The allies that never were by Gabriele Schmitt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Faith and fury by John Reid

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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Red hats and Union Jacks by Yash Irwin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

A republic of fearing children’s books by Shanna Shepard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Me My Mind & I #12: Moving boxes #Cartoon by Patrick McWade

 

A different way to check internal and external ...thoughts!
'Me My Mind & I' is a cartoon series by Patrick McWade.
For more 'Me My Mind & I' HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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Fika bonding! #119 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

Fika is a state of mind and an important part of Swedish culture. It means making time for friends and colleagues to share a cup of coffee and a little something to eat.

For more Fika bonding!, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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The illusion of progress in an age of regression by Brea Willis

For a fleeting moment it seemed the world had reached a fragile consensus, oil, that stubborn relic of the industrial age, would no longer dictate the fate of economies or the rhythm of geopolitics. Nations spoke in earnest about wind corridors and solar fields, about tidal innovations and the quiet promise of water-powered grids. It was not perfect, nor fast enough, but it was movement and movement mattered.

Then came the disruption. What had been a cautious but collective march toward energy transition began to fracture under the weight of political short-termism and revived fossil fuel loyalties. The shift was not immediate but it was unmistakable. Climate rhetoric softened, replaced by the familiar language of “energy independence” that, more often than not, translated into drilling more, extracting more and delaying more.

The consequences of this reversal are no longer abstract. They are visible in the volatility of oil markets, in the uneasy alliances being rekindled, and in the quiet abandonment of ambitious renewable targets. Nowhere is this contradiction more glaring than in regions already strained by geopolitical tension, where reliance on oil remains both a lifeline and a liability. As instability deepens, oil prices climb, predictably, relentlessly and with them rises the cost of clinging to an outdated system.

There is a particular irony in watching governments scramble to manage rising energy costs while simultaneously neglecting the very alternatives that could have insulated them. Wind and water do not spike in price due to conflict. Sunlight is not subject to sanctions. And yet, these truths are repeatedly sidelined in favour of immediate political gains or economic nostalgia.

The argument often presented is one of practicality: that the world is simply not ready to abandon oil. But this is a convenient half-truth. The world was not ready and perhaps still isn’t but it was preparing. Infrastructure was being tested, investments were being made, and public sentiment was, however slowly, shifting. What stalled progress was not impossibility, but interruption.

And interruptions, particularly political ones, have consequences that extend far beyond election cycles. They reshape priorities, redirect funding and perhaps most damagingly, erode trust. When governments signal inconsistency on something as foundational as energy policy, industries hesitate, innovators retreat and citizens grow sceptical of long-term promises.

Meanwhile, the clock does not pause. Environmental pressures intensify, economies remain vulnerable to supply shocks and the illusion of control that oil can indefinitely serve as a stable backbone, grows thinner by the day. The recent surges in prices are not anomalies; they are reminders. Reminders that dependence carries risk and that diversification is not a luxury but a necessity.

What makes the current moment particularly frustrating is not just the regression, but the awareness of it. We know what alternatives exist. We have seen them work, even if imperfectly. The path forward is neither mysterious nor unattainable. It simply requires consistency, a quality too often sacrificed at the altar of political expediency.

History will not judge this era kindly if it is remembered as the moment when progress was within reach, only to be wilfully set aside. The tragedy is not that the world relied on oil for so long. It is that, having begun to move beyond it, we chose or allowed ourselves to turn back.

Emotion #Poem by Jan Sand

The world, to be fair
Simply
Is not there
If you don’t care.
The notion
That emotion
Merely spices up the nices,
Gives significance to chance,
Provides devices to circumstance
To enhance or dismiss
What you prefer to miss
Loses an essential.

Emotion’s not a triviality.
It’s the basis of reality.

You must love or hate,
Discriminate
To act to create fate
Or otherwise you simply don’t exist.

That robots do not care,
Are not aware,
But derive their drive
From algorithm
Is exorcism of its livingness.

When a soldier or a torturer
Or just an average employee
Refuses to be
Emotional,
To care of what or where
Or how performance does
What performance does
As long as money is reward,
He or she becomes
Mere robotry.