Our Common Oceans and Seas by Rene Wadlow

 

The people of the earth having agreed that the advancement of man in spiritual excellence and physical welfare is the common goal of mankind...therefore the age of nations must end, and the era of humanity begin.”
Preamble to the Preliminary Draft of a World Constitution

The United Nations is currently preparing a world conference 5-7 June 2017 devoted to the Implementation of Sustainable Development Goal N° 14: Conserve and sustainable use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.  Non-governmental organizations in consultative status with the U.N. are invited to submit recommendations for the governmental working group which is meeting 24 to 27 April in New York.

The Association of World Citizens has long been concerned with the Law of the Sea and had been active during the 10-year negotiations on the law of the sea during the 1970s, the meetings being held one month a year, alternatively in New York and Geneva. The world citizens position for the law of the sea was largely based on a three-point framework:

a) that the oceans and seas were the common heritage of humanity and should be seen as a living symbol of the unity of humanity;

b) that ocean management should be regulated by world law created as in as democratic manner as possible;

c) that the wealth of the oceans, considered as the common heritage of mankind should contain mechanisms of global redistribution, especially for the development of the poorest, a step toward a more just economic order, on land as well as at sea.

The concept of the oceans as the common heritage of humanity had been introduced into the U.N. awareness by a moving speech in the U.N. General Assembly by Arvid Pardo, Ambassador of Malta in November 1967.  Under traditional international sea law, the resources of the oceans, except those within a narrow territorial sea near the coast line  were regarded as "no one's property" or more positively as "common property."  The "no one's property" opened the door to the exploitation of resources by the most powerful and the most technologically advanced States.  The "common heritage" concept was put forward as a way of saying that "humanity" - at least as represented by the States in the U.N. - should have some say as to the way the resources of the oceans and seas should be managed.  Thus began the 1970s Law of the Seas negotiations.

Perhaps with or without the knowledge of Neptune, lord of the seas, the Maltese voted to change the political party in power just as the sea negotiations began. Arvid Pardo was replaced as Ambassador to the U.N. by a man who had neither the vision nor the diplomatic skills of Pardo.  Thus, during the 10 years of negotiations the "common heritage" flame was carried by world citizens, in large part by Elisabeth Mann Borgese with whom I worked  closely during the Geneva sessions of the negotiations.

Elisabeth Mann Borgese  (1918-2002)  whose birth anniversary we mark on 24 April, was a strong-willed woman.  She had to come out from under the shadow of both her father, Thomas Mann, the German writer and Nobel laureate for Literature, and her husband Giuseppe Antonio Borgese (1882-1952), Italian literary critic and political analyst.  From 1938, Thomas Mann lived in Princeton, New Jersey and gave occasional lectures at Princeton University.  Thomas Mann, whose novel The Magic Mountain was one of the monuments of world literature between the two World Wars, always felt that he represented the best of German culture against the uncultured mass of the Nazis.  He took himself and his role very seriously, and his family existed basically to facilitate his thinking and writing.

G.A. Borgese had a regular professor's post at the University of Chicago but often lectured at other universities on the evils of Mussolini.  Borgese, who had been a leading literary critic and university professor in Milan, left Italy for the United States in 1931 when Mussolini announced that an oath of allegiance to the Fascist State would be required of all Italian professors. For Borgese, with a vast culture including the classic Greeks, the Renaissance Italians, and the 19th century nationalist writers, Mussolini was an evil caricature which too few Americans recognized as a destructive force in his own right and not just as the fifth wheel of Hitler's armed car. 

G.A. Borgese met Elizsabeth Mann on a lecture tour at Princeton, and despite being close to Thomas Mann in age, the couple married very quickly shortly after meeting.  Elisabeth moved to the University of Chicago and was soon caught up in Borgese's efforts to help the transition from the Age of Nations to the Age of Humanity. For Borgese, the world was in  a watershed period. The Age of Nations − with its nationalism  which could be a liberating force in the 19th century as with the unification of Italy − had come to a close with the First World War.  The war clearly showed that nationalism was from then on only the symbol of death.  However, the Age of Humanity, which was the next step in human evolution, had not yet come into being, in part because too many people were still caught in the shadow play of the Age of Nations.

Since University of Chicago scientists had played an important role in the coming of the Atomic Age, G.A. Borgese and Richard McKeon, Dean of the University felt that the University should take a major role in drafting a world constitution for the Atomic Age. Thus the Committee to Frame a World Constitution, an interdisciplinary committee under the leadership of Robert Hutchins, head of the University of Chicago, was created in 1946. To re-capture the hopes and fears of the 1946-1948 period when the World Constitutions was being written, it is useful to read the book written by one of the members of the drafting team: Rexford Tugwell. A Chronicle of Jeopardy (University of Chicago Press, 1955). The book is Rex Tugwell's reflections on the years 1946-1954 written each year in August to mark the A-bombing of Hiroshima

Elisabeth had become the secretary of the Committee and the editor of its journal Common Cause.   The last issue of Common Cause was in June 1951. G.A. Borgese published a commentary on the Constitution, dealing especially with his ideas on the nature of justice. It was the last thing he wrote, and the book was published shortly after his death: G.A.Borgese. Foundations of the World Republic (University of Chicago Press, 1953). In 1950, the Korean War started. Hope for a radical transformation of the UN faded.  Borgese and his wife went to live in Florence, where weary and disappointed, he died in 1952.

The drafters of the World Constitution went on to other tasks.  Robert Hutchins left the University of Chicago to head a “think tank”- Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions – taking some of the drafters, including Elisabeth, with him. She edited a booklet on the Preliminary Draft with a useful introduction A Constitution for the World (1965) However, much of the energy of the Center went into the protection of freedom of thought and expression in the USA, at the time under attack by the primitive anti-communism of then Senator Joe McCarthy.

In the mid-1950s, from world federalists and world citizens came various proposals for UN control of areas not under national control: UN control of the High Seas and the Waterways, especially after the 1956 Suez Canal conflict, and of Outer Space. A good overview of these proposals is contained in James A.  Joyce. Revolution on East River (New York: Ablard-Schuman, 1956).

After the 1967 proposal of Arvid Pardo, Elisabeth Mann Borgese  turned her attention and energy to the law of the sea.  As the UN Law of the Sea Conference continued through the 1970s,  Elisabeth was active in seminars and conferences with the delegates, presenting ideas, showing that a strong treaty on the law of the sea would be a big step forward for humanity. Many of the issues raised during the negotiations leading to the Convention, especially the concept of the Exclusive Economic Zone, actively battled by Elisabeth but actively championed by Ambassador Alan Beesley of Canada, are with us today in the China seas tensions. While the resulting Convention of the Law of the Sea has not revolutionized world politics – as some of us  hoped in the early 1970s - the Convention is an important building block in the development of world law. We are grateful for the values and the energy that Elisabeth Mann Borgese embodied and we are still pushing for the concept of the common heritage of humanity.

 ****************************************

Rene Wadlow, President and a representative to the United Nations, Geneva, Association of World Citizens

Ian Glim #010 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

A bewildered soul navigating global complexities armed
only with earnestness and a sharp, sarcastic wit.

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The bottom that keeps moving into the mud by Yash Irwin

Just when it seems impossible for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, former known as ...Prince Andrew, to sink any lower in the public imagination, another headline arrives to remind us that the floor beneath him is apparently made of quicksand.

The latest revelation is not the kind of scandal that produces dramatic photographs or breathless television specials. It lacks the lurid details that have dominated discussions of Andrew for years. Instead, it concerns something almost mundane: money. Specifically, undisclosed rental income reportedly earned from sub-letting three cottages on the Royal Lodge estate, a property he leases from the Crown Estate.

Yet the significance lies precisely in its ordinariness. After years of controversies, public relations disasters, and reputational wreckage, one might assume that Andrew’s greatest challenge would be demonstrating humility, transparency, and an understanding of why public trust in him has evaporated. Instead, the recurring pattern seems to be an inability or unwillingness, to appreciate how these stories look to ordinary people.

That matters because royalty survives on perception. Monarchies in the modern era are not sustained by military power or divine right. They endure because enough citizens conclude that the institution provides value, continuity, and a sense of national identity. The arrangement depends heavily on trust.

Andrew has become a walking argument against that trust. The issue is not merely whether rules were broken. Investigators, auditors, and officials can debate technicalities. The larger question is why someone whose public standing is already shattered continues to generate stories that reinforce every criticism levelled against him.

For many people struggling with housing costs, inflation, and stagnant wages, tales of undisclosed rental income connected to a sprawling royal estate land with predictable force. Fairly or unfairly, they create the impression of a privileged figure operating under a different set of assumptions than everyone else.

The British royal family has spent decades trying to modernize its image. It has emphasized service, duty, and accountability. Senior royals regularly visit charities, champion causes, and speak about the challenges facing ordinary citizens. Whether one supports the monarchy or not, the institution has clearly recognized that survival requires adaptation.

Andrew, however, often appears trapped in a different era. Every new revelation feels less like an isolated incident and more like another chapter in a remarkably consistent story. The details change, but the underlying theme remains stubbornly familiar: entitlement colliding with public scrutiny.

What makes this particularly damaging is that the burden rarely falls on Andrew alone. The monarchy itself absorbs the impact. Every uncomfortable headline forces the institution to answer questions it would rather avoid. Every controversy distracts from the work of other royals. Every fresh disclosure revives debates that palace officials have spent years attempting to move beyond.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Andrew saga is its persistence. Most public figures eventually reach a point where there are no more surprises left to uncover. With Andrew, that point never seems to arrive. Just when observers conclude that the story has exhausted itself, another development emerges.

And so the public is left with a strange spectacle: a man who long ago became a liability to the institution he was born into, yet somehow continues to find new ways to prove the point. For Andrew, the bottom never appears to be a destination. It is merely another stop on the way down.

The We #Poem by Jan Sand

 

I doubt the me is singular
The sense is multilingualar
The I is sky and fingertips,
It’s tears and years and smiling lips,
Not one nor ten, but uncountable,
An angry steed unmountable
That rears and screams with dreams
Of broken bones, with blacknesses,
And sweet love that might save, might,
But cannot take the world in fist
To shake it, to see it cannot persist
In mindless tumble, wrecking all that exists.

There is death’s silence in eternity
A handful or two of a billion years
That waits most patiently for that spark,
Quite clear in the singing lark,
In the trumpet of an elephant,
That pleads for delight
To cry to the universe night.
Please permit, look and wonder
At the flash, at the thunder
That creates the path for life
To grow in understanding
To make sense of your commanding.

#eBook: The Youth Bulge by Oumou Yakubu

On a humid night in Niamey, Niger, a fifteen-year-old boy named Hamid scrolls through a borrowed smartphone. The median age in his country is also fifteen , the youngest on earth.

Eight thousand kilometres east, in Patna, India, a nineteen-year-old girl named Priya finishes her shift at a call centre, earning just enough to keep her younger brothers in school. They have never met. They share no language, no faith, no culture. But they share a century.

By 2050, Africa and South Asia will be home to nearly half the world’s children and young adults, a demographic bulge so vast it will either power the global economy or set it ablaze. Hamid is one of 40 per cent of sub-Saharan Africans under fifteen. Priya is one of 25 per cent of South Asians in the same cohort. Together, their generation will enter a job market that currently creates only 25 million formal roles each year against a billion new workers expected by mid-century. The maths does not forgive.

The geopolitics of the African and South Asian youth

Geopolitics is the study of how geography, resources and power shape global politics. It analyzes how location, climate, population, and access to trade routes influence a nation’s foreign policy and strategic decisions.

Ovi eBook Publications 2026

The Youth Bulge

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Ant-sized Culinary #009 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

In the bustling undergrowth of Picante Hill, Anton the culinary ant dons his oversized toque and delivers deliciously chaotic cooking wisdom, one tiny misadventure at a time.

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Jun 7, 1494; The Treaty of Tordesillas

7 June 1494 remains one of the most remarkable and controversial dates in world history. On that day, representatives of Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, an agreement that attempted to divide vast portions of the globe between two European powers. By drawing an imaginary line approximately 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, the treaty granted Spain rights to lands west of the line and Portugal rights to lands east of it.

At first glance, the agreement may seem like a practical diplomatic solution to a growing rivalry. Yet, viewed through a modern lens, it appears astonishingly arrogant. Two monarchies, possessing limited knowledge of the wider world, effectively claimed ownership over territories inhabited by millions of people whom they had never met and whose societies they barely understood.

The Treaty of Tordesillas stands as both a masterpiece of diplomacy and a symbol of European imperial ambition. Its legacy continues to shape the modern world more than five centuries later.

The treaty emerged from a period of extraordinary exploration. In 1492, the Italian navigator Christopher Columbus, sailing under the Spanish Crown, reached lands across the Atlantic that Europeans had not previously incorporated into their geographical understanding. Although Columbus believed he had found a route to Asia, his voyages opened the door to extensive European expansion.

Portugal, meanwhile, had spent decades investing in maritime exploration along the African coast. Under the influence of figures such as Prince Henry the Navigator, Portuguese sailors had steadily pushed further south, seeking trade routes to Asia and access to valuable commodities.

The sudden possibility of overseas empires created a serious problem. Spain and Portugal were emerging maritime powers, both eager to secure wealth, prestige, and strategic advantage. Without a formal agreement, conflict seemed inevitable.

The solution was diplomatic rather than military. Negotiations led to the Treaty of Tordesillas, which sought to prevent war by establishing a clear boundary between the spheres of influence of the two kingdoms.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the treaty is its underlying assumption: that European rulers possessed the authority to divide lands they neither controlled nor fully understood.

No representatives from the Americas, Africa, or Asia were present during the negotiations. Indigenous peoples had no voice in determining their own futures. Their existence was largely ignored in a document that would profoundly affect their descendants for centuries.

From a modern perspective, this attitude appears deeply flawed. The treaty reflected a worldview in which powerful European states regarded non-European territories as prizes to be allocated rather than societies with their own histories, cultures, and rights.

Yet it would be simplistic to judge the treaty solely through contemporary standards. The late fifteenth century operated according to very different assumptions about sovereignty, religion, and international law. European monarchs believed that Christian authority, royal legitimacy, and papal endorsement provided a sufficient basis for territorial claims.

Understanding this context does not excuse the consequences, but it helps explain how such an agreement could be considered reasonable by those who signed it.

The treaty played a pivotal role in shaping the development of overseas empires. Spain expanded across much of the Americas, eventually establishing control over enormous territories stretching from present-day Mexico to South America. Vast quantities of silver and gold flowed into Europe, transforming the Spanish monarchy into one of the dominant powers of the sixteenth century.

Portugal focused on Africa, Asia, and eventually Brazil. The treaty's boundary proved particularly significant when Portuguese explorers encountered the eastern coast of South America. Because part of modern Brazil fell within Portugal's designated sphere, the country developed as a Portuguese-speaking society rather than a Spanish-speaking one.

This outcome demonstrates the extraordinary influence of a line drawn on a map thousands of miles away. Modern Brazil, home to more than 200 million people, owes much of its linguistic and cultural identity to decisions made in Tordesillas in 1494.

The treaty therefore did not merely allocate territory; it helped shape the cultural geography of entire continents.

While criticism of the treaty is entirely justified, it is also worth recognising its diplomatic significance. Europe in the fifteenth century was no stranger to warfare. Territorial disputes frequently escalated into prolonged conflicts. In this context, the Treaty of Tordesillas represented an attempt to manage international competition through negotiation rather than violence.

The agreement acknowledged that competing powers required mechanisms to regulate their ambitions. In a sense, it foreshadowed later developments in international diplomacy and treaty-making.

Of course, the treaty's effectiveness was limited. Other European powers, including England, France, and the Netherlands, eventually rejected the notion that Spain and Portugal possessed exclusive rights to overseas territories. As their maritime capabilities expanded, they challenged Iberian dominance and established empires of their own.

Nevertheless, the treaty remains an early example of states attempting to solve geopolitical disputes through formal agreement.

The immediate beneficiaries of the treaty were Spain and Portugal. They gained legal and political justification for exploration and conquest, while reducing the likelihood of direct conflict between themselves.

The greatest losers were undoubtedly the indigenous populations of the Americas and other regions affected by European expansion. The centuries following the treaty witnessed conquest, displacement, forced labour, cultural destruction, and devastating epidemics.

Many indigenous societies experienced profound disruption as European empires expanded. Entire civilisations were transformed or destroyed. The wealth generated by colonial systems often came at an immense human cost.

At the same time, the treaty indirectly contributed to the creation of the interconnected global world we know today. Trade networks expanded across oceans. New crops, animals, technologies, and ideas moved between continents. The process was often unequal and frequently brutal, but it fundamentally reshaped human history.

The modern global economy, with its extensive international connections, owes something to the age of exploration that the treaty helped facilitate.

More than five hundred years after its signing, the Treaty of Tordesillas remains a fascinating historical paradox. It was an agreement designed to prevent conflict, yet it facilitated centuries of imperial expansion. It demonstrated diplomatic sophistication, yet rested upon assumptions of extraordinary entitlement. It sought order, yet contributed to immense upheaval.

Most importantly, it reminds us that maps are never merely geographical tools. They are expressions of power. The line drawn west of the Cape Verde Islands was not simply a cartographic exercise; it was a declaration about who possessed the authority to shape the future.

History has shown that no nation can permanently divide the world according to its own wishes. Yet the Treaty of Tordesillas illustrates how profoundly political decisions can influence generations to come.

On 7 June 1494, two kingdoms attempted to divide the unknown world. In doing so, they helped create the modern one.

Pink flamingos and Trumpian corruption in Albania by Timothy Davies

The controversy surrounding a proposed €1.4 billion luxury resort on Albania’s southern coast is about far more than hotels, marinas and investment brochures. It has become a test of whether small countries can protect their natural heritage when confronted by the combined weight of political influence, global capital and elite ambition.

Thousands of Albanians gathering in Tirana to protest the development is not merely another environmental demonstration. It reflects a growing unease that decisions affecting national treasures are increasingly being made for the benefit of the wealthy and well-connected rather than for ordinary citizens. The symbolism is difficult to ignore. On one side stand environmentalists, local residents and conservation advocates. On the other stand billionaire investors linked to one of the most politically connected families in America.

The project associated with Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners promises economic growth, tourism revenue and international attention. Such arguments are familiar. They accompany almost every major development proposal around the world. Yet the question is not whether luxury resorts generate money. They do. The question is whether every coastline should be treated as a commercial opportunity and whether some places possess value precisely because they have not yet been transformed into playgrounds for the affluent.

The Vjosa-Narta region is not an empty canvas awaiting development. It is a rare ecological sanctuary, home to flamingos, nesting sea turtles and vulnerable marine species. These ecosystems took centuries to evolve. A resort can be built in a few years. Once damaged, however, natural habitats are rarely restored to their original state. The economic gains are immediate and measurable. The environmental losses often emerge slowly, long after investors have moved on to their next venture.

What makes this dispute particularly striking is the political context surrounding it. Donald Trump built much of his public identity on promises to challenge entrenched elites and defend national interests against global influence. Yet the international business activities of figures connected to his family frequently appear to embody the very forces many voters believed they were rejecting: the movement of powerful capital across borders in search of lucrative deals, privileged access and favourable treatment.

Whether in Washington, the Gulf or the Balkans, the perception persists that political connections and private business opportunities increasingly travel together. Even when no laws are broken, such arrangements raise uncomfortable questions. Citizens are left wondering whether public institutions are serving national interests or facilitating projects desired by wealthy outsiders.

Albania faces a dilemma familiar to many developing and middle-income nations. Foreign investment is needed. Economic growth matters. Tourism can create jobs and improve infrastructure. Yet growth that sacrifices irreplaceable environmental assets may ultimately prove self-defeating. Countries that sell their most valuable landscapes for short-term gains often discover that the real treasure was the landscape itself.

The protesters in Tirana are therefore arguing about something larger than a single resort. They are challenging a model of development that assumes every untouched coastline represents unrealised profit. Their message is that not everything should be for sale.

In an age when billionaires can move money across continents with ease, preserving that principle may become one of democracy’s most important environmental defences.

The vanishing middle by Brea Willis

Modern neighbourhoods are quietly losing the informal social infrastructure that once made daily life feel porous rather than segmented. The café that asked for nothing more than your lingering presence, the community center with its folding chairs and uncertain schedules, even the modest pub or library corner that tolerated idleness, these were never just amenities. They were the connective tissue of urban life, the places where belonging was not scheduled or monetized, but simply allowed to happen.

In their place we have built something far more efficient and far less forgiving: a geography of optimization. Coffee is ordered ahead of arrival, seating is reserved by subscription and even “community” has been reframed as a service with deliverables. The neighborhood, once a loose constellation of accidental encounters, increasingly behaves like a corridor, one moves through it rather than within it. The idea that one might simply exist somewhere, without extracting value from the moment, begins to look almost eccentric.

It is tempting to blame technology, but that diagnosis is too easy. The deeper shift is architectural and economic. We have systematically removed the “in-between” spaces, the moments not governed by productivity or consumption. In doing so, we have erased the conditions under which casual familiarity used to form. What remains is either the private interior or the transactional exterior, with little room for the slow emergence of recognition between strangers.

This loss is not merely sentimental. It changes how communities understand themselves. A neighborhood without shared third places becomes forgetful, not in a nostalgic sense, but structurally. People no longer accumulate each other over time; they pass through each other in parallel streams. Even loneliness becomes more abstract, less a feeling in a room than a pattern across a network.

The question, then, is whether such spaces can be rebuilt virtually without reproducing the same logic of efficiency that hollowed them out in physical form. Most digital platforms have not helped. They have replaced presence with performance, conversation with metrics, and gathering with engagement. What they call “community” often resembles audience management more than mutual inhabitation.

And yet the possibility remains that virtual third places could exist, if they are designed against the grain of optimization. This would require a deliberate refusal of urgency, a suspension of measurable outcomes. A digital café, if such a thing can be imagined, would not be a platform for output but a room for lingering, where arrival matters more than achievement and staying is not justified by activity.

The difficulty is that inefficiency, once the natural condition of social life, now feels like a luxury. But it is precisely inefficiency that allowed belonging to form in the first place. To be slightly bored together, to repeat encounters without agenda, to recognize someone not because you need them but because you have simply kept showing up, these are the understated mechanics of community.

Rebuilding this sensibility, whether online or off, is less about design than restraint. It asks for spaces that do not hurry people along, that resist turning every interaction into data. It also asks for patience in an impatient age, for environments where silence is not an error state but part of the texture of being together.

Perhaps the real task is not to restore what has been lost, but to reinterpret it. The middle ground between home and work, between solitude and performance, does not need replication so much as reinvention. If neighbourhoods are to regain their social depth, they will have to tolerate less efficiency and more ambiguity, more drift, more unplanned encounter.

In that sense, the vanishing middle is not just a loss to be mourned, but a challenge to be answered. What we build next, physically or virtually, will depend on whether we can once again make room for the unproductive moment, and trust that something meaningful can still begin there.

The luxury of enough by Sidney Shelton

For years consumer culture has spoken in a single, relentless language; the newer is better. The phone in your pocket is already obsolete. The sofa in your living room could be trendier. The coffee maker that works perfectly well lacks a feature you never knew you needed until an advertisement informed you of your deficiency. Entire industries thrive on the subtle suggestion that satisfaction is not a destination but a flaw.

Against this backdrop, the rise of the so-called “Underconsumption Core” movement feels less like a trend and more like a quiet act of rebellion.

Its premise is almost embarrassingly simple. Use what you already own. Keep the phone for another year. Wear the coat until it actually wears out. Resist replacing functional furniture because a social-media influencer has declared last season’s aesthetic spiritually bankrupt. In an economy built around perpetual upgrading, such behavior has begun to appear strangely radical.

What makes the movement fascinating is not its thriftiness but its emotional appeal. Traditional frugality often carried a moral undertone, a sense of sacrifice for a greater good. Underconsumption Core is different. It romanticizes continuity. It invites people to see beauty in familiar objects rather than treating them as temporary placeholders on the path to something newer.

A scratched dining table becomes evidence of family life rather than a decorating failure. A ten-year-old lamp becomes part of a home’s character instead of an embarrassment. A smartphone with a fading battery becomes a reminder that technology is a tool, not a personality.

This shift matters because modern consumption has increasingly become disconnected from necessity. Many purchases today are not made because something is broken but because something is boring. The marketplace has become remarkably effective at transforming ordinary familiarity into dissatisfaction. The object has not changed; only the story surrounding it has.

Underconsumption Core attempts to rewrite that story. Its popularity also reflects a growing exhaustion with the performance of consumption. Social media has turned buying into a form of public entertainment. Entire online identities are built around hauls, unboxings, room refreshes, and product recommendations. The result is a culture in which ownership is never enough. One must constantly acquire and display.

Yet there is something oddly liberating about refusing to participate. A person who decides that their current belongings are sufficient exits a race that has no finish line. They stop measuring their lives against an endless stream of curated upgrades.

Of course, every movement carries the risk of becoming the thing it criticizes. Already there are signs that Underconsumption Core itself may become another aesthetic, complete with its own influencers, hashtags, and opportunities for monetization. Capitalism has a remarkable ability to package resistance and sell it back to consumers.

Still, the core idea remains powerful. In a society obsessed with optimization, choosing enough can feel revolutionary. It rejects the assumption that fulfillment is always one purchase away. It recognizes that possessions often become more meaningful with time rather than less.

Perhaps the most appealing aspect of Underconsumption Core is that it reminds us of a truth that advertising rarely acknowledges: the happiest relationship we can have with our belongings may not be acquiring them. It may be keeping them. The greatest luxury, after all, is not having everything. It is discovering that what you already have is enough.

#eBook Of OSCE and Media by GAFG

 

By Steve Clemons, Zijad Bećirović, Olga Algayerová
Co-edited by: Silvie Drahošová

The relationship between media, truth, and security has never been more fragile—nor more consequential. As you will read in the pages that follow, the erosion of press freedom is not a distant concern confined to authoritarian regimes. It is happening here, now, across the OSCE region, accelerated by technologies that outpace our ethical frameworks and amplified by actors who understand that controlling information is the first step toward controlling societies.

This eBook emerges from the proceedings of the OSCE Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting held in Vienna on 17–18 March 2025—a gathering that brought together journalists, diplomats, technologists, and civil society advocates under the shared conviction that media freedom is not optional for democracy. It is its circulatory system.

What you hold is not a conventional conference report. It is a provocation, a warning, and a set of pathways forward. The contributors to this volume—from Steve Clemons' unflinching critique of mainstream media's hubris to Harvey Dzodin's radically practical reward-based model for combating disinformation, and Nathan Coyle's urgent call to decolonize AI training data to Philipe Reinisch's synthesis of human connection and technological ethics—share a common refusal to accept decline as destiny.

The numbers are sobering. At least 124 journalists were killed in 2024 alone. Over 90% of AI training data originates in the Global North, while 43% of global conflicts occur in Africa. A single deepfake audio clip may have swung a national election in Slovakia. And yet, as Olga Algayerova reminds us in her keynote, we possess the tools, the legal frameworks, and the collective institutions to reverse this tide—if we choose to act.

The Helsinki spirit of 1975 was never meant to be a museum piece. It was a living commitment to the idea that security cannot be comprehensive without freedom, and freedom cannot endure without truth. The essays in this volume ask us to renew that commitment for an age of generative AI, fragmented media ecosystems, and resurgent authoritarianism.

The question before us is not whether media freedom is under threat. It is whether we still possess the courage to defend it—not as journalists alone, but as societies, as institutions, and as individuals who refuse to confuse information with insights, noise with news, or propaganda with truth.

This eBook is offered as open source for a reason. Its insights belong to everyone who still believes that a free press is not a luxury but a lifeline. Read it. Share it. Act on it.

Dimitris Giannakopoulos

Of OSCE and Media

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