The skepticism trap by Jennifer Stephenson

Modern conspiracy theorists like to imagine themselves as the last adults in the room. While everyone else is supposedly swallowing official narratives, they are asking questions, connecting dots and refusing to believe what they are told. There is something flattering about this self-image. It is also profoundly misleading.

The problem with much contemporary conspiracy thinking is not an absence of scepticism. It is scepticism with the brakes removed.

Healthy scepticism asks: What is the evidence? What would prove me wrong? How reliable is the source? Are there simpler explanations? Toxic scepticism asks only: What if they are lying? The first is an intellectual method. The second is an attitude and attitudes are remarkably good at disguising themselves as intelligence.

The conspiracy theorist begins with suspicion and then treats suspicion as evidence. An unexplained event becomes proof of concealment. A contradiction becomes proof of deception. Missing information becomes proof that something is being hidden. And when evidence appears to contradict the theory, that evidence is absorbed into the theory itself. The more vigorously authorities deny it, the more convinced the believer becomes that the authorities must be involved.

This is not critical thinking. It is a closed circuit. There is, of course, a legitimate reason to distrust institutions. Governments lie. Corporations conceal wrongdoing. Intelligence agencies conduct secret operations. Powerful people collude. History is littered with genuine conspiracies. Scepticism is therefore not merely permissible; it is indispensable to a functioning democracy.

But precisely because conspiracies sometimes happen, the existence of one possible conspiracy cannot become a licence to believe every conceivable one. The great trick of conspiratorial thinking is that it converts uncertainty into certainty. Reality is messy, accidental and frequently boring. Institutions make mistakes. Bureaucracies contradict themselves. Politicians say stupid things. Scientists revise conclusions. Newspapers get stories wrong. Markets behave irrationally. Human beings are chaotic creatures.

The conspiracy offers something much tidier: somebody did it. That simplicity is intoxicating. Social media has turned this intellectual bad habit into an industrial product. Every coincidence can be assembled into a thread; every anonymous account can become an insider; every photograph can acquire a sinister caption. Algorithms reward emotional certainty, not intellectual humility. The result is a strange new hierarchy in which knowing less can produce greater confidence.

And confidence is increasingly mistaken for courage. The genuine sceptic must possess an unfashionable quality: the willingness to be disappointed. If the evidence destroys a cherished suspicion, the sceptic changes his mind. The conspiracist changes the explanation.

This distinction matters enormously. A person who questions authority can strengthen democracy. A person who regards every authority as inherently fraudulent eventually destroys the possibility of shared knowledge altogether.

The irony is delicious. Conspiracy theorists often accuse everyone else of being sheep. Yet they can become remarkably obedient to the narrative of their own tribe, repeating its vocabulary, accepting its authorities and dismissing outsiders without examination.

Critical thinking is not believing the opposite of what you are told. It is having no predetermined opposite. That is the harder discipline and the one modern conspiracy culture desperately needs.

Fortune cookie #Poem by Abigail George

 

Today I write about forgiveness, about having a forgiving heart

My mother
has turned into
a fire hydrant

She waters
the garden
with a boomslang
in her hand

Charles Bukowski
watches her
His eyes, two brown cells

He smiles at my mother, the fire hydrant
But she just ignores him
as if he isn’t standing there

He dips
a rusk
into the tea

There’s a tiny earthquake in the cup
Waves across the saucer

The tea spills into the verdant-green silence
Its perfume

The sound of the hosepipe, water gushing
out of it
Birdsong

We’re all free now, says Chris Hani
Bukowski nods

I don’t agree
But I don’t say anything

George Botha
and Stephen Bantu Biko
play a game of chess

If philosophy is medicine, what is poetry?
Albert Camus remarks

Frantz Fanon
turns his head
in the direction
of the cacti and says,

Philosophy is philosophy is philosophy
Fanon, who am I to disagree, says Camus

There’s a knock
at the front door

It’s another pilgrim
on a spiritual mission

They want to meet
The other pilgrims present

I make more tea
Bukowski says
that he wishes
he had been happier

I remark, how well I know that feeling

Anna Akhmatova
and I spoke about the men
that we had loved and adored,
and the men who had left us
We spoke about the women we became
as we lost our innocence
as we grew older
and the springtime
of our youth
faded away

Petya Dubarova is quiet
You’re a rebel, Hani says
She’s a poetess, Camus says

She’s a teenager
She wants to be left alone,
I want to holler
But I can’t seem to find the words

Petya stares into the distance
as if there are mountains gazing back at her

Look! The roses
The parsley, the mint
The flowers sparkling

Their mouths, rainbows
No spoiled identity here

No stigma
No fractured sensibility
Yes, no stigma

Look! Look!
There’s Patrice Lumumba
under the shade
of the guava tree
dancing
cheek-to-cheek
with his wife

Look! Look!
My father, my father!
A young man
before he had me

before my sister came along
then his namesake

He puts his arms around my mother
And kisses her cheek
And she laughs

She laughs
While I hand out fortune cookies

And the earth is still round
The glaciers are melting in the North Pole
There is still a hole in the ozone layer
They want to colonise Mars
They still send rockets to space
Babies are still being born in refugee camps

But my mother is laughing
My mother is happy
And my father is a young man
in the prime of his life

It is not too late to forgive you
No, it is not too late to forgive you my brother
It is like the feverish habitat of mitochondria
The primordial soup of forgiveness is a work in progress
It is a process that has the neverending potential
to die in the half-light
at the end of the day.

Classified, except for …democracy by Markus Gibbons

There is something almost quaint about the idea that the Pentagon might regard Congress as a team sport. One can imagine the scene: Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth arrives on Capitol Hill carrying the usual Washington mixture of charts, talking points and an appetite for an enormous cheque. The number is extraordinary, $1.5 trillion in proposed defence spending. The briefing room, apparently, is where the truly extraordinary part begins, some members of Congress are invited in, others are left outside.

This is not merely bad manners. It is a peculiar misunderstanding of what Congress is. The Constitution did not create a legislative majority and a legislative minority so that one could be treated as the government and the other as a hostile foreign power. Democrats in Congress may be political opponents of the administration. They are not foreign agents. They are not an inconvenient press corps. And they certainly do not stop being representatives of American citizens when they walk through the doors of a classified briefing room.

Hegseth's defenders can invoke leaks, distrust, security concerns and the familiar Washington argument that discretion is sometimes necessary. Fine. Classified information should be protected. But classification is supposed to protect national security, not provide a convenient adjective for political exclusion.

That distinction matters enormously when the department seeking congressional approval is asking for a sum so large that it could make even Washington's accustomed relationship with the word “trillion” seem slightly embarrassed. Hegseth is not asking Congress merely to admire his budget. He needs Congress to authorise, appropriate and ultimately legitimise it.

And yet the Pentagon appears increasingly comfortable treating congressional oversight as something to be managed rather than something to be respected.

The irony is almost too perfect. An administration demanding extraordinary military power is simultaneously narrowing the circle of lawmakers permitted to scrutinise it. The larger the budget becomes, the smaller the audience apparently gets.

Even Republicans have begun to object. That should make everyone nervous, because when members of the governing party start complaining that their own secretary of defence is turning national security into partisan property, the problem has moved beyond ordinary Washington tribalism.

There is a deeper danger here. Institutions acquire habits long before they acquire names. Today it is Democrats excluded from a briefing. Tomorrow it could be Republicans who have fallen out of favour with the president. Eventually Congress discovers that the executive branch has quietly decided which legislators deserve information and which deserve explanations after the fact.

That is how democratic erosion tends to work: rarely with a dramatic announcement, usually through administrative decisions that are defended as temporary, practical or necessary.

The Pentagon is not a political campaign office. The Secretary of Defence is not the president's partisan enforcer. Classified briefings are not rewards handed to friends.

America's military strength ultimately depends on something less glamorous than missiles, drones or aircraft carriers: constitutional trust.

A Pentagon that cannot distinguish between secrecy and partisan loyalty risks weakening precisely the institution it claims to defend. The most alarming secret in Washington may therefore be the one nobody is bothering to classify: democracy requires witnesses.

The Greeks we refuse to see by Thanos Kalamidas

Lisa Itoya is sixteen years old. She is Greek-Nigerian, a basketball player and now a member of Greece’s under-16 women’s national team. One might imagine that representing your country at sixteen would be the sort of achievement that produces congratulations, awkward television interviews and perhaps a few proud grandparents. Instead, Itoya has been greeted online by the familiar Greek cocktail of nationalism, racism and the peculiar conviction that someone else is somehow less Greek.

The reaction is depressingly predictable. Every time a Greek athlete with immigrant roots succeeds, a certain section of the country appears to discover that the Greek nation has an immigration policy after all, citizenship may be tolerated, excellence may be applauded but belonging remains conditional.

The usual response is to blame the far right, the Nazis of Golden Dawn, the assorted professional patriots who spend their evenings measuring the ethnic purity of strangers on social media. They certainly deserve the blame when they hurl racial abuse. But blaming only the far right is too comfortable. It allows everyone else to wash their hands.

Greek racism is older, broader and more ordinary than the extremists who advertise it most loudly.

There is a particularly stubborn mythology at work here, Greece as the beginning of everything that matters. Democracy began here. Philosophy began here. Theatre began here. Western civilisation supposedly walked out of ancient Athens carrying a torch and politely handed it to Europe. The mythology is so deeply embedded that it can become something more than pride. It can become entitlement.

If we invented democracy, the reasoning goes, surely we must also possess an unusually democratic soul. If we produced Aristotle, surely our descendants inherited his wisdom. If the Parthenon represents civilisation, then the people living beneath it must somehow be civilisation’s natural custodians.

History, unfortunately, is rarely that generous.

Modern Greece is a complicated society shaped by invasions, occupations, migrations, refugees, empires, intermarriage, economic upheavals and enormous movements of people. Yet popular nationalism often prefers an immaculate family tree. It turns history into a flattering portrait rather than a messy photograph.

That is why the appearance of a black Greek athlete can provoke such extraordinary anxiety. She is not merely a young woman playing basketball. To some people, she is an argument against their mythology.

Giannis Antetokounmpo has already become the great contradiction. A child of Nigerian parents became one of the most recognisable Greek athletes on Earth. His success made Greece proud, while his very existence once made parts of Greece uncomfortable. Emmanouil Karalis has encountered similar ugliness. Now Itoya has entered the same arena, except that she is sixteen and should not have to develop the emotional armour of an adult simply to wear the national jersey.

And there is an amusing historical irony in all this obsession with purity. Greek nationalists who imagine themselves racially exceptional might discover that the European far right often does not regard Greeks as the ideal Europeans at all. To many northern European supremacists, Greeks have long been stereotyped as southern, unreliable, lazy, corrupt or vaguely exotic. The people shouting about who is Greek enough may themselves fail somebody else’s imaginary racial examination.

That should be funny. It is actually tragic.

Because the real question is not what happens when a celebrated athlete encounters racism. Athletes have microphones, sponsors, lawyers, clubs and public visibility. Their suffering can become a national conversation.

What happens to the ordinary black Greek who has none of those things?

What happens to the teenager insulted on the street, the worker followed in a shop, the child mocked at school, the family treated as permanently foreign despite having lived in Greece for generations? Who notices them? Who intervenes? Who pays the price when politicians and public figures flirt openly with racial contempt and discover that the consequences are minimal?

This is where Greece needs to stop congratulating itself.

Racism is not defeated when the national team selects a black player. It is defeated when nobody thinks her selection requires an explanation.

Itoya does not need to prove that she is Greek. Greece needs to prove that it deserves her.

Fika bonding! #127 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

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

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

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The best-friend family by Paula Bartlett

For generations, society sold adults a remarkably simple proposition, fall in love, get married, buy a house and have children. The sequence was presented less as one possible route through life than as the route. Yet increasingly, people are looking at the entire arrangement and asking a rather inconvenient question: why must romance be the foundation of a family at all?

The answer emerging in some households is surprisingly old-fashioned. Friendship. Across affluent societies, adults are experimenting with buying homes with their closest friends, sharing domestic responsibilities and, in some cases, raising children together without being romantically involved. Platonic life partnerships and co-parenting arrangements are becoming more visible, while the financial realities of housing have made friendship a surprisingly practical economic alliance.

This is not necessarily the death of romance. It is the end of romance's monopoly. The modern romantic relationship has been asked to do an extraordinary amount of work. One person is expected to be lover, best friend, financial partner, emotional therapist, co-parent, housemate, holiday companion and retirement plan. No wonder so many relationships buckle under the weight. We have turned the romantic partner into an entire social infrastructure.

Friendship, meanwhile, has been treated as the supporting cast. Perhaps that hierarchy was always backwards. A good friend may know your weaknesses without exploiting them, understand your irritating habits without pretending they are charming and remain beside you after the romance has lost its chemical fireworks. Friendship can be remarkably durable precisely because it does not require the permanent maintenance of sexual attraction.

Then there is money, that unromantic little tyrant. Buying a home alone has become increasingly difficult in many places. Pooling two incomes, sharing a mortgage and dividing household expenses can turn an impossible aspiration into a manageable one. For adults who have no interest in waiting indefinitely for Prince Charming or who have discovered that Prince Charming is financially useless, friendship can become a practical route to stability.

Children may make the argument even stronger. Parenthood is not fundamentally a romantic activity. It is a long-term exercise in cooperation, patience, reliability and sacrifice. A child needs adults who show up. Whether those adults kiss each other goodnight is rather less important than whether they turn up at the school gate, remember the doctor's appointment and remain calm when the child has painted the dog purple.

Platonic co-parenting challenges precisely this old assumption, that a child's family must originate in a love affair. Of course, friendship does not magically eliminate conflict. Quite the opposite. Property disputes, different parenting philosophies, new romantic partners, jealousy and changing ambitions can make these arrangements complicated. A friendship can survive a disastrous holiday; surviving a mortgage and eighteen years of childcare is another matter.

Yet the broader cultural shift deserves attention. People are increasingly separating the things previous generations bundled together: love, sex, companionship, property, parenthood and family.

That may ultimately be healthier. The family of tomorrow may not be defined by who sleeps together, but by who turns up for one another. And perhaps the most radical family revolution is not abolishing commitment. It is choosing it deliberately.

The dictator in absentia by Fahad Kline

There is a somewhat almost theatrically appropriate about Bashar al-Assad being sentenced to death in a courtroom he did not have the courage to enter. The dictator who spent years insisting that Syria was too complicated to be governed by anyone but him has discovered the simplest political lesson of all, regimes end, palaces empty, statues fall and eventually the paperwork catches up. A Damascus court has now convicted Assad of murder, torture, arbitrary detention and crimes against humanity, imposing the death penalty in absentia. He remains safely in Moscow, where Russia has given him the kind of sanctuary that dictators have historically mistaken for immortality.

The comparison with Nuremberg is tempting, though it should be handled carefully. Nuremberg was not merely punishment. It was an attempt to establish a principle: that sovereignty is not a licence to murder one's citizens, and that “I was only following orders” is not a sufficient moral defence when the orders themselves are criminal. Syria needs something similar—not because Assad is uniquely monstrous, but because the machinery that sustained him was extraordinarily ordinary. Ministries signed papers. Officers followed commands. Prison guards turned keys. Propagandists explained away the dead. Bureaucrats learned to make atrocity look administrative.

That is the real significance of the verdict. Assad's greatest achievement was not that he remained in power for twenty-four years. It was that he transformed brutality into routine. The Assad system did not depend upon one man personally torturing every prisoner or ordering every killing. It depended upon thousands of people understanding what was expected of them and discovering that obedience was safer than conscience.

A death sentence, therefore, is emotionally satisfying but politically incomplete. Indeed, the awkward irony is that Assad's punishment may never actually occur. He is in Russia. Moscow has little reason to hand over a former client whose survival remains useful as a symbol of its influence and as a reminder of what happens to those who challenge authoritarian power. The Syrian court can sentence Assad; it cannot presently reach him.

But justice is not entirely measured in handcuffs. A verdict creates a record. It gives names to crimes and responsibility to perpetrators. It tells survivors that what happened to them was not merely the unfortunate turbulence of a civil war, not an inevitable consequence of sectarian hatred, and not the unfortunate collateral damage of a government defending itself. It says, instead, that a state crossed a line and that somebody was responsible.

That distinction matters enormously. Yet Syria's new rulers should resist the intoxicating temptation to turn justice into revenge. A country emerging from dictatorship does not become democratic merely because yesterday's prisoners become today's judges. Nor does justice become more legitimate because its verdict is popular. The new Syria will be judged not only by how firmly it condemns Assad, but by whether it can construct institutions capable of judging everyone, including its own allies.

That is the difficult part. Nuremberg mattered because it attempted to establish law above political convenience. Syria now faces the same test. If the court becomes merely an instrument for settling the accounts of one victorious faction, the Assad verdict will eventually look less like the birth of justice than the opening act of another political cycle.

The dead deserve better than that. For years Assad behaved as though Syria belonged to him. His final humiliation is that Syria has now put his name into a court record as a defendant rather than a president. He may remain in Moscow. His regime does not. And history, at last, has started taking attendance.

The podium gets quieter by Howard Morton

Karoline Leavitt’s departure from the White House press secretary’s office has been presented as a family decision and perhaps it is. She has two young children, recently returned from maternity leave and says plainly that the job demands more time than she can give while being the mother she wants to be. There is no reason to doubt that. But Washington has always been a city where perfectly respectable explanations can coexist with less comfortable political truths.

Leavitt is not merely leaving a job. She is stepping away from one of the most combustible platforms in American politics at an unusually revealing moment. Donald Trump has praised her extravagantly and says she will remain an outside adviser and influential Republican voice. That is the political equivalent of being given a golden parachute and told it is a family picnic. Perhaps it is. Perhaps it is also an exit ramp.

The White House press secretary is supposed to explain the administration to the country. Under Trump, the position has increasingly become something else: a daily exercise in combat. The briefing room is less a place where government policy is clarified than a stage on which loyalty is demonstrated, enemies are identified and the president's preferred version of reality is defended with the energy of a courtroom advocate who has already decided the verdict.

Leavitt understood the assignment. She was young, energetic, combative and unusually willing to turn the press briefing into political theatre. She did not simply answer reporters; she fought them. For the Trump movement, this was a feature, not a flaw.

But there is a peculiar danger in becoming too good at defending one man. Political careers are longer than presidencies, at least in theory. A spokesperson can spend years building a reputation for competence and then discover that the reputation has been swallowed by the personality she served.

That may be the more interesting question here. Is Leavitt leaving because the boat is sinking, or because she has realised that she does not want to be aboard when everyone else discovers the leaks?

The answer may ultimately be neither. Trump remains immensely influential, and Leavitt is hardly fleeing the movement. She is being repositioned, not exiled. Yet that distinction matters. From inside the White House, she has been the voice defending Trump. Outside it, she can become a voice defending Trumpism, which is a considerably more flexible and potentially more durable career.

That is smart politics. It is also smart personal branding. The most dangerous thing for a young political communicator is not controversy. It is becoming permanently associated with someone else's controversies. Trump has made political loyalty into a currency, but currencies fluctuate. The person standing beside the king during his triumph may become a footnote when the king leaves the palace.

Leavitt is only twenty-eight. She has decades ahead of her. Leaving the podium now allows her to preserve something invaluable in Washington, optionality.

The family explanation may be entirely sincere. It can also be politically useful. In Washington, the cleverest exits are those that do not look like exits at all.

Leavitt is not abandoning Trump. She is simply making sure that, when the Trump era eventually becomes history, her own name does not disappear into the footnotes. That is not disloyalty. It is survival.

TECH – MIND – HEALTH by Prof. Anis H. Bajrektarevic

Beyond Technology: Preserving Humanity in the Age of AI

The unprecedented acceleration of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital technologies has fundamentally transformed the conditions under which humanity lives, governs, communicates, and understands itself – something this author was writing about extensively for more than two decades . Yet the principal challenge of the digital age does not lie in the increasing sophistication of algorithms, computational power, or autonomous systems. Rather, it lies in humanity's diminishing capacity to guide technological development through reflective awareness, ethical judgment, and responsibility.

Humans, technology, and nature exist within a relationship of profound interdependence in which every technological innovation reshapes the social, ecological, cognitive, and political conditions of human existence – thus confirming the central premise of the so-called anthropotechniques[1]. Consequently, the contemporary digital crisis is ultimately not a crisis of technology, but a crisis of consciousness – as this author noted long ago, describing the "cognitive deficit crisis"[2].

Human development can therefore no longer be measured solely through economic growth, productivity, or computational capability. It must equally be evaluated through the quality of human consciousness, mental well-being, ecological sustainability, social cohesion, cross-generational contents and solidarities, as well as other formats of equity and justice, to the very preservation of life in all its forms.

The chapters collected in this volume approach these questions from different disciplinary perspectives, yet they converge on one essential conclusion: technology must remain an instrument of human development rather than becoming the measure of humanity itself. The decisive question of our age is therefore not what technology can accomplish, but what humanity is capable of becoming through its responsible use.

More than seven centuries before the emergence of modern science, Jalal ad-Din Rumi reminded humanity that existence cannot be confined to the visible and the material, warning against the illusion that external forms alone constitute reality. Centuries later, Max Planck, whose discoveries inaugurated the quantum revolution, questioned the Newtonian mechanisticworldview of classical science (and social Darwinists), and argued that consciousness occupies a fundamental place in our understanding of reality. Although emerging from entirely different intellectual traditions and historical settings, Rumi, Planck and Buddhist philosophy converge in recognising that matter and consciousness cannot be understood as isolated or competing domains. To reduce one to the other—or to imagine that technology may ultimately substitute for human consciousness—is not merely philosophically inadequate but fundamentally contrary to the relational order of nature itself.

This understanding resonates equally with the humanistic philosophy of the post-Second World War European thought, most notably in the works of Erich Fromm, who argued that the highest achievement of civilization is not the accumulation of technical power or material possessions but the realization of the human person. The essential question is therefore not what technology can produce, but what human beings are capable of becoming. Technology derives its legitimacy not from novelty, speed or efficiency, but from its capacity to deepen freedom, cultivate reflective awareness, strengthen solidarity and enable the flourishing of individuals, communities and civilizations.

AI, as well as other forms of digital (over)exposure that is (over)stimulating us, should therefore be understood as nothing else but the latest form of anthropotechnique—one of the techniques through which humanity extends, cultivates and transforms its own capacities.This author has written several books on this.

The history of civilization is, in essence, the history of anthropotechniques. Their original purpose was survival (through the mechanical solidarity of the group); their ultimate purpose is human (group and individual) self-realization. Such realization is therefore both the purpose and the criterion by which every anthropotechnique—from the first stone tool to AI—must ultimately be judged.

Throughout history, anthropotechniques have served humanity by strengthening its normative orders. Their legitimacy has never resided in technical sophistication itself, but in their contribution to the development of the human person and the advancement of civilization. Whenever technological development ceases to enhance human dignity, autonomy, wisdom, ecological responsibility and intergenerational well-being, and instead promotes dependence, alienation, domination, environmental degradation or the reduction of persons to objects of algorithmic optimisation, it fails its fundamental civilizational purpose. Technology was created to advance humanity; humanity was never created to alienate itself through technology.

At this critical civilizational juncture, humanity carries a responsibility extending far beyond the present generation. Our obligation is not merely to innovate, but to preserve the social and generational contract as well as the balance between analogue and digital, between efficient and human, between rational and empathic.

As this author have repeatedly argued in his writings, sustainable development is too often described as ‘any development that meets the entire needs of the present without compromising such needs of the future generations (deprived from hidden – societal, health or environmental costs)’, but maybe more accurate – while shorter, definition would be "any development aimed at the so-called 3Ms: the maximum good for maximum species, over maximum time-space span – comprehensive stewardship." This principle applies with equal force to AI and to every past, current or emerging anthropotechnique. The 3Ms are therefore not merely a sustainability principle; they constitute the normative criterion by which every anthropotechnique should be evaluated. Technology fulfils its civilizational purpose only when it secures the greatest good for the greatest number of species over the longest possible time-space horizon, while preserving the social contract between contemporaries and the generational contract between present and future generations.

From this perspective, Quantum Buddhism(connecting Technology – Mind – Health; for more, see the author’s works on Geopolitics of Quantum Buddhism) may be understood as one possible ethical-philosophical orientation that restores the missing bridge between matter and spirit, capability and responsibility, science and wisdom – a merge between Newton and Rumi, between Weber and Sartre, between the vehicle and the journey, between colour and rhythm, dharma and karma. It neither rejects science nor opposes technological innovation. Rather, it reminds us that technological progress acquires meaning only when directed toward the higher and longer-lasting common good. Science expands knowledge, technology expands capability, while philosophy cultivates wisdom. A sustainable civilization requires the harmonious balance of all three. And these three require an unrestricted and fair, yet analogue, horizontal and vertical transmission.

If technology is the vehicle through which civilization advances, ethical reflection remains the compass that ensures the journey continues toward humanity rather than away from it. The journey begins with the human being, and its destination is human self-realization.

Ultimately, the future of technology will not be determined by machines but by humanity's capacity to preserve wisdom alongside knowledge, responsibility alongside power and consciousness alongside innovation. The true measure of technological progress is therefore not whether machines become more intelligent, but whether humanity itself becomes wiser, freer, healthier, more compassionate and en route to its own self-realisation.

Technologyis humanity's greatest invention because of humanity's unique ability to deploy the mind for abstract thinking (a feature that significantly distinguishes humans from other (intelligent) forms of life on this planet). One exists only through the other. If we inherited this world from previous generations, then—even in the best of circumstances—we inherited only half of it; the other half is borrowed from future generations, of all.

Geneva/Vienna, March 2026
Prof. Anis H. Bajrektarevic, GAFG’s co-founder and ABC

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Download or read GAFG's 4th eBook HERE!

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[1]As anthropotechniques, we should assume the (precognitive and) conscious clustering of different experiences, knowledges, discoveries, patents and the like; its practical application in any human activity (including all modes of horizontal and vertical transmission) aimed at acquiring resources for consumption in space and time by variety of tools and weaponry. As the only compensation for the biological and neurological limitations of humans (inferior to other forms of life on the planet), the anthropotechniques were answering the central pre-cognitive concern of humans: Survival! This is a self-coined definition based on works of prof. Kulic from late 1990 and early 2000, that ever since this author further developed and extensively used in his lectures on the ‘Institutions and Instruments of Sustainable Development’ (chapter: Environmental ethics). As such, the definition is extensive enough to describe the event of first usage of the sharp stone/broken bone by early homo faber all the evolutionary way to the development and deployment of the nuclear bomb.

[2]"...our crisis cannot be environmental, as it was never a financial or security (...) – our crisis must be a moral one".

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Anis H. Bajrektarevic, Vienna, Author is chairperson and professor in international law and global political studies, Vienna, Austria. He authored three books: FB – Geopolitics of Technology (published by the New York’s Addleton Academic Publishers); Geopolitics – Europe 100 years later (DB, Europe), and the just released Geopolitics – Energy – Technology by the German publisher LAP. No Asian century is his forthcoming book, scheduled for later this year. 

AntySaurus Prick #135 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

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

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

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War that found the sea by Mathew Walls

Wars have a habit of escaping the map drawn for them and the Iran war is now doing precisely that. What began as a confrontation over Iran's nuclear ambitions and regional power is becoming a maritime war and maritime wars have an especially unpleasant tendency to turn local disputes into global economic problems.

The latest attacks should therefore be treated as more than another grim entry in the daily casualty ledger. Four crew members were killed in a Houthi attack on a cargo ship in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, while American forces struck a vessel in the Gulf of Oman that Washington said was attempting to reach an Iranian port. The geography matters. These are not the same battlefield. They are two ends of the commercial arteries connecting the Middle East to the world.

The danger is not simply that ships are being attacked. It is that the logic of the war is beginning to make shipping itself a weapon.

Iran's refusal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz unless America accepts its conditions is the clearest expression of that logic. Tehran understands something that military planners sometimes forget: a narrow waterway can possess strategic importance far beyond its physical dimensions. Hormuz is not merely a strait. It is a pressure valve for the world economy. Keep it closed and the consequences travel far beyond Iran, America or the Gulf.

The Houthis provide the other half of the equation. Their attacks around Bab el-Mandeb mean that even if vessels avoid Hormuz, they cannot necessarily escape the war by taking the longer route through the Red Sea. The world's shipping companies are thus being presented with an increasingly absurd choice: sail through one danger zone, sail around another, or wait indefinitely while diplomats discover new ways of saying that negotiations are progressing.

This is how regional wars become global ones, not necessarily through a dramatic declaration of war, but through accumulated inconvenience, insurance premiums, delayed cargoes, diverted tankers and nervous markets.

Washington, meanwhile, faces its own trap. If the United States permits Iran to determine which ships may pass, it risks conceding an extraordinary strategic advantage to Tehran. If it enforces a blockade aggressively, every vessel stopped, damaged or struck becomes another opportunity for escalation. The American argument that a ship is violating a blockade may be legally or militarily coherent; to a crew trapped in the middle of it, the distinction between blockade enforcement and maritime combat is rather less comforting.

Iran faces a corresponding dilemma. Closing Hormuz gives Tehran leverage, but leverage is useful only while it remains controllable. If the economic pain becomes too great, Iran risks turning international pressure into international hostility. If the closure continues long enough, countries that dislike American policy may nevertheless conclude that Iranian control of a global shipping artery is intolerable.

And the Houthis introduce an even more unpredictable variable. They are aligned with Tehran, but proxy warfare is rarely as tidy as its architects imagine. Once missiles are flying and ships are burning, escalation acquires its own momentum. One attack invites retaliation; retaliation invites another attack; eventually nobody remembers which escalation was supposed to produce the negotiating advantage.

That is the real danger now. The war is no longer confined to governments fighting governments. It is beginning to involve the infrastructure of global commerce itself. Tankers, container ships, ports and maritime chokepoints are becoming pieces on the chessboard.

Diplomacy therefore needs to move faster than the missiles. The tragedy is that every new attack makes compromise politically harder while making compromise strategically more necessary. Tehran wants concessions before reopening Hormuz. Washington wants security before relaxing pressure. The Houthis want the maritime battlefield to remain part of the conflict. Each side believes the other must blink first. But seas do not blink. They simply carry the consequences onward.