The bomb and the excuse by Howard Morton

There is something profoundly disturbing about a government preparing plans to strike another country with the “Mother of All Bombs” while the president keeps the world guessing about whether the war will resume. It is the language of deterrence dressed in the clothes of intimidation, with an enormous explosive device hovering somewhere between military strategy and political theatre. And the most dangerous question is not merely what Washington intends to bomb, but what happens if Tehran decides that waiting is more dangerous than acting.

Because wars do not always begin when somebody officially declares them. Sometimes they begin when two governments convince themselves that the other is preparing to strike, and each decides that moving first is the only way to avoid catastrophe.

The American military reportedly has developed new strike plans targeting Iranian energy infrastructure and nuclear sites, with Donald Trump retaining the decision to resume combat operations. The existence of contingency plans is hardly unusual for a military power. The disturbing element is the political atmosphere surrounding them: public threats, strategic ambiguity and the prospect that a spectacular attack could become an instrument of presidential messaging.

Trump likes the language of overwhelming power. It is theatrical, muscular and wonderfully uncomplicated for an audience that will never have to shelter beneath the explosions. The “Mother of All Bombs” sounds like a weapon designed by a marketing department that believes subtlety is for cowards. But this is not a Hollywood trailer, and Iran is not a prop waiting for its cue.

The destruction of energy infrastructure would have consequences extending far beyond military installations. Electricity, fuel, transport and industrial production are not abstract strategic assets. They are part of the machinery sustaining civilian life. An attack on them risks imposing suffering on millions of people who have neither chosen their government's policies nor volunteered to become instruments in somebody else's geopolitical demonstration.

Nuclear sites introduce another layer of danger. Bombing facilities associated with a nuclear programme does not automatically eliminate the knowledge, materials or political determination behind that programme. Depending on the targets and circumstances, military action could create contamination risks, intensify regional instability and strengthen the argument among Iranian hardliners that only a nuclear deterrent can protect the country from future attacks.

That is the strategic absurdity of preventive war: the operation intended to eliminate a threat can make the threat more attractive to those who survive it. But there is an equally disturbing possibility surrounding the public presentation of these plans. What if Tehran interprets the threats as evidence that an American attack is approaching and decides to strike American forces or regional allies first? Washington could then point to Iranian aggression as justification for a vastly expanded campaign.

There is no established evidence that the United States is deliberately trying to provoke such a response. Yet responsible leaders should understand that their actions can create precisely the conditions in which an adversary feels compelled to act pre-emptively. When military threats become public spectacles, every movement acquires a political meaning, every precaution resembles preparation for attack, and every miscalculation becomes potentially irreversible.

The danger is a security dilemma in which both sides claim to be preventing war while taking steps that make war increasingly likely. Iran's government is not innocent of responsibility. Its regional activities, threats and military decisions deserve scrutiny, and no government should be permitted to endanger others without consequences. But condemning Tehran's conduct does not give Washington a blank cheque to escalate indefinitely. International law does not disappear because a president believes that overwhelming force will produce a more satisfying negotiating position.

Nor should the American public be expected to accept another war simply because the administration has already prepared the bombs. If Trump wants diplomacy, he must leave credible room for diplomacy. That means communicating clear limits, avoiding threats that make retreat politically humiliating, pursuing verifiable agreements and ensuring that military readiness does not become a substitute for political strategy.

The world has seen enough leaders confuse the ability to destroy with the ability to resolve. The real test of American power is not whether Washington can unleash the largest conventional bomb in its arsenal. It is whether its president can resist the temptation to turn military superiority into a performance of personal authority.

Because the most frightening possibility is not that the Mother of All Bombs will be dropped. It is that somebody, somewhere, will make one reckless decision, and then another government will use the consequences to explain why it had no choice.

That is how a provocation becomes a justification, a justification becomes a war, and a war becomes a catastrophe that nobody supposedly wanted. The bomb may have a monstrous name. The excuse, when it arrives, will probably sound perfectly reasonable.

The Ascent #Poem & #Painting by Nikos Laios

He was the
Grand architect
Of his own misery,
Alone and undone,
He wallowed in
Failure and held
It up as a revolutionary
Banner and as he drank
A bottle of Malbec
And listened to an
Old record of U2’s
‘New Year’s Day’
With the muffled
Sounds of traffic
Outside and he
Smoked a joint to
Numb the sorrow
Of his descent,
For he had
Become
A monster,
And wondered
Whether he too
Like Dante would
Experience an ascent,
And who will be his
Virgil?

The execution show by Markus Gibbons

There was a time when governments tried to convince the world that civilisation meant something. Apparently, that time was becoming optional, replaced by a political entertainment industry in which the Pentagon could seriously propose livestreaming a man being executed by firing squad, as though death were another sporting event and the American public had purchased season tickets.

Nidal Hasan committed a horrific crime at Fort Hood in 2009, murdering 13 people and injuring 32 others. He was convicted and sentenced to death. The victims and their families deserve justice, remembrance and dignity. None of that, however, explains why the United States government should turn his execution into a public broadcast.

On October 8, the Pentagon announced plans to livestream Hasan's scheduled December 3 execution. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth presented public visibility as a way of demonstrating the consequences of such crimes. And suddenly America found itself staring into a rather ugly mirror. Because there is a profound difference between administering justice and putting death on display.

The reaction that followed was not merely another predictable political argument. By October 15, the idea had generated international horror and widespread condemnation. What had apparently been conceived as a demonstration of American resolve instead became a demonstration of something much more disturbing: how easily a democratic government can flirt with the language and imagery of authoritarian punishment.

And then Donald Trump cancelled it. Good. That decision matters, because sometimes stopping something terrible before it happens is the only sensible victory available. But cancelling the livestream does not erase the fact that the Pentagon thought broadcasting an execution was an acceptable proposition in the first place.

That is the real scandal. The Taliban has staged public executions and punishments. Iran has used public executions as instruments of state authority and intimidation. ISIS turned murder into propaganda, deliberately producing spectacles of cruelty to terrorise populations and advertise its power. These organisations differ enormously from the United States in their ideology, institutions and political systems. But the imagery of public punishment carries a universal danger: the state deliberately transforms human suffering into a demonstration of power.

America should know better. Nobody needs to pretend that Hasan was innocent or that the Fort Hood massacre was anything other than monstrous. The victims deserved justice. Their families deserved recognition. Hasan's conviction and sentence followed a judicial process.

But a civilised legal system is not measured by how enthusiastically it kills the people it condemns. It is measured by whether it can administer justice without turning punishment into revenge or spectacle.

A courtroom establishes guilt through evidence, law and due process. A livestreamed execution offers something else: an image of the state exercising ultimate power over a helpless prisoner while millions watch.

What exactly was the educational purpose? Would a terrorist suddenly discover morality because he watched a firing squad? Would an extremist contemplating murder be deterred by the knowledge that the government might eventually broadcast his own death? There is little evidence for such fantasies.

There is, however, an obvious danger in normalising violence as political theatre. And what about the soldiers ordered to participate? They serve a military institution whose traditions include discipline, duty and honour. Asking them to become performers in a government broadcast would have dragged a solemn legal responsibility into the swamp of political spectacle.

The victims' families deserved better too. Their loved ones should be remembered for their lives, their service and the futures stolen from them, not used as supporting characters in a televised demonstration of state power. America has spent decades condemning authoritarian governments for using fear, violence and public humiliation to demonstrate authority. It has criticised regimes that turn punishment into propaganda and insisted that democratic institutions must operate according to higher standards.

That is precisely why the proposed livestream was so grotesque. The United States is not the Taliban. It is not ISIS. It is not Iran. Its constitutional system, courts and political freedoms are fundamentally different. But democracy does not receive permanent immunity from barbarism simply because it calls itself democratic.

Democratic erosion rarely arrives carrying a sign announcing its intentions. Sometimes it arrives as a supposedly tough policy. Sometimes as a patriotic spectacle. Sometimes as a government official saying the public needs to see consequences. And sometimes it arrives as a camera pointed at a firing squad.

Trump's cancellation was therefore welcome, not because Hasan's crime should be forgotten, and certainly not because punishment should disappear, but because the state does not need an audience for every exercise of its power. Justice does not require applause. Justice does not require ratings.

And justice certainly does not require a livestream. The world reacted with horror, and the White House eventually stepped back. Perhaps that is the small piece of good news in this ugly episode: the democratic instinct against turning execution into entertainment still exists.

But the question remains. Why did anybody in the American government think it was a good idea in the first place? That question deserves an answer.

Ma-Siri & Co #132 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

Ma-Siri is a mother, a grandmother and a very active social life,
searching for the meaning of life among other things and her glasses.

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Lettuce is national security by Sabine Fischer

For decades, governments have treated food as a commodity, agriculture as an economic sector and supermarkets as temples of endless abundance. We became so comfortable with the miracle of global distribution that we forgot a rather embarrassing detail: food does not grow on supermarket shelves, and a nation cannot eat a shipping forecast.

Now extreme weather is disrupting harvests, geopolitical conflicts are shaking trade routes, and global supply chains are demonstrating their extraordinary capacity to collapse at precisely the moment we need them most. Yet the political establishment continues to behave as though food security means negotiating another trade agreement, signing another import contract and crossing its fingers that somewhere on the planet the rain will arrive on time.

This is not food security. It is national dependence wearing a business suit. The local food revolution must therefore stop being marketed as a fashionable ecological hobby for urban middle classes who enjoy expensive organic tomatoes and photographs of community gardens. It is becoming a matter of national resilience, economic survival and, ultimately, defence. A country that cannot feed its population when international distribution breaks down is not strategically independent. It is simply lucky until its luck runs out.

Consider the absurdity of our present arrangements. Food may travel thousands of kilometres, cross several borders, pass through centralised warehouses and depend on fuel, refrigeration, digital logistics and political stability before reaching a family’s kitchen. The system is efficient when everything works. But efficiency without resilience is an invitation to disaster. A blocked shipping route, a fuel crisis, a cyberattack, a prolonged drought or a regional war can turn apparent abundance into an expensive shortage remarkably quickly.

And when that happens, people do not eat efficiency reports. The pandemic offered a warning. Conflicts have reinforced it. Extreme weather is making the warning harder to ignore. Droughts, floods, heatwaves and shifting growing seasons threaten agricultural production across regions that the global market has come to treat as interchangeable suppliers. They are not interchangeable when several major producers suffer simultaneous crop failures or when exports are restricted to protect domestic populations.

A global food system built around concentration and maximum short-term profitability can become dangerously fragile. The answer is not to abandon international trade or pretend every country can grow every crop. That would be economic nonsense. The answer is to stop confusing global cooperation with total dependence on distant suppliers.

Food resilience begins at the municipal level. Cities and towns should identify what they can produce locally, which surrounding farms can supply them, what storage capacity they possess and how food would reach vulnerable residents during a prolonged emergency. Municipal authorities should protect agricultural land from speculative development, support local farmers, encourage cooperatives, invest in regional processing facilities and create distribution networks that do not collapse when a single warehouse or transport corridor fails.

Schools, hospitals, public kitchens and care homes can become dependable customers for regional producers. Rooftops, vacant plots, community gardens and suitable urban spaces can supplement production, although nobody should pretend that a few lettuce beds will feed a metropolis. Serious local food policy requires serious agriculture, infrastructure, land management and investment.

And yes, it requires governments to pay farmers properly rather than treating them as disposable suppliers whose livelihoods can be sacrificed whenever supermarket chains demand lower prices.

Here lies the political scandal: governments spend enormous sums discussing national security while leaving a fundamental element of it exposed to market concentration, environmental disruption and logistical failure. We protect borders, discuss military readiness and worry about hostile powers, yet frequently neglect the agricultural foundations that allow a society to function in the first place.

What exactly are soldiers defending if the population cannot reliably obtain food? National defence must expand its understanding of security. It should include seed diversity, soil health, water management, agricultural knowledge, regional storage, resilient electricity supplies and the survival of small and medium-sized farms. These are not sentimental rural concerns. They are strategic assets.

There is also a democratic dimension. Communities with stronger regional food networks possess more choices when international markets become unstable. They can keep more economic value circulating locally, strengthen relationships between producers and consumers, and reduce the distance between a shortage and a practical response. Local production will not eliminate food inflation or protect every harvest from climate disasters, but diversified systems can provide alternatives when one part of the chain fails.

The transition will not be cheap. Building storage, supporting farmers, improving irrigation and establishing processing facilities requires public money and long-term planning. But resilience always costs something before a crisis. Dependence costs considerably more during one. The real revolution is not about replacing every imported banana with a patriotic apple. It is about designing a food system in which international trade provides opportunity rather than holding entire populations hostage to its uninterrupted operation.

The next great security crisis may not begin with tanks crossing a border. It may begin with empty warehouses, failed harvests, interrupted deliveries and governments discovering that their supposedly sophisticated food systems have no adequate backup. A nation cannot eat its stock market. It cannot digest a trade agreement. And it certainly cannot survive on political speeches about strategic autonomy. The defence of a country begins long before the first shot is fired. Sometimes, it begins with the farmer down the road.

#eBook: DEATH & ECSTACY by David Sparenberg

A Noir-Drama written for performance in the tradition of German Expressionist Theatre and Cabaret Voltaire.

German Expressionist Theatre developed during a time of crisis, of intensifying extremity. A time of pandemic, of war, economic instability, political chaos and ideological conflict, periodically resulting in street violence and death. The movement was nurtured by small groups of artists who thought of themselves as revolutionaries. both of culture and society.

The goal of their work was to introduce a condition which they called The New Man – a human type freed from the limitations of lifeless, death administering traditions, political betrayals and increasing insecurity of public dysfunction and despair.

So much has happened in the theatre since the heyday of German Expressionism—there has been Artaud and Brecht, Samuel Beckett and Grotowski, the Living Theatre—and in history: the rise of Fascism, Communistic Totalitarianism, a traumatic Second World War, and now on the brink of World War Three and catastrophic climate change: Earth Crisis is evident as Human Crisis. The pressure is felt.

David Sparenberg is a humanitarian and eco poet, essayist, storyteller, a World Citizen and advocate for democracy, who lives in Seattle, WA in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

Ovi eBook Publishing 2026

DEATH & ECSTACY

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Poverty has billionaires by Paula Bartlett

October 17th is the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty and there is something obscene about commemorating the eradication of poverty in a world where a handful of individuals accumulate fortunes large enough to make entire national budgets look like pocket money. We have the technology to feed humanity, the resources to provide clean water, the knowledge to treat preventable diseases and the productive capacity to build decent homes. Yet millions remain trapped in hunger, insecurity and humiliating dependence. This is not simply a failure of humanity. It is a failure of political priorities, economic justice and, increasingly, basic decency.

And then there is Donald Trump, the magnificent salesman of personal enrichment disguised as national greatness, who has turned greed into a political philosophy and self-interest into a patriotic performance. His universe is populated by winners, losers, deals, luxury, loyalty and the eternal conviction that the man with the biggest bank account deserves the biggest chair. The poor, in this worldview, are generally useful as campaign scenery, electoral statistics or convenient examples of people who supposedly failed to work hard enough.

Trump did not invent inequality, nor is he the sole architect of global poverty. That would be too generous to the long succession of governments, corporations and financial interests that have helped construct this mess. But his politics give inequality a particularly shameless public face: wealth becomes proof of virtue, tax cuts for the powerful become economic wisdom, and the struggles of ordinary people are reduced to personal shortcomings.

Apparently, if you cannot afford your rent, you need better discipline. If your wages disappear before the end of the month, you should learn to budget. If your children go hungry, perhaps you should have made better choices. Meanwhile, someone can inherit a fortune, exploit political connections and accumulate extraordinary wealth, then lecture the rest of humanity about merit. The hypocrisy is so enormous that it deserves its own tax category.

The problem is not that every billionaire is evil or that wealth itself should be treated as a crime. The problem is an economic order in which private fortunes can grow beyond imagination while public services deteriorate, workers struggle to survive and governments claim that helping the vulnerable is simply too expensive. Somehow, there is always money for political vanity, corporate subsidies, weapons and spectacular tax concessions. When the bill arrives for reducing child poverty, suddenly the national treasury develops a mysterious case of poverty itself.

This is where the annual commemoration becomes uncomfortable. Poverty is not merely an empty stomach. It is the constant anxiety of choosing between heating and eating, the humiliation of asking for help, the child who cannot participate because the family cannot afford it, the older person counting coins at the supermarket and the worker who is employed full-time but remains one unexpected expense away from disaster. Poverty steals time, health, opportunity and dignity. It turns every ordinary decision into a calculation of survival.

Nor can the problem be solved through charity alone. Charity may rescue a family tonight, and that matters enormously. But charity cannot substitute for fair taxation, decent wages, affordable housing, accessible healthcare, quality education and social protection. A society that depends on the generosity of the rich to provide the essentials of life has confused philanthropy with justice. People should not need a billionaire’s benevolence to live with dignity.

The International Day for the Eradication of Poverty should therefore be less about solemn speeches and more about uncomfortable questions. Why do governments tolerate extreme deprivation alongside extraordinary concentrations of wealth? Why are workers expected to accept insecurity while those at the top demand ever more favourable conditions? Why is public assistance scrutinised so aggressively while the privileges enjoyed by the powerful are frequently treated as economic necessities?

And why do we continue to elect politicians who sell resentment to the poor while protecting the systems that keep them poor? Eradicating poverty requires more than compassion. It requires redistribution of opportunity, political courage and the willingness to challenge an economy that rewards accumulation more enthusiastically than contribution. It means measuring prosperity not only by stock markets and billionaire rankings, but by whether people can afford a home, feed their children, see a doctor and grow old without fear.

A civilisation should not be judged by how extravagantly its richest citizens live, but by how little it allows its poorest citizens to suffer. On 17 October, we will once again declare that poverty must end. Fine. But declarations are cheap, especially when delivered by people who will never have to choose between dinner and electricity.

The poor do not need another commemorative day. They need a fairer world. And the billionaires, the political opportunists and the worshippers of greed need to understand one inconvenient truth: a society can survive without creating another billionaire. It cannot call itself successful while millions are denied the means to live.

Ian Glim #018 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

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

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Pakistan - They Stabbed Me Again by Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD.

The Country under Critical Lense exposes Power Grab and Corruption

Pakistan’s political governance embodies loss of basic human values, systematic corruption, despotic policies and decision-making to tolerate the opposition and dreadful apparatus of missing legitimate governance. Is Pakistan drowning or its destiny is vulnerable to be ruled by a few neo-colonial families? The recent authoritarian action signals the coming of martial law administration against the freedom of people and democratic values. Nations cease to exist when governed by egoistic Generals, incompetent and dishonest politicians caring for the self lacking vision, integrity and logic of nation-building. Contemporary progressive nations produce educated, intelligent and proactive leaders to plan for sustainable future-making

Pakistani Generals could be bought and sold at market places disclosed Bruce Riedel, Brooking Institute, USA (“Battle for the Soul of Pakistan” ), a former President Obama’s advisor on Pakistan and Afghanistan, 2009. Formative history tells Pakistanis lost over sixty years stolen by political conspirators, martial law administrators and egoistic dictators making disdained future. The seven or more known military coups stabbed the body of Pakistan time and again. Pakistan faces serious problems of national unity, identity and nation-building. First, it was ZA Bhutto and General Yahya Khan in 1971 failure to transfer power to the elected party. Today Shahbaz Sharif, so called Prime Minister once again stabbed the nation with the complicity of few Generals to avert peaceful political demonstration in Islamabad. The delusional politics of the few - Punjabi political elite are alleged to have stolen the time and opportunities for systematic change, harmony and national unity. They prefer to blame and bomb Afghanistan, an ethnic- cultural neighbor rather than overcoming their own failure to ensure border security.  Zardari, an illegitimate politician  and president, dismissed a Pakhtunawa elected provincial government as it would not allow federal actors to undermine its functional apparatus. The masses demand restoration of democratic institutions, freedom of Imran Khan and public accountability of criminals ruling the country. Political corruption and nepotism is the order of the day. Do responsible people learn from their past mistakes and make navigational changes for the good of people and nation?

Not the Pakistani elite, they lost half of the country to India (1971 and making of Bangladesh) but refused to transfer political power to elected Sheikh Mujib ur Rehman’s Awami League. Recall (“ Brtish Colonialism and How India and Pakistan Lost Freedom. https://www.globalresearch.ca/british-colonialism-how-india-pakistan-lost-freedom/5765810”) what General PNK Choudry, the former Chief of the Indian Army, told me in early 1970’s. If Pakistanis were intelligent and honest to transfer the power systematically to Sheikh Rehman (the Majority elected leader), they would have saved Pakistan’s honor and defeated Mrs. Indra Gandhi’s plan to make Pakistan surrender at Dakkah, December 1971. The legacy of Bhutoos, Sharifs and Generals is a history of shame, disgrace as the present and future generations of conscientious Pakistanis would curse them for their corruption and dishonesty to national interest. The seven military coups obliterated the moral, intellectual and political foundation of Pakistan bringing to a catastrophic ending of losing East Pakistan and the state of Jammu and Kashmir to India.

The 2024 National Elections were Rigged by the Ruling Elite

Most dreadful tragedies have infallibly resulted in victimizing the masses.  The 2024 national elections were won by the TIP led by Imran Khan. But few Generals and Sharif family rigged the outcome.

ttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/17/senior-pakistan-official-admits-election-rigging-as-protests-grip-countr. Today, the nation is crippled with catastrophic events of insecurity, mismanagement and socioeconomic and political exploitation. The ruling elite - Sharif family and the Generals view Pakistan as their own property and are not open to reason and accountability. They are engaged in systematic subversion of national freedom, security and future-making. They cannot realize the imperatives of hopes and expectations of a new generation of educated and morally and intellectually competent people. Future belongs to the new generation of educated people, not to the naive and obsolete Generals. They are the wrong people, with wrong thinking and doing the wrong things. If there was any fair system of accountability, some of the Generals and accomplice politicians could well have faced firing squads for their crimes against the nation. Are the Generals waiting for another mishap of formative history? Please see  “Pakistan Leaders or Criminals”, “Pakistan: What Next after the Rigged National Elections?

https://countercurrents.org/2024/02/pakistan-what-next-after-the-rigged-national-elections/ you will discover how Bhuttos, Zardari, Sharifs and General Musharaf - these thugs stole billions and billions to own properties in UK, France and Spain. The Thinking People of the New Generation view them as the most corrupt, crime riddled monsters who will never come to terms with reason and honesty to reflect on their own wrongdoings. They never imagined–how the present and future generations would remember them?

Few Generals Run Pakistan and Sharif Brothers Stabbed the Nation

The Generals do not develop the economy or moral and intellectual fabrics of a nation but intellectuals, visionary, thinkers or poets or philosophers do; they do not prepare present and future generations of educated people for national responsibility and share no sense of law and social justice to enhance nation-building. These egoistic generals and accomplices have no sense of time and history how Pakistan was created and its imperatives for nation-building and democratic principles of fair and honest political governance. It is widely believed that the generals played an active role in removing Imran Khan – an elected PM from power and installing an indicted criminal and money launderer Sharif to power.  Pakistani politics, if any, has become a hollow joke in global affairs. They are working and supporting the same plan of individualistic interest to undermine the freedom of Pakistan.please see: https://www.thetimes.com.au/world/24661-pakistan-how-neo-colonial-leaders-stabbed-the-nation

Pakistan needs a navigational change but where would the change come from? Arguably, a moral and intellectual leader could reset the future of highly colonized country. Tyranny is always powerless and transitory. Often when sadistic politicians cannot solve one set of problems, they come up with other naive ideas to create more critical problems to distract the masses. The emergency in Pakhutnawa Province is one of those scenarios. Imran Khan wasted four years as an idealist and not a realist to know the conspirators. He was not a gangster, killer or money launderer as are Sharfis, Bhutoos and Zardari. Perhaps few Generals were at odds with Khan against his futuristic plans for change and reformation. “Pakistan, Planned Political Chaos: Imran Khan a Victim of Hope for the Future”, Global Research: 11/06/2022.Khan has been imprisoned under false pretext of political vengeance and to pave the way for another opening for the crime riddled Sharif family.  What is the solution to the morally and intellectually sickening political culture of Pakistani politics?  It is hard to imagine  that FM Assam Munir and his few sadistic partners including the Sahrfi family would create an environment of free and fair elections. The law and justice system has already collapsed and Pakistan could fall into another conspiracy for its disintegration. You may find ideas and ideals in“How to Change Political Culture of Corruption and Rebuild the Future?” 2/16/2019: Pressenza, NY. (https://www.pressenza.com/2019/02/pakistan-how-to-change-political-culture-of-corruption-and-rebuild-the-future/).

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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/B0F6V6CH5Wand https://pdfhost.io/v/BZkFa7FYPR_Wars_on_Humanity_-_Mahboob_A__Khawaja__PhD_

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Check Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD. eBOOK,
Wars on Humanity:
Ukraine, Palestine and the role of Global Leaders
HERE!

The new digital lords by Mathew Walls

Once upon a time, empires conquered territories, kings collected taxes and governments controlled the infrastructure that held their countries together. Today, a billionaire can build a satellite network, control a communications platform spanning continents and negotiate with governments as though an elected administration were merely another customer-service department. Welcome to digital feudalism, where the castle is in orbit, the land is the internet, and the new aristocrats arrive with rockets instead of cavalry.

The public confrontation between Elon Musk and Indian industrialist Mukesh Ambani over Starlink's entry into India's satellite internet market exposes a much larger struggle. Beneath the arguments over spectrum allocation, licensing and market competition lies a question that governments have been remarkably slow to confront: who ultimately controls the infrastructure on which modern societies depend?

India is not some helpless village waiting for a billionaire to deliver civilisation by satellite. It has formidable technological capabilities, a vast domestic market and its own strategic interests. The dispute illustrates the collision between private global ambitions and a state's authority to determine how communications resources are allocated, regulated and made available to its citizens.

But the implications extend far beyond India. Communications networks, satellite constellations, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and energy infrastructure increasingly determine how economies function and how governments respond to emergencies. Control over these systems means control over essential capabilities: who can communicate, which services remain operational, where data travels and how quickly a society can recover when its infrastructure is disrupted.

And an uncomfortable amount of this power is accumulating in private hands. The traditional billionaire buys influence through money, lobbying and political connections. The digital billionaire can go further. He can own the infrastructure through which millions communicate, the satellites connecting isolated communities, the computing capacity supporting essential services and the platforms through which public debate unfolds.

A government may possess a flag, a parliament and a national anthem, yet discover that an essential service depends on the continuing goodwill of a private company headquartered thousands of kilometres away.

That is not necessarily a loss of sovereignty in the formal legal sense. It is something more practical and potentially more dangerous: dependence without adequate control.

Imagine a military crisis, a diplomatic confrontation or a domestic emergency. What happens if a privately controlled communications network changes its access conditions, withdraws service or makes operational decisions that conflict with a government's security requirements? Contractual obligations and regulatory remedies may exist, but in a fast-moving crisis, the difference between legal authority and effective control can become painfully obvious.

A government cannot simply summon a satellite constellation into existence because a billionaire has decided that its priorities are inconvenient. Nor is the answer to demonise private enterprise. Companies such as SpaceX have helped expand access to satellite communications, demonstrating how private investment and engineering can deliver capabilities that governments might struggle to develop at comparable speed. Innovation matters. Competition matters. So does the ability of businesses to operate across borders.

The problem begins when innovation becomes an argument for immunity. A company operating critical infrastructure cannot reasonably claim that its commercial freedom should override every legitimate public obligation. Equally, governments should not use national security as a convenient excuse to protect politically connected domestic monopolies from competition. Sovereignty is not a licence for corruption, and regulation should not become a weapon against inconvenient competitors.

The challenge is to establish rules that protect the public without allowing governments or corporations to capture the system. Traditional antitrust law remains necessary, but it is not sufficient. Competition authorities can investigate market concentration and abuse of dominance; they cannot, by themselves, guarantee that a country retains access to essential communications during a war or that a foreign supplier cannot exploit a critical dependency.

States need stronger safeguards: diversified infrastructure, transparent licensing, enforceable service obligations, independent regulatory oversight, credible emergency arrangements and clear limits on how private operators may exercise control over essential services. International agreements must also address cross-border infrastructure, because satellites and digital networks do not stop at customs checkpoints.

Above all, governments need alternatives. A country that has no realistic alternative to a private supplier is not negotiating on equal terms, regardless of what the contract says. Europe should understand this particularly well. Digital sovereignty cannot be achieved through speeches about strategic autonomy while essential computing, communications and technological capabilities remain concentrated in a small number of foreign companies. The same principle applies to India and every other country attempting to balance innovation with independence.

The coming struggle will not simply be between Musk and Ambani, American technology and Indian industry, or private enterprise and national regulation. It will concern the distribution of power in societies where infrastructure has become inseparable from political authority. The central question is whether citizens will retain meaningful democratic control over the systems on which their lives depend.

Because a billionaire does not need to become president to exercise power over a country. Sometimes it is enough to own the network, control the access and negotiate the price.

The old feudal lord controlled the bridge and charged travellers to cross it. The new one controls the digital highway, the satellites above it and the infrastructure beneath it. The scenery has changed. The fundamental question has not: who controls the gate, and who gets to decide who passes through?

In the twenty-first century, sovereignty will mean more than defending borders. It will mean ensuring that the essential machinery of society cannot become the private kingdom of someone who answers to shareholders rather than citizens.

The last football gods by Kasie Hewitt

There was a time when footballers became part of your life. Not your screen time, not your social-media feed, not the algorithm's latest recommendation, but your actual life. You grew up with them, argued about them, defended them against friends who supported the wrong club, and carried their victories and defeats like personal memories. You could remember where you were when they scored, who was sitting beside you, what you were drinking and the precise moment an ordinary afternoon became football history.

Then came Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, two extraordinary footballers who turned sporting rivalry into a global cultural phenomenon. And now, as Messi's international career approaches its final chapter, an uncomfortable question emerges: are we losing not merely the last giants of a golden era, but also the ability to fall in love with sport itself?

Perhaps the football gods are not disappearing. Perhaps we have simply become too impatient to worship anything for more than thirty seconds. Messi's story was never just about goals. It was about time, loyalty, disappointment, redemption and the almost irrational belief that something beautiful could happen if you kept watching. His journey with Argentina, from painful international defeats to winning the Copa América and finally the World Cup in 2022, gave millions a narrative that no marketing department could manufacture. It was a story that required patience. You had to endure the disappointments before you could understand the triumph.

That is precisely what makes the emerging culture of sports consumption so different. Today's young fan can watch Messi's greatest goals before breakfast, a spectacular save during lunch and a dramatic penalty shootout while waiting for a bus. Every moment is available, edited, captioned and delivered with the urgency of a fire alarm. The extraordinary has become permanently accessible, which means it risks becoming permanently ordinary.

Football has always depended on highlights. Nobody needs a lecture about the romance of watching a goalless ninety minutes in the rain. But there is a difference between using highlights to remember a match and replacing the experience of following sport with a conveyor belt of spectacular fragments.

An algorithm does not care whether you understand the history of a club, the anguish of a supporter or the significance of a player returning from injury. It cares whether you keep watching. It will happily serve you a bicycle kick, a controversial red card, an angry manager and a goalkeeper making a fool of himself, then move on before you have had time to remember anybody's name.

The product is not loyalty. The product is attention. And attention is becoming the most fiercely contested stadium in modern sport. The commercial machinery surrounding football has embraced this transformation. Clubs sell global brands, broadcasters compete for fragmented audiences, platforms package sporting drama into endlessly shareable clips, and players become personal media companies. Young athletes can build enormous followings before establishing a lasting sporting legacy. Their popularity can rise with a viral moment and disappear beneath the next fashionable sensation.

This does not mean younger fans are incapable of loyalty. That would be an easy and lazy accusation. Millions continue to follow clubs through relegations, financial disasters and decades without trophies. Local identity, family traditions and the emotional geography of football remain powerful. Digital platforms can also deepen fandom, connect distant supporters and introduce new generations to the game's history.

But the conditions for creating a universally shared sporting memory are changing. Messi and Ronaldo emerged during an unusual period when global broadcasting, social media and extraordinary longevity allowed two players to dominate football's cultural imagination for nearly two decades. Their rivalry offered a common reference point across continents. Even people who barely watched football knew their names.

The next generation may produce players every bit as gifted, perhaps even more versatile. But a fragmented media environment makes it harder for any single athlete to command the same collective attention. Different audiences inhabit different platforms, follow different competitions and consume different versions of sporting reality.

We may not lack future legends. We may lack a common place in which legends become universal. And that is a loss worth considering. When a player becomes a legend, he offers more than entertainment. He provides a shared language between generations. A father remembers Maradona; a daughter remembers Messi; a grandson discovers both through old footage and begins an argument that lasts until dinner. Sport becomes a bridge between people who disagree about practically everything else.

A stream of disposable highlights cannot entirely replace that inheritance. Messi's eventual departure will not end football, any more than the departures of Pelé, Cruyff or Maradona ended the game. There will be new heroes, new rivalries and new moments of collective madness. Football is too deeply rooted in human emotion to disappear beneath an algorithm.

But the game must decide what it wants to preserve. If everything becomes content, every goal becomes a marketing opportunity and every athlete becomes an interchangeable source of engagement, football risks losing the slow accumulation of memories that turns admiration into devotion.

The tragedy would not be that another Messi never appears. It would be that he appears, performs miracles for twenty years, and a generation remembers him only as a collection of clips between advertisements. Football's greatest legacy has never been the goals we watched. It has been the years we spent caring about the people who scored them. When the final whistle sounds on Messi's era, the real question is whether we still have the patience to fall in love with the next one.