An old squabble in new uniforms by Marja Heikkinen

Israel insists that its campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon are about security, not conquest. The stated objective is straightforward enough, destroy organizations that have spent years launching rockets, organizing attacks and openly declaring their desire to eliminate the Jewish state. After the horrors of October 7 many Israelis concluded that deterrence had failed and that merely containing militant groups was no longer an option. From that perspective, the war is not a geopolitical choice but a grim necessity.

Yet history has a way of intruding on military logic. The question hanging over the region is whether Israel is truly eliminating its enemies or merely participating in another cycle that has defined the conflict for generations. Terrorist organizations can be weakened, their leaders killed, their infrastructure shattered. Armies are very good at destroying things. They are often less successful at destroying ideas, identities, grievances and the political ecosystems that produce armed movements in the first place.

One does not need to romanticize Hamas or Hezbollah to recognize this dilemma. Organizations built around militancy frequently survive devastating losses. They mutate, fragment, rebrand, recruit new generations and return under different names. The Middle East is littered with examples of movements declared defeated only to reappear in altered forms a decade later. Military victory and political resolutions are not the same thing.

This is where another, a more uncomfortable question emerges. Critics of Israel argue that the war cannot be viewed separately from the broader issue of territory and settlement expansion. They point to the steady growth of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and to statements by some nationalist politicians who speak openly about permanent Israeli control over Palestinian lands. To these observers, the conflict begins to resemble a familiar historical pattern, a stronger power defeating armed resistance while simultaneously expanding its footprint.

That accusation is fiercely rejected by many Israelis, who note that Gaza was not settled in the years leading up to the current war and that the immediate military objectives are directed at armed groups rather than territorial acquisition. They see comparisons to imperial expansion as simplistic and often blind to the genuine security threats Israel faces.

Still, perceptions matter in politics almost as much as facts on the ground. Every new settlement announcement, every provocative statement from an extremist politician, every image suggesting permanence where temporary security measures were promised, strengthens the argument of those who believe the conflict is about more than terrorism.

The tragedy is that both narratives contain elements that resonate. Israel faces real enemies committed to violence. Palestinians face a reality in which land, movement, and sovereignty remain deeply contested. Each side can point to evidence supporting its fears. Each side can produce a catalogue of historical wounds.

The result is a conflict trapped between military necessity and historical memory. Israel may succeed in severely damaging Hamas and Hezbollah. It may even achieve periods of relative calm. But if the underlying political questions remain unanswered, today's victory could become tomorrow's prelude.

History rarely repeats itself exactly. It prefers variations on old themes. The danger for everyone involved is that this war may eventually be remembered not as the end of a threat, but as another chapter in a story that neither side has yet figured out how to conclude.

My Johannesburg, many years ago, many moons ago Kite #Poem by Abigail George

 

I get into his car
There’s no invasion of Ukraine yet
No bombardment on Kyiv
No Zelensky in a bunker
No Russian tanks in Donbas
No drones flying overhead in a field
There’s no turning back
There’s no Palestine on the news
Or even in the newspapers
There’s no talk of the fall of Gaza or Gaza in ruins
No children’s bodies under rubble
No funerals in the what used to be city streets
No displacement
No school in a refugee camp
Or choir
Or musician with a string instrument
No refugee camps in Sudan yet
No just a dense sea of bodies, just black holes not yet
I get into his car
But I don’t know where I’m going
I have no idea where I’m going
Where he’s going to take me
I put my safety belt on
But I don’t feel safe
He doesn’t say anything
I don’t say anything
I put my hand on his knee
To steady myself
To get a grip on the situation
I’m in his car
I don’t know where I’m going
I wait for the robot to turn green
I focus on the woman
In the next car
Her child on the backseat
The child stares back at me
The dog pokes its head out of the
Window to get a better look
How did I get here?
Mandela is free
South Africa is a democracy
But I don’t feel free
What will my father say, think?
I’m in the man’s car. The man who is older,
in his late thirties or early to mid-forties
I don’t know where I’m going
I’m scared

#eBook: The Barricade and the Blackshirts by Ovi History

 

The Battle of Cable Street, Mosley’s Fascists, and the Day the East End Said No”
On the grey afternoon of 4 October 1936, two visions of Britain collided in the narrow streets of Stepney. One marched in black uniforms, saluting a leader who promised order, empire and the expulsion of Jews from the East End.

The other rose from cobblestones hastily torn from the road, barricades manned by Jewish tailors, Irish dockers, Communist firebrands and Labour councillors who, hours earlier, had been rivals. They found themselves standing shoulder to shoulder, armed with little more than chair legs, rotten vegetables and an electrifying conviction: They shall not pass.

Oswald Mosley, the First World War hero turned Labour MP turned fascist demagogue, had planned a triumphant procession through the heart of London's Jewish quarter. His British Union of Fascists, the Blackshirts, would cut a swathe through Cable Street, proclaiming ‘Britain First’ with the theatrical violence he had so admired in Mussolini.

But Mosley had miscalculated. The very poverty and overcrowding that had made Stepney fertile ground for his anti-Semitism had also forged a people unafraid of a fight.

Ovi History eBook
May 2026

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The Barricade and the Blackshirts

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William Butler Yeats: The Transition to Aquarius by Rene Wadlow

I have lived many lives.
I have been a slave and a prince.
Many a beloved has sat upon my knee
and I have sat upon the knee of many a beloved.
Everything that has been shall be again.
William Butler Yeats "Many a Beloved"

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) the Irish poet whose birth we mark on 13 June, along with his close colleague George Russell, who published under the name of AE, are the modern European poets most conscious of the transition within astrological cycles from the Piscean Period to the Age of Aquarius.

The concept that humanity is at the end of a 2000-year cycle and about to start a new dispensation at a higher turn of the spiral - the gyre as Yeats called the historic spiral - was  the framework within which he always worked.   Within the Age of Aquarius , there would be a coherence of politics and culture that was lacking in the Piscean Period which is symbolized by two fish going in opposite directions.

Yeats had written his understanding of historic astrological cycles in an early edition of A Vision published in only 600 copies in 1924 which he distributed to his friends who shared an interest in theosophical thought. He republished A Vision in 1937 in a fuller and more public version.  Yeats died in 1939 and had a sense well in advance of his approaching death.  The 1937 edition stands as his mature presentation of astrological cycles and their impact on human history. (1)

The concept of astrological cycles and their impact on history was developed for Western readers by Madame Helena Blavatsky, a founder of the Theosophical Society, especially in her major work The Secret Doctrine. In her later years, she lived in London, and Yeats served as the secretary of a group of advanced students formed into the Esoteric  Section.  Yeats was rather critical of the outspoken, cigarette-smoking habits of Madame Blavatsky and did not continue to be part of the "inner circle".  However, the astrological cycles remained the foundation of his vision of historical development.

The idea of astrological cycles is widely held in Asia. Its most wide-spread text is the Kalachakra, an Indian tradition now best known in its Tibetan form.  The Kalachakra (The Wheel of Time), while prediction of the future is not its aim, does indicate that at the end of a 1000-year cycle, around the year 2000CE, conditions would be created for individual evolution and enlightenment.  Each individual would have the possibility to reach the pinnacle of his evolutionary potential as within each individual there is a light which indicates the next steps to be taken for growth.

Annie Besant, who followed Madame Blavatsky as leader of the Theosophical movement was a student of the Kalachakra.  Her anti-colonial activities in India and Yeats' in Ireland were both closely related to the knowledge that the Piscean Period was coming to an end and that a colonial status was not an appropriate form for the start of the Age of Aquarius.

The Age of Aquarius was to be one of individual responsibility.  Therefore political decisions which set the framework of individual action must be taken as close to the individual as possible.  A colonial situation is a framework of irresponsibility.  Therefore Yeats was active in both cultural and political revival which led to the creation of the Republic of Ireland.  Yeats had hopes for a culturally renewed Ireland that could draw on the best of its popular traditions. As he wrote "We must hold to what we have that the next civilization may be born of our own rich experience."

The Irish Republic created in 1922  which he hoped would be a beacon of beauty seemed to him to have quickly deteriorated under the influence of narrow clerical leadership, an example of which was the head of the police who had criticized Irish dance gatherings as "orgies of dissipation, which in the present state of legislation the police is powerless to prevent." (2)

Although Yeats was elected to the Irish Senate, a more reflective body than the more political lower house, he largely rejected earthly politics, partly because he had spent much of his life developing a metaphysical system of cyclic patterns within history and also within individual  human lives.

 ****************************

Notes

1) For a good overview of Yeats' interest in cycles see Harbans Rai Bachchan. W.B. Yeats and Occultism
(Delhi: Motilal Bandarsidass, 1965)

2) See D.F. Kesgh. The Vatican, the Bishops and Irish Politics, 1919-1939
(Cambridge University Press, 1986)

 ******************************

Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

Fika bonding! #123 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

Fika is a state of mind and an important part of Swedish culture. It means making time for friends and colleagues to share a cup of coffee and a little something to eat.

For more Fika bonding!, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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The voters’ inflation problem by Timothy Davies

Donald Trump did not merely make a controversial economic remark when he declared, “I love inflation.” He may have unintentionally revealed something far more troubling about the political moment America finds itself trapped in. The statement itself was startling enough. Inflation is not some abstract economic concept admired from a distance. It is the reason groceries cost more, rents rise faster than paychecks and families quietly remove items from shopping carts while pretending not to notice. Loving inflation is rather like loving potholes, root canals, or power outages. It is an odd affection to publicly confess.

Yet the remark raises a question that extends beyond Trump’s own understanding of economics. The more fascinating mystery is why millions of voters continue to embrace politicians who repeatedly demonstrate confusion, indifference, or outright contradiction regarding the issues affecting everyday lives.

For years, inflation has been presented as one of the defining political concerns in the United States. Candidates have campaigned on promises to defeat it, tame it, crush it, and rescue Americans from its effects. Political advertisements have depicted families struggling with rising prices. Speeches have been built around economic anxiety. Entire electoral strategies have depended on convincing voters that inflation is the enemy.

Then comes a statement like “I love inflation,” and the reaction among supporters often seems less like scrutiny and more like rationalization. Suddenly words do not mean what they appear to mean. Explanations emerge. Interpretations multiply. Context becomes elastic. What would be condemned as incompetence from a political opponent is transformed into genius, humor or strategic messaging when it comes from a favored leader.

This phenomenon is not unique to Trump, but he has elevated it into a political art form. His supporters are frequently asked to perform remarkable intellectual gymnastics. One day they are told tariffs will lower prices. Another day they are informed that tariffs may increase prices but are somehow still beneficial. Contradictions that would sink ordinary politicians become mere footnotes in the endless cycle of political loyalty.

At some point, the discussion stops being about Trump’s grasp of economics and starts becoming about the electorate’s willingness to suspend skepticism. Democracies depend on citizens who are prepared to evaluate leaders critically, even leaders they admire. When loyalty replaces analysis, accountability evaporates.

The danger is not that politicians occasionally say foolish things. Politicians have been doing that since politics was invented. The danger arises when obvious contradictions no longer matter. If a leader can praise inflation after years of condemning it, and supporters barely blink, then facts become secondary to identity. Politics transforms from a contest of ideas into a tribal exercise where consistency is optional and reality negotiable.

Perhaps that is the most unsettling aspect of the episode. The concern is not whether Trump fully understands inflation. Voters can decide that for themselves. The larger concern is whether enough Americans still expect coherence, honesty, and basic economic logic from the people seeking power.

A democracy can survive a politician’s careless words. It struggles when millions stop caring whether those words make sense at all.

Rebranding child labour by Virginia Robertson

Every year, World Day Against Child Labour arrives with the familiar declarations. Governments issue statements. Corporations publish carefully designed graphics. International organizations release reports filled with concern. Everyone agrees that children belong in schools, not factories. Everyone condemns exploitation. Everyone insists that progress is being made.

And yet, something strange has happened in recent years. Child labour has not simply survived. In many places, it has been rebranded. The old image of child labour is easy to condemn. A twelve-year-old working sixteen hours in a textile mill is a moral outrage few would openly defend. But modern societies have become remarkably inventive when it comes to finding new language for old practices. What was once exploitation can suddenly become “training,” “entrepreneurship,” “family contribution,” “workforce development,” or “career readiness.”

The vocabulary changes. The child remains at work. Across the world, economic pressures have intensified. Families struggle with rising costs, stagnant wages, and shrinking opportunities. Businesses face labour shortages and seek cheaper alternatives. Politicians speak constantly about competitiveness and productivity. Under such conditions, children begin to appear not as young people deserving protection but as untapped economic resources.

The transformation rarely happens openly. No politician stands before a podium and announces support for child labour. Instead, exceptions multiply. Regulations become flexible. Definitions shift. Age restrictions acquire loopholes large enough to drive delivery trucks through. What emerges is not the return of nineteenth-century factories but something more subtle: the normalization of children participating in labour markets under increasingly creative justifications.

The most revealing aspect of this trend is the language used to defend it. We are told that work builds character. We hear that young people need real-world experience. We are reminded that previous generations worked from an early age. These arguments often contain fragments of truth. Responsibility matters. Practical skills matter. Experience matters.

But there is a significant difference between learning responsibility and becoming economically necessary. A child helping occasionally in a family business is not the same as a child whose labour fills gaps created by economic policy, labour shortages, or corporate cost-cutting. The distinction matters because one is part of growing up while the other risks becoming part of someone else’s business model.

History demonstrates that child labour rarely expands because societies suddenly decide it is morally acceptable. It expands because adults convince themselves that current circumstances make it necessary. Economic necessity has always been exploitation’s most persuasive public relations agent.

That is why World Day Against Child Labour should be more than an annual exercise in self-congratulation. It should force uncomfortable questions. When laws are weakened, who benefits? When children enter workplaces earlier, who profits? When educational opportunities shrink while employment opportunities expand, what priorities are being revealed?

The danger today is not that societies openly embrace child labour. The danger is that they become skilled at disguising it. Exploitation wrapped in modern language remains exploitation. A loophole does not become ethical because it is legal. A marketing campaign does not transform necessity into opportunity.

Children deserve preparation for adulthood. They deserve responsibility, education, and practical experience. What they do not deserve is to become the shock absorbers of economic systems unwilling to confront their own failures.

The most effective defence of child labour has never been denial. It has always been redefinition. That is precisely why it deserves scrutiny whenever it appears wearing a new name.

The humanity’s lobbyist by Edoardo Moretti

Pope Leo’s emerging skepticism toward artificial intelligence has been interpreted by some as a quaint theological concern, the sort of warning one expects from a religious institution that has spent centuries greeting technological revolutions with caution. But that reading misses the deeper significance of his position. What makes his voice notable is not that he is warning about machines. Plenty of people are doing that. It is that he appears to be asking a question that much of modern society has stopped asking altogether: what exactly is humanity trying to preserve?

For the better part of two decades, the conversation around artificial intelligence has been framed as an argument about efficiency. AI can write faster, calculate faster, diagnose faster, and increasingly create faster. The assumption embedded within this logic is that speed and productivity are self-evident goods. If a machine can do something better than a person, then the machine should do it. The discussion typically ends there.

Yet Pope Leo seems to be pushing against the premise itself. The issue is not whether machines can outperform humans in particular tasks. The issue is whether a civilization gradually handing over judgment, creativity, memory, and even relationships to algorithms remains recognizably human at all.

This is not a religious question. It is a civilizational one. The most striking aspect of the AI revolution is how little resistance it has encountered. Previous technological upheavals produced visible opponents. Industrialization had labor movements. Globalization had populist critics. Nuclear weapons inspired entire generations of activists. Artificial intelligence, by contrast, often feels like an unstoppable tide greeted with a shrug. Governments rush to adopt it. Corporations compete to deploy it. Consumers eagerly embrace it. Skepticism is frequently dismissed as fear, ignorance, or nostalgia.

What Pope Leo appears to understand is that the real danger may not be machine domination in the science-fiction sense. It may be voluntary surrender. Humanity is not being conquered by robots marching down city streets. Humanity is quietly outsourcing pieces of itself because convenience is seductive and efficiency is difficult to resist.

A society that allows algorithms to decide what people read, whom they date, what they believe, what they create, and eventually what they think is not necessarily becoming more advanced. It may simply be becoming more passive.

The irony is that AI is often celebrated as humanity’s greatest achievement. In many ways it is. It reflects extraordinary ingenuity and ambition. But every civilization eventually faces a test involving its own creations. The challenge is not whether it can build powerful tools. The challenge is whether it retains enough wisdom to remain their master.

This is where Pope Leo’s voice resonates beyond churches, cathedrals, or religious doctrine. He sounds less like a guardian of ancient traditions and more like an advocate for human agency in an age increasingly enchanted by automation. His warning is not that machines will suddenly become evil. It is that humans may gradually forget why they matter.

In that sense, his stand feels less like opposition to technology and more like a defense of humanity itself, the increasingly lonely position of a man standing before a cheering crowd and asking whether anyone has considered the cost of getting everything they want.

AntySaurus Prick #131 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

Dino is a vegetarian virgin dinosaur and his best friend is Anty,
a carnivorous nymphomaniac ant.
They call themselves the AntySaurus Prick and they are still here
waiting for the comet to come!

For more AntySaurus Prick, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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Let My Children Go: World Efforts to Eliminate the Worst Forms of Child Labour by Rene Wadlow

 

Your children are not your children;
They are the sons and daughters of
Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you, yet they
belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not
your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies, but not their souls.
                                 Kahil Gibran

12 June is a red letter day on the UN agenda of events as the World Day Against Child Labour.  It marks the 12 June arrival in 1998 of hundreds of children in Geneva, part of the Global March against Child Labour that had crossed a 100 countries to present their plight to the International Labour Organization (ILO).

“We are hurting, and you can help us” was their message to the assembled International Labour Conference which meets each year in Geneva in June.  One year later, in June, the ILO had drafted ILO Convention N° 182 on child labour which 165 States have now ratified — the fastest ratification rate in the ILO’s  history.

ILO Convention N°182 sets out in article 3 the worst forms of child labour to be banned:

a) all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery, such as the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage and serfdom and forced or compulsory labour, including forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict;

b) the use, procuring or offering of a child for prostitution, for the production of pornography or for pornographic performances;

c) the use, procuring or offering of a child for illicit activities, in particular for the production and trafficking of drugs as defined in the relevant international treaties;

d) work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children.

The Convention is supplemented by a Recommendation: the Worst Forms of Child Labour Recommendation N° 1999, which provisions should be applied in conjunction with the Convention: “Programme of Action (article 6): Among other issues, the situation of the girl child and the problem of hidden work situations in which girls are at special risk are explicitly mentioned; Hazardous work (article 3(d): In determining the types of hazardous work, consideration should be given, inter alia, to work which exposes children to physical, psychological or sexual abuse.

Today, millions of children, especially those living in extreme poverty, have no choice but to accept exploitive employment to ensure their own and their family’s survival.  Child labour was often hidden behind the real and non-exploitive help that children bring to family farms.  However, such help often keeps children out of school and thus outside the possibility of joining the modern sector of the economy.  The ILO estimates that of the some 200 million child labourers in the world, some 70 percent are in agriculture, 10 percent in industry/mines and the others in trade and services — often as domestics or street vendors in urban areas.  Globally, Asia accounts for the largest number of child workers — 122 million, Sub-Saharan Africa, 50 million, and Latin America and the Caribbean, 6 million.  Young people under 18 make up almost half of humanity, a half which is virtually powerless in relation to the other half.  To ensure the well-being of children and adolescents in light of this imbalance of power, we must identify attitudes and practices which cause invisibility.

One of the most exploitive type of child labour is what is called “debt bondage” — most pervasive in India, Pakistan and western Nepal.  In these countries, the debt bondage pattern of exploitation is supported by long-standing traditions and cultural biases against low castes or minority ethnic groups.  Dept bondage is a practice by which parents pledge their children’s work to pay off debts.  The debts are very small at the start but with very high interest rates.  Thus the children may work for their entire childhood to pay off the debt because of fraudulent accounting mechanisms employed by debt holders.

In western Nepal, where such bonded labourers are known as “Kamaiya”, the accounting schemes can keep families in debt for generations.  Since Kamaiyas are often not paid enough to meet their basic needs, many have no choice but to take new loans from their masters.  Many also carry inherited debts, sometimes going back for three or four generations in addition to their own.  Children sold to bond masters work long hours over many years in  an attempt to pay off these debts due to the astronomically high rates of interest charged and the low wages paid.  The eradication of child labour depends on an ethical awakening on the part of employers, government officials, and non-governmental organizations.

In India, child debt servitude has been illegal since 1933.  Since independence, India has adopted a host of additional protective legislation, most importantly the Bonded Labour System Abolition Act of 1976, which strictly outlaws all forms of debt bondage and forced labour.  However, without political will to enforce them, these legal safeguards have little impact.  Whether due to corruption or indifference, the political will is lacking.  Labour laws are routinely flouted with virtually no risk of punishment to the offender.  This is why an ethical awareness must grow and all children seen as having dignity and potential for a fuller life.

There is still a long way to go to eliminate exploitive child labour.  Much child labour is in what is commonly called the non-formal sector of the economy where there are no trade unions.  Child labour is often related to conditions of extreme poverty and to sectors of the society where both adults and children are marginalized such as many tribal societies in Asia, or the Roma in Europe or migrant workers in general.

In addition to the worst forms of exploitive child labour, there is the broad issue of youth training and employment. The challenges ahead are very much a youth challenge.  The world will need to create millions of new jobs over the next decade in order to provide employment for the millions of new entrants into the labour market in addition to creating jobs for the millions of currently unemployed or underemployed youth.

There needs to be world-wide labour market policies that provide social protection measures, better training for an ever-changing work scene. World Citizens support the demands of decent work for all.  We need to cooperate to build economies and societies where young persons participate fully in the present and the future.

 ********************************

Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

Robert’s ghost in state house by Eze Ogbu

Zimbabwe has always lived with its history but there are moments when history seems less like a memory than a tenant who never moved out. The government's latest step toward a constitutional amendment that would extend the president's term by two years and replace direct presidential elections with selection by lawmakers is one of those moments. It feels less like a legal reform than a familiar knock on the door from a past many Zimbabweans have spent decades trying to escape.

The proposal arrives wrapped in the language of procedure and governance. Its supporters will undoubtedly argue that constitutional systems evolve, that parliamentary selection is practiced elsewhere, and that stability is a virtue in a turbulent region. Yet political changes cannot be judged solely by their technical details. They must also be measured by the political culture in which they occur and the incentives they create.

In Zimbabwe, the symbolism is impossible to ignore. For nearly four decades, Robert Mugabe perfected a political model in which institutions increasingly existed to serve power rather than restrain it. Elections remained, constitutions remained and parliament remained but the spirit of democratic accountability steadily weakened. The forms survived while the substance eroded. The result was a nation where political continuity became an end in itself, often detached from public consent.

That is why the current proposal has generated such concern. Extending a presidential term is rarely a neutral act. Eliminating a direct presidential election is even less so. Together, the changes suggest a governing philosophy that places convenience for the political elite above the fundamental democratic principle that leaders should periodically return to the electorate for judgment.

One of the ironies of modern Zimbabwean politics is that Mugabe himself is gone, yet many of the instincts that defined his rule seem remarkably resilient. The personalities have changed. The habits have not.

Across the continent, citizens have become increasingly familiar with the script. A constitutional amendment appears. Technical arguments are offered. Assurances are given. The public is told that democracy remains secure. Yet somehow the practical effect almost always benefits those already in power. The political horizon stretches a little further for incumbents while becoming slightly narrower for everyone else.

Democracy is not merely a mechanism for choosing leaders. It is a discipline imposed upon leaders. It forces governments to confront uncertainty, criticism, and the possibility of rejection. Elections are inconvenient by design. They remind rulers that authority is borrowed, not owned.

When governments begin searching for ways to reduce those inconveniences, citizens are right to become suspicious. The legal challenges now before Zimbabwe's constitutional court may ultimately determine the amendment's fate. But the larger issue extends beyond courtrooms and legal briefs. It concerns the direction of a country that has repeatedly promised democratic renewal while remaining haunted by authoritarian reflexes.

Nations do not become democratic simply because they hold elections. Nor do they become authoritarian overnight. The transformation is usually gradual, marked by small adjustments that seem manageable in isolation but alarming in accumulation.

Zimbabwe stands at one of those moments. The question facing the country is not whether Robert Mugabe still occupies an office. He does not. The question is whether the governing culture he cultivated still occupies the political imagination. The latest amendment suggests that, for some in power, the old ghost remains very much at home.