On the Writing of Power and Professional Development by Mohammad Momin Khawaja

Writing has been used by many ancient and modern cultures to preserve historical records of human activity. This is an important human social activity in that people find relevance in expressing themselves in various social contexts. A record of this would preserve how we perceive and navigate the challenges of our life activities. Cultural values and traditions are often the strongest moral and emotional concepts to people. As such, narrating and keeping records of one’s traditions and values would remind us of what we value the most and preserve what we revere, trust, and find as a source of life guidance.

There are many ethical, socially meaningful, and professional applications to writing. Writing is being used in various studies and professions to help preserve the self by narrating or keeping a record of cultural values and traditions. The idea central to reflective writing is that written stories are stimuli to and the subject matter for individual or group discussion and contemplation (Bourdreau et al., 2012). Participants write about events or ideas in their personal and professional lives that are either troubling or difficult to resolve. Then, they share the stories behind such complexities with peers in a support group setting. Just as is the medical profession, in the humanities this narrative context takes shape in diverse forms and functions (Bourdreau et al., 2012).

Reflective writing courses have been used successfully in western nation-states for the professional education of general practitioners. Participants write about events or ideas in their personal and professional lives that are either troubling or difficult to. resolve. Then, they share as the stories behind such complexities with peers in a support group setting. Narrative story has become increasingly more in use by healthcare professionals. This phenomenon is referred to ‘narrativist turn' in the humanities and has now coincided in being a trend in medical professional development. This narrative context in medicine has taken shape in diverse forms and functions (Bourdreau et al., 2012). The earliest sources of this in the medical profession is sources to the Balint group method that was grounded in storytelling. The idea behind this method was to support the doctor-patient relationship by focusing on physician emotions arising out of clinical encounters. Their focus was on identifying and determining puzzling and unsettling emotions and situations (Bourdreau et al., 2012). A similar activity, although different in how we understand narrative and stories as a genre, has been termed reflective writing.

Many healthcare professionals recognize reflective writing and the medical narrative as specific methodology in qualitative research. The stories and narratives in the medical profession constitute a type of psychotherapeutic intervention. This medical narrative has now evolved as stream within bioethics (Bourdreau et al., 2012). The extent of the development of reflective writing and the medical narrative is such that a taxonomy was recently constructed and published. This taxonomy in the healthcare profession is known as ‘narrative medicine'. Thus, it is medicine practiced with the narrative competence to recognize, interpret, and be moved to action by the predicaments of others.

Writing is an important human activity that has helped to preserve human ideas, values and traditions, and the history of nations and peoples. This important human activity is found in abundance in nearly all the professions and in education today. Reflective writing is a development in writing used nowadays towards beneficent outcomes. Despite the diverse nature of reflective writing and narrative writing, the practical applications of this practice prove useful in many human complexities found in the world today.

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References:
Bourdreau, D., Liben, S., Fuks, A., (2012). A faculty development workshop in narrative-based reflective writing. Perspective Medical Education. 1:143-154. DOl: 10.1007/s40037-012-0021-4

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Mohammad Momin Khawaja is a Graduate Student (Athabasca University) in MAIS Interdisciplinary Program and a freelance Journalist; Member of the Canadian Sociological Association (CSA) and Member of the International Center for Journalism – ICFJ Global Network, Washington, D.C. USA. He shares a scholarly global insight to socio-economic - ancient and cultural affairs and writes on contemporary issues of cultural studies, social justice, criminology, philosophy,history and problems of indigenous social welfare system and human development. He is author of numerous publications including, Women in the Ancient World (Lambert Academic Publication, 2023), Philosophy and Ethics; and A World Community: Diversity in Cultures and Values (2024), and Women in Ancient Cultures (Lulu Press Inc. USA), 2025. He recently published: “North American Colonization of Indigenous People, Cultures and System of Social Welfare.”:https://www.uncommonthought.com/mtblog/archives/2023/05/26/north-american-colonization-of-indigenous-people-cultures-and-system-of-social-welfare.php. “Canada’s System of Social Welfare and We, the People Aspiring for Change and Social Justice.” https://thetimes.com.au/world/23595-canada-s-system-of-social-whttps:“North American Society, AI and the Technological  Imperatives.”https://countercurrents.org/2024/01/north-american-society-ai-and-the-technological-imperatives/

Buried shame by Virginia Robertson

Every year, the world pauses, briefly, politely, on the International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action. Speeches are made. Statements are issued. Carefully worded posts circulate. And then, almost immediately, the world moves on. The landmines, however, do not.

They wait. Hidden beneath soil that once fed families, along paths where children still dare to walk, under the fragile illusion of “post-conflict recovery.” Landmines are not relics of war; they are its most cowardly extension. They are weapons designed not just to kill, but to linger, to rot the future long after the headlines fade.

Let’s stop pretending this is merely a humanitarian issue. It is a moral failure ongoing, deliberate, and tolerated. Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: landmines exist today not because we lack the technology to remove them, but because we lack the political will to prioritize human life over strategic convenience. Clearing mines is slow, expensive and unglamorous. It doesn’t win elections. It doesn’t boost defence contracts. It doesn’t satisfy the appetites of those who still view war as a game played on maps instead of a curse buried in the earth.

So the mines stay. And with them, the consequences. Farmers who cannot farm. Children who cannot play. Communities that cannot rebuild. Entire regions frozen in a state of quiet terror, where every step carries the weight of uncertainty. This is not collateral damage. This is calculated neglect.

What makes landmines particularly grotesque is their indiscriminate nature. They do not recognize ceasefires. They do not distinguish between soldier and civilian, adult and child, enemy and survivor. They are equal opportunity destroyers, and in that sense, they expose the hypocrisy of modern warfare. We speak endlessly about precision, about minimizing harm, about “smart” weapons, yet we continue to tolerate devices that are the very definition of blind violence.

And then there is the language. “Mine action.” “Risk education.” “Clearance operations.” Sanitized phrases that attempt to wrap brutality in bureaucracy. Let’s call it what it is: a global effort to clean up after the reckless, often cynical decisions of governments and armed groups who knew exactly what they were planting and where.

The defenders of landmines will argue necessity. They always do. They will speak of borders, deterrence and security. But what security is built on the permanent endangerment of civilians? What defence strategy requires the future to bleed?

If a weapon continues to kill decades after a conflict ends, it is not a tool of war, it is a legacy of failure.

There is, of course, progress. Treaties have been signed. Stockpiles destroyed. Large areas cleared. Dedicated individuals risk their lives every day to disarm these hidden killers, one painstaking step at a time. Their work is heroic. It is also, in a just world, unnecessary.

Because the real solution is not better mine detection. It is not faster clearance. It is the absolute, uncompromising rejection of landmines as acceptable instruments of war.

Anything less is complicity. This day of awareness should not be comfortable. It should not be a box to tick or a moment to signal virtue. It should be a confrontation. A demand. An accusation.

Why are these weapons still in the ground? Why are communities still living in fear of something buried decades ago? And why, despite all our technological advancement and moral posturing, have we accepted this as normal?

Until those questions are answered with action, not statements, not promises, but measurable, relentless action, this day remains what it truly is: a reminder not of progress but of how much we are still willing to ignore.

The mines are still there.

And so is our responsibility.

Maya Angelou - Still, She Rose

There are voices that echo and then there are voices that settle into the bones of culture; permanent, resonant, undeniable. Maya Angelou (April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) belongs to the latter. To read her is not merely to encounter poetry; it is to step into a life that refused silence, refused diminishment and refused to be anything less than fully, unapologetically human.

Angelou’s poetry has often been described as accessible, and sometimes that word is used dismissively, as if clarity were a weakness. But her genius lies precisely there. She did not write to obscure; she wrote to reveal. Her lines are direct, rhythmic, almost conversational, yet they carry the weight of history, trauma, and triumph. “Still I Rise” is not just a poem; it is a declaration, a mantra, a cultural artefact that has outlived trends in literary taste. Critics who seek dense abstraction will not find it in Angelou’s work. What they will find instead is something more difficult to achieve, emotional precision without pretension.

Her poetry draws heavily from oral traditions, sermons, spirituals, storytelling and that influence gives her work its unmistakable cadence. There is music in her words, not in the ornamental sense but in the structural one. She understood rhythm the way a performer does, which is no surprise given her background in theater and performance. This performative quality makes her poetry feel alive, almost incomplete on the page until spoken aloud. Yet this strength is also, for some, a limitation. On the page alone, without her commanding voice, certain poems can feel simpler than they truly are.

But to isolate Angelou’s poetry from her life is to misunderstand both. Her autobiographical work, especially I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, reshaped how personal narrative could function in literature. It was not merely a memoir; it was a political act. By telling her story of racism, trauma, displacement and resilience, she challenged a literary world that had long marginalized voices like hers. The courage to articulate such experiences, especially at the time she did, cannot be overstated.

Angelou’s activism was not performative, nor was it confined to the page. She stood alongside major figures in the civil rights movement, lending her voice and her presence to causes that demanded both. Yet her activism was never strident in the sense of alienating rhetoric. Instead, it was rooted in dignity. She insisted on humanity first, on the idea that equality was not a radical demand but a fundamental truth. This approach made her work widely accessible, though some critics argue it softened the sharper edges of political critique. Perhaps. But it also broadened her reach, allowing her message to travel across boundaries that more confrontational voices sometimes cannot cross.

There is, inevitably, a tension in Angelou’s legacy between literary merit and cultural impact. Some critics place her outside the canon of “great poets” in the traditional sense, arguing that her work lacks the complexity or innovation of more formally experimental writers. This criticism, while not entirely unfounded, misses the point. Angelou did not seek to reinvent poetry as a form; she sought to reclaim it as a voice. Her contribution is not measured solely by technical innovation but by cultural resonance.

And that resonance is immense. Angelou became more than a writer, she became a symbol. Her readings, her speeches, even her presence carried a sense of authority and warmth that transcended literature. She spoke at presidential inaugurations, appeared in public discourse as a moral voice and embodied a kind of wisdom that felt both earned and generous.

What makes Angelou endure is not perfection but authenticity. She did not hide her pain, nor did she romanticize it. She transformed it. In doing so, she offered readers not just art but permission to feel, to speak, to rise.

In the end, Maya Angelou’s greatest achievement may not be any single poem or book, but the space she carved out in global culture, a space where voice matters, where story is power, and where rising again and again, is an act of defiance and grace.

Puppi & Caesar #42 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

Another cartoon with a mean and know-all of a bully cat, Puppi and her intellectual, pompous companion categorically-I-know-all, Caesar the squirrel!  

For more Puppi & Caesar, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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The allies that never were by Gabriele Schmitt

There is something deeply ironic in watching political forces that once flirted across the Atlantic now recoil from each other in thinly veiled contempt. First Giorgia Meloni recalibrated, stepping away from the fever-dream expectations of her loudest international admirers. Now Germany’s AfD follows suit, signalling clearly and unapologetically that American influence, military presence and geopolitical adventurism are no longer welcome on their terms. And just like that, the fantasy collapses.

For years the transatlantic far-right tried to sell a narrative of ideological brotherhood. A shared crusade, they claimed, against liberalism, globalization, migration and the so-called decay of Western identity. It was a convenient myth, loudly amplified by American political figures who believed they had found eager disciples in Europe. But myths have a way of shattering when confronted with reality and reality has arrived with a vengeance.

Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: nationalism does not travel well. It is, by its very nature, selfish, territorial and suspicious of outsiders, even when those outsiders claim to be allies. The AfD’s recent posture is not a betrayal of its ideology; it is its purest expression. “Germany first” does not leave much room for American bases, American wars or American expectations. And certainly not for American politicians attempting to shape German domestic discourse like it’s another swing state.

This is where the disappointment from figures like Vance and the broader MAGA ecosystem becomes almost amusing. They invested heavily, politically, rhetorically, even emotionally, in the idea that Europe’s far-right movements were extensions of their own struggle. They cheered them on, amplified their voices and in some cases, crossed the line into outright interference. The assumption was simple, shared enemies would naturally create lasting alliances.

But alliances built on resentment are fragile. They lack the substance required to survive conflicting interests. And when those interests collide, as they inevitably do, the façade crumbles.

AfD’s stance is not subtle. It is a rejection not just of American foreign policy but of American influence altogether. It is a declaration that Germany should not be a staging ground for conflicts that are not its own. And while this position may resonate domestically with voters weary of global entanglements, it sends a very clear message across the Atlantic, you are not as welcome as you thought.

This is the part that MAGA never quite understood. Their worldview is deeply rooted in American exceptionalism, the belief that the United States is not just a nation, but a model to be exported, imposed and admired. Even when they claim to oppose interventionism, there remains an underlying assumption that America sets the tone. That others will follow.

But Europe, even its most radical factions, has its own history, its own priorities, and its own version of nationalism. And that version does not include playing second fiddle to Washington’s ambitions or its political theatrics.

What we are witnessing now is not a fracture; it is a correction. A return to the logical endpoint of nationalist politics, isolation, competition and mutual distrust. The illusion of a unified far-right international has been exposed for what it always was, a convenient narrative not a durable reality.

And perhaps the greatest irony of all is this: in their attempt to build a global ideological movement, they have proven why such a movement can never truly exist. Nationalism cannot be globalized. The moment it tries, it ceases to be nationalism at all.

So here we are. The cheers have faded, replaced by awkward silence and thinly disguised frustration. The allies that never were have gone their separate ways, each retreating into their own version of sovereignty.

And in the end, it turns out that “America First” and “Germany First” were never meant to stand side by side.

The illusion of control in a scroll-driven world by Sidney Shelton

Governments around the world like to project confidence when it comes to protecting young adults from the harms of social media. New laws are proposed, age limits debated, warning labels suggested and algorithms scrutinized. On paper it can look like progress. But in reality, the effort to meaningfully reduce harm often feels like trying to regulate the tide with a bucket.

Yes, countries can legally act. They can pass legislation requiring platforms to remove harmful content faster, restrict data collection, or limit targeted advertising to minors. Some have even explored curfews, forcing platforms to lock out younger users during nighttime hours. These are not trivial steps, they signal awareness and, at times, political courage. But whether they truly minimize harm is another question entirely.

The core issue is that social media is not a static industry. It evolves faster than law can keep up. By the time a regulation is drafted, debated and enforced, platforms have already shifted their features, redesigned their interfaces or subtly altered how content spreads. What lawmakers regulate is often yesterday’s version of the problem.

Meanwhile, social media companies are not passive actors. They are global, resource-rich and deeply incentivized to resist anything that threatens engagement. Their business model depends on attention, and attention is often captured most effectively through emotional intensity, outrage, insecurity, validation loops. These are precisely the mechanisms that can harm young adults, affecting self-esteem, mental health, and even identity formation.

So when regulations emerge, companies rarely reject them outright. Instead, they adapt just enough to comply on the surface while preserving the core mechanics underneath. A feature may be renamed, a setting buried deeper, a safeguard made technically available but practically invisible. Compliance becomes a performance rather than a transformation.

There is also the problem of enforcement. Passing a law is one thing; enforcing it across borders is another. Social media platforms operate globally, while laws remain largely national. A country can impose fines or threaten bans, but such measures are blunt tools. Too harsh and they risk backlash from users and economic consequences. Too soft, and they are easily absorbed as a cost of doing business.

And then there is the cultural dimension. Young adults are not just passive recipients of social media, they are active participants. They build identities, communities, and even careers within these platforms. Attempts to restrict access can be perceived not as protection, but as control. This creates a paradox: the very group meant to be protected may resist the measures designed to help them.

Does this mean regulation is pointless? Not entirely. It can set boundaries, create accountability, and shift public expectations. Over time, it can push platforms toward safer designs, especially when combined with public pressure and media scrutiny. But it is not a silver bullet, and pretending otherwise risks complacency.

Real harm reduction requires a broader approach. Education plays a crucial role, teaching young people not just how to use social media, but how it uses them. Transparency must go beyond legal requirements and become a standard expectation. And perhaps most importantly, there needs to be a cultural shift in how we value attention itself.

The uncomfortable truth is that the power of social media does not come solely from the companies that build it. It also comes from the millions who use it, feed it, and depend on it. Governments can try to reshape the system, but they cannot do it alone and certainly not through legislation that is always one step behind.

So yes, countries can act. But whether they can truly minimize harm remains uncertain. For now, the sense of control they project is, at best, partial and at worst, an illusion carefully maintained in a world that refuses to slow its scroll.

Faith and fury by John Reid

There’s a certain fever in modern political discourse where imagination outruns reality and suspicion becomes spectacle. The idea that militant factions within American evangelical circles, particularly those aligned with the MAGA movement, are poised to physically attack the Pope belongs, at least for now, more to the realm of anxiety than credible threat. But dismissing it outright without examining the forces that give rise to such fears would be a mistake.

The United States is experiencing a period of deep ideological fracture and religion has not been spared. In fact, it has often been weaponized. Some strands of evangelical Christianity have fused tightly with political identity, producing a worldview that sees global institutions, including the Vatican, as adversarial. Pope Francis, with his emphasis on climate change, migration and economic justice, has drawn criticism from certain conservative American religious figures who view his positions as too progressive, even heretical.

Layer onto this the influence of media personalities and political commentators who thrive on outrage. Figures like Pete Hegseth, while not calling for violence, often frame cultural and religious debates in combative, even apocalyptic terms. This rhetorical escalation contributes to an environment where extreme interpretations can take root among a small but vocal minority. Words matter, especially when they echo within already polarized communities.

Yet it is crucial to distinguish between heated rhetoric and organized intent. There is no credible evidence suggesting that American evangelical groups, MAGA-aligned or otherwise, are planning or capable of orchestrating an attack on the Pope. The Vatican is one of the most heavily protected religious institutions in the world, and any such act would require coordination far beyond the reach of fringe ideological circles.

What does exist, however, is a growing normalization of viewing opponents not just political, but religious, as enemies rather than fellow believers or citizens. This shift is dangerous. When theological disagreements morph into existential threats in the public imagination, the line between metaphorical and literal conflict can blur.

The real issue, then, is not an impending attack, but the erosion of shared ground. When American Christians begin to see the leader of the Catholic Church not just as wrong, but as fundamentally illegitimate or even sinister, it signals a deeper crisis within the fabric of faith itself. Christianity, historically diverse and often contentious, has always contained internal disagreements. What’s new is the intensity and political entanglement of those disputes.

Fear-driven narratives also serve a purpose, they galvanize, mobilize and simplify complex realities into digestible enemies. But they rarely lead to constructive outcomes. Instead, they harden divisions and distract from more pressing challenges, declining trust, weakening institutions and the loss of civil discourse.

So no, there is no serious, imminent plot by American evangelical militants to attack the Pope. But the fact that such a question feels plausible to some speaks volumes about the current climate. It reflects a society where ideological echo chambers amplify the most extreme possibilities and where faith, instead of uniting, is increasingly a battleground.

The task ahead is not to chase shadows of unlikely violence, but to confront the very real divisions that make such shadows seem believable in the first place.

2nd opinion! 26#06 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

Seriously, a human hater self-centred agoraphobic in quarantine!
I think you’ll need a second opinion after this.

For more 2nd opinion, quarantined!, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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Red hats and Union Jacks by Yash Irwin

There is something deeply unsettling about watching a political culture with centuries of its own identity begin to cosplay another nation’s worst instincts. Yet here we are, Nigel Farage, flanked by a rotating cast of former Tory figures clinging to relevance, eagerly importing the theatrics, slogans and intellectual emptiness of American MAGA politics into the United Kingdom.

This is not admiration, it is imitation at its most cynical. Farage has always been a political opportunist, a man who understands the power of grievance better than the responsibility of leadership. But what we are witnessing now goes beyond his usual brand of populism. This is a deliberate attempt to reshape British political discourse into something louder, angrier and far less accountable. It is not about policy; it is about performance. Not about governance; about perpetual outrage.

The irony is almost laughable. Britain, with its long parliamentary traditions, nuanced political debates and often understated rhetoric, is being force-fed a diet of American-style political spectacle. The subtlety is gone. In its place, slogans, culture wars and the endless recycling of “us versus them.”

Former Tory politicians joining this parade make it even worse. These are individuals who once operated within the structures of governance, who understood the complexities of policy and compromise. Now, stripped of power and perhaps of purpose, they have found refuge in the easy applause of outrage politics. It is easier to shout than to solve. Easier to provoke than to persuade.

What makes this transformation particularly dangerous is its calculated simplicity. MAGA-style politics thrives on division, on reducing complex societal issues into digestible anger. Immigration becomes invasion. Opposition becomes betrayal. Facts become optional. It is politics designed not to inform citizens, but to inflame them.

And Farage knows exactly what he is doing. By borrowing from this playbook, he taps into a ready-made emotional framework. Fear, resentment, nostalgia, these are powerful tools. But they are also corrosive. They erode trust, undermine institutions and leave behind a political landscape where winning matters more than governing.

Britain deserves better than this imported chaos. The United Kingdom has its own challenges, economic pressures, social divisions, questions about its place in the world. These require serious leadership not theatrical imitation. Turning British politics into a second-rate version of American culture wars does nothing to address these issues. It distracts, it divides and ultimately, it diminishes.

There is also something profoundly unpatriotic about this entire exercise. To drape oneself in the Union Jack while mimicking another country’s political dysfunction is not nationalism, it is insecurity. True political confidence would mean engaging with Britain’s problems on British terms, not outsourcing outrage to a foreign template.

What we are seeing is not strength. It is desperation dressed as defiance. And perhaps that is the most telling part of all. This push to “MAGA-form” UK politics is not a sign of momentum, it is a sign of exhaustion. When ideas run out, volume increases. When credibility fades, spectacle takes over.

The question is whether the British public will accept this transformation or reject it.

Because once politics becomes pure performance, reality itself becomes negotiable. And that is a road that, once taken, is very difficult to leave.

For the boy child sitting in the front row at the book fair #Poem by Abigail George

 

The flower is lonely
look how it weeps
look how the stone edge
precipice of the tips
of the tears form an iceberg
It's tired of the night
its polarities
its dimensions
its ghosts
The flower finds the day empty
and filled with longing
solitude
the interloper, regret
the people are as depressing
as rain and winter light
The time to have children is over
I eat bread and cheese
for one
The light dims
Another night is over
And I am left to think
of our separation
the much younger
(than I am now)
woman in your life
I think of how fragile
the word “ceasefire” is
“novelist”
and I come up for air
reach for memory
and all of its tenderness
What remains is this
a sickly father
the traits of manic depression
hope
Yes, hope
all of its blessed assurance
I find faith in a clock
The spaghetti of time
The years
turn into mist
while I listen
to a poem by Akhmatova
I am not the only woman
who has felt alone
who has been rejected by a man
and became a poet
instead of a mother.

A republic of fearing children’s books by Shanna Shepard

Every April, a gentle irony floats across the calendar. International Children’s Book Day arrives with its usual fanfare, posters of dragons and dreamers, librarians arranging bright displays, teachers urging reluctant readers toward stories that might quietly change their lives. It is in theory a celebration of imagination, curiosity and the sacred, subversive act of a child discovering a world larger than their own.

And yet, in the United States, the day increasingly lands with a hollow echo. Because while one hand gestures toward celebration, the other has been busy removing books from shelves.

There is something almost literary about the contradiction itself, a kind of dark allegory. A nation that prides itself on free expression now finds itself nervously scanning the contents of children’s literature, as though stories themselves might be contraband. School boards debate not literacy, but acceptability. Librarians, once quiet custodians of curiosity, are recast as reluctant arbiters of controversy. The question is no longer “What should children read?” but “What should they be prevented from encountering?”

The shift is subtle in tone but enormous in implication. Defenders of these bans often frame them as protective measures. Children, they argue, must be shielded from complexity, from discomfort, from ideas that challenge inherited beliefs. It is a familiar instinct and not an entirely unreasonable one. Childhood is, after all, a fragile terrain. But literature has never been merely decorative. The best children’s books have always smuggled difficult truths beneath whimsical surfaces. They speak of loss, difference, fear, injustice because children, contrary to the sanitizing impulse, already live in a world where such things exist.

To deny them stories that reflect that reality is not protection. It is erasure. And erasure, in its quiet way, is far more dangerous than any paragraph. What is lost in this climate is not just access to specific titles, but a broader trust in the reader. A child picking up a book is not a passive vessel awaiting ideological imprinting. They are active interpreters, capable, often surprisingly so, of navigating ambiguity. To assume otherwise is to underestimate them, to flatten their intellectual and emotional lives into something far smaller than it truly is.

Meanwhile, the adults wage their battles. There is, too, a peculiar irony in the choice of targets. Books, printed, bound, sitting quietly on shelves, have become the focal point of cultural anxiety in an age where far more aggressive, less mediated content streams endlessly through screens. It is the book, with its patient demand for attention, that is deemed suspect. Perhaps because books, unlike fleeting images, linger. They invite reflection. They create interiority. And interiority, in a polarized moment, can feel like a threat.

On International Children’s Book Day, we are meant to celebrate the idea that stories open doors. That they expand the boundaries of a child’s world, offering not just escape but understanding. The act of reading is, at its core, an act of empathy—of stepping into another perspective, another life.

To restrict that act is to quietly narrow the future. The deeper question, then, is not about any single book or policy. It is about what kind of readers and eventually, what kind of citizens we hope children will become. Curious or cautious? Open or guarded? Capable of wrestling with complexity, or trained to avoid it?

A society reveals itself not just by what it permits, but by what it fears. And on a day meant to honour children’s literature, the growing discomfort with certain stories suggests that the fear is not of books themselves but of the ideas and the independence, they might inspire.