U.N. System Weakened by U.S. Retreats by René Wadlow

On 7 January 2026, the U.S. government announced that it was withdrawing from membership (and thus financial contribution) to 31 United Nations' bodies and programs.  According to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, these institutions and programs are "redundant in their scope, mismanaged, unnecessary, wasteful, poorly run and captured by the interests of actors advancing their own agendas contrary to our own."  He added "Many of these bodies promote radical climate policies, global governance and ideological programs that conflict with U.S. sovereignty and economic strength."

The U.S. withdrawal comes at a time when the U.N. as a whole (the 193 member States) is in the process of evaluating U.N. structures and programs (UN 80).  The results of this evaluation should be presented later this year.

A good number of the programs from which the U.S.A. is withdrawing are based or have activities in Geneva, Switzerland. As an NGO representative to the U.N. in Geneva, I have interacted with many of these programs and the Secretariat members. At this time when there are real challenges in the world society, the withdrawal of the U.S.A. weakens the U.N. system as a whole.  The representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in consultative status will increase their activities so that the intellectual dynamics will not be weakened, but NGOs cannot fill the financial gap.

One of the bodies marked for withdrawal is the International Law Commission.  A colleague from Egypt who taught international law at the University of Geneva was a leading member of the Commission and had a deep understanding of Middle East culture. Stronger respect for international law in the Middle East remains a real need.

Another institution is the Geneva-based International Trade Center where I had a good friend in the Secretariat.  The Trade Center helped developing countries negotiate contracts with transnational corporations.  These corporations usually have sophisticated lawyers to write contracts, not the case for many developing countries.  Thus the work of the Trade Center filled a real need.

The U. N. Institute for Training and Research has its headquarters in New York, but many of its activities were Geneva-based and so the Secretariat cooperated with Geneva-based NGOs.  The same holds true for the UN University with headquarters in Japan but with many Geneva-based activities.

The U.S. is withdrawing from support for the Office of the Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict, from the U.N. Entity for Gender Equality, and from the Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict - all issues on which the Association of World Citizens has been active.  The U.S. is leaving the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations at a time when cross-cultural understanding is a vital need.

Many of the U.N. activities which the U.S. is leaving have dedicated U.S. citizens in the Secretariat.  I am not sure what their status will be once the withdrawal is complete.

The U.S. is also withdrawing from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the key instrument on climate change issues.  The consequences of climate change are being increasingly felt, and U.S. action would be needed.

As I noted, the representatives of non-governmental organizations will have to increase sharply their activities in the United Nations bodies and programs. The challenges facing us are heavy, and constructive action is urgently needed.

 ********************************

René Wadlow, Association of World Citizens

Snow’s sigh #ShortStory #Fiction by Olivia Mendez

Ella wrapped her scarf tighter around her neck and pulled her coat’s hood snug over her head. The biting cold of Sweden’s winter seeped through her layers, sending a shiver down her spine. She couldn’t believe she had let Ingrid, her college roommate and best friend, convince her to come all the way from South Carolina to Sweden in January, of all months. Snow was something Ella had always dreaded, a rare inconvenience back home, but here, it was a suffocating blanket that transformed the world into a frozen wasteland.

“Ingrid, why couldn’t you have visited me instead?” Ella muttered as she stepped into her borrowed snow boots, sighing at the sheer absurdity of it all. But Ingrid had promised her warmth, not in temperature, but in experience.

That morning, after endless teasing about Ella’s snow-phobia, Ingrid had handed her a steaming cup of hot chocolate and nudged her toward the door. “Go take a walk by the lake,” she said, grinning. “It’s magical after fresh snow.”

Magical? Ella thought as she trudged through the deep drifts, the wind nipping at her cheeks. More like miserable. The snow crunched under her boots, the sound oddly soothing in the quiet stillness of the forest path.

The lake appeared ahead, a shimmering expanse of ice framed by snow-laden trees. The sight stopped Ella in her tracks. It was beautiful, she admitted reluctantly. The kind of beauty that felt unreal, like stepping into a postcard. The air was crisp, the silence profound, and for a moment, Ella forgot her discomfort.

She ventured closer to the edge of the lake, her breath fogging the air. Just as she was about to turn back, she heard a crunch of snow behind her. Ella spun around, startled, and came face-to-face with a tall man bundled in a dark coat and a knit cap.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, his voice carrying a soft accent.

Ella blinked, caught off guard by the sudden intrusion. “It’s fine,” she managed, her Southern drawl creeping into her words.

He smiled. A warm, genuine smile that made Ella’s cheeks heat in a way that had nothing to do with the cold. “You’re not from around here, are you?” he asked, his eyes sparkling with curiosity.

“No,” she said, laughing nervously. “Is it that obvious?”

“Only a little.” He chuckled, the sound rich and inviting. “I’m Lukas. I live nearby. I come here often, especially after a snowfall. It’s quiet, peaceful.”

“I can see that,” Ella said, glancing back at the frozen lake. “It’s... breathtaking.”

“You say that like you’re surprised.”

“I kind of am.” She hesitated, then added, “I’m Ella. From South Carolina. Snow isn’t really my thing.”

Lukas tilted his head, studying her. “Yet here you are, standing in the middle of it.”

“Ingrid, my friend, said I should come. I think she just wanted me out of the house.”

“Smart friend.” Lukas grinned. “Sometimes you have to push people to see the beauty they’re missing.”

They fell into an easy conversation, walking along the lake’s edge. Lukas told her about his childhood in the area, the way he used to skate on the lake with his siblings, and how the forest seemed to hold secrets if you listened closely enough. Ella shared stories of warm Southern summers, porch swings, and her grandmother’s pecan pie.

The hours slipped by unnoticed, the snow underfoot crunching in rhythm with their steps. For the first time since arriving in Sweden, Ella forgot to feel cold.

When the sun dipped low, casting the sky in shades of gold and pink, Lukas stopped and turned to her. “The sunsets here are worth the frostbite,” he said softly.

Ella looked up, her breath catching at the sight. The lake mirrored the fiery hues of the sky, and the world seemed to glow.

“You were right,” she murmured. “It is magical.”

Lukas smiled, his gaze lingering on her. “I think you’re starting to like the snow.”

“Maybe just a little,” Ella admitted, her lips curving into a smile.

As they stood there, the silence wrapping around them like a blanket, Ella felt something shift. The snow no longer felt oppressive; it felt like a gift, a quiet, sparkling invitation to something new.

And as Lukas reached out to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear, his touch gentle and tentative, Ella realized that sometimes, the things you dread the most can lead you to the places you’re meant to be.

That winter, Ella fell in love. Not just with the snow, but with the man who showed her its magic. And every January after, when the first flakes fell, she would think of that day by the lake, where her life changed forever in the whisper of winter’s embrace.

The end

Invisible chains by Shanna Shepard

National Human Trafficking Awareness Day arrives each year with the quiet insistence of a calendar square that wants more attention than it gets. It is not marked by fireworks or sales, and it resists easy symbolism. Human trafficking is not a single story with a single villain. It is a system, adaptable and patient, thriving not on darkness alone but on our collective willingness to look away when the picture becomes complicated or uncomfortable.

We like to imagine trafficking as something distant and cinematic: shadowy border crossings, locked shipping containers, whispered pleas in foreign languages. This framing is convenient because it reassures us that the problem belongs elsewhere. In reality, trafficking hides in plain sight. It works the late shift at nail salons, cleans hotel rooms before dawn, harvests crops under the sun, and scrolls through social media looking for loneliness to exploit. It wears the face of normal commerce and the language of opportunity.

What makes trafficking so durable is not only cruelty but ambiguity. Many victims do not recognize themselves as victims, at least not at first. They are offered jobs, housing, affection, or stability. Consent is blurred, then eroded. Debt replaces wages. Threats replace promises. By the time force appears, escape feels impossible, not because the doors are always locked, but because the consequences of leaving feel worse than staying. This is not a failure of individual strength. It is the predictable outcome of power stacked carefully against the vulnerable.

Awareness days often ask us to learn the signs, as if trafficking were a puzzle that could be solved with sharper observation. Awareness matters, but it is not a moral finish line. The uncomfortable truth is that trafficking persists because it is profitable and because its profits are woven into the everyday economy. Cheap labour, fast services, and disposable people are not glitches in the system; they are features we quietly tolerate as long as the costs remain invisible.

There is also a temptation to turn outrage into spectacle. We share shocking statistics, retell the most brutal cases, and then move on, satisfied that our emotional response counts as engagement. But horror alone rarely produces change. It can even numb us. When every story is extreme, the ordinary suffering that defines most trafficking cases fades into the background. The victim who does not fit the narrative of absolute captivity becomes easier to ignore.

A more honest response would force us to examine our own comfort. It would ask why certain jobs are structured so that exploitation is almost inevitable, why immigration systems trap people in dependency, why reporting abuse so often leads to punishment rather than protection. These questions are less dramatic than rescue fantasies, but they are where responsibility actually lives.

National Human Trafficking Awareness Day should make us suspicious of simple solutions. Raids and arrests can matter, but without long term support, survivors are often returned to the same conditions that made them vulnerable in the first place. Justice cannot end at extraction. It must include housing, legal status, medical care, and the slow rebuilding of autonomy. Otherwise, awareness becomes another performance that centers our sense of righteousness rather than the lives at stake.

Perhaps the most difficult shift is recognizing that trafficking is not only a crime problem but a social one. It flourishes where inequality is sharp, where social safety nets are thin, and where people are reduced to their economic usefulness. As long as we accept a world where some lives are cheap by design, trafficking will find room to breathe.

On this day, the most radical act may be restraint. Fewer slogans. Less self congratulation. More listening to survivors who describe not just what happened to them, but what failed around them. Awareness should unsettle us, not comfort us. It should linger after the day ends, complicating how we think about work, consumption, and dignity.

Human trafficking survives on invisibility, but not the kind cured by a single spotlight. It thrives in the gray areas we prefer not to name. If this day is to matter, it must leave us with fewer illusions about innocence and more willingness to accept shared responsibility. That discomfort is not a flaw. It is the beginning of something more honest.

Change rarely announces itself loudly. It arrives through policy debates that feel tedious, budgets that reflect values, and daily choices made without applause. Awareness, if it is to mean anything, must evolve into sustained attention, patience, and the courage to disrupt what benefits.

Trekking Chat #001 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

They trek across surreal cartoon streets, armed with quirky sarcasm
and boundless humor. They map uncharted valleys, befriend bizarre creatures
and find the real adventure in their square frames.

For more Trekking Chat, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

---

When personal morality replaces law by Marja Heikkinen

When a president declares that the only thing capable of stopping him is “my own morality” and “my own mind,” while dismissing international law as unnecessary, it is not bravado. It is a warning. Power that answers only to itself is not leadership; it is impulse elevated to policy. History has taught us, repeatedly and painfully, that when rulers frame restraint as optional, the costs are paid by ordinary people, usually far from the microphones and well beyond the reach of accountability.

Those words matter because they set the tone for action. They announce a worldview in which institutions are inconveniences, laws are obstacles, and oversight is an insult. In such a climate, enforcement agencies do not merely execute policy; they absorb attitude. They learn quickly what is rewarded, what is ignored and what will be excused. When the message from the top is that morality is personal and law is negotiable, abuses stop being aberrations and start becoming features.

Nowhere has this been more visible than in the behaviour of ICE and Border Patrol forces operating with the swagger of occupation units rather than civil servants. Reports of people being arrested without clear cause, beaten during encounters, shot under dubious circumstances, or killed with investigations quietly stalled are not rumours whispered on the fringe. They are patterns. And patterns, by definition, are not accidents. They emerge when power is unleashed without meaningful consequence.

The most disturbing aspect is not simply that noncitizens have been brutalized. It is that American citizens have also been caught in this dragnet of impunity. Citizenship, supposedly the ultimate shield, has proven flimsy when confronted by armed agents emboldened by political cover. When a government tolerates, excuses, or outright defends illegal actions by its own forces, it sends a chilling message: your rights exist only at the pleasure of those enforcing them.

Defenders of this approach often retreat into the language of security. They speak of threats, invasions, emergencies, and necessity. Fear becomes the solvent that dissolves principle. But security without law is not security at all. It is volatility. It replaces predictable justice with arbitrary force and calls the result strength. In reality, it weakens the very foundations it claims to protect, eroding trust between the state and the people it governs.

Trump’s insistence that he does not “need international law” reveals something deeper than nationalist bluster. International law is not about foreign approval; it is about shared limits on state violence. Rejecting it is a declaration that limits themselves are optional. Once that idea takes hold, domestic law soon follows. If treaties can be shrugged off, why not statutes? If norms can be mocked, why not constitutional principles? The slide is not sudden; it is normalized step by step.

This is how democracies decay without a single dramatic collapse. The uniforms remain. The elections continue. The slogans still promise greatness. But beneath the surface, the moral contract frays. People begin to expect abuse. Victims are told they must have deserved it. Accountability is reframed as disloyalty. And the president’s “own morality” becomes the final court of appeal, immune to evidence, insulated from consequence.

An administration that reflexively covers for illegal actions by enforcement agencies does more than shield individuals; it institutionalizes wrongdoing. Investigations are slow-walked. Prosecutors decline cases. Internal reviews clear everyone involved. Each non-decision reinforces the lesson that force will be forgiven if it aligns with political goals. Over time, officers who might have acted with restraint either adapt or leave, replaced by those comfortable operating in moral fog.

The tragedy is that none of this is inevitable. Laws exist precisely because individual morality is unreliable. Minds change. Tempers flare. Ambition distorts judgment. The rule of law is the collective agreement that no one, especially those with guns and badges, gets to decide unilaterally how far is too far. When a president openly rejects that premise, he is not projecting confidence. He is confessing contempt for the guardrails that protect everyone else.

In the end, the question is not what can stop one man. It is what will stop a system from becoming accustomed to cruelty. If the answer remains “nothing but his own mind,” then the nation has already accepted a dangerous lie, that power needs no restraint. And lies like that do not remain theoretical. They leave bruises, graves, and a country wondering when morality became a substitute for law.

What makes this moment especially perilous is the normalization of exhaustion. People grow tired of outrage, numb to headlines, resigned to the idea that nothing will change. That fatigue is itself a political outcome. It clears space for further excess, because resistance requires energy and belief. Journalism, protest, and courts are portrayed as annoyances rather than necessities. Yet democratic survival has always depended on refusal, refusal to accept cruelty as governance, refusal to excuse violence as policy, refusal to let any leader redefine law as a personal inconvenience. Without that refusal, silence becomes consent, and consent hardens into complicity. History watches quietly, but consequences arrive loudly, reshaping lives long after speeches fade and denials crumble beyond the comfort of power.

MINNEAPOLIS: 7th January 2026 #Poem by David Sparenberg

A Merry, Merry Christmas
and a Happy New Year!
Let’s hope it’s a good one
without any fear.  -John Lennon

The Brown Shirts are in the streets again:
the intention is terror
the plan is murder.

They will as quickly shoot a woman in the head*
as shoot a man.
They will as readily traumatize and orphan a child
as intimidate and abuse an elder:

separate children from their mothers
bash, break the bones and bloody the faces
of Constitutionally sanctioned protesters.

The Brown Shirts (SA
Sturmabteilung, the stormtroopers)
are in the streets again, armed and dangerous.
And they believe the streets belong to them.

With raised clenched fist of cultic loyalty
they do not consider themselves outside the law.
In the ideological tempest of their 4^th Reich
they are convinced they are the law.

Those of us who do not learn, pundits say
are condemned to repeat.
The boots are on the ground.
The Brown Shirts are in the streets again.
The agents of ICE
believe the streets belong to them.

*In memory of Renee Nicole Good
and the shot seen and heard around the world.

---

David Sparenberg is a humanitarian & eco-poet, international essayist and storyteller. He published four OVI eBooks in 2025, the latest, TROUBADOUR and the Earth on Fire was published on International Migrants Day, December 18th. David lives in the Ecotopian hub of Seattle Washington in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and identifies as a Citizen of Creation.

---

Don't miss David Sparenberg's latest eBook Troubadour and the Earth on fire ,
Download for free, HERE!

Handcuffs on the Greek tractors by Melina Barnett

The order to arrest protesters and unionists during the farmers’ demonstrations on the Greek highways is not merely an episode of excess policing. It is a political statement, a judicial confession and a warning. It tells us, in plain term that Greek justice no longer even pretends to stand at arm’s length from power. It bends, it reacts and it obeys. And it obeys to Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

Farmers blocking highways are not criminals. They are citizens pushed to desperation by rising costs, collapsing incomes and policies designed far from the soil they work. When tractors line asphalt, it is not an attack on democracy; it is one of its oldest expressions. Yet the state’s response was not dialogue, negotiation, or patience. It was arrests. It was intimidation. It was the criminalization of dissent.

Justice did not intervene to protect constitutional rights. It intervened to protect political convenience.

This is where the rot becomes visible. Orders to arrest protesters do not appear out of thin air. They require prosecutors willing to interpret the law aggressively, judges willing to look away, and police leadership confident that no institutional line will be crossed by crossing the people. This confidence does not grow in a vacuum. It grows in an ecosystem where power is centralized, accountability is decorative, and loyalty is rewarded.

The Mitsotakis government has mastered this ecosystem. Institutions are not abolished; they are hollowed out. The courts still exist, but they increasingly function as extensions of executive will. Independence survives as rhetoric, not as practice. When justice moves faster against protesting farmers than against corruption scandals, wiretapping revelations, or political cronies, the hierarchy of priorities becomes undeniable.

Unionists were targeted because unions represent memory. They remember rights that were won, not gifted. They remember that labor protections were not acts of generosity by enlightened governments but the result of conflict. Silencing unionists is not about traffic flow. It is about disciplining society. It is about sending the message that collective action will be punished, not heard.

The highways were chosen deliberately. Highways are visible. They disrupt the illusion of normality that governments desperately try to maintain. Arrests on highways are theatrical. They reassure supporters that “order” is being restored while warning the rest that resistance has consequences. It is governance by spectacle, backed by handcuffs.

Greek justice, in this moment, did not act as a neutral arbiter between citizens and the state. It acted as a shield for power. Dependent justice is more dangerous than openly authoritarian justice because it hides behind procedures. It speaks the language of legality while emptying it of meaning. It does not ban protests; it redefines them as crimes.

This dependency did not begin with one decision or one demonstration. It is the culmination of years in which checks and balances were treated as obstacles, journalists as enemies, and critics as threats. When surveillance scandals fail to trigger meaningful judicial consequences, when ministers emerge untouched from political disasters, but farmers are arrested for blocking roads, justice reveals its alignment.

Supporters of the government will argue that laws must be enforced, that roads cannot be blocked, that order must prevail. But law without proportionality is repression and order without legitimacy is fear. Democracies are not measured by how they treat obedience, but by how they tolerate disruption.

The farmers’ protests exposed something far more serious than agricultural policy failures. They exposed a justice system that looks upward before it looks at the law. A system that calculates political cost before constitutional duty. A system dependent not on principles, but on power.

This is not a temporary deviation. It is a direction. And unless it is named, confronted, and resisted, the handcuffs placed on the highways today will quietly tighten around society tomorrow.

History is unforgiving to governments that confuse control with stability. When justice becomes selective, citizens eventually stop trusting not only institutions, but each other. Cynicism spreads, participation shrinks, and democracy becomes a performance without belief. Greece has walked this road before and it never ends where its architects promise. The farmers on the highways may disperse, the tractors may leave, and the news cycle may move on. But the precedent remains. Each arrest lowers the threshold for the next. Each silent judge normalizes the silence. And each government that discovers how easily justice can be guided will be tempted to guide it further, until guidance becomes command and command becomes habit.

Democracy does not die loudly; it erodes quietly, legally and incrementally.

Carpond #006 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

A cacophony of singalongs, stifled yawns,
and surprisingly insightful debates
on the existential dread of a four wheeler vacuum

For more Carpond, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

---

Europe without nerve by Thanos Kalamidas

The war in Ukraine, Donald Trump’s erratic belligerence toward Venezuela and his theatrical threats aimed even at Greenland are not isolated spectacles of global disorder. They are stress tests. And under this pressure the European Union’s leadership has revealed something far more troubling than disagreement or hesitation, a profound incapacity to act with clarity, courage and strategic autonomy.

Europe today appears less like a union of sovereign democracies and more like a committee perpetually waiting for instructions. While history accelerates Brussels deliberates. While threats multiply statements are polished, softened and released too late to matter. This is not diplomacy. It is paralysis disguised as process.

Ursula von der Leyen has come to embody this failure. Her tenure has been defined by grand rhetoric and careful avoidance of confrontation. She speaks fluently of values, resilience, and unity, yet consistently shrinks from the hard choices that give those words meaning. Leadership, after all, is not about vocabulary. It is about consequence.

Ukraine is the clearest indictment. Faced with the most serious war on European soil since 1945, the Union has acted as a generous payer but a timid power. Weapons arrive slowly. Red lines are endlessly debated. Strategy is outsourced to Washington, leaving Europe exposed to every electoral mood swing across the Atlantic.

Trump’s behaviour only sharpens this reality. His attack on Venezuela, the kidnapping of its president and his absurd sabre rattling over Greenland are not policy positions so much as warnings of an imperialist authoritarian figure. They demonstrate how fragile Europe’s security becomes when it depends on the temperament of a single American president. Yet the EU response remains reactive, almost submissive.

This is where von der Leyen’s danger lies. She has normalized dependence as prudence and hesitation as wisdom. Under her leadership, Europe has learned to speak loudly about norms while whispering when confronted by force. The result is a Union that appears morally confident but strategically hollow.

Free journalism does not demand neutrality in the face of dysfunction. It demands clarity. The European project was never meant to be an elegant debating society. It was meant to ensure that Europe would never again be a playground for stronger powers. Today, it risks becoming exactly that.

The answer is not anti Americanism, nor reckless militarism. It is adulthood. Europe needs leadership willing to define interests, accept risk and act before crises metastasize. That requires confronting uncomfortable truths, including the failure of those currently at the helm.

Von der Leyen’s defenders will argue that consensus is slow by design, that unity requires patience. That argument confuses method with outcome. Consensus that cannot produce power is not unity. It is collective weakness carefully managed.

History is unforgiving to institutions that mistake comfort for stability. The world is reorganizing around power, speed, and will. Europe cannot afford leaders who wait for permission to lead. The cost will not be theoretical. It will be measured in lost influence, broken borders, and diminished futures.

Europe does not lack resources, talent, or legitimacy. It lacks nerve. And nerve is not found in communiqués or summits. It is forged when leaders accept that safety without sovereignty is an illusion, and that dependence dressed as cooperation eventually collapses.

The crises of today are warnings from tomorrow. Ukraine bleeds, American politics convulse and global norms erode. Each moment of European hesitation writes another footnote in the story of decline. This trajectory is not inevitable, but it is being chosen.

If Europe wants to matter, it must rediscover the courage to decide. That means leadership change, strategic independence, and an honest reckoning with failure. The alternative is to continue watching history unfold elsewhere, while congratulating ourselves on process.

That is not leadership. It is managed decline with better branding. And it is precisely why the current European leadership, personified by Ursula von der Leyen, represents not continuity, but danger. Danger to credibility, danger to security, and danger to the very promise that Europe once made to itself.

Europe was built to be more than a market and more than a moral lecture. It was built to protect its people in a hostile world. Until its leaders remember that purpose, every crisis will expose the same truth: the Union speaks, the world acts.

This imbalance cannot be corrected with slogans or summits. It requires resolve. Without it, Europe will remain wealthy, well spoken, and increasingly irrelevant. A continent that waits to be led will eventually be led by others. History has never been kind to spectators. Europe should remember that now. Before consequences become permanent. And irreversible.
Ursula von der Leyen must leave.

The silence beside the throne by Kingsley Cobb

There are moments in politics when absence speaks louder than applause. When Trump attacked Venezuela arrested/kidnapped Nicolás Maduro, or mused about “running” Venezuela while threatening Cuba and Mexico, JD Vance was nowhere to be seen. No clarifying statement. No loyal echo. No carefully worded nod. Just silence.

That silence invites interpretation and in Trump-world, interpretation is never neutral. JD Vance was once framed as a future-facing heir to Trumpism, younger, sharper, Ivy-educated yet culturally resentful, a man who could translate raw populism into a durable political project. His rise suggested continuity, not caution. Yet when Trump’s rhetoric crossed from bluster into the realm of international illegality and geopolitical irregularity Vance disappeared from view. The question is not simply where he was, but why he chose not to be visible.

One explanation is calculation. Vance is ambitious, and ambition in American politics often expresses itself through strategic restraint. Trump’s acts toward Venezuela and threats towards its neighbors were not policies; they were impulses, untethered from law, diplomacy, or consequence. Standing beside them would mean owning them. Opposing them would mean betrayal. Silence becomes the narrow bridge between future viability and present loyalty. In that reading, Vance was not hiding out of fear, but hedging against a future in which Trump’s words are replayed in courtrooms, hearings, and campaign ads.

But there is a harsher possibility, that JD Vance simply doesn’t matter as much anymore. Trump’s inner circle is famously unstable, governed less by ideology than by attention and utility. People rise and fall not because of elections or competence, but because Trump’s instincts shift. In that unstable ecosystem, Marco Rubio’s reemergence is striking. Once mocked and politically sidelined, Rubio has reinvented himself as a reliable, fluent translator between Trump’s impulses and the institutional world that must absorb them.

Rubio shows up. He comments. He contextualizes. He excuses. When Trump talks about strongmen, borders, and hemispheric dominance, Rubio is there to nod along while smoothing the edges for donors, allies, and anxious bureaucracies. JD Vance, by contrast, trades in cultural grievance and domestic resentment, tools that thrive at rallies but falter in conversations about sanctions, invasions, or regime change. In the theater of foreign policy, Rubio has become more useful than Vance and usefulness is the only stable currency in Trump’s orbit.

This does not mean Vance has been formally exiled. Trump rarely cuts people off cleanly. Instead, he allows them to fade while others occupy the spotlight. Vance may still be a future asset, waiting for a moment when Trump needs generational anger rather than geopolitical fluency. Until then, silence acts as both shield and signal, protecting Vance from immediate fallout while quietly marking his reduced relevance.

There is also an uncomfortable moral dimension. Kidnapping a foreign head of state or administering another country crosses lines that even hardened political operatives recognize as dangerous. Vance is not naïve. He understands illegality, precedent and the long memory of the political record. Being publicly tied to such rhetoric would haunt any future presidential run. His absence may be the closest thing to dissent he can afford.

So has Marco Rubio replaced JD Vance in the heart and future of Donald Trump? Perhaps not replaced, but repositioned. Rubio is the voice of plausible empire; Vance is the voice of wounded nationalism. Right now, Trump seems more interested in the former. The throne is crowded, the court is restless, and silence may be JD Vance’s last defensive move. In Trump’s world, however, those who remain silent too long often discover they are no longer being listened for at all.

#eBook: Thunder in space by Lester Del Rey

 

The men on the space station had a word for trouble—"thunder." Always it had been thunder on earth. Now, with the warheads decaying and the Soviets playing a mysterious game, now there was …

Thunder in space

While Russia continues to remain wary of American attack, America has grown more suspicious of Russian activities. And the rest of the world is stricken with the painful knowledge that they shall inevitably be caught in the crossfire …

At the back of his mind, Goddard’s Acting Commander, Jerry Blane, knew it was bound to happen sooner or later, but he never expected he'd have to blast the enemy under these circumstances: the establishment of friendly–even helpful–relations with their Russian counterpart, the Tsiolkovsky. So when faced with the decision to save his life and his crew by demolishing the Russian spaceship, he made a choice that would foster revolutionary mindsets and alter global history.

Lester del Rey born June 2, 1915 and died May 10, 1993. He was an American science fiction author and editor. He was the author of many books in the juvenile Winston Science Fiction series, and the editor at Del Rey Books, the fantasy and science fiction imprint of Ballantine Books, along with his fourth wife Judy-Lynn del Rey.

In Public Domain
First Published 1962
Ovi eBook Publishing 2024

Read it online or download HERE!
Enjoy viewing & reading it online or download in PDF format HERE!
All eBooks and downloads are FREE!

---

Check Ovi eBookshelves HERE!