and cultural hub. That promise shattered when Beijing tightened its grip through laws rushed into existence without public consent, and through a governance model that has increasingly dismissed local concerns in favor of mainland priorities. In that context, a fire becomes political, not because residents want to politicize tragedy, but because governance failures now touch every corner of daily life.

Residents who watched firefighters battle the flames were also watching the cracks in a system that has grown less transparent and less accountable. Questions rose quickly: How did the building’s known safety violations go unaddressed? Why were residents’ years of complaints ignored? Why did inspections seem more concerned with controlling public assembly spaces than ensuring public safety? To many, the answers are obvious; officials are beholden upward, not outward. When a government’s legitimacy comes from a distant authority rather than the people it claims to represent, its priorities inevitably drift.

And that is the core of the anger. The fire is not a standalone disaster; it is a symptom of a governance model that treats the public as a problem to be managed rather than a community to be served. Hongkongers remember when district councils had more sway, when local voices could pressure authorities into action, when there was a semblance of participatory oversight. Today, those channels have been gutted. Decision-making travels through a narrow pipeline aligned with Beijing’s expectations, leaving residents to shout into a void.

Urban safety is only one area where the consequences of this shift are felt. The same disconnect appears in housing policy, policing, education, and the shrinking space for civil society. Each new restriction has chipped away at the sense of autonomy and identity that was once the bedrock of Hong Kong. Against that backdrop, a tragic fire becomes a rallying point not because the people want to weaponize grief, but because they see clearly how the system’s failures compound.

Critics of public outrage often accuse Hongkongers of conflating unrelated issues, insisting that a fire is just a fire. But that argument requires willful blindness to the broader context. When oversight agencies once charged with community protection become instruments of political stability, when transparency is replaced by directives and slogans, when accountability evaporates, people naturally and rightly interpret tragedies through that lens. Public fury is not irrational; it is a rational response to a pattern.

The fire has also reignited conversations about a deeper cultural loss, Hong Kong’s traditional ethos of self-reliance combined with collective vigilance. Neighborhoods once organized with swift community-based responses to risks, filling gaps where bureaucracy lagged. But even that fabric has frayed. New regulations, new surveillance measures, and new political red lines have eroded trust not just in government but between residents. When people fear that gathering, organizing, or even speaking might draw unwanted attention, they retreat. That retreat costs lives long before flames arrive.

It is impossible to separate the political from the practical. You cannot ask citizens to trust a governance structure that does not trust them. You cannot build resilient communities in a climate where participation is treated as dissent. And you cannot expect public calm when the institutions meant to protect them have been reengineered to prioritize control over care.

Hong Kong’s government will likely respond with statements of concern, promises of investigation, and pledges of reform. These cycles are familiar. But the public knows that without structural change without genuine space for civic input, without independent oversight, and without autonomy in local governance such promises are little more than smoke.

The tragedy of the fire is real and profound. But the greater tragedy lies in how preventable risks persist in a system that resists scrutiny. The anger rising now is not an overreaction; it is a sign that the public still cares deeply about the city’s future, even when those in power appear to care more about conformity than community.

Hong Kong did not burn just because of an accident. It burned because too many warnings were ignored, too many voices were dismissed, and too many decisions were made far from the people who must live with the consequences. And when flames expose those truths, fury is not only understandable it is necessary.

ICE at the breaking point by Howard Morton

If there were ever a signal flare that an institution has lost its purpose, its standards, and its moral compass, it is this: accepting applicants who can “barely read or write.” That is, according to a recent report, exactly what is happening inside ICE as Noem rushes to bolster the agency’s ranks. And while the headline itself is jarring, the deeper implications are far more disturbing not just for the agency, but for a country that continues to grapple with the consequences of empowering an institution long criticized for cruelty, corruption, and an absence of meaningful oversight.

For years, ICE defenders have insisted that the agency performs an essential national security function. But essential institutions protect their standards, not dilute them to the point where literacy is optional. Essential institutions strengthen qualifications, not erase them to meet a political quota. And above all, essential institutions recognize that the power to detain, deport, separate families, and make life-altering decisions cannot be handed to individuals who may not even be able to properly read the documents they are signing.

The rush to hire underqualified applicants reflects something more troubling than staffing shortages, it reveals an agency that has lost all sense of self-regulation. Standards are supposed to act as guardrails, ensuring that those entrusted with power wield it responsibly. When the guardrails collapse, abuses don’t just become possible; they become inevitable.

And ICE’s history has already shown us what happens when the wrong people are given far too much authority. This is the agency that oversaw family separations, forced hysterectomies on detained women, and enabled a network of private detention centers with repeated accusations of assault and neglect. It’s the agency that allowed medical complaints to be ignored, legal rights to be blurred, and accountability to evaporate whenever the spotlight shifted elsewhere.

If such abuses occurred when ICE claimed to have rigorous standards, what happens when the bar is lowered to the floor?

The answer is simple: the system breaks. Or perhaps more accurately, the system exposes that it was broken long ago.

Lowering employment standards suggests one of two things, either ICE cannot attract qualified candidates because the job is fundamentally repugnant, or leadership has decided that competence is a luxury the agency can no longer afford. Neither interpretation inspires confidence. Both point to an agency that is spiraling, not stabilizing.

But there’s another layer to this crisis. Agencies like ICE rely on public trust to operate effectively. There must be at least a baseline belief that those enforcing immigration laws are trained, vetted, and capable. Once that belief collapses, ICE loses even the fragile legitimacy it once held. How can an agency that hires individuals unable to complete basic written tasks be trusted with interpreting complex immigration cases? How can due process survive when the people executing it may struggle to read the very rules they are supposed to uphold?

The simple truth is this: ICE has never been about methodical law enforcement. It has always been about brute enforcement show of force over comprehension, punishment over procedure. Lowering recruitment standards only confirms that the goal is not justice but manpower. Not professionalism but presence. Not competence but compliance.

This is not an institution that can be “reformed,” because reform assumes the foundation is salvageable. ICE’s foundation has been cracked from the start built hurriedly after 9/11, fused together from overlapping agencies, and weaponized in ways that have consistently created harm rather than security. It was constructed without clarity, managed without accountability, and now operates without even minimal hiring requirements.

So yes, the report that ICE is accepting recruits who can barely read or write says a lot about the agency. But it says even more about why the time for half-measures and timid reforms has passed.

An institution that relies on diminished standards to function is an institution that cannot function at all. One that continues to accumulate power despite its failures is a danger, not a safeguard. And one that fills its ranks with underqualified individuals is not protecting the country it is endangering it.

The rush to hire unprepared applicants is not a sign of temporary desperation; it is the final verdict on ICE’s viability. When an agency responsible for some of the most consequential decisions in a person’s life treats literacy as optional, the conclusion is unavoidable: ICE has no business continuing to exist.

Not tomorrow. Not after another round of reforms. Not after another commission, audit, or congressional hearing.

Dissolving ICE is not a radical solution, it is the only responsible one. A nation that claims to value justice cannot afford an agency that abandons standards, erodes rights, and endangers the very people it purports to protect.

It is long past time to shut the agency down and build something better something accountable, humane, transparent, and worthy of the authority it wields.

Maples & Oranges #056 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

Taunting oranges in the midst of other fruity links,
constantly spreading the wares of their juicy gloom.

For more Maples & Oranges, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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An embrace with echoes by Avani Devi

There are diplomatic greetings, and then there are political statements dressed up as greetings. Narendra Modi’s warm, almost celebratory welcome to Vladimir Putin in India falls squarely into the latter category. It was not merely a bilateral meeting, nor a harmless courtesy between two world leaders. It was a pointed message, one that underscored how profoundly the West has miscalculated its ability to isolate Russia, and how confidently India now navigates a world where old alliances matter less than strategic advantage.

For all the talk in Western capitals about turning Russia into a pariah after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the images from Delhi told a starkly different story. Here was Putin, smiling and unembarrassed, strolling beside Modi like a man who had not been sanctioned, denounced, or economically strangled by half the world. And here was Modi, offering not neutrality but visible warmth an embrace that was less about friendship and more about strategic signalling.

This scene did not emerge overnight. It has been building for two years, fueled by one of the great geopolitical paradoxes of our time: sanctions intended to cripple Russia ended up recalibrating global energy flows in ways that strengthened Moscow’s hand, and India wasted no time capitalising on the opportunity. As Europe recoiled from Russian oil, India bought record amounts of it, cheap, abundant, and too economically irresistible to refuse. What began as a transactional bargain transformed into an indispensable lifeline for Russia’s war-strained economy. Today, Russia is India’s largest oil supplier, and that alone gives Moscow leverage the West underestimated.

But the deeper question, the one that Modi’s warm welcome forces us to confront is what India wants from this relationship, and how far Modi is willing to go to forge a partnership with Putin that is neither temporary nor superficial.

India likes to present itself as a champion of multipolarity, a nation that rejects the notion of falling neatly into any geopolitical category. Not Western-aligned, not Eastern-dependent, but instead proudly sovereign, charting its own course. In practice, however, Modi’s approach has tilted closer to a strategic embrace of strongman diplomacy. He sees value in Putin not just as an energy supplier, but as a counterweight to Western pressure, a partner in defence procurement, and a symbol of defiance against what he perceives as global “double standards.” In this context, Modi’s welcome to Putin becomes more than optics, it becomes ideology.

It is also deeply personal. Both leaders share a preference for centralised power, a command-and-control style of governance, and a suspicion of liberal critics who question their democratic credentials. They are, in many ways, leaders shaped by parallel instincts, even if their political systems differ. This makes cooperation easier, smoother, and less entangled in the moral considerations that often complicate Western alliances.

The West, on the other hand, finds itself stuck in a contradictory position. It wants India as a democratic partner and counterbalance to China, yet it recoils from Modi’s openness with Putin. It expects India to condemn Russia’s invasion, yet continues to court New Delhi for economic and strategic reasons. India, aware of this imbalance, uses it to extract maximum advantage while giving little away. Modi understands that the West needs India more than India needs the West and Putin understands this too.

But perhaps the most significant, and troubling, question is what the growing closeness between Modi and Putin means for global power dynamics. Two leaders with an affinity for authoritarian governance, commanding enormous populations and vast strategic resources, are edging closer in a moment when global power is fragmenting. That is not an alliance to take lightly.

How far could this go? Modi will not sign away India’s independence, nor will he jeopardize its ties with the United States, his government is far too pragmatic for that. But he may very well offer Putin more diplomatic cover, more economic cooperation, and more symbolic validation than any Western strategist predicted. And each time he does, it chips away at the ideological narrative Western governments constructed about Russia’s supposed “isolation.”

Putin is not isolated. He is adapting. And with partners like India, he is doing far more than surviving, he is stabilizing.

This, ultimately, is the message embedded in Modi’s welcome: the world is no longer shaped by Western condemnation, nor by Western definitions of legitimacy. It is shaped by interest, opportunity and power, three currencies Modi and Putin wield with increasing confidence.

The question the West must now ask is not why Modi welcomed Putin so warmly, but why it believed that he wouldn’t.

Eurovision’s identity crisis in a fractured Europe by Melina Barnett

The Eurovision Song Contest has always liked to imagine itself as a glitter-soaked island floating above the choppy waters of European politics, a place where key changes matter more than geopolitical ones, and where sequins are wielded like diplomatic olive branches. But this year, the illusion has cracked. With public broadcasters from Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, and Slovenia withdrawing from next year’s contest over the European Broadcasting Union’s decision to allow Israel to participate, Eurovision suddenly looks less like a cheerful celebration of unity and more like a battlefield dressed in rhinestones.

The walkouts mark a rare moment in which Eurovision’s famously big-tent ethos, anyone can sing, anyone can win, everyone must endure an unreasonably long voting sequence, collides with the harsh reality of a continent struggling with its own conscience. The EBU’s staunch insistence that Eurovision must remain “non-political” has long been a central pillar of its identity. But the idea that a cultural megashow watched by hundreds of millions can remain a politics-free zone has always been a polite fiction. The contest has weathered political storms before, from Russia’s exclusion after its invasion of Ukraine to decades of diplomatic side-eye exchanged through song. But this year, the tension feels different: more exposed, more urgent, harder to dance around.

At the heart of the dispute is Israel’s participation despite growing international criticism of its actions in Gaza during the war with Hamas. Broadcasters in several countries have argued that allowing Israel to perform sends the wrong message or rather, sends no meaningful message at all, at a time when silence can feel like complicity. For them, participating in the contest is not simply a matter of submitting a song and booking hotel rooms. It is an endorsement of the show’s rules, its boundaries, and its moral posture. Their withdrawal is a statement: if Eurovision insists on being apolitical, then they will not help it pretend.

The EBU, for its part, appears determined to stick to its usual script. Eurovision, they say, is about music, not politics. But this line is increasingly hard to maintain with a straight face. Eurovision is a cultural phenomenon precisely because it sits at the intersection of art and national identity. Countries send songs not just to entertain but to represent themselves. Political realities are baked into the very format of the contest: a parade of nations, each announcing their votes in a ritual that could easily pass for an EU summit with better outfits.

To insist that the contest is “not political” is to misunderstand its own power. Music may transcend borders, but Eurovision, as an institution, does not. And pretending otherwise doesn’t protect the contest’s integrity; it puts it at risk.

The withdrawing broadcasters are doing something Eurovision itself has been reluctant to do: acknowledge that global conflicts don’t stop at the arena door. Their stance is not about banning Israeli artists, nor about denying the complexity of the war. It is about recognizing the symbolic weight of participation, and the impossibility of separating art from the conditions in which it is made and received.

Critics of the boycotts argue that politicizing Eurovision undermines its purpose. But perhaps the more honest question is: what purpose does Eurovision serve in a world where Europe culturally, politically, ethically, is more fragmented than ever? Is the contest a space where unity is performed despite differences? Or should it reflect the world as it is, fractures and all?

The walkouts expose an uncomfortable truth: neutrality is also a position. When the EBU chooses to allow Israel’s participation without addressing the moral debate surrounding it, it is not avoiding politics but choosing a particular interpretation of them, one that privileges continuity and spectacle over controversy and reflection.

For years, fans have celebrated Eurovision as a joyous escape from reality. And perhaps that escapism is needed now more than ever. But escapism is not the same as avoidance. If Eurovision wants to survive as a cultural institution that claims to bring people together, it must grapple with the reality that people will not always want to sit together, especially not when the world outside the arena is burning.

Europe is changing. Its politics are louder, its divisions sharper, its moral compass under constant strain. And Eurovision, for all its glitter, cannot hide from this shift. The withdrawal of four major broadcasters is not just a protest; it is a warning: a contest that refuses to evolve with the political conscience of its participants risks becoming irrelevant.

Next year’s Eurovision will go on, no doubt. Songs will be sung, points will be awarded, and dramatic key changes will be delivered with the usual gusto. But the music may echo differently. Unity cannot be choreographed, and harmony cannot be demanded. If Eurovision wants to remain Europe’s favorite celebration of togetherness, it must first admit the truth: the stage is political, whether it likes it or not.