Humanity at Crossroads: Where are the Peacemakers? By Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD.

 Global  Leaders Who could not Think as Normal Human Beings

Tyranny is always blind and  transitory. Those leaders claiming to be wise and smart wage wars to impose the fallacy of moral degradation and mechanized intellect to propel egoistic glory in phony opinion polls.  They want to “destroy civilizations” and fix time and history with the power of political nuisance unfolding treacherous minds as if the destiny of some ethnically chosen people for greatness. 

American leaders funded by the Israeli lobby entrap the thinking and political action process across US governance. PM Netanyahu survives supported by American intransigence for Greater Israel. A favorite perversion of facts from fantasy dictates the Arab Gulf leaders' petrodollar triviality of fake prosperity of degeneration and dismantlement. Disconnected Arab leaders cannot claim security or peace from the US Board of Peace. Deafening silence on peace in Gaza, occupied West Bank daily displacements and planned killings by Israeli forces perpetuate disintegration of Palestine and obliterated experience actualizes the extended world of tragedies and misfortune for global humanity. Pursuant to their strategic agenda against the Arab states, America and Israel announced integration of military establishments. The same insanity flourishes in war between Russia and Ukraine. This state of affairs reflects complete societal breakdown and march towards self-annihilation. Despite hollow claims, no moral and ethical behavior is seen in the sudden and inexplicable plunge to human wickedness.  Even the warmongers cannot predict what the end game is going to be. Evil happens when conscientious men do nothing. God created the Heavens and Earth as a trust to live and to flourish human generations since time immemorial. It was not meant to be bombed and destroyed by sheer ignorance and wickedness.

The UNO and world Order is broken and left to the interpretation of few so called democratically elected leaders acting as tyrants and oppressors to overwhelm peace, security and the future of mankind.Why the UNO based on its Charter cannot protect the civilian population in Gaza and West Bank from the Israeli forces? They favor the Hobbesian formula: “war of all against all.” People of knowledge know well what is truth and what is falsehood. Our professed ignorance and arrogance towards Divine Knowledge has pushed us to echo evil and futility in a global cataclysm – the treacherous conflict causing degeneration to be at the epicenter of man-made cataclysm driven by lingering suspicion in relations to others within the splendid Universe. The earth and universe are meant for human beings and are enriched to support all of their needs over time and space. Are we living in a disconnected world of our own making? How strange we are so abhorrent and neglectful of our own present and futuristic sustainability? Truth is One and the same unchanging as it was many centuries earlier. We are a creation of God, One humanity and cannot detach ourselves to what happens to other fellow human beings.

The Earth is Living and We, the Humanity have Passion for Peace, Not Wars

We live on earth that sustains all forms of living things, yet human ignorance and arrogance are at work to destroy the essential foundation of our own lives. The creation of Earth, Moon, the Sun and all working systems are a trust to humanity. Have We, the People, We, the Humanity honored and protected that natural trust and its obligations?  In a recent article (“Conflict Beyond Reason:  a dialogue to end the war is desperately needed”)https://www.uncommonthought: this author encompassed the truth not for geological or meteorological explanation but for the understanding of fellow human beings that the earth spins at 1670 km per hour and orbit the Sun at 107,000 km per hour.  Imagine, if this spinning fails, what consequences could occur to the living beings on Earth. Think again, about the average  distance of earth from moon is 93 million miles -the distance of Moon from Earth is currently 384,821 km equivalent to 0.002572 Astronomical Units -(https://www.newscientist.com/question/fastearthspin/#ixzz7C8p37S9X). If this God given system of distance between the Earth-Sun and the Earth-Moon were ever to change, there will be no sign of life, human civilizations or habitats left on Earth. Do intelligent leaders listen to voices of reason and make a navigational change for peace and harmony when facts of life warrant an urgent change in attitudes, policies and behaviors? The Divine Revelations (the Quran: 40: 21) offer a stern warning to conscientious leaders and nations:

Do they not travel through the earth and see
What was the End of those before them. They were even superior to them in strength
And in the traces they have left on the earth. But God did call them to account for their sins
And none had they to defend them against God.

The Wars in Palestine, Ukraine and against Iran Must be Stopped by Reason and Dialogue

To safeguard our common future as One humanity, we the people must reject ignorance, cruelty and wars as means to political power and hegemony. Civilizations do not grow out of the moral mire of conquests, superiority of racial ethnicity, tyranny and imperialism. Are there any Thinking people to take heed from the prevalent facts of human history? President Trump appears to echo the extremist policies and practices pursued by PM Netanyahu as if the rest of the conscientious global community does not exist. The former European imperialists sucked out the oil resources from the Arab world and now intend on dismantling the Arab-Muslim world- narrates Dr. Jan Oberg, a peace researcher from Sweden, and former British Diplomat Ian Proud: “The “West” Is Imploding Faster after This” TRANSCEND Media Service: 4/8/25: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2025/04/the-west-is-imploding-faster-after-this/ The signs are not just on the wall but written in the skies and the oceans too. The entire “western” narrative, its repressive dominance, and its hubris are about to collapse and take many of its established institutions down with it. And the kakistrocratic (aka imbecile) leadership doesn’t even realize it. If they did, they wouldn’t be driving Europe into that giant iceberg.

Watching dreadful apparatus of fire and brimstone, We, the People are horrified by the crimes against humanity and genocide happening across the globe, be it across Gaza-Palestine, between Russia-Ukraine and Iran and the US war. Time and history will not wait as we the humankind stand at a critical juncture of our own complacency to have allowed ignorance, hatred, fear and animosity to destroy our life, culture and existence. Can we think to be human in all of our moral, political and intellectual endeavors?

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Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution and has spent several academic years across the Russian-Ukrainian and Central Asian regions knowing the people, diverse cultures of thinking and political governance and a keen interest in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including: Global Humanity and Remaking of Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution for the 21st Century and Beyond, Barnes and Noble Press, USA, 2025 https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/global-humanity-and-remaking-of-peace-security-and-conflict-resolution-for-the-21st-century-and-beyond-mahboob-a-khawaja/1147150197 and We, The People in Search of Global Peace, Security and Conflict  Resolution. Kindle Direct Publishing-Amazon, 05/2025 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F6V6CH5W and https://pdfhost.io/v/BZkFa7FYPR_Wars_on_Humanity_-_Mahboob_A__Khawaja__PhD_

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Wars on Humanity:
Ukraine, Palestine and the role of Global Leaders
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A republic with the lights off by Mia Rodríguez

There is a political joke that stops being funny when everyone understands it. Daniel Ortega appears to have delivered one. If Nicaragua is to have no more elections capable of allowing the opposition to win power, then the country has crossed the line that separates an unpleasant democracy from something much simpler: a dictatorship with administrative stationery.

Modern autocracy rarely announces itself with a trumpet. He need not abolish parliament, burn the constitution in the town square, or send tanks clattering down the avenue. He keeps the offices, the flags, the ceremonies and, occasionally, the ballot boxes. What disappears is the possibility that any of these things might produce an inconvenient result.

Elections are useful to authoritarian governments for precisely this reason. They provide scenery. They make power look procedural. A government can point to polling stations and say: Look, the people have spoken. The question is whether people may say anything the government has not already approved.

Ortega’s Nicaragua has been travelling down this road for years, and the depressing part is not that the destination is mysterious. It is that the journey has become so familiar. Opposition figures are harassed or imprisoned, independent media are squeezed, civil society is dismantled, and institutions that might restrain the executive are steadily brought to heel. The regime presents the resulting silence as stability.

That is the oldest authoritarian misunderstanding of peace. A cemetery is stable too. The Sandinista revolution once claimed the language of emancipation, sovereignty and popular power. There is Shakespearean bleakness in watching a movement born against dictatorship turn the state into a fortress around itself. Revolutions often begin by promising that nobody will again possess unchecked power. Their tragedy is that some eventually discover how convenient unchecked power can be.

Ortega’s defenders may invoke foreign interference, Washington’s history in Central America, national security or opposition incompetence. Some contain genuine historical grievances. Nicaragua has suffered from outside meddling and internal violence. But history is not a lifetime exemption from accountability. A government cannot claim sovereignty for itself while denying sovereignty to its own citizens.

Nor can elections be reduced to a ritual performed every few years for the benefit of foreign observers. Their essential purpose is not to decorate government with legitimacy. It is to make government vulnerable to replacement. Remove that possibility and the ballot becomes theatre, and citizenship becomes audience participation.

The most disturbing consequence is psychological. Once people understand that voting cannot change power, they stop expecting politics to change anything. Cynicism becomes habitual. Fear becomes practical. Silence becomes a survival skill. A dictatorship does not merely control institutions; it tries to colonise imagination, persuading citizens that alternatives are forbidden and rendered politically almost impossible.

That is why Nicaragua’s crisis is larger than Ortega. The real danger is creating a political culture in which the absence of choice is mistaken for national destiny.

A country without competitive elections may still possess ministries, courts, police, schools and official speeches. What it lacks is the one institution that makes rulers temporary. And once rulers cease to be temporary, they stop being elected leaders. They become owners.

That is the moment when a republic has gone dark, even if every government building remains brightly lit.

The second genome by Dai Eun Greer

For decades, healthy eating has been sold as though it were a universal equation. Eat more fibre. Avoid saturated fat. Choose whole grains. Fill your plate with colourful vegetables. While these recommendations have undoubtedly improved public health, they have also created one of modern nutrition's most persistent myths: that the same food will produce the same benefits for everyone.

The science of the human microbiome is steadily dismantling that comfortable assumption. Hidden inside each of us is an ecosystem of trillions of bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms that collectively contain far more genes than our own DNA. If our genetic code is the blueprint we inherit, our microbiome is the blueprint we negotiate throughout life. It may well be our true "second genome."

This changes the conversation about nutrition in profound ways. Two people can sit at the same breakfast table, eat identical bowls of oatmeal topped with blueberries, and experience remarkably different biological responses. One person's blood sugar remains stable while another's spikes dramatically. One feels energetic for hours, another reaches for a snack before noon. The difference may not lie in willpower, metabolism or age. It may lie in the invisible society living inside their digestive tract.

That reality should make us deeply sceptical of nutritional absolutism. Every few years a new dietary movement arrives proclaiming salvation through keto, veganism, carnivore eating, intermittent fasting or the latest superfood imported from some remote mountain valley. Yet the microbiome stubbornly refuses to cooperate with fashionable certainty. What nourishes one internal ecosystem may barely register in another.

Perhaps the greatest irony is that modern life has quietly impoverished this second genome. Highly processed foods, excessive antibiotic use, sanitised environments and monotonous diets have reduced microbial diversity across much of the developed world. We have become obsessed with sterilising our surroundings while inadvertently sterilising parts of ourselves. The result may not simply be digestive discomfort but altered immunity, inflammation, mental health and metabolic disease.

This should not become another excuse for nutritional chaos. The microbiome is not a licence to declare that doughnuts are secretly healthy because someone somewhere digests them efficiently. Rather, it reminds us that biology is more nuanced than ideology. General principles still matter, but individual variation matters almost as much.

Medicine is already moving towards personalised treatments based on genetics. Nutrition will almost certainly follow the same path. Instead of prescribing identical diets for millions, future healthcare may analyse an individual's microbial composition before recommending foods likely to improve blood sugar control, reduce inflammation or even influence mood. That prospect is both exciting and humbling because it admits that human beings are less standardised than nutritional guidelines often pretend.

The microbiome also delivers a philosophical lesson. We like to imagine ourselves as autonomous individuals making rational dietary choices. In reality, we are walking ecosystems whose health depends on countless microscopic partners we cannot see. Their success often determines our own.

Perhaps the greatest dietary revolution will not come from discovering another miracle food. It will come from abandoning the comforting fiction that there is one perfect diet for everyone. Our second genome is quietly reminding us that health is not only written in our DNA but negotiated every day with the invisible civilisation we carry within us.

#eBook: The Fate of Empires in Svensksund by Ovi History

 

On July 9, 1790, the narrow coastal channels of the Baltic Sea erupted into an inferno of wood, iron and black powder. The Second Battle of Svensksund remains the largest naval clash in Baltic history; a dramatic two-day epic where an underdog Swedish force shattered the imperial ambitions of Catherine the Great.

Yet, to look at Svensksund purely as a clash of ships is to miss the point. As we explore in this issue, it was a grand, high-stakes gamble that fundamentally reshaped regional geopolitics, left an indelible mark on modern geography and left behind a literal time capsule on the ocean floor.

The sheer scale of the battle forms the spine of our coverage. We chart the chronological narrative of the battle itself, highlighting the brilliant defensive positioning of Swedish Lieutenant-Colonel Carl Olof Cronstedt. He lured the overconfident Russian commander, Prince Charles of Nassau-Siegen, into a deadly choke point. The Russian fleet was utterly bottlenecked, leading to a catastrophic defeat.

Ovi History eBook
july 2026

Ovi eBook Publishing 2026

The Fate of Empires in Svensksund

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Ian Glim #013 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

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

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A race without referees by Jiro Lambert

The most remarkable feature of the artificial-intelligence revolution is not its speed, nor even its technical sophistication. It is the astonishing absence of preparation. Every previous technological upheaval arrived with institutions capable of adapting, however imperfectly. Railways produced transport regulators. Industrialisation created labour laws. Aviation inspired international treaties. Nuclear power eventually led to inspection regimes and global agreements. Artificial intelligence, by contrast, has burst into everyday life while governments, universities, courts, corporations and international organisations remain several steps behind, struggling to understand what has already happened.

The uncomfortable truth is that nobody was truly ready. Politicians still speak about AI as though it were a future challenge requiring future legislation. Yet AI has already become a colleague, a teacher, a propagandist, a financial adviser, a military analyst, a therapist and, increasingly, an autonomous decision-maker. It is writing software, creating convincing videos, diagnosing illnesses, drafting legal documents and influencing elections before most lawmakers have even agreed on a common definition of what they are attempting to regulate.

That disconnect is becoming dangerous. Governments traditionally move at the speed of committees, consultations and parliamentary debates. Artificial intelligence evolves at the speed of software updates measured in weeks, sometimes days. By the time a regulation is drafted, negotiated, amended and finally approved, the technology it was meant to govern has already transformed into something entirely different. Legislators are effectively chasing a moving target while wearing blindfolds.

International organisations have fared little better. Grand declarations about ethical AI, responsible innovation and international cooperation sound reassuring in conference halls, but algorithms do not wait for diplomatic consensus. Technology companies operate globally while regulation remains overwhelmingly national. Data flows effortlessly across borders that legal systems cannot meaningfully patrol. The imbalance grows larger every month.

Even the institutions traditionally trusted to preserve knowledge appear unsettled. Universities debate whether students should use AI while students have already incorporated it into nearly every aspect of learning. Schools struggle to distinguish original thought from machine-generated prose. Courts are confronted with fabricated evidence so realistic that authenticity itself becomes a legal question. Journalism fights sophisticated misinformation campaigns powered by systems capable of producing endless quantities of persuasive falsehoods.

The irony is difficult to ignore. Humanity has spent decades imagining dramatic robot uprisings while largely overlooking the quieter revolution unfolding through software. AI did not conquer governments by force. It simply advanced faster than bureaucracy could react. It entered offices, classrooms, hospitals and military headquarters one practical application at a time until its presence became almost ordinary.

Meanwhile, economic competition has discouraged restraint. No government wishes to fall behind geopolitical rivals. No corporation wants to surrender market dominance. No university wants to appear technologically obsolete. Everyone acknowledges the risks while simultaneously accelerating development. It resembles an arms race in which every participant insists that someone else should apply the brakes first.

Calls for "controlling AI" may already sound strangely outdated. Control suggests an authority capable of directing events. Yet authority itself is fragmented. National governments lack global reach. International institutions lack enforcement powers. Private companies possess enormous technological influence but answer primarily to shareholders and competitive pressures. Responsibility has become so widely distributed that genuine accountability is difficult to locate.

This does not mean regulation is impossible. It does mean that regulation alone will never be sufficient. Society requires institutions capable not merely of reacting to technological change but anticipating it. That demands expertise, flexibility and international cooperation on a scale that current political systems rarely achieve.

Artificial intelligence is exposing an uncomfortable reality that extends far beyond technology itself. The real crisis is not that machines are becoming extraordinarily intelligent. It is that the institutions built to govern modern civilisation are proving remarkably slow, fragmented and outdated. The race has already begun. The troubling question is whether the referees have permanently lost sight of the track.

Hegseth’s myth of the action hero by Cassandra Sparks

There is something strangely cinematic about the idea that military readiness can be measured through testosterone tests. It belongs less to the history of warfare than to the world of action films, where victory is delivered by bulging muscles, clenched jaws and improbable explosions. If reports of Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth advocating annual testosterone testing for every service member over 30 are taken as a serious proposal they reveal a misunderstanding not only of biology but of military history itself.

The fantasy is familiar. Hollywood has spent decades convincing audiences that wars are won by solitary warriors charging into impossible odds, all biceps and bravado. The Rambo archetype remains deeply embedded in popular culture: the hero who succeeds through physical dominance alone. It makes for entertaining cinema. It makes for dreadful military doctrine.

Real armed forces have never relied primarily on youthful hormone levels. They have depended on discipline, training, logistics, organisation, leadership and experience. The Roman legions conquered an empire not because they were filled with bodybuilders but because they perfected engineering, coordination and tactical flexibility. Wellington defeated Napoleon through planning and coalition management as much as battlefield courage. The Allied victory in the Second World War rested on industrial production, intelligence gathering, code-breaking and operational command every bit as much as physical endurance.

Military history repeatedly demonstrates that seasoned veterans often outperform younger soldiers precisely because experience compensates for declining athleticism. Judgement under fire cannot be manufactured in a laboratory. Calm decision-making during chaos is not a hormone. Neither is tactical patience.

None of this is to dismiss the importance of physical fitness. Armed forces should demand high standards, and ageing inevitably presents medical challenges. Regular health assessments are sensible. Testosterone deficiency is a genuine medical condition that deserves diagnosis and treatment where clinically appropriate. Yet turning one biological marker into an annual ritual risks confusing medicine with symbolism.

It also reinforces an increasingly peculiar cultural obsession that masculinity can be reduced to laboratory numbers. The wellness industry has spent years marketing testosterone as though it were the master key to confidence, leadership and success. Politics now appears tempted to borrow the same language, treating hormone levels almost as a patriotic performance indicator.

That approach misunderstands what military institutions actually require. Modern soldiers operate drones, analyse intelligence, coordinate cyber operations, manage autonomous systems and work in multinational commands. Increasingly, wars reward technical competence and cognitive flexibility over cinematic displays of physical dominance. The battlefield is becoming more technological, not more theatrical.

There is another danger. Policies built around simplistic biological assumptions often create unintended incentives. Personnel may seek unnecessary treatments, medical resources may be diverted from more pressing concerns, and older service members could find themselves viewed through an unfair lens despite possessing invaluable institutional knowledge. Experience, once regarded as a strategic asset, risks being treated as a biochemical liability.

Perhaps the deeper problem is cultural rather than medical. Democracies occasionally fall in love with stylised visions of military strength because films and television offer cleaner narratives than history books. The screen celebrates the lone warrior. History celebrates the team, the planner, the logistician, the engineer and the commander who prevents battles from being lost before they begin.

Heroes rarely resemble Hollywood's fantasies. They are usually exhausted, disciplined, highly trained professionals whose greatest victories are achieved through preparation rather than spectacle. Nations that forget this lesson may find themselves admiring the physique of fictional warriors while overlooking the far less glamorous qualities that have determined the outcome of wars for centuries.

The tariff trolley by Zakir Hall

Donald Trump’s latest tariff threat has the peculiar logic of a supermarket quarrel conducted with a battering ram. On August 19th, the president threatened duties of 50% on Canadian goods, presenting the measure as retaliation for what America regards as unfair practices by Canadian provinces that do not buy enough American products. The argument is so wonderfully disproportionate that it almost sounds like political satire: someone declines to put American cheese in the shopping trolley, therefore an entire trade relationship must be punished.

Tariffs, however, are not an especially sophisticated instrument for settling bruised feelings. They are taxes imposed at the border, and their costs do not politely remain on the other side. They travel through importers, manufacturers, retailers and, eventually, consumers. A tariff aimed at Canadian goods can become an American surcharge on ordinary life, turning a dispute over purchasing preferences into higher prices for businesses and households that had nothing to do with the quarrel.

This is the strange Trumpian habit of treating international commerce as an extension of personal grievance. Countries are imagined as shoppers who have somehow insulted the cashier. Trade deficits become evidence of cheating; foreign competition becomes disloyalty; and the complexity of integrated supply chains is reduced to a morality tale in which America is perpetually being mugged in broad daylight.

Canada is hardly some distant commercial antagonist. Its economy is deeply interwoven with America’s, from energy and agriculture to manufacturing and logistics. Goods cross the border repeatedly before becoming the products Americans eventually purchase. A punitive tariff therefore risks resembling a man setting fire to his neighbour’s shed because he dislikes the price of the neighbour’s lawnmower, only to discover that his own garage shares the same wall.

The most revealing part of the threat is its collective punishment. If a Canadian province makes purchasing decisions that Washington dislikes, why should an American factory worker, grocer or consumer bear the consequences? The tariff does not distinguish between a provincial government, a supermarket chain and a family buying dinner. It simply arrives with a tax collector’s blank expression.

There is also something intellectually lazy about the underlying assumption that patriotic consumption can be commanded into existence. Consumers do not necessarily reject American products because they hate America. They buy what is affordable, available, familiar or good. A bottle, tin or packet does not carry a passport into the supermarket aisle. Commerce works precisely because people are allowed to choose.

Trump’s approach turns that freedom into a grievance. If consumers choose Canadian goods, Washington threatens Canada. If Canada retaliates, American exporters suffer. If prices rise, someone else will presumably be blamed. The circle is complete, and the politics becomes less about economic strategy than about demonstrating that nobody can refuse America without being punished.

That may produce applause at a rally. It is considerably less convincing as economic policy. A mature trading power should be capable of negotiating disputes without treating the grocery basket as a battlefield. America does not become stronger when it taxes its neighbours for failing to love its products. It merely makes the supermarket receipt another monument to wounded pride.

The tragedy is that rhetoric of strength can conceal misunderstanding of power. Real power builds alliances and makes products irresistible. It does not demand affection at checkout, then send the bill elsewhere.

Ant-sized Culinary #012 #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 weight of expectation by Yash Irwin

Few politicians inherit office. Even fewer inherit expectation. Andy Burnham found himself carrying something heavier than a parliamentary majority or a ministerial brief. He’s burdened by hope, arguably the most dangerous commodity in democratic politics.

The public often mistakes Prime Minister change for turning points. They are usually transfer points instead, moments when accumulated frustrations are handed from one government to another. Burnham's greatest political challenge would therefore not be defeating his opponents. It would be managing expectations inflated by years of disappointment with the political establishment.

Britain has spent more than a decade searching for stability and finding turbulence instead. Brexit, economic stagnation, inflation, public service decline, housing shortages and growing regional inequalities have produced an electorate that is simultaneously impatient and exhausted. Whoever occupies Number 10 is expected not merely to govern competently but to reverse years of structural decline almost immediately.

That is an impossible assignment. Burnham's reputation has been built not on Westminster theatrics but on the image of a pragmatic regional leader. As Mayor of Greater Manchester he cultivated the persona of someone prepared to confront central government, defend local interests and speak in relatively plain language. Those qualities have genuine electoral value because they contrast sharply with a political class often accused of speaking in slogans rather than solutions.

Yet national leadership changes every politician. The mayor who could criticise government from outside must suddenly become the government itself. Every promise made in opposition becomes a measurable target. Every speech becomes an implied contract. Every delay becomes evidence of failure.

That transformation is brutal. Burnham would also confront another uncomfortable reality. Britain no longer suffers from one crisis but from several interconnected ones. The National Health Service requires enormous investment and reform. Local government finances remain fragile. Infrastructure demands decades of planning. Productivity growth has stubbornly underperformed comparable economies. Energy security, defence spending and an ageing population all compete for the same limited public finances.

Political rhetoric can ignore these trade-offs. Government cannot. Perhaps the greatest danger comes not from opposition parties but from supporters who expect rapid change. Modern politics has become increasingly impatient. Social media compresses political time, encouraging voters to judge governments not after years but after weeks. Honeymoon periods have almost disappeared. Ministers are expected to deliver visible results before the machinery of government has even adjusted to new priorities.

This creates a vicious cycle. Leaders announce ambitious reforms to satisfy expectations. Bureaucratic realities slow implementation. Public disappointment grows. Political capital evaporates before meaningful change becomes visible.

Burnham's instinct may well be to decentralise power further, giving cities and regions greater authority over transport, housing and economic development. It is a logical extension of the model he has long championed. Yet constitutional reform rarely produces immediate improvements that voters can feel in their daily lives. The benefits arrive slowly while the political costs are immediate.

International pressures would further complicate the picture. Britain's economic fortunes remain tied to global markets, geopolitical uncertainty and volatile energy prices. No Prime Minister, however capable, exercises complete control over growth, inflation or investor confidence. Governments are often judged for forces they neither created nor fully command.

Ultimately, Andy Burnham's success would depend less on whether he performs miracles than on whether he persuades the country to abandon its expectation of them.

British politics has developed a habit of elevating leaders as national redeemers before condemning them as national disappointments. That cycle has damaged governments across the political spectrum. If Burnham were to escape it, he would need something rarer than charisma or ideology. He would need the political courage to tell voters that recovery is measured in years, not headlines, and that genuine renewal demands patience from a country that has almost forgotten how to wait.

The tyranny of tomorrow by Phylicity Harvey

Every generation believes it has discovered the moral equation that will finally explain how humanity should behave. Effective Altruism and its more ambitious offspring, Longtermism, promise precisely that: use reason, evidence and mathematics to maximise the greatest possible good, even if that means diverting resources from today's suffering towards preventing hypothetical catastrophes that could erase humanity's distant future. It is an elegant theory. It is also a profoundly unsettling one.

The attraction is obvious. If humanity survives for millions of years, trillions upon trillions of people may yet exist. In that arithmetic, preventing an existential disaster today could outweigh almost any present-day concern. Saving one child from malaria suddenly competes against safeguarding entire future civilisations from artificial intelligence gone rogue, engineered pandemics or asteroid impacts. Numbers become so enormous that ordinary compassion starts looking almost irrational.

Yet morality is not an accountant's ledger. The danger begins when hypothetical people acquire greater ethical status than living ones. There is something deeply uncomfortable about telling a hungry child, a refugee fleeing war or a family without medicine that their suffering must wait because someone, somewhere, has calculated a tiny probability of saving quadrillions of unborn descendants centuries from now. Such reasoning risks transforming ethics into an exercise detached from the very people ethics was invented to protect.

Longtermists often insist this is a false dilemma. They argue that society can both relieve present suffering and invest in reducing existential risks. In principle, that is perfectly reasonable. In practice, however, budgets are finite, political attention is limited and philanthropic money follows priorities. Every pound directed towards speculative future scenarios is a pound unavailable for hospitals, famine relief, vaccination campaigns or disaster recovery. Choices matter because scarcity remains stubbornly real.

There is also a remarkable confidence embedded within Longtermism that deserves far greater scepticism. Predicting next year's economic outlook is notoriously difficult. Predicting technological civilisation thousands or millions of years ahead borders on science fiction. Human history is littered with experts who confidently forecast futures that never arrived. Building moral priorities upon such uncertain foundations requires extraordinary faith disguised as rational calculation.

Ironically, many existential threats become less threatening when today's humanitarian crises are addressed. Stable societies invest more in science, education and resilient institutions. Healthier populations are better equipped to confront pandemics. Democracies with functioning public services are less likely to descend into conflicts that increase global instability. Helping people now is not merely charity; it strengthens humanity's capacity to survive tomorrow.

There is another philosophical flaw. Effective Altruism often seeks to eliminate emotion from ethical decision-making, treating empathy as a cognitive bias rather than a moral compass. But civilisation itself has been built upon the instinct to help those standing directly before us. Compassion is not a bug in human reasoning. It is one of its finest achievements.

None of this means existential risks should be ignored. Artificial intelligence, nuclear weapons and biotechnology deserve serious attention precisely because their consequences could be catastrophic. Prudence demands preparation. What it does not demand is elevating speculative futures above visible suffering.

A civilisation reveals its character not through the lives it imagines but through the lives it touches. If the pursuit of saving tomorrow requires looking away from those dying today, then the future being protected may not be morally worth inheriting.