The voters’ inflation problem by Timothy Davies

Donald Trump did not merely make a controversial economic remark when he declared, “I love inflation.” He may have unintentionally revealed something far more troubling about the political moment America finds itself trapped in. The statement itself was startling enough. Inflation is not some abstract economic concept admired from a distance. It is the reason groceries cost more, rents rise faster than paychecks and families quietly remove items from shopping carts while pretending not to notice. Loving inflation is rather like loving potholes, root canals, or power outages. It is an odd affection to publicly confess.

Yet the remark raises a question that extends beyond Trump’s own understanding of economics. The more fascinating mystery is why millions of voters continue to embrace politicians who repeatedly demonstrate confusion, indifference, or outright contradiction regarding the issues affecting everyday lives.

For years, inflation has been presented as one of the defining political concerns in the United States. Candidates have campaigned on promises to defeat it, tame it, crush it, and rescue Americans from its effects. Political advertisements have depicted families struggling with rising prices. Speeches have been built around economic anxiety. Entire electoral strategies have depended on convincing voters that inflation is the enemy.

Then comes a statement like “I love inflation,” and the reaction among supporters often seems less like scrutiny and more like rationalization. Suddenly words do not mean what they appear to mean. Explanations emerge. Interpretations multiply. Context becomes elastic. What would be condemned as incompetence from a political opponent is transformed into genius, humor or strategic messaging when it comes from a favored leader.

This phenomenon is not unique to Trump, but he has elevated it into a political art form. His supporters are frequently asked to perform remarkable intellectual gymnastics. One day they are told tariffs will lower prices. Another day they are informed that tariffs may increase prices but are somehow still beneficial. Contradictions that would sink ordinary politicians become mere footnotes in the endless cycle of political loyalty.

At some point, the discussion stops being about Trump’s grasp of economics and starts becoming about the electorate’s willingness to suspend skepticism. Democracies depend on citizens who are prepared to evaluate leaders critically, even leaders they admire. When loyalty replaces analysis, accountability evaporates.

The danger is not that politicians occasionally say foolish things. Politicians have been doing that since politics was invented. The danger arises when obvious contradictions no longer matter. If a leader can praise inflation after years of condemning it, and supporters barely blink, then facts become secondary to identity. Politics transforms from a contest of ideas into a tribal exercise where consistency is optional and reality negotiable.

Perhaps that is the most unsettling aspect of the episode. The concern is not whether Trump fully understands inflation. Voters can decide that for themselves. The larger concern is whether enough Americans still expect coherence, honesty, and basic economic logic from the people seeking power.

A democracy can survive a politician’s careless words. It struggles when millions stop caring whether those words make sense at all.

Rebranding child labour by Virginia Robertson

Every year, World Day Against Child Labour arrives with the familiar declarations. Governments issue statements. Corporations publish carefully designed graphics. International organizations release reports filled with concern. Everyone agrees that children belong in schools, not factories. Everyone condemns exploitation. Everyone insists that progress is being made.

And yet, something strange has happened in recent years. Child labour has not simply survived. In many places, it has been rebranded. The old image of child labour is easy to condemn. A twelve-year-old working sixteen hours in a textile mill is a moral outrage few would openly defend. But modern societies have become remarkably inventive when it comes to finding new language for old practices. What was once exploitation can suddenly become “training,” “entrepreneurship,” “family contribution,” “workforce development,” or “career readiness.”

The vocabulary changes. The child remains at work. Across the world, economic pressures have intensified. Families struggle with rising costs, stagnant wages, and shrinking opportunities. Businesses face labour shortages and seek cheaper alternatives. Politicians speak constantly about competitiveness and productivity. Under such conditions, children begin to appear not as young people deserving protection but as untapped economic resources.

The transformation rarely happens openly. No politician stands before a podium and announces support for child labour. Instead, exceptions multiply. Regulations become flexible. Definitions shift. Age restrictions acquire loopholes large enough to drive delivery trucks through. What emerges is not the return of nineteenth-century factories but something more subtle: the normalization of children participating in labour markets under increasingly creative justifications.

The most revealing aspect of this trend is the language used to defend it. We are told that work builds character. We hear that young people need real-world experience. We are reminded that previous generations worked from an early age. These arguments often contain fragments of truth. Responsibility matters. Practical skills matter. Experience matters.

But there is a significant difference between learning responsibility and becoming economically necessary. A child helping occasionally in a family business is not the same as a child whose labour fills gaps created by economic policy, labour shortages, or corporate cost-cutting. The distinction matters because one is part of growing up while the other risks becoming part of someone else’s business model.

History demonstrates that child labour rarely expands because societies suddenly decide it is morally acceptable. It expands because adults convince themselves that current circumstances make it necessary. Economic necessity has always been exploitation’s most persuasive public relations agent.

That is why World Day Against Child Labour should be more than an annual exercise in self-congratulation. It should force uncomfortable questions. When laws are weakened, who benefits? When children enter workplaces earlier, who profits? When educational opportunities shrink while employment opportunities expand, what priorities are being revealed?

The danger today is not that societies openly embrace child labour. The danger is that they become skilled at disguising it. Exploitation wrapped in modern language remains exploitation. A loophole does not become ethical because it is legal. A marketing campaign does not transform necessity into opportunity.

Children deserve preparation for adulthood. They deserve responsibility, education, and practical experience. What they do not deserve is to become the shock absorbers of economic systems unwilling to confront their own failures.

The most effective defence of child labour has never been denial. It has always been redefinition. That is precisely why it deserves scrutiny whenever it appears wearing a new name.

The humanity’s lobbyist by Edoardo Moretti

Pope Leo’s emerging skepticism toward artificial intelligence has been interpreted by some as a quaint theological concern, the sort of warning one expects from a religious institution that has spent centuries greeting technological revolutions with caution. But that reading misses the deeper significance of his position. What makes his voice notable is not that he is warning about machines. Plenty of people are doing that. It is that he appears to be asking a question that much of modern society has stopped asking altogether: what exactly is humanity trying to preserve?

For the better part of two decades, the conversation around artificial intelligence has been framed as an argument about efficiency. AI can write faster, calculate faster, diagnose faster, and increasingly create faster. The assumption embedded within this logic is that speed and productivity are self-evident goods. If a machine can do something better than a person, then the machine should do it. The discussion typically ends there.

Yet Pope Leo seems to be pushing against the premise itself. The issue is not whether machines can outperform humans in particular tasks. The issue is whether a civilization gradually handing over judgment, creativity, memory, and even relationships to algorithms remains recognizably human at all.

This is not a religious question. It is a civilizational one. The most striking aspect of the AI revolution is how little resistance it has encountered. Previous technological upheavals produced visible opponents. Industrialization had labor movements. Globalization had populist critics. Nuclear weapons inspired entire generations of activists. Artificial intelligence, by contrast, often feels like an unstoppable tide greeted with a shrug. Governments rush to adopt it. Corporations compete to deploy it. Consumers eagerly embrace it. Skepticism is frequently dismissed as fear, ignorance, or nostalgia.

What Pope Leo appears to understand is that the real danger may not be machine domination in the science-fiction sense. It may be voluntary surrender. Humanity is not being conquered by robots marching down city streets. Humanity is quietly outsourcing pieces of itself because convenience is seductive and efficiency is difficult to resist.

A society that allows algorithms to decide what people read, whom they date, what they believe, what they create, and eventually what they think is not necessarily becoming more advanced. It may simply be becoming more passive.

The irony is that AI is often celebrated as humanity’s greatest achievement. In many ways it is. It reflects extraordinary ingenuity and ambition. But every civilization eventually faces a test involving its own creations. The challenge is not whether it can build powerful tools. The challenge is whether it retains enough wisdom to remain their master.

This is where Pope Leo’s voice resonates beyond churches, cathedrals, or religious doctrine. He sounds less like a guardian of ancient traditions and more like an advocate for human agency in an age increasingly enchanted by automation. His warning is not that machines will suddenly become evil. It is that humans may gradually forget why they matter.

In that sense, his stand feels less like opposition to technology and more like a defense of humanity itself, the increasingly lonely position of a man standing before a cheering crowd and asking whether anyone has considered the cost of getting everything they want.

AntySaurus Prick #131 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

Dino is a vegetarian virgin dinosaur and his best friend is Anty,
a carnivorous nymphomaniac ant.
They call themselves the AntySaurus Prick and they are still here
waiting for the comet to come!

For more AntySaurus Prick, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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Let My Children Go: World Efforts to Eliminate the Worst Forms of Child Labour by Rene Wadlow

 

Your children are not your children;
They are the sons and daughters of
Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you, yet they
belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not
your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies, but not their souls.
                                 Kahil Gibran

12 June is a red letter day on the UN agenda of events as the World Day Against Child Labour.  It marks the 12 June arrival in 1998 of hundreds of children in Geneva, part of the Global March against Child Labour that had crossed a 100 countries to present their plight to the International Labour Organization (ILO).

“We are hurting, and you can help us” was their message to the assembled International Labour Conference which meets each year in Geneva in June.  One year later, in June, the ILO had drafted ILO Convention N° 182 on child labour which 165 States have now ratified — the fastest ratification rate in the ILO’s  history.

ILO Convention N°182 sets out in article 3 the worst forms of child labour to be banned:

a) all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery, such as the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage and serfdom and forced or compulsory labour, including forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict;

b) the use, procuring or offering of a child for prostitution, for the production of pornography or for pornographic performances;

c) the use, procuring or offering of a child for illicit activities, in particular for the production and trafficking of drugs as defined in the relevant international treaties;

d) work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children.

The Convention is supplemented by a Recommendation: the Worst Forms of Child Labour Recommendation N° 1999, which provisions should be applied in conjunction with the Convention: “Programme of Action (article 6): Among other issues, the situation of the girl child and the problem of hidden work situations in which girls are at special risk are explicitly mentioned; Hazardous work (article 3(d): In determining the types of hazardous work, consideration should be given, inter alia, to work which exposes children to physical, psychological or sexual abuse.

Today, millions of children, especially those living in extreme poverty, have no choice but to accept exploitive employment to ensure their own and their family’s survival.  Child labour was often hidden behind the real and non-exploitive help that children bring to family farms.  However, such help often keeps children out of school and thus outside the possibility of joining the modern sector of the economy.  The ILO estimates that of the some 200 million child labourers in the world, some 70 percent are in agriculture, 10 percent in industry/mines and the others in trade and services — often as domestics or street vendors in urban areas.  Globally, Asia accounts for the largest number of child workers — 122 million, Sub-Saharan Africa, 50 million, and Latin America and the Caribbean, 6 million.  Young people under 18 make up almost half of humanity, a half which is virtually powerless in relation to the other half.  To ensure the well-being of children and adolescents in light of this imbalance of power, we must identify attitudes and practices which cause invisibility.

One of the most exploitive type of child labour is what is called “debt bondage” — most pervasive in India, Pakistan and western Nepal.  In these countries, the debt bondage pattern of exploitation is supported by long-standing traditions and cultural biases against low castes or minority ethnic groups.  Dept bondage is a practice by which parents pledge their children’s work to pay off debts.  The debts are very small at the start but with very high interest rates.  Thus the children may work for their entire childhood to pay off the debt because of fraudulent accounting mechanisms employed by debt holders.

In western Nepal, where such bonded labourers are known as “Kamaiya”, the accounting schemes can keep families in debt for generations.  Since Kamaiyas are often not paid enough to meet their basic needs, many have no choice but to take new loans from their masters.  Many also carry inherited debts, sometimes going back for three or four generations in addition to their own.  Children sold to bond masters work long hours over many years in  an attempt to pay off these debts due to the astronomically high rates of interest charged and the low wages paid.  The eradication of child labour depends on an ethical awakening on the part of employers, government officials, and non-governmental organizations.

In India, child debt servitude has been illegal since 1933.  Since independence, India has adopted a host of additional protective legislation, most importantly the Bonded Labour System Abolition Act of 1976, which strictly outlaws all forms of debt bondage and forced labour.  However, without political will to enforce them, these legal safeguards have little impact.  Whether due to corruption or indifference, the political will is lacking.  Labour laws are routinely flouted with virtually no risk of punishment to the offender.  This is why an ethical awareness must grow and all children seen as having dignity and potential for a fuller life.

There is still a long way to go to eliminate exploitive child labour.  Much child labour is in what is commonly called the non-formal sector of the economy where there are no trade unions.  Child labour is often related to conditions of extreme poverty and to sectors of the society where both adults and children are marginalized such as many tribal societies in Asia, or the Roma in Europe or migrant workers in general.

In addition to the worst forms of exploitive child labour, there is the broad issue of youth training and employment. The challenges ahead are very much a youth challenge.  The world will need to create millions of new jobs over the next decade in order to provide employment for the millions of new entrants into the labour market in addition to creating jobs for the millions of currently unemployed or underemployed youth.

There needs to be world-wide labour market policies that provide social protection measures, better training for an ever-changing work scene. World Citizens support the demands of decent work for all.  We need to cooperate to build economies and societies where young persons participate fully in the present and the future.

 ********************************

Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

Robert’s ghost in state house by Eze Ogbu

Zimbabwe has always lived with its history but there are moments when history seems less like a memory than a tenant who never moved out. The government's latest step toward a constitutional amendment that would extend the president's term by two years and replace direct presidential elections with selection by lawmakers is one of those moments. It feels less like a legal reform than a familiar knock on the door from a past many Zimbabweans have spent decades trying to escape.

The proposal arrives wrapped in the language of procedure and governance. Its supporters will undoubtedly argue that constitutional systems evolve, that parliamentary selection is practiced elsewhere, and that stability is a virtue in a turbulent region. Yet political changes cannot be judged solely by their technical details. They must also be measured by the political culture in which they occur and the incentives they create.

In Zimbabwe, the symbolism is impossible to ignore. For nearly four decades, Robert Mugabe perfected a political model in which institutions increasingly existed to serve power rather than restrain it. Elections remained, constitutions remained and parliament remained but the spirit of democratic accountability steadily weakened. The forms survived while the substance eroded. The result was a nation where political continuity became an end in itself, often detached from public consent.

That is why the current proposal has generated such concern. Extending a presidential term is rarely a neutral act. Eliminating a direct presidential election is even less so. Together, the changes suggest a governing philosophy that places convenience for the political elite above the fundamental democratic principle that leaders should periodically return to the electorate for judgment.

One of the ironies of modern Zimbabwean politics is that Mugabe himself is gone, yet many of the instincts that defined his rule seem remarkably resilient. The personalities have changed. The habits have not.

Across the continent, citizens have become increasingly familiar with the script. A constitutional amendment appears. Technical arguments are offered. Assurances are given. The public is told that democracy remains secure. Yet somehow the practical effect almost always benefits those already in power. The political horizon stretches a little further for incumbents while becoming slightly narrower for everyone else.

Democracy is not merely a mechanism for choosing leaders. It is a discipline imposed upon leaders. It forces governments to confront uncertainty, criticism, and the possibility of rejection. Elections are inconvenient by design. They remind rulers that authority is borrowed, not owned.

When governments begin searching for ways to reduce those inconveniences, citizens are right to become suspicious. The legal challenges now before Zimbabwe's constitutional court may ultimately determine the amendment's fate. But the larger issue extends beyond courtrooms and legal briefs. It concerns the direction of a country that has repeatedly promised democratic renewal while remaining haunted by authoritarian reflexes.

Nations do not become democratic simply because they hold elections. Nor do they become authoritarian overnight. The transformation is usually gradual, marked by small adjustments that seem manageable in isolation but alarming in accumulation.

Zimbabwe stands at one of those moments. The question facing the country is not whether Robert Mugabe still occupies an office. He does not. The question is whether the governing culture he cultivated still occupies the political imagination. The latest amendment suggests that, for some in power, the old ghost remains very much at home.

The cost of looking backward by Brea Willis

One of the more peculiar spectacles in modern politics is watching leaders fight yesterday’s battles while the rest of the world quietly moves on. Energy policy offers perhaps the clearest example. Across Europe, parts of Asia and even regions once heavily dependent on fossil fuels, governments and businesses have increasingly concluded that renewable energy is not merely an environmental aspiration. It is an economic strategy.

The debate, in many places, has evolved. The question is no longer whether wind, solar, and other renewable technologies can play a significant role in national energy systems. The question is how quickly they can be expanded, how effectively they can be integrated into electric grids, and how much money they can save consumers and industries. What was once framed as a moral argument about climate responsibility has become, in many respects, a practical argument about competitiveness.

Against this backdrop, Donald Trump and many figures within his political movement continue to treat green energy as though it were an ideological hobby rather than an industrial reality. The rhetoric often suggests that renewable power represents weakness, dependency, or economic sacrifice. Yet the irony is difficult to ignore. Nations investing heavily in renewable infrastructure are frequently doing so because they believe it strengthens their economies, attracts investment, lowers long-term costs, and reduces vulnerability to volatile fuel markets.

There is something distinctly twentieth century about the insistence that prosperity must remain tethered to older energy systems. It resembles the executives who once dismissed personal computers as toys or the publishers who underestimated the internet. History is filled with examples of established industries confusing familiarity with permanence.

The United States, of course, remains a technological giant. It possesses world-class universities, engineering talent, capital markets, and innovative companies capable of leading almost any industrial transformation. That is precisely what makes the resistance to renewable energy so puzzling. The country is not lacking the resources to compete. Instead, it often appears trapped in a political argument that much of the world has already settled.

Supporters of Trump's approach frequently frame renewable energy as a threat to jobs and economic growth. Yet industries centered on solar panels, battery technology, grid modernization, and clean-energy manufacturing have become major sources of employment and investment across numerous regions. The global economy is not waiting for Washington to resolve its ideological disputes. Companies are making decisions today about where factories will be built, where research will be conducted, and where future supply chains will emerge.

What makes the situation particularly frustrating is that renewable energy should not be a partisan issue at all. Affordable electricity, energy independence, technological leadership, and industrial competitiveness are goals that transcend political labels. A wind turbine does not care whether its electricity powers a conservative household or a liberal one. A solar panel has no party registration.

The real danger is not that America will suddenly stop producing energy or cease being an economic powerhouse. The danger is more gradual. It is the risk of surrendering leadership in industries that will shape the coming decades because political symbolism became more important than economic reality.

The rest of the world is not embracing renewable energy out of charity, sentimentality, or environmental idealism alone. Increasingly, it is doing so because the numbers make sense. Markets tend to reward efficiency, innovation and lower costs. They are remarkably indifferent to political nostalgia.

And that may be the central lesson here. Economies can adapt to new technologies. Nations can modernize. What proves far more difficult is convincing politicians to stop fighting the future once it has already arrived.

#eBook The man who walked like a heron by Nneka Solomon

 

So when she saw the man standing at the edge of the cassava field, she did not run. She tilted her head, the way her grandmother taught her, like a bird deciding whether a snake is friend or food.

He was tall. Too tall. His legs were long as herons' legs, his neck thin as a reed. He wore grey linen that drank the twilight instead of reflecting it. His skin was the colour of old parchment, the kind her grandfather used to wrap tobacco leaves.

And his eyes, his eyes were shallow graves. No grief, no joy. Just two holes where something had been and was no longer.
“Child,” he said.

Nneka Solomon, part-time educator full-time chronicler of small-town life, spends her days navigating the unpredictable waters of academia and her evenings crafting fantastical tales where the local gossip mill becomes a cauldron of magical intrigue and the town square transforms into a bustling marketplace for enchanted wares.

Ovi eBook Publishing 2026

The man who walked like a heron

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Marx cousins #028 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

Groucho Marx attempts to seduce Karl Marx’s beard,
only to be met with a scathing analysis of capitalism
disguised as a poorly-aimed spittoon.

For more Marx Cousins, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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The bones of the dead #poem & #artinstallation by Amir Khatib

 

"I sell the bones of the dead to the dead."

Everything you've ever wished to achieve, you can attain,
if you leave the past behind you!

Don't forget it, but don't cling to it.
Don't let it tempt you to return to its embrace,
for it is a prostitute who has left service, seeking someone to restore her to her former glory…
And if you entrust the future to the uncertain possibility and leave it in its hands,

and ground the present in understanding your place and time,
and pledge allegiance to nature in its eternal rule.

But you, what do you truly want?

— I want peace with myself,
for she is the first finger I put in my mouth,
the first sound I heard,
the first being I saw that smiled at me in the mirror,
the first dream, and the first nightmare of my life. It is my homeland, for which I fought eighty years of wars,
Wounded by the stabs of the future,
That invades without justification,
And I aspire to be worthy of my name,
Which is the name of life.
I want a night where I sleep awake and a day without dreams,
I want a completely white sky;
To draw in it and tuck it under my arm,
And planets colored like billiard balls,
To play with them alone without losing.
I want a woman who doesn't misunderstand my silence,
And an ordinary, predictable day that doesn't boast of retribution,
And a hope that's been preserved with the taste of "pastrami".
I want to paint in death,
And hold exhibitions in underground halls overflowing with springs,
I want to sell…
The bones of the dead to the dead in need,
And sing.

Art Installation by Amir Khatib

When fear becomes a weapon by Aimee Ingram

South Africa likes to present itself as the rainbow nation, a country that emerged from the darkness of apartheid with a promise of tolerance, dignity and shared humanity. Yet every time foreigners are hunted, attacked or driven from their homes, that promise looks increasingly fragile.

The killing of at least two Mozambicans this week and the torching of dozens of shacks in Mossel Bay should not be dismissed as isolated incidents. They are part of a recurring pattern that has stained South Africa’s democratic story for years. Hundreds of Mozambicans reportedly fled in fear, while others waited to be repatriated. The images are disturbingly familiar: frightened families carrying what little they own, homes reduced to ashes and communities shattered by mobs convinced that outsiders are to blame for their struggles.

The uncomfortable truth is that xenophobia in South Africa is no longer merely a social problem. When people are targeted because of where they come from, when violence is directed at a group based on nationality, and when communities are terrorized simply for being foreign, the line into hate crime territory has already been crossed.

What makes these attacks especially troubling is that they are often fueled by grievances that are real but misdirected. South Africa faces staggering unemployment, deep inequality and persistent poverty. Many citizens feel abandoned by political leaders who have promised economic progress but failed to deliver it. Frustration is understandable. Violence against immigrants is not.

Foreign workers did not create South Africa’s economic challenges. Mozambican labourers did not design policies that left millions unemployed. Migrants did not build the corruption networks that siphoned away public resources. Yet they become convenient targets because they are visible, vulnerable and often unable to defend themselves politically.

This is the oldest trick in politics and society, when solutions are difficult, find a scapegoat. The danger extends beyond the immediate victims. Xenophobic violence poisons the entire region. Southern African nations are linked by history, trade, labour migration and family ties. Many South Africans once found refuge and solidarity in neighbouring countries during the anti-apartheid struggle. To now see citizens of those same countries chased from their homes represents a tragic reversal of that spirit.

There is also a practical cost. Countries cannot build prosperity while tolerating lawlessness. Investors notice instability. Tourists notice hostility. Regional partners notice when their citizens are attacked. Every act of mob violence weakens South Africa’s standing and undermines confidence in its future.

Political leaders must resist the temptation to flirt with anti-immigrant rhetoric for short-term popularity. Words matter. When migrants are routinely portrayed as invaders, criminals or economic parasites, violence becomes easier to justify in the minds of angry citizens. Responsible leadership requires confronting myths rather than exploiting them.

The deeper challenge is moral. A society reveals itself not by how it treats the powerful but by how it treats the vulnerable. Foreign workers living in informal settlements are among the least protected people in South Africa. If they can be burned out of their homes and driven across borders by fear, then the principles of equality and human dignity become little more than slogans.

The tragedy in Mossel Bay should be a wake-up call. Economic hardship may explain public anger, but it can never excuse persecution. When fear becomes a weapon and nationality becomes a target, everyone loses. South Africa deserves better than that, and so do its neighbours.