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.

Ant-sized Culinary #017 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

In the bustling undergrowth of Picante Hill, Anton the culinary ant dons his oversized toque and delivers deliciously chaotic cooking wisdom, one tiny misadventure at a time.

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The ballot box troll by Timothy Davies

Democracy used to be serious business. You argued, campaigned, complained, voted and then spent the following four years discovering that the people you elected had either forgotten their promises or never intended to keep them. Today however, democracy increasingly resembles an internet comment section with compulsory paperwork. The candidates are the content, the voters are the audience, and the ballot box has become an opportunity to tell the political establishment to go to hell.

Consider the bizarre political symbolism of a candidate named Hitler Mussolini Flores winning a mayoral election in Peru. The name alone sounds like a particularly tasteless joke invented by an exhausted history teacher after three glasses of wine. Yet the deeper question is not whether the name is outrageous. It is what happens when politics becomes so absurd that absurdity itself starts looking like a legitimate political strategy.

We should be careful not to assume that a provocative name automatically makes its bearer an extremist, or that everyone voting for such a candidate shares the historical associations attached to it. Names, personalities and political identities do not always fit neatly into the boxes observers construct. But the spectacle raises a genuinely uncomfortable question: are citizens still voting for the government they want, or are they increasingly voting for the political circus they believe they deserve?

There is a difference, and it matters. Across democracies, distrust of established parties, frustration with corruption and disappointment with public institutions have created fertile ground for political protest. Some voters turn to radical movements. Others abstain. Still others support candidates who promise to smash the system, embarrass the establishment or simply make the political class look ridiculous.

The irony vote belongs to this last category, although it is not always easy to distinguish deliberate provocation from sincere political conviction. It is the democratic equivalent of replying to a bureaucrat's incomprehensible letter with a photograph of a goat. You may experience a moment of exquisite satisfaction, but the bureaucracy remains, the problem remains, and the goat has no administrative authority.

That is the central danger of hyper-polarisation. Political choices become less about governing and more about humiliating the other side. The opponent must be defeated, preferably spectacularly. The establishment must be embarrassed. The institutions must be mocked. The candidate's competence becomes secondary to the pleasure of watching respectable people choke on their morning coffee.

And the political establishment has done plenty to earn public contempt. When parties treat public office as private property, when corruption investigations become political theatre, when politicians promise transformation and deliver carefully packaged disappointment, they should not be surprised when voters stop treating elections with reverence. People do not suddenly develop a taste for political absurdity in a vacuum. Often, they arrive there after years of being offered the same stale menu by different waiters.

But understanding the frustration does not mean romanticising its consequences. A ballot is not a social-media post. A mayoralty is not a meme account. A municipality must collect waste, maintain roads, manage budgets, provide services and make decisions that affect people who may have voted for the winner, against the winner or not at all. Water systems do not care whether an election was intended as satire. Public hospitals cannot be administered through sarcasm. Pensioners cannot pay their bills with the satisfaction of having annoyed a political commentator.

The joke ends when governing begins. Worse, irony is an exceptionally convenient hiding place for political irresponsibility. A voter can support a provocative candidate and later claim that nobody was supposed to take the choice seriously. A politician can cultivate notoriety while avoiding the difficult business of explaining policies. And parties can dismiss legitimate public anger as ignorance, allowing themselves to avoid confronting the institutional failures that helped produce it.

Everybody gets an escape route. Democracy gets the bill. There is also a darker consequence. When political life becomes an endless contest of humiliation, citizens gradually lose the distinction between institutions that deserve reform and institutions that should simply be destroyed. Courts, electoral authorities, local councils and public services become props in a permanent culture war. The objective is no longer to make them work better, but to make the other tribe suffer.

That is how civic despair becomes politically profitable. The answer is not to lecture voters about behaving responsibly while leaving corruption, inequality and administrative incompetence untouched. Nor is it to demand that every election become a solemn ceremony conducted by people wearing respectable expressions. Democracy needs anger, humour, dissent and the freedom to reject conventional candidates. Sometimes the establishment deserves to be laughed out of the room.

But ridicule must lead somewhere. Protest without accountability becomes another performance, and performance without governing becomes an expensive illusion. If political parties want fewer voters treating elections as opportunities for sabotage, they must give citizens reasons to believe that their choices matter. That means competent public services, transparent institutions, credible investigations into corruption and political representatives who understand that public office is a responsibility rather than a personal entitlement.

The irony vote is not necessarily a vote for extremism. Sometimes it is a vote of exhausted disbelief, a desperate attempt to make an unresponsive system notice the people it has ignored. Yet a democracy cannot survive indefinitely if its citizens regard the ballot as a punchline and its politicians regard public anger as a marketing opportunity. The ballot box should be where citizens choose their future, not where they upload their contempt. Because when democracy becomes a joke, the final laugh rarely belongs to the voters.

Guilfoyle Athens, Inc. by Thanos Kalamidas

There was a time when becoming an American ambassador required something resembling diplomatic experience, international knowledge, political judgment, and the ability to represent the interests of the United States without turning an embassy into a personal clubhouse. Under Donald Trump, however, the appointment process increasingly resembles a family loyalty programme. Have you donated enough? Have you praised the boss sufficiently? Are you close enough to the family to know which doors open and which secrets must remain locked?

Kimberly Ann Guilfoyle apparently understood the importance of networking. The former Fox News personality, Republican fundraiser and former …fiancée of Donald Trump Jr. became America's ambassador to Greece. Her appointment raised questions about the increasingly blurred boundaries between political loyalty and diplomatic qualifications. However, on 13 October 2026, the curtain fell. Guilfoyle resigned after White House press secretary Katie Zacharia announced that the administration had asked her to step down.

The official farewell was predictably polite. Guilfoyle had been a wonderful asset, Zacharia said and the White House wished her well. Washington has a remarkable talent for turning political embarrassment into a farewell card.

But the departure is bigger than one ambassador's career. It raises a much more uncomfortable question, what exactly does Greece mean to Donald Trump's America if a position of such strategic importance can become entangled with personal connections to the presidential family?

That is the question Athens should be asking Washington. Greece is not a decorative Mediterranean postcard where an American political celebrity can spend a few years enjoying sunshine, receptions and expensive dinners. It occupies a strategically significant position connecting Europe, the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean with implications for NATO, regional security, energy infrastructure, maritime routes and relations with Turkey. Its proximity to the Middle East makes its diplomatic importance even more obvious.

This is serious business. It requires serious representation. Yet Trump's approach to public appointments has repeatedly suggested that proximity to the family can be more valuable than professional experience. Loyalty becomes a qualification, personal relationships become political currency and institutions are expected to accommodate the preferences of a president who often treats government as an extension of his own brand.

In this system, an ambassador risks becoming less a representative of the United States than a representative of the president's personal interests. The distinction is not academic. American diplomats are supposed to advance national interests, maintain relationships with host governments and protect their country's credibility. They are not supposed to create uncertainty about whether official meetings, diplomatic access, or political connections might serve private interests. Even the appearance of such conflicts can damage trust.

The allegations surrounding Guilfoyle were serious. Reports alleged that she sought a $100,000 payment from a political donor to cover a personal credit card bill, potentially in exchange for access to senior administration officials. Other allegations concerned her interactions with Greek business interests and the use of diplomatic influence. Her lawyers disputed the accusations and defended her conduct. These remain allegations, not established findings of guilt, and her resignation does not settle the questions surrounding them.

But the political consequences are already clear. An ambassador appointed amid questions about political connections has departed amid questions about conduct, leaving the administration to manage the damage.

And what does this tell us about the appointment process? If Guilfoyle's relationship with Trump Jr. helped make her politically attractive for the position, the problem extends beyond her individual qualifications. It concerns a system in which personal proximity to power can appear to count more than the professional demands of the job.

The White House's request for her resignation also exposes the fragility of political patronage. The same administration that entrusted her with a sensitive diplomatic position ultimately decided that the controversy had become too costly. Loyalty can open doors in Washington, but it does not guarantee that those doors will remain open when the headlines turn sour.

What an extraordinary way to run a foreign policy. If Guilfoyle's departure leads to a serious review of diplomatic appointments, ethics procedures, and accountability, something useful might yet emerge from this episode. If she is simply replaced by another politically connected loyalist, the nameplate will change while the machinery remains untouched.

Greece and in fact every other country, deserve better than to become collateral damage in Washington's family politics. Its government and public should be entitled to expect an American ambassador who understands the responsibilities of the office, respects Greek sovereignty and can conduct diplomacy without private controversies overshadowing official business.

Americans deserve better, too. Their diplomatic service is not a collection of reward positions for political loyalty, fundraising enthusiasm, or romantic proximity to the president's family. Guilfoyle's resignation closes one chapter, but it does not answer the most important question: who was responsible for deciding that she was the right person to represent American interests in Athens and what criteria mattered most in that decision?

The real scandal is not simply that Kimberly Guilfoyle has left her post. It is that her appointment raised such fundamental questions about how the post was awarded in the first place. If family connections can become a route into diplomacy, then the problem extends far beyond one woman. It concerns a presidency in which personal loyalty risks becoming foreign policy and a country whose strategic interests deserve considerably more than a presidential favour.

A treaty against tomorrow by Virginia Robertson

Humanity has perfected the art of preparing for the last war while sleepwalking towards the next catastrophe. We have treaties against nuclear proliferation, military alliances against hostile states, conventions governing chemical weapons and elaborate diplomatic rituals designed to prevent one government from blowing another government off the map. Yet we remain remarkably unprepared for threats that do not respect borders, recognise flags or wait for foreign ministries to finish their morning coffee.

Artificial intelligence, engineered biological threats, nuclear escalation and climate tipping points are not separate chapters in a collection of fashionable anxieties. They are warning signs of a civilisation acquiring powers that its political institutions may be incapable of controlling.

The question is no longer whether humanity possesses the technological capacity to endanger its own future. It is whether humanity possesses the political maturity to prevent that capacity from becoming a catastrophe. At present, the evidence is hardly encouraging. Our international security architecture was largely constructed around the assumption that danger comes from identifiable states pursuing identifiable interests. Governments sign agreements, establish verification mechanisms and negotiate compromises because they understand that mutual destruction is generally an unattractive investment. The system is imperfect, frequently hypocritical and heavily influenced by military and economic power, but it provides a framework for managing certain forms of conflict.

Existential risk exposes its limitations. A runaway AI system would not necessarily recognise diplomatic boundaries. A biological catastrophe could spread across continents before governments agreed on the wording of a joint statement. Climate tipping points would not pause because competing powers had temporarily suspended their arguments. And a nuclear escalation could turn a regional confrontation into a global disaster before the international community finished debating responsibility.

The threats are different, but the fundamental weakness is the same: humanity's capacity to create danger is developing faster than its capacity to govern it. Consider artificial intelligence. Governments and corporations are racing to develop increasingly powerful systems, driven by commercial advantage, military applications and the fear of falling behind competitors. Safety research exists, regulatory initiatives are advancing, and international discussions are taking place. But the strategic incentives remain brutally familiar. If one country slows down, another might accelerate. If one company invests heavily in safeguards, a competitor might market a less constrained product first.

We have built a technological arms race in which the prize is economic and military dominance, while the potential losses could extend far beyond the competitors themselves. This is not an argument against technological progress. It is an argument against treating the future of civilisation as an acceptable side effect of commercial competition.

The same logic applies to biosecurity. Scientific advances can improve medicine, prevent disease and save millions of lives. They can also create new vulnerabilities if dangerous capabilities spread without adequate oversight. National regulation alone cannot reliably manage risks that cross borders, particularly when information, equipment and expertise move through global networks.

Climate change presents another uncomfortable lesson. Its dangers have been documented for decades, yet governments continue to treat long-term planetary stability as something to negotiate against short-term political convenience. Every election becomes an excuse to postpone difficult decisions, while the atmosphere remains magnificently indifferent to electoral arithmetic.

The existing Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty remains important. It should not be discarded as an obsolete relic. But a framework designed principally around nuclear weapons cannot, by itself, govern emerging AI capabilities, biological threats and interconnected environmental risks. Humanity needs an additional instrument: a Humanity Safeguard Pact, a legally binding international agreement establishing minimum protections against catastrophic and potentially existential threats.

Such a pact should require participating states to maintain independently verifiable safeguards for the most dangerous AI systems, establish shared biosecurity standards, strengthen monitoring of emerging threats and create rapid international notification procedures when a credible catastrophic risk appears. It should also provide secure channels for scientific cooperation, independent oversight and assistance to countries lacking the resources to implement adequate protections.

Most importantly, compliance must not depend entirely on the goodwill of governments or the promises of corporations. Independent verification, transparent reporting and meaningful consequences for serious violations are essential. Without enforcement, another international treaty would merely add expensive stationery to the world's already impressive collection of unfulfilled promises.

The pact must also avoid becoming an instrument through which powerful countries monopolise advanced technology while denying poorer societies its benefits. Humanity cannot build collective security on technological apartheid. Developing countries must have a genuine voice in setting the rules, alongside access to scientific knowledge and the resources needed to meet common standards.

And who should lead this effort? Not one superpower, not a handful of billionaires and certainly not an exclusive club of governments deciding that everybody else can inherit the risks without sharing the authority. The United Nations should provide the negotiating framework, supported by independent scientists, international institutions and civil society. Governments must accept that certain risks are too consequential to be left entirely to national discretion.

None of this guarantees survival. Treaties cannot eliminate accidents, malicious actors or every unpredictable consequence of scientific discovery. But uncertainty is not an argument for political paralysis. It is a reason to build safeguards before the emergency arrives.

The year 2100 may seem distant to politicians whose horizons rarely extend beyond the next election. For the generations expected to live in that century, however, it is not an abstract date. It is their future, their societies and their planet. We cannot promise them a world without danger. We can stop pretending that every danger must first become a disaster before governments take it seriously.

Humanity has spent centuries negotiating how to fight wars between nations. It is time to negotiate how to prevent threats that could make those wars, and perhaps humanity itself, irrelevant. The ultimate national security interest is the continued existence of humanity. Every flag, every ideology, every corporation and every government is subordinate to that single condition. Without a future, there is nobody left to govern, conquer, regulate or profit.