The Strait of Hormuz Blockade Vs. The Blockade of Gaza by Javed Akbar

“Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen:
your hands are full of blood.”

With these searing words from Isaiah 1:15, invoked by Pope Leo XIV on Palm Sunday, March 29, 2026, a timeless moral indictment was cast upon a world that has mastered the language of piety while abandoning the substance of justice. It was a pointed response to the public display of prayer by Pete Hegseth¹ at the Pentagon – an invocation that, in this light, rang hollow against the weight of unfolding realities.

Today, a deeply unsettling reversal lies at the very core of the global order.

The mere whisper of disruption in the Strait of Hormuz sends tremors through capitals, markets, and militaries alike. Yet the slow suffocation of human lives—most visibly in Gaza, but no less tragically in Lebanon and Sudan—elicits little more than ritualistic concern. When commerce is threatened, urgency is immediate; when humanity is extinguished, indifference is methodical.

This is not an oversight. It is a clear ranking of what matters most.

The world has adjusted its conscience to the rhythms of the market. Oil routes are arteries; human lives, it would seem, are expendable margins. The calculus is stark and unsettling: economic instability is intolerable, but human suffering—especially when it belongs to the distant, the dispossessed, the “other”—is negotiable.

During the Iraq War, Susan Sontag² captured this chilling detachment with devastating clarity. When her daughter asked how many had died, she replied to her child: “No one that we know, dear.” In that quiet admission lies the architecture of modern apathy—the narrowing of empathy to the familiar, the erasure of the unseen.

The recent specter of closure in the Strait of Hormuz exposed this moral fracture with brutal clarity.

After forty days of sustained and unprovoked assault by the United States and Israel against Iran - marked by the deployment of overwhelming military force and culminating in a crushing setback – a rapid and coordinated global response was set in motion. Washington, facing mounting pressure , moved with notable haste to embrace a ceasefire³ underscoring the stark realities on the ground. Yet this urgency did not arise from the cries of children in Gaza buried beneath rubble, nor from the collapse of hospitals and homes. It was not conscience that stirred—it was the consequence.

For over two years, Gaza has endured systematic devastation. Civilian infrastructure lies in ruins; medical systems teeter on the brink of total collapse. The suffering is neither hidden nor ambiguous. And yet, the response from the international system has remained confined to carefully worded statements—expressions of concern devoid of resolve, condemnations without consequence.

The contrast is not merely striking—it is damning.

It has become evident that not all blood carries equal weight in the scales of global politics. The machinery of international response is not activated by the magnitude of human suffering, but by the proximity of economic risk. Oil possesses the power to mobilize fleets and forge alliances; the deaths of children do not interrupt supply chains, nor do they disturb stock markets. As long as tragedy remains geographically and economically contained, it is rendered politically tolerable.

This is the unspoken doctrine of our time: wars are objectionable not when they are unjust, but when they are inconvenient.

Even the sudden retreat from escalation when energy routes were threatened was not an awakening of moral restraint. It was a calculation—precise, clinical, and entirely devoid of ethical introspection. The same powers that tolerate prolonged devastation in one region will act decisively in another when their own stability is imperiled. This is not leadership; it is selective urgency masquerading as diplomacy.

Meanwhile, nations like Iran—whatever one’s political assessment—continue to draw upon a deeply rooted spiritual consciousness, one that frames struggle not merely in geopolitical terms but as part of a broader moral and existential narrative. This dimension, often ignored in Western analyses, underscores a truth that technocratic calculations fail to grasp: societies are not sustained by power alone, but by meaning.

What emerges, then, is a world order profoundly out of balance—a system in which material priorities eclipse moral imperatives, where the value of human life is contingent upon its economic relevance.

A civilization that mobilizes for oil but not for blood is not merely inconsistent; it is in peril. For when compassion becomes conditional and justice selective, the very foundations of legitimacy begin to erode. No accumulation of wealth, no safeguarding of energy routes, can compensate for the corrosion of conscience.

The warning issued in Isaiah echoes with renewed urgency: prayers unaccompanied by justice are empty. And the Qur’an succinctly declares; O’ you who believe! Why do you say what you do not do? Most hateful in the sight of Allah is that you say what you do not do. (Qur’an 61:2-3).

In the final reckoning, no civilization will be judged by the fullness of its treasuries or the security of its oil routes, but by the weight it accorded to human life. For the humanity that does not bleed at the sight of blood has already begun to lose its soul.

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¹Pete Hegseth delivered prayers at the Pentagon on March 25, 2026. The prayer services were part    of a monthly Christian worship ceremony initiated by Hegseth, who is the Secretary of Defense.

² Susan Sontag was a renowned American writer, critic, and intellectual known for her profound    impact on contemporary thought and art.

³ US negotiators walked away after few hours of negotiations as Iran would not budge on the re-opening of the strait of Hormuz

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Javed Akbar is a freelance writer whose opinion columns have appeared in Toronto Star and numerous digital platforms. He can be reached at: mjavedakbar@gmail.com

Post-Orbán illusion of relief by Thanos Kalamidas

The fall of a dominant political figure is always tempting to celebrate as a moral victory, a narrative turning point where history appears to correct itself. The reported defeat of Viktor Orbán invites precisely that instinct, a sense that Europe has at last nudged aside one of its most persistent illiberal forces. For years Orbán’s Hungary stood as both a symbol and a laboratory, a place where democratic institutions were hollowed out not with tanks but with legal precision, media consolidation and a steady erosion of norms. His departure or even a weakening of his grip, feels like a release of pressure from the continent’s political bloodstream.

But relief is not the same as resolution. Péter Magyar is a figure who embodies the uneasy truth about political transitions, they are rarely clean breaks. Magyar’s rise has been framed, in some corners, as a hopeful pivot, a chance for Hungary to recalibrate, to step away from the authoritarian flirtations of the past decade. Yet this optimism deserves scrutiny not amplification. Political identities, especially those forged in proximity to power, do not dissolve overnight.

Magyar was not an outsider shouting from the margins. He was, by most accounts, a product of the system he now inherits or claims to challenge. That proximity matters. It shapes instincts, alliances and perhaps most importantly, limits. The idea that someone deeply embedded within Orbán’s political ecosystem can seamlessly transform into a liberal reformer requires a degree of faith that recent history does not easily justify.

This is not to say that change is impossible. Political reinvention happens. But it is rarely as dramatic as headlines suggest. More often, it is incremental, cautious, hedged by the need to maintain support among constituencies that were cultivated under the previous regime. And those constituencies, in Hungary’s case, have been shaped by years of nationalist rhetoric, anti-immigrant sentiment, and a steady drumbeat of cultural grievance.

Magyar’s own record, marked by nationalist tones and rhetoric that leans at times into exclusionary territory, raises legitimate concerns. He may not project the overt authoritarianism that defined Orbán’s later years, but ideology does not need to be loud to be influential. Subtle shifts, coded language and policy priorities can sustain the same underlying currents, even under a different banner.

There is also a broader European context to consider. The continent is not merely contending with individual leaders but with a persistent ideological wave, one that blends nationalism, skepticism of liberal institutions and a willingness to redraw democratic boundaries in the name of stability or sovereignty. Hungary has been a focal point of this trend but it is far from alone. In that sense, Orbán’s potential exit is less a conclusion than a chapter break.

What makes this moment particularly delicate is the temptation, especially among observers outside Hungary, to project their own hopes onto Magyar. To see in him what they wish Hungary to become, rather than what it is. This kind of projection is understandable, it is human to seek narratives of redemption but it is also risky. It can dull critical scrutiny at precisely the moment it is most needed.

If Magyar is to prove different, he will need to do so not through rhetoric but through action, by restoring institutional independence, by genuinely opening the media landscape, by resisting the easy political gains of scapegoating and division. These are not symbolic gestures; they are structural commitments. And they are difficult, often politically costly to sustain.

For now then, a measured response is not cynicism but prudence. Orbán’s shadow does not disappear with his departure. It lingers in institutions, in public discourse, in the expectations of voters. Whether Péter Magyar represents a departure from that shadow or merely its evolution remains an open question.

History after all, has a habit of repeating itself, not as a dramatic echo, but as a quiet continuation.

#eBook Edenic visions by Ovi Art eBooks

Before it is a place of soil and seed, it is an idea. A knot of longing, power, memory, or faith tied into living matter.

When an artist turns to a garden, whether a sliver of medieval cloister grass, a Versailles parterre visible only from a king’s window, or a tangle of asylum bindweed—they are not merely painting leaves and light. They are painting a world in miniature, a version of how things should be, once were or might yet become.

This book begins with a simple observation, for over a thousand years, gardens have served as art’s most persistent, pliable metaphor. Yet they have rarely been treated as a subject in their own right, not just as backdrop or botanical record, but as a living, contested medium.

The enclosed hortus conclusus of a Flemish manuscript illuminates a virgin’s womb. The Persian paradise garden, woven into silk or tile, promises a riverine afterlife. Botticelli’s orange grove stages pagan philosophy. Monet’s water-lily pond becomes a late-life studio, then a national memorial. Each is a garden. Each is a theology, a politics, a wound, a cure.

Ovi eBook Publishing 2026

Edenic visions

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Berserk Alert! #096 #Cartoon by Tony Zuvela

 

Tony Zuvela and his view of the world around us in a constant berserk alert!
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Sacco and Vanzetti: That Agony is Our Triumph by Rene Wadlow

"If it had not been for these things, I might have live out my life talking at street corners to scorning men.  I might have die, unmarked, unknown, a failure.  Now we are not a failure.  This our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man as now we do by accident.  Our words - our lives - our pain - nothing! The taking of our lives  -  lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler - all! That last moment belongs to us - that agony is our triumph" - Letter of Bartolome Vanzetti (1888-1927) to Judge Webster Thayer who had condemned Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco (1891-1927) to death for the murder of a guard and the paymaster of the Slater and Morill Shoe Company in Braintree, Massachusetts on 15 April 1920.

Sacco and Vanzetti, along with a third member of the Italian anarchist group involved in the robbery were electricuted at midnight on 23 August 1927, after seven years of legal procedings and an organized social campaign to prevent the execution led by some of the leading intellectuals of the time, especially the novelist John Dos Passos.  Some 200,000 persons attended the funeral, and there were demonstration in front of U.S. embacies in many parts of Europe.  Since then, Sacco and Vanzetti have been symbolic figures in efforts to abolish the death penalty.

Two aspects of the trials and legal procedures have stood out in the anti-death penalty debates.  The first is that it is often difficult to have a trial that is not influenced by emotions and the political currents of the times.

Both Sacco and Vanzetti had been members of an anarchist network led by the Italian anarchist writer Luigi Galleani who was living for some years in the New York area.  He edited a journal calling for violent revolution.  He was deported to Italy in June 1919, but his journal continued for several years after that.  In the minds of many in the U.S.A. there was a link between anarchy and Bolshevism which had just come to power in Russia in 1917.  There were fears that Bolshevism would spread.  Moreover, both Sacco and Vanzetti had left for Mexico in 1917 and changed their names to evade draft registration which had been introduced in 1917 when the U.S. jointed the First World War.  The prosecutor in the murder trial used the Mexico flight to demonstrate their lack of patriotism. In Massachusetts, there was a general anti-Italian feeling, even if individuals were not anarchist but family-loving Roman Catholics.

The second element of the case used in anti-death penalty efforts is that people are executed who are later found to be not guilty of the crimes for which they were executed.  Research on the case continued long after the executions.  It is highly possible that Sacco was in fact involved in the robbery and may have used the weapon he had with him.  Vanzetti was not involved but rounded up as a member of the same Italian anarchist group which had robbed the pay of other shoe companies as well.

Thus the possibility of a person from a minority group, of the lower class, at a time of fear and international violence being convicted and executed is higher than if a person is part of the majority, has money to get a good lawyer, and the world situation is calm.

Studies in a good number of countries indicate that the death penalty has little impact on the rate of violent crimes.  Thus, the Association of World Citizens has worked with others, especially in the United Nations bodies for the abolition of the death penalty.

Since the end of World War II, there has been a gradual abolition of the death penalty.  In some countries, executions have been suspended in practice but laws allowing executions remain.  In other countries, there has been a legal abolition.The abolition of executions and the corresponding valuation of human life are necessary steps in the development of a just world society.

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Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

Ian Glim #007 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

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

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The cost of power without restraint by Robert Perez

There is a particular kind of political miscalculation that does not announce itself immediately. It does not arrive with the clarity of electoral defeat or the finality of a failed policy. Instead it seeps quietly into the moral fabric of a nation, altering how that nation is seen and more dangerously, how it sees itself. What we are witnessing now in Israel is not simply a geopolitical setback tied to a ceasefire agreement or shifting alliances. It is something far more enduring, a reputational fracture that may take generations to mend.

Benjamin Netanyahu has long positioned himself as the indispensable guardian of Israeli security, a leader forged in the language of existential threat. For years, that posture resonated, not only within Israel but across much of the West. The narrative was simple and powerful: Israel as a small democracy, perpetually under siege, justified in its vigilance and when necessary, its force. That narrative, however, has been strained to the point of collapse.

The recent trajectory, marked by the devastation in Gaza and controversial military actions extending into neighboring territories, has altered the moral equation. The issue is no longer framed solely as self-defense. It is now viewed, increasingly, through the lens of proportionality, accountability and human cost. Civilian suffering, once contextualized within the complexities of asymmetric warfare, has become central to the global perception of Israel’s conduct. And perception, in international politics, is not a superficial concern; it is a form of power.

What makes this moment particularly consequential is not just the criticism from traditional adversaries or even rival states. It is the shift within the Western public, the very audience that historically provided Israel with diplomatic cover and moral sympathy. Governments may continue to navigate cautiously, balancing strategic interests and domestic pressures but public opinion is less constrained. It reacts viscerally, often unforgivingly, to images of destruction and to narratives of imbalance. The erosion of that public goodwill is not easily reversed.

Netanyahu’s approach has been characterized by a kind of strategic maximalism, the belief that overwhelming force can decisively resolve complex, deeply rooted conflicts. But history suggests otherwise. Force can suppress, deter, and even destroy, but it rarely resolves the underlying conditions that give rise to conflict. In the absence of a credible political horizon, one that acknowledges the rights and aspirations of others, military success risks becoming strategically hollow.

There is also a domestic dimension to this reckoning. Nations, like individuals, construct identities not only through their achievements but through the stories they tell about themselves. Israel’s founding narrative is deeply tied to survival, resilience and a moral claim to security after unimaginable historical trauma. When actions on the ground appear to contradict that narrative, the dissonance is not merely external; it reverberates internally, challenging the coherence of national identity.

To suggest that Israel is no longer seen as a victim but as an aggressor is, of course, a simplification. Reality is more complex, shaped by decades of conflict, mutual grievances, and cycles of violence. Yet perceptions do not require perfect accuracy to exert influence. They shape alliances, inform policy debates and over time, redefine a nation’s place in the world.

The deeper tragedy is that reputational damage of this kind cannot be repaired through a single policy shift or diplomatic initiative. It requires sustained, visible commitment to restraint, accountability, and a reimagining of strategy that moves beyond immediate security concerns. It demands leadership willing to accept that strength is not only measured by military capability but by the ability to exercise it judiciously.

In the end, the question is not whether Netanyahu has won or lost in the narrow sense of political maneuvering. It is whether the path he has chosen has diminished something more fundamental, something that, once eroded, cannot be easily restored.

Democracy deferred and power consolidated by Eze Ogbu

There is something chillingly familiar in the arc of broken promises. It begins with urgency often justified. A nation in crisis. A people desperate for stability. A leader, usually in uniform, steps forward not as a ruler, but as a “temporary guardian.” And then, slowly almost imperceptibly at first, the language shifts. Timelines blur. Commitments soften. Power settles in.

This is the trajectory now unfolding in Burkina Faso under President Ibrahim Traoré. When Traoré seized power in 2022, the justification was clear: insecurity, insurgency and a failing state apparatus demanded decisive action. For many citizens, exhausted by violence and instability, the coup was not welcomed so much as tolerated, a reluctant gamble on order over chaos. The promise that followed was crucial: this was temporary. Democracy would return.

Now, that promise appears to have evaporated. “Democracy isn’t for us,” Traoré reportedly declared, a statement that lands not merely as a policy position but as a philosophical shift. It is the kind of remark that doesn’t just close a door; it attempts to redefine the entire house. The implication is stark, that the people of Burkina Faso are somehow unsuited for self-governance, that elections are a luxury rather than a right, and that authority is better concentrated than contested.

Such rhetoric is not new. Across history, leaders who consolidate power often frame democracy as impractical, destabilizing, or culturally incompatible. It is a convenient argument. After all, if democracy is “not for us,” then there is no need to justify its absence. No need to explain delays. No need to face the uncertainty of elections.

But the truth is far less philosophical and far more political. Abandoning democratic transition is rarely about protecting a nation; it is about protecting power. Elections introduce risk. They invite scrutiny, dissent and the possibility however remote, that the current leadership could be replaced. For a military regime, accustomed to command and control, that uncertainty can feel intolerable.

And so, the narrative shifts. Democracy becomes a Western imposition. Stability becomes the ultimate virtue. Criticism becomes disloyalty.

Yet this framing ignores a fundamental reality: the desire for representation is not foreign. It is not imported. It is human. The right to choose one’s leaders, to hold them accountable, to voice dissent, these are not luxuries reserved for certain regions or cultures. They are universal aspirations, even when imperfectly realized.

In Burkina Faso, as in many nations navigating political turbulence, democracy has never been flawless. Elections alone do not guarantee justice or prosperity. But to dismiss democracy entirely is to abandon the very mechanism through which citizens can demand better.

There is also a deeper risk in Traoré’s declaration, one that extends beyond Burkina Faso’s borders. When one leader openly rejects democratic principles, it can embolden others. It normalizes the idea that coups need not be temporary, that power once seized can simply be kept. In regions already grappling with fragile institutions, such precedents matter.

Of course, governance is not easy, especially in the face of insurgency and economic strain. Traoré’s defenders will argue that extraordinary times require extraordinary measures. And perhaps, in the short term, centralized power can produce swift decisions.

But history offers a caution: power that is unchecked rarely remains benevolent. Without accountability, without the pressure of public consent, even well-intentioned leadership can drift toward authoritarianism. Not overnight, but steadily.

The tragedy here is not just the postponement of elections. It is the erosion of trust. Citizens were told one story in 2022, a story of transition, of eventual return to civilian rule. Now, they are being told another: that the promise itself was misguided.

And in that contradiction lies the real damage. For when leaders ask their people to “forget about” voting, what they are really asking them to forget is something far more profound, the belief that their voices matter at all.

The strait gamble by Zakir Hall

There is a particular kind of stubbornness that masquerades as strength in American foreign policy, a refusal to retreat that, over time, begins to look less like resolve and more like inertia. The latest turn in the long, exhausted dance between Washington and Tehran carries that familiar note. With the collapse of U.S.–Iran peace talks, President Donald Trump has reached for a lever that feels decisive, a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. It is the sort of move that appears forceful on a map and in a headline but dissolves into ambiguity and danger upon closer inspection.

The Strait is not just another geopolitical chokepoint; it is the circulatory artery of the global oil market. Roughly a fifth of the world’s petroleum flows through that narrow passage. To attempt to control it is to tamper not only with Iran’s lifeline but with the fragile equilibrium of global commerce. The idea of a blockade then is less a surgical strike than a blunt instrument, one that risks hitting the wielder as much as the intended target.

What makes this strategy especially precarious is its illusion of control. A blockade suggests clarity, ships stopped, pressure applied, concessions extracted. But Iran has never been a predictable adversary and asymmetry is its native terrain. Harassment of tankers, cyber disruptions, proxy escalations across the region, these are not hypotheticals but well-practiced responses. In that context a blockade does not simplify the conflict; it multiplies its entry points.

And then there is the economic paradox at the heart of the plan. For an administration that has often measured success in stock indices and fuel prices, the willingness to risk a shock to global energy markets is striking. Even the hint of instability in the Strait tends to send oil prices climbing. A sustained disruption would almost certainly do more, feeding inflationary pressures at home and testing the resilience of supply chains already stretched thin. It is a peculiar form of economic brinkmanship, one that gambles with domestic stability in pursuit of international leverage.

Supporters of the move might argue that all options in dealing with Iran are unattractive and they would not be wrong. Diplomacy has repeatedly stalled; sanctions have yielded diminishing returns; military escalation carries its own catastrophic risks. But acknowledging the difficulty of the problem does not absolve policymakers from the consequences of their choices. A blockade is not a neutral placeholder while better ideas emerge, it is itself an escalation, one that narrows the path back to negotiation.

There is also the question of precedent. The United States has long championed the principle of free navigation, invoking it as both a legal norm and a strategic interest. To impose a blockade in one of the world’s most vital waterways is to blur that principle in ways that may not be easily contained. Other powers, watching closely, might draw their own conclusions about when and how such measures are justified.

In the end the Strait of Hormuz plan feels less like a strategy than a wager, a bet that pressure will produce clarity, that escalation will compel restraint, that the costs can be managed or deferred. History suggests otherwise. More often, such gambles entangle their authors in the very uncertainties they seek to eliminate. The danger is not only that the move will fail to deliver a swift or decisive victory but that it will succeed in creating a new, more volatile status quo, one in which the United States finds itself reacting, once again, to consequences it set in motion.

Ant-sized Culinary #006 #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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Arnold Toynbee: Tribalism with a Difference by Rene Wadlow

Our modern Western nationalism has an ecclesiastical tinge, for, while in one aspect it is a reversion to the idolatrous self-worship of the tribe which was the only religion known to Man before the first of the 'higher religions' were discovered by an oppressed internal proletariat...it is a tribalism with a difference.  The primitive religion has been deformed into an enormity through being power-driven with a mis-applied Christian driving-force.  Arnold Toynbee A Study of History

Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) whose birth anniversary we mark on 14 April, was a historian, a philosopher of history and an advisor on the wider Middle East to the British Government.  Already a specialist on Greece and the Middle East from his university studies and in the intelligence services during the First World War, he was an expert delegate on the English delegation to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.  The breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of new states in the Middle East followed.  Also there was the start of Zionist activities in Palestine and frontier and population transfers between Greece and Turkey - all issues on which Toynbee gave advice.  He became director of studies of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) an early "think tank" created to advise the British Government.

At the same time that he was an advisor on the Middle East (Chatham House producing a respected Yearbook on world affairs) Toynbee continued writing on the classical antiquity of Greece and Rome, much influenced by the spirit of Thucydides.  Toynbee was struck by the alternative between union and division as the defining characteristic of classical Greece.  These were the centuries of the flowering and then final decadence of a civilization which bears remarkable parallels with the history and perspectives of modern Europe.  Toynbee argued that Greece's economic development, based on colonization and commerce, together with the maintenance of the political sovereignty of the very small territorial units of the city-state, created an imbalance that could not last.  The city-states, if they did not want to return to autocracy and economic backwardness, should have created a pan-Hellenic political organization to manage problems.  In the same way that Greece failed to mitigate the anarchic character of relations between city-states, so Western civilization may flounder and fail.

As Toynbee wrote in Mankind and Mother Earth "Evidently few people are ready to recognize that the institution of local sovereign states has failed repeatedly, during the last 5,000 years, to meet mankind's political needs, and that, in a global society, this nstitution is bound to prove to be transitory once again and this time more surely than ever before."

Toynbee placed his hope in creative leaders, who, seeing the challenges of the times, would respond with the creation of new, more just and peaceful institutions. The number of creative leaders has been in short supply, but the challenges still face us.

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Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens