VIEW FROM THE SOUTH By Nikos Laios

THE JOURNEY

We live in a challenging time of mixed fortunes and tumultuous events, and in the west the narratives of these times are communicated through the well-worn paths of partisan media and political positions; of victims and oppressors, revolutionaries and reactionaries. The question however is posed, does this represent the reality of the majority of the people on this planet, or are they just the views of a very small - yet vocal - and privileged minority in the west? This article explores important events and subjects of our time from the position of the rest of the world, the developing world, those outsiders without a voice, and of rational-critical thinkers. The origins of the concept of this article was inspired during a business trip to South Africa in 2025.

I work for a large corporation in North Sydney, Australia as an analyst and subject matter expert in several fields and had the privilege to have spent several weeks in South Africa in February of 2025 to visit the corporate headquarters of the company I work for. It was a productive trip, but an important and seminal time for this writer in that it was the catalyst to reexamine and reconsider many previously held opinions and beliefs, that up to that point I held as a privileged westerner. A brief narrative of the trip is required here to provide some context, and also a further exploration of the economic and social conditions that I found, which are common to vulnerable peoples from around the developing world.

Australia and South Africa are two of the southernmost nations on the planet, and flying to South Africa from Sydney one becomes aware of this. Upon flying from Sydney the flight path heads southwards past Melbourne and once the flight heads west, one can see Antarctica on the flight path. In South Africa I spent my time in Johannesburg, Pilanesberg National Park, Cape Town and its surrounds. South Africa is a lush green country. Yes, it’s chaotic, and there are problems with maintenance of its infrastructure, but I found the nation and its people beautiful.

In Johannesburg as part of my corporate obligations, I participated in a youth employment volunteering activity at Harambee.Harambee is an anchor partner in a breakthrough platform called SA Youth which brings together many partners to create a single national network to allow young people to access a wide selection of jobs and skilling opportunities, and for opportunity holders to access young engaged jobseekers.I participated in two mock- interviews each with two jobseeker participants in the program. To meet some of these dynamic, bright and happy young Black South African people seeking job opportunities - and from challenging backgrounds from Soweto, who displayed such optimism and joy, was very humbling.

My other work obligations took me to Pilanesberg National Park and stayed at a luxury resort and went on safaris on this ancient landscape , explored Johannesburg and visited Mandela House, which was an emotional experience. Then flew to Cape Town and stayed in a luxury hotel and when not fulfilling corporate obligations there, explored the town, travelled to Table Mountain overlooking Cape Town, spent a day at Groot Constantia, South Africa's oldest wine estate that dates back to 1685, and drove down to Hout Bay, Chapman’s Peak Drive Lookout Point and then to the very tip of South Africa, and sailing. It was all stunning and glorious, but what amazed me the most was the people!

What shocked me the most during my stay in South Africa were the economic and social inequalities that I discovered, and directly from Black South Africans that I had the honour to meet and become friends with to this day.While they are structurally unique due to the localised legacy of apartheid, the economic and food insecurity issues affecting Black South Africans are representative of and share fundamental characteristics with those of vulnerable populations across the developing world.The median monthly income for Black South Africans is approximately R5,200 (about $315 USD). The unemployment rate among Black South Africans stands at approximately 35.8% to 37.6%, compared to roughly 6.7% to 8.1% for white South Africans.

Severe food insecurity and chronic hunger affect millions of Black South Africans due to deep systemic poverty; high unemployment, extreme economic inequality, and rising living costs. While the average South African eats two to three meals a day, approximately one in four families experiences regular hunger, forcing individuals—particularly parents—to skip meals for days or severely ration what they eat to survive. Because of South Africa's historic and continuing wealth disparity, hunger and malnutrition are heavily racialised, concentrated almost exclusively among Black South Africans.

I had the opportunity and good fortune to befriend a South African work colleague, his name is Themba, and he is from the Zulu nation. To this day he calls me brother and I call him brother, and we found that regardless of our differences of race, beliefs, culture, environment and upbringing, that we found much commonality in ethics, morality and outlooks. We discovered that though, he an African from the Zulu nation, and I an Australian of Greek background, that there were many similarities. For a period of time as a boy I lived in the tribal highlands of Epirus in northwestern Greece in the 70’s during the military dictatorship. It was a time of harsh economic deprivation, we had no electricity or running water, and the culture was a pastoral-tribal organisation, rigid conformist patriarchal structure with taboos, personal honour codes, ancestral beliefs, and a warrior code. My friend Themba found that this resonated much with his Zulu culture. The other day in one of our regular calls, we discussed one theme, that if Themba and I can transcend our identities, find commonality and forge a strong bond of friendship, then why not others from around the world? To bridge religious, racial, political and cultural differences.To find friendship and fraternity rather than hatred, violence, prejudice, conflict and chaos.

In one of my favourite books in my library titled ‘The Self Illusion’, by cognitive neuroscientist Bruce Hood, he explores how our sense of a single, permanent identity is a construction of the brain. Rather than being a fixed entity, our identity is fluid and context-dependent, and constantly evolving to fit external environments and social roles. In one quote from his book, he states; “You only exist as a pattern made up of all the others things in your life that shape you. If you take each away, “you” would eventually cease to exist. This does not mean that you do not exist at all, but rather that you exist as a combination of all the others who complete your sense of self.”

Then we come to the current issues affecting the developed world, Europe and the west, but before I discuss these, going back to my conversations with some of these humble, economically challenged yet proud Black South Africans. When in conversation, and geopolitical, economic and political issues would come up, I would ask them what their opinions were? On Ukraine, Russia, on Israel/Palestine, the EU, the Middle East, the environment and carbon emissions, social media, protest causes, and their responses were all the same, that they were too hungry and poor to think of anything other than trying to find enough resources to feed themselves and keep the electricity on. To them, these western obsessions were a luxury that they could not afford to dwell on. This both struck me and humbled me. I had much to consider in what was important. If people in the developing world thought this way - 84% of the world’s population - then what made our concerns in the west more important than theirs?

THE DEVELOPED WORLD

On Donald Trump, since his inauguration in January of 2025, much has changed in the world and many of his decisions chaotic, but before reviewing these, a brief background is required on this writer’s political history to provide some context to the opinions expressed in the remainder of this article. When I graduated from High School in Australia, I joined a far- left radical green environmentalist group for a few years. Though I had received a classical education and was well read, and the young intellectual in me had many doubts, I needed a flag to embrace, beliefs to fill an existential void, plus it was the fashion. Then after several years, once I recognised that their beliefs were corrupt and wrapped in ego, a poor attempt to fill a vacuum that many secular and atheist young men and women felt they needed to embrace to give them meaning,  but which in effect achieved nothing but conflict, bitterness and protest, I left them. Then during my 20’s and 30’s I was gainfully employed and travelled the world. I then joined the conservative movement, the Liberal Party, Australia’s version of the Republican Party. I met the former Prime Minister John Howard, the former Treasurer Joe Hockey in party functions here in the north shore of Sydney. Then years later, disillusioned, I left them as well.

Now a humanist and an existentialist - and with age comes wisdom -  and the realisation that the political movements of the left and the right that have underpinned the western world throughout the Twentieth Century are historical anachronisms whose time have come and gone.Yet they still influence the politics of today, with partisan politicians making political and economic decisions based on either a Marxist-Socialist utopian ideal of redistributionism, or a far-right clinging to a golden age thinking of an idealised past when all was well in the world of pure capitalist and homogeneous societies, instead of making rational decisions that will benefit all of their peoples.

On reflecting on Trump, he is a failed transactional businessman now President and completely unsuited to the role and has lowered the gravitas of his office. During his second term he has undertaken a series of actions on trade, military interventions and damaging geopolitical decisions. His decisions and actions have been both counterproductive and destructive and damaged global stability and long-term US interests, and has irrevocably damaged America’s reputation.

He has withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement, severed ties with the World Health Organisation, and froze billions of dollars in international development, global health programs and migration humanitarian aid. He has destroyed the global multilateral trade system through the imposition of sweeping tariffs and damaged bilateral ties with allies. The imposition of a 12.5% tariff on America’s longtime ally Australia really hurt the image we had here in Australia of the US; that it caused cognitive dissonance is an understatement. This writer along with most of my fellow Australians have had a deep affection for the American people. They have contributed much during the Twentieth Century in literature, drama, music and the arts, but this President in a short time has unfortunately destroyed the reputation of their nation.

Then the final blows to America’s reputation were his support of tyrants and dictators, undermining NATO and Ukraine, the illegal invasion of Venezuela, and then his territorial ambitions on Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal. Finally there was the completely irrational and illogical war on Iran which has interrupted global energy and supply chains and has been the major catalyst in fuelling inflation and the cost of living not only internationally, but for his very own people. Then against this background we have the economic, debt problems and social issues in Europe to consider.

European debt problems are the result of various economic issues; from high government spending, lagging GDP rates, debt-to-GDP rates, and the monetary union.  Many nations across Europe face budget shortfalls, gaps between tax inflows and expenditure funding. European economic growth has been sluggish for over a decade. Without strong GDP growth, countries cannot naturally shrink the relative size of their debt burden, leaving them heavily reliant on financial markets to refinance trillions of euros in outstanding bonds.

Then there is the issueof rising Bond yields, where as a result of the global inflation outlook and geopolitical events - the war in Ukraine, the threat to supply lanes and fuel costs due to the Iran conflict and the blockade of the Straits of Hormuz, the era of cheap money is over which has significantly escalated the costs of borrowing money for European governments and other governments around the world, including here in Australia.

For example in France, the Eurozone's second-largest economy, its public debt now climbs to 119% of GDP (€3.6 trillion) with annual budget deficits running near 5%, easily breaching the EU’s 3% limit. Then there are the increasing borrowing costs. The 10-year French government bond yield is 4.77% to 4.91%. As of the writing of this article, the 10-year Australian government bond yield is 5.00% to 5.02% (though Australia’s Gross Debt-to-GDP is 33.1%), and the 10-year US government bond yield is 4.86% to 4.89%. The reason why rising rates of 10-year government bond yields arebad economic signs, is because they dramatically increase the costs of borrowing for both the private and government sectors, and where for Governments, increasing portions of their national tax revenue must be spent servicing interest.

Then we consider the inherent weaknesses of the monetary union that combines various and disparate national economies of varying strengths and weaknesses through the adoption of one currency, one central bank and interest rate policy, that denies national governments the ability to manage supply and demand through the mechanisms of their own currencies and interest rate settings. This inherently is one of the weaknesses of the monetary union; that by the adoption of a single currency and a single monetary authority, member states have in turn surrendered two critical macroeconomic levers - exchange rate flexibility and independent monetary policy (interest rates).

Finally the other major factor affecting many nations around the world is falling fertility rates that could affect economic viability. Falling fertility rates are also a problem here in Australia with a current fertility rate of 1.497. Over two-thirds of humanity live in countries where the fertility has dropped below the 2.1 population replacement threshold. As workforces around the world shrink in advanced and middle-income nations, the raw volume of economic output face severe structural downward pressure. As fewer children are born the proportion of retirees over age 65 expands rapidly. Where a smaller tax base of younger workers is left to fund skyrocketing public expenditures for welfare programs, elderly healthcare and national pension systems, threatening to trigger higher national debts or aggressive tax hike policies.

Countries like Italy have seen historic lows in daily births, and France has recorded post-WWII lows in birth numbers, threatening tax bases and public service funding for education and senior care.  My home country Greece is also facing severe issues due to its fertility rate of 1.22 to 1.27, causing schools across Greece to shut down.

Then there is the issue of immigration into Europe, irregular immigration and asylum seekers and refugees. Yes, there are responses - both social and political in the argument for-and-against the migration issue, but using rational thinking, this is a potential solution to European falling fertility rates and the subsequent economic problems. Either increase fertility rates, or address this through immigration. As someone myself who comes from a migrant family, one of the blessings of living here in Australia is that it is a thoroughly successful multicultural society. My friends consist of Australians and people here from around the world - Africa, India, the Middle East, Asia and Europe - and as a result is an energising and exciting place to be at the moment. Immigration and multinationalism here have shown that they work!

What this writer is proposing for Europe is considered in Europe as controversial and the opinion of an outsider. But as a European passport holder and someone living on the outside, this affords one some clarity. Yes, there are issues, two thirds of refugees and asylum seekers are males, and certain cultural beliefs that are brought in are considered from a western perspective patriarchal and misogynistic; but with a unified and carefully thought out immigration policy, nothing is impossible. The fact is that the concept of the nation state is two hundred to four hundred years old, and the nomadic instinct of mankind to wander the world seeking to improve the quality of life  is at least three hundred thousand years old. The construct of nation states can only keep out for so long the primordial nomadic instincts of man.

The question is what can Europe do to revitalise itself? How can it address the challenge of new beliefs and customs that are contrary to the core tenets of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights?  This writer can speak from experience on misogynist and patriarchal attitudes having grown up in a native Greek culture which has traditionally been misogynistic and patriarchal - and still is - and have seen much and witnessed much. But can attest that when we migrated to the new world, and on attaining wisdom, this writer transcended the illusion of identity and reinvented identity by consciously throwing out some of the old baggage of European culture and keeping the best parts of value and combined them with new culture and beliefs that I found here in Australia. An egalitarian nation where all men and women are equal, all people of different races, beliefs and orientations are equal. Unencumbered of historical baggage and views, life in this new, multicultural and multiracial land is glorious and vital!

In Plato’s work ‘The Republic’, on the allegory of the cave, Socrates describes prisoners chained in an underground cave who mistake shadows projected on a wall as reality, illustrating how people grow attached to illusions, and resist truth and education when it challenges what they are used to believing, and he states; “Most people are not just comfortable in their ignorance, but hostile to anyone who points it out.” Hopefully we too in our modern world can transcend our illusions of fixed beliefs and identities and find some truths. Then finally, we can all truly start moving forward and make our world a better place.

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All photos including the cover photo by Nikos Laios

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The war machine has no bottom line by Marja Heikkinen

The most expensive wars of our century may not be the ones appearing on television with burning buildings, devastated cities and military funerals. Some of the most financially destructive conflicts are fought in the shadows, through proxy armies, technological warfare, economic strangulation, intelligence operations and permanent military readiness. They are wars without declarations, without clear endings and, increasingly, without any serious public accounting of their accumulated costs.

The American confrontation with Iran, the regional proxy networks, the militarisation of the Middle East and the expanding competition between Washington and its adversaries illustrate this dangerous transformation. Every escalation generates another invoice: additional deployments, air-defence systems, surveillance infrastructure, naval operations, cyber capabilities, ammunition replacement and protection of strategically vulnerable installations. Meanwhile, sanctions, disrupted shipping routes, energy insecurity and insurance premiums spread the financial consequences far beyond the battlefield. And this is only the beginning of the bill.

Modern warfare has become an extraordinarily expensive technological obsession. A relatively inexpensive drone can force an opponent to expend a sophisticated interceptor costing hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of dollars. Naval forces deploy increasingly complex systems against threats that may be produced cheaply and in enormous quantities. The mathematics are grotesque. The military-industrial establishment, however, has discovered that grotesque mathematics can be extraordinarily profitable.

The shadow war is not merely about who wins a confrontation. It is about who can afford to sustain the confrontation indefinitely. That is where the real political scandal begins.

Governments increasingly treat military expenditure as an unavoidable investment while social expenditure becomes a suspicious indulgence requiring endless efficiency reviews. Defence budgets rise, emergency appropriations multiply and procurement programmes acquire the sacred status of strategic necessities. Meanwhile, citizens are told that public healthcare is under pressure, teachers must manage overcrowded classrooms, housing shortages are somebody else's problem and pension systems need painful adjustments.

Apparently, the national treasury has a magical compartment labelled War, where money grows without consequences, and another labelled Society, where every additional euro must undergo moral interrogation.

The economic damage extends beyond the money directly spent. Military escalation consumes industrial capacity, redirects scientific talent, increases borrowing requirements and creates uncertainty that discourages investment. Energy shocks and maritime disruptions impose additional costs on businesses and households. Reconstruction, refugee support, environmental destruction and long-term trauma generate obligations that can survive the original conflict by decades. And nobody has adequately explained who ultimately pays.

The taxpayer does. The consumer does. The unemployed worker does. The family waiting for medical treatment does. Future generations inherit the debt, the damaged infrastructure and the geopolitical hostility conveniently described today as strategic necessity.

This is not an argument for abandoning defence or pretending that aggressive regimes, terrorism and geopolitical coercion disappear through good intentions. Security matters. Deterrence matters. Protecting populations matters.

But security cannot become a political blank cheque, particularly when the strategies supposedly protecting us reproduce instability, encourage arms races and make permanent confrontation economically attractive.

A democracy that cannot explain the financial consequences of its security policies is not exercising responsible leadership. It is asking citizens to finance an experiment whose objectives, duration and ultimate costs remain conveniently undefined.

The question is no longer simply how much governments spend on war. It is how much peace, prosperity and social solidarity they sacrifice while preparing for the next one. The shadow war has a budget. It has victims. It has beneficiaries. And it has an extraordinary capacity to conceal its own price. The most dangerous illusion in modern geopolitics is that we can wage perpetual war abroad while maintaining an affordable, compassionate and sustainable society at home. We cannot.

Eventually, even the most sophisticated missile system encounters the oldest strategic reality of all: a nation can destroy its enemies, exhaust its citizens and bankrupt its future without ever declaring itself defeated.

#eBook Visions from the Void - The World of Hieronymus Bosch by Ovi Art eBooks

Bosch, who lived around the turn of the sixteenth century in the Brabant town of ’s-Hertogenbosch, left behind a universe that seems less painted than excavated from the subconscious.

His canvases are populated by hybrid monsters, grotesque landscapes, absurd punishments and bewildering moral spectacles. They are populated, too, by ordinary human weaknesses: vanity, lust, greed, gluttony, cruelty, stupidity and the remarkably persistent belief that someone else will eventually pay for our sins.

Yet the painter himself remains an elusive figure. We know something about his life, his marriage, his professional standing and his religious surroundings. We know considerably less about the private machinery of his imagination. The popular image of Bosch as an isolated visionary, a starving mystic who deliberately weakened his body to unlock supernatural perceptions, belongs partly to the seductive mythology surrounding his art. The historical evidence is less accommodating. There is no reliable proof that he fasted himself into hallucinations or deliberately cultivated starvation as a gateway to hell.

Ovi eBook Publishing 2026

Visions from the Void
The World of Hieronymus Bosch

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Ant-sized Culinary #019 #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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The global south comes to Capitol Hill by John Kato

Washington may still believe it owns the world, but a new generation of lawmakers is arriving with a rather different understanding of who gets to speak. For generations, the United States has appointed itself the world's teacher, policeman, banker, occasional priest and permanent judge. Now, a changing America is bringing voices into Congress that might have a few inconvenient questions about the country's understanding of the rest of the planet.

The growing presence of first- and second-generation African and Asian Americans in the US political establishment represents something more significant than another chapter in America's familiar diversity narrative. It challenges the intellectual architecture of American foreign policy. And that is where the real political earthquake might begin.

For decades, Washington has approached much of the Global South through an extraordinarily comfortable combination of paternalism, strategic calculation and occasional generosity. Africa needed assistance. Asia needed investment. Latin America needed stability. The Middle East needed democracy, preferably delivered with a military escort. Development was something America generously provided, while political loyalty was frequently expected in return. It was an arrangement dressed in the language of international cooperation but frequently conducted through the mechanics of dependency.

The arrival of lawmakers with African and Asian family backgrounds offers an opportunity to question this inherited mentality. These politicians are not automatically representatives of their ancestral homelands, nor should anybody expect them to vote according to ethnic identity. They are American legislators, accountable first and foremost to their constituents and the Constitution. But their personal histories can give them perspectives that traditional Washington diplomacy has often lacked.

They understand that the Global South is not a geographical waiting room for Western development assistance. It is a collection of societies with their own ambitions, political disagreements, technological capabilities, economic priorities and increasingly influential international relationships. And perhaps, just perhaps, they understand that people in Lagos, Nairobi, Delhi, Manila or Dhaka are not waiting for another American lecture about how to organise their futures.

The challenge is to move the conversation beyond humanitarian assistance and towards genuine economic partnerships. Trade instead of charity. Technology transfer instead of permanent dependency. Educational and scientific cooperation instead of occasional diplomatic photographs. Infrastructure investment instead of political conditionality disguised as development policy.

Africa, for example, cannot be approached merely as a continent of humanitarian emergencies. Its young population, natural resources, technological entrepreneurship and expanding markets make it central to the economic and geopolitical future of the twenty-first century. Asian economies, meanwhile, are not simply manufacturing extensions of Western consumer markets. They are increasingly setting technological standards, developing financial networks and negotiating their own positions in the international order.

American foreign policy must recognise this reality before competitors recognise it more successfully. But representation alone will not produce a revolution. Washington has an impressive talent for absorbing uncomfortable ideas, putting them through a committee, diluting their political content and returning them to the public wrapped in a bipartisan press release. Diversity can become another decorative feature of American politics: attractive in photographs, useful in election campaigns and remarkably harmless to established power structures.

The danger is that lawmakers with international backgrounds become symbols rather than political actors. Their identities are celebrated while their proposals are ignored. They are invited to explain their heritage but rarely encouraged to challenge the institutions responsible for America's international failures. That would be an insult disguised as inclusion.

The more interesting question concerns accountability. A new generation of legislators must be willing to scrutinise American interventions, arms exports, trade agreements, sanctions, immigration policies and relationships with authoritarian governments. They must also challenge the convenient hypocrisy through which Washington condemns abuses by adversaries while discovering strategic reasons to overlook similar behaviour among allies.

The Global South does not need American politicians who merely understand its geography. It needs American politicians prepared to question the political assumptions that have shaped its relationship with Washington.

There is also a transnational diaspora dimension. Millions of Americans maintain family, cultural, professional and economic connections across borders. These relationships can create channels of cooperation that conventional diplomacy cannot easily manufacture. They can encourage scientific exchange, investment, cultural understanding and more sophisticated approaches to migration. They can also expose the contradictions between America's international rhetoric and the experiences of immigrant communities at home.

Ultimately, the significance of a changing Congress will not be measured by the number of African or Asian surnames on its membership list. It will be measured by whether those lawmakers help change what America does, rather than simply how America looks.

Washington does not need another generation of politicians explaining American exceptionalism to the world. It needs a generation capable of understanding that the world has stopped accepting exceptionalism as an argument.

The Global South is not asking for a seat at America's table as a grateful guest. It is demanding recognition as an equal participant in a changing international order. And perhaps the most uncomfortable lesson for Capitol Hill is this: the world has been speaking for a very long time. The problem was never that it lacked a voice. The problem was that Washington rarely considered listening an essential part of diplomacy.

Trump’s war on the diabetic poor by Flo Schofield

There are many ways to kill a healthcare system. You can starve it of money, dismantle its protections, privatise its responsibilities, or convince millions of people that medical care is somehow a privilege reserved for those who can afford it. Washington, under Donald Trump, appears increasingly determined to explore all of them.

On 14 November, World Diabetes Day arrives with an uncomfortable message for America: millions of people are expected to manage a chronic disease while navigating a political environment increasingly hostile to affordable healthcare. The celebration of medical progress becomes a grotesque exercise in contradiction when the political leadership undermines the very conditions that make survival possible.

Diabetes is not a political preference. Insulin is not a luxury. And a functioning pancreas is certainly not something Americans should be expected to purchase through political loyalty.

Yet American healthcare has long operated under a brutal contradiction. The country possesses extraordinary medical expertise, pharmaceutical innovation and technological resources, but millions remain trapped between insurance companies, prescription costs, deductibles and the terrifying arithmetic of staying alive.

Trump's administration has intensified the political assault on the public foundations of healthcare through its hostility towards federal spending, public health institutions and social protections. Its broader campaign against government programmes threatens to make healthcare insecurity even more severe, particularly for low-income Americans, older people and vulnerable communities.

The consequences are not abstract budgetary calculations. They are people rationing medication, postponing appointments, skipping laboratory tests and making decisions no human being should have to make: whether to buy groceries or purchase the insulin necessary to remain alive.

For someone with Type 1 diabetes, insulin is indispensable. For millions with Type 2 diabetes, treatment may also depend on insulin or other essential medication. Insufficient access can lead to devastating complications, including kidney failure, cardiovascular disease, blindness and amputations. The human cost of inadequate treatment is measured not in spreadsheets but in damaged bodies and shortened lives. And here comes the American pharmaceutical circus.

The United States has repeatedly demonstrated its capacity to turn essential medicines into enormously profitable commodities. Pharmaceutical companies defend their pricing structures with arguments about innovation, research and market incentives. Meanwhile, patients are left navigating a marketplace in which the price of survival can become an economic punishment.

There have been insulin price reductions and federal initiatives offering lower-cost options. Medicare's insulin cost-sharing protections have provided meaningful relief to eligible beneficiaries. These achievements matter. But they are not a substitute for universal affordability, comprehensive coverage or a healthcare system that treats patients as human beings rather than revenue opportunities.

The political danger is that Trumpism transforms healthcare into another ideological battlefield. Public expenditure becomes an enemy, social solidarity becomes suspicious, and government responsibility is dismissed as an invitation to dependency. The rhetoric is familiar: freedom, efficiency, individual responsibility.

But what freedom exists for someone who cannot afford insulin? What individual responsibility is possible when the pharmaceutical bill consumes the household budget? And what efficiency can possibly justify preventable hospitalisations, medical emergencies and premature deaths? World Diabetes Day should expose this obscene contradiction rather than decorate it with sentimental awareness campaigns.

Diabetes requires prevention, early diagnosis, continuous monitoring, accessible treatment, nutritional education and sustained public investment. It demands cooperation between healthcare professionals, governments, communities and patients. Above all, it requires political recognition that healthcare is a fundamental human responsibility, not an ideological indulgence.

The Trump administration should be judged not by its theatrical declarations about American greatness but by whether ordinary Americans can obtain the medication necessary to survive. A country capable of sending billionaires into space should not force diabetics to calculate whether they can afford another month of insulin. America does not need another slogan about making itself great again. It needs a healthcare system that makes staying alive affordable. On World Diabetes Day 2026, that should be the minimum demand. Not charity. Not political generosity. Not another presidential performance. Simply the right to live.

The planet is in intensive care by Paula Bartlett

The next climate summit should have fewer politicians discussing carbon targets and considerably more doctors explaining what happens when the patient stops breathing.

Somewhere between another diplomatic handshake, another beautifully worded declaration and another promise to achieve net zero several decades from now, reality has been abandoned in the waiting room. The patient is deteriorating, the emergency department is overcrowded, and the politicians are still arguing about who should pay for the ambulance.

The climate crisis is no longer simply an environmental emergency. It is a global health crisis, potentially of pandemic proportions, and the medical profession should stop being an invited supporting act in climate discussions and become one of their principal voices.

For years, climate change has been presented through the language of environmental accounting: degrees Celsius, atmospheric carbon concentrations, emissions targets, industrial transitions and economic projections. Important, certainly, but also wonderfully convenient for politicians who prefer discussing numbers rather than human consequences. A temperature graph does not scream. A statistical projection does not arrive at an emergency department gasping for breath. A carbon budget does not bury a child. People do.

Extreme heat is already turning ordinary summer days into medical emergencies. Cardiovascular and respiratory patients face increased risks. Older people, outdoor workers, infants and those living in poorly insulated housing are particularly vulnerable. Air pollution aggravates existing illnesses, while droughts, floods and changing weather patterns threaten food security, sanitation and access to clean water. Meanwhile, warming conditions expand the geographical reach and seasonal opportunities of disease-carrying mosquitoes and ticks.

The consequences are not waiting for some distant environmental apocalypse. They are entering clinics, operating theatres, maternity wards and intensive care units.

And then there is the psychological damage. Climate anxiety, displacement, trauma following extreme weather events and the destruction of communities are not footnotes to an environmental report. They are human suffering, requiring professional attention and long-term care. When a flood destroys somebody's home, the damage does not disappear when the television cameras leave. When an entire community loses its livelihood, the consequences do not fit neatly into a government spreadsheet.

Yet climate negotiations continue to operate as though the principal stakeholders are energy companies, finance ministers, industrial lobbyists and diplomats with an impressive collection of carefully rehearsed adjectives.

Where are the doctors? Where are the nurses, epidemiologists, public-health specialists, emergency physicians and hospital administrators? They should be sitting at the negotiating table, not waiting outside it.

The next climate summit must place health professionals at its centre. Not as ceremonial speakers delivering five minutes of compassionate warning before the delegates return to discussing economic competitiveness, but as participants shaping binding priorities and measurable commitments.

Every national climate strategy should include health impact assessments. Hospitals must become climate-resilient infrastructure, equipped to withstand heatwaves, floods, power failures and supply-chain disruptions. Public-health surveillance must anticipate emerging infectious diseases. Urban planning must prioritise breathable air, accessible green spaces, shade and protection for vulnerable populations. Climate adaptation funding must include the financial resources necessary to protect healthcare systems, particularly in poorer countries that contributed least to the problem but frequently suffer its harshest consequences. And perhaps most importantly, governments must stop treating prevention as an optional expenditure.

There is a brutal economic absurdity in refusing to invest in prevention while spending billions treating the consequences. It is the equivalent of setting fire to a hospital and then proudly announcing an increase in the emergency services budget. The inequality is equally unforgivable. Wealthier societies possess greater resources to protect themselves, while poorer communities face greater exposure and weaker healthcare infrastructure. Climate injustice is therefore also health injustice. Any summit that ignores this relationship is not negotiating a solution; it is negotiating the distribution of suffering.

Medical professionals understand something that political negotiators frequently forget: emergencies do not negotiate with election calendars. Viruses do not respect diplomatic protocol. Heatwaves do not wait for parliamentary majorities. Human biology has no patience for political compromise.

The medical profession cannot solve the climate crisis alone. But it can expose its consequences with an authority that no government public-relations department can manufacture. Doctors understand prevention, risk, evidence and the terrible cost of delayed intervention. They also understand that when a patient is critically ill, pretending everything is under control is not optimism. It is malpractice.

The next climate summit needs fewer speeches about saving the planet and more serious discussions about saving the people living on it. The planet will survive another political conference. Humanity, particularly its most vulnerable populations, cannot afford another exercise in diplomatic procrastination. Perhaps it is time to stop treating climate change as a problem for the environment ministry and start treating it as an emergency for the entire medical profession.

The planet is running a fever. The waiting room is full. The doctors are ready. The question is whether the politicians are finally prepared to listen before somebody has to pronounce the patient dead.

Walk the talk 26#019 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

The term “talk the talk, walk the walk” is a phrase in English
that means a person should support what they say, not just with words,
but also through action. Actions speak louder than words.

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The cheap oil trap by Zakir Hall

When petroleum becomes cheaper, politicians celebrate, consumers breathe easier, and the fossil-fuel industry quietly prepares its next profitable resurrection. The planet, meanwhile, receives another invoice nobody wants to pay. Cheap oil becomes a political trophy, a reassuring economic signal, almost a declaration that everything is returning to normal. But normal is precisely the problem.

The celebration of cheaper oil is not merely economically shortsighted. It is dangerously dishonest about the world we inhabit. Beneath the comforting arithmetic of lower fuel bills lies an uncomfortable reality: the global energy system remains structurally vulnerable, strategically dependent, environmentally destructive, and frighteningly addicted to the very commodity whose temporary price decline is being celebrated.

Oil prices do not fall because humanity has suddenly escaped its dependence on petroleum. They fluctuate because supply, demand, geopolitical calculations, production decisions, economic expectations, and market speculation collide in unpredictable ways. A temporary price decline is not an energy revolution. It is a market movement, and confusing the two is an exercise in collective self-deception. The first victims of this illusion are long-term investments.

When oil becomes cheaper, political enthusiasm for expensive energy transitions weakens. Consumers postpone electric vehicle purchases. Businesses reconsider investments in alternative technologies. Governments discover convenient excuses to delay climate commitments, soften regulations, or subsidise conventional energy consumption. Fossil-fuel producers, meanwhile, exploit the breathing space to protect their infrastructure, consolidate market positions, and prepare for the next profitable cycle. This is how temporary economic comfort becomes permanent strategic stupidity.

The energy transition requires enormous capital, technological development, infrastructure, grid modernisation, storage capacity, and political consistency. These investments cannot be switched on and off according to the latest movements in international petroleum markets. Renewable energy projects, electricity networks, industrial electrification, and sustainable transport demand planning measured in decades, not the political attention span of a government celebrating a few cheaper litres of petrol.

And here lies the most disturbing contradiction. We know the climate clock is accelerating. We know fossil-fuel combustion remains a central driver of global warming. We know that postponing decarbonisation makes the eventual transition more expensive, more disruptive, and more socially painful. Yet every oil-price dip encourages the comfortable fantasy that the problem can wait.

The problem cannot wait. Nor should the energy transition be understood as an ideological punishment imposed upon motorists, workers, or struggling households. That is precisely the poisonous narrative fossil-fuel defenders have perfected: climate responsibility supposedly demands economic suffering, while petroleum consumption represents freedom, affordability, and ordinary people's interests.

This is nonsense dressed as populism. A genuinely intelligent energy policy would protect households from price shocks while accelerating the construction of a cleaner, more resilient energy system. It would use periods of lower oil prices to reduce dependence, strengthen public transport, improve energy efficiency, expand renewable electricity, and invest in technologies capable of replacing petroleum across industry and transport.

Instead, governments frequently behave like gamblers who mistake a lucky afternoon for financial security. The real question is not whether oil costs less today. It is whether tomorrow's economies will remain hostage to geopolitical instability, fossil-fuel supply disruptions, and environmental damage whose costs are increasingly transferred to taxpayers, communities, and future generations.

Cheap oil is not necessarily cheap energy. Its price at the pump excludes much of the climate damage, pollution, geopolitical insecurity, and economic vulnerability embedded in its consumption. The dangerous illusion is believing that a lower price means a smaller problem. Celebrating cheap oil while postponing the energy transition is not economic prudence. It is an expensive refusal to confront reality.

The oil market may offer temporary relief. The climate will not offer temporary consequences. And when the next energy crisis arrives, as the structural vulnerabilities of petroleum dependence guarantee it eventually will, today's celebrations will look less like economic victories and more like the applause of passengers enjoying a discount ticket aboard a sinking ship.

Looking In Love's Glass #Poem by Strider Marcus Jones

 

looking in love's glass
at what we have drank
and haven't drank
to quench our thirst
slow and fast
not the first
not the last-
beauty is flesh
is your womanliness
and i find
your mind
grows branches into mine
we climb-
so compatible
and indelible,
to others forgettable
crashed dream
on screen-
we know
we go
out of scene.

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Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society, nominated for the Pushcart Prize x4 and Best of the Net x3, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.

Berserk Alert! #134 #Cartoon by Tony Zuvela

 

Tony Zuvela and his view of the world around us in a constant berserk alert!
For more Berserk Alert! HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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