Ignorant and Imbecile Warriors: America and Israel Waging War on Humanity by Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD.

Leaders Who could not Lead

“Trump claimed that God supports the United States’ actions in the war against Iran” noted Manilo Dinucci (https://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-god-united-states/5922063):“I believe that, because God is good,” he said, “and God wants us to take care of people.”.... Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth, referring to Iran: “An entire civilisation will perish, never to return; 47 years of extortion, corruption and death will finally come to an end. God bless the great people of Iran!” Although the Pope did not mention Trump by name, he stated that “God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war”

Discarding the creed of optimism when most hated and feared intervene to twist the logic and truth of reality and act like Pharaoh of the 21st century. An ill-informed conscience is embedded in the triviality of actions and reactions in war against Iran. All actions have consequences as if President Trump and Netanyahu think of extended impunity. Most pernicious consequences are waiting to grab them as it happened to Pharaoh at the Red Sea. Their warmongering is to entrap humanity at large in social, political, legal and economic consequences and tyranny of conclusion to terminate on its own as the process of the Law of Nature. They plan to maximize shortsighted glory and political triumph. Every beginning has its own end without an escape.  We, the People, realize there is much evil and much good in our encompassing imagination of the world. Our expectations turned sour that responsible institutions such as the UNO, Western leadership and other global institutions of peace and security would flout their role-play with distressed timidness and ignorance of prevalent reality in global humanitarian affairs.  

In a recent article (“How Egomaniac Leaders Call to End Civilized Humanity?” The Ovi Magazine: 4/9/25,https://realovi.wordpress.com/2025/04/09/how-egomaniac-leaders-call-to-end-civilized-mankind-by-mahboob-a-khawaja-phd/), this author described President Trump and PM Netanyahu as mindless anarchists having ignored the voices of reason and subjected mankind to genocide and crimes against humanity. They behave in arrogance and insolently like the Pharaoh. Do they not standto meet the same ending as did Pharaoh? Most Israelis protesting at Tel Aviv blame Netanyahu as egoistic and waging war on Iran for personal glory and triumph. The leaders prey on people who elected them whereas the people seem to pray for them to end their fallacy of claims. God created human beings as moral beings unlike other animals and beasts, with a Divine Trust and Accountability for actions on this planet? Leaders enriched with moral, intellectual and spiritual values know life has a purpose, trust and meaning and act responsibly but the 21st century Western leaders are steeped in their own folly and perpetuated ignorance. Insanity is powerless and transitory.

Mike Adams (“Dystopian Nightmare: Ten Unbelievable Things that Will Happen Soon if We Don’t Stop the March of Tyranny and the Enslavement of Humanity.” Transcend Media: 6/16/2023 ), warns of dire consequences tomankind.(https://www.transcend.org/tms/2023/06/dystopian-nightmare-10-unbelievable-things-that-will-happen-soon-if-we-dont-stop-the-march-of-tyranny-and-the-enslavement-of Humanity now faces a critical choice: We either choose the path of total enslavement under an authoritarian, techno-fascist dictatorship, or we choose to instead embrace decentralized finance, free speech, rationality and the rule of law. https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-06-16-dystopian-nightmare-10-things-that-will-happen-soon.html

Does President Trump want to Annihilate Civilizations for Israel?

Political tyranny is powerless and transitory. Across the globe, people are resilient to understand the sadistic political endeavors of few mindless leaders. President Trump, enticed by Netanyahu, wanted to see Iran and Arabs engaged in fighting and self-destruction.  The Strait of Hormuz is blocked unilaterally to shipping as if they own the water of the sea and the possessions of earth. Their sinister plans deny the truth of diplomacy and terms of current ceasefire to give reason a chance for peace and conflict resolution. Remember! Those challenging the Laws of God are chastised by the Laws of God without exception. Are they waiting to meet the same end as did Pharaoh at the Red Sea? The aggression and insanity of war has no logic and sense of morality as human beings.  To comprehend immutable reasoning, there is no international law and no Geneva Conventions to safeguard the victims of imperialist war, it is a joke, a rhetoric against Arab-Muslim people across the globe. What have the Arab-Muslim leaders done to stop the killing fields of Gaza and occupied West Bank (Palestine),  and the on-going war between Iran and the US, absolutely nothing.

For a long time, most oil exporting Arab leaders lost moral and intellectual values of Islam, appearing too occupied in sports and entertainment away from the pains and horrors of cruelty inflicted by Israel-American policies and practices - the authoritarian Arab leaders learnt nothing from living history. Do the Leaders Live in Hell or with Normal Masses to know the reality? Irresponsible and important Arab-Muslim leaders claiming to be mediators for peace and ceasefire are liars, nothing more than puppets of the Western imperialism not to challenge Israel for its planned onslaught of Palestinian masses. The Egyptians, Qataris, Saudis and others carry no values in global context and appear morally, intellectually and politically bankrupt as a scum floating on a torrentof naive puppets and discredited leaders. Please see more:https://realovi.wordpress.com/2025/03/14/howarab-muslim-leaders-betrayed-the-people-by-mahboob-a-khawaja-phd/

The End-Game to Continued the War against Iran and Arabs

Amir Nour and Laala Bechetoula (“What Bombs Cannot Kill. Part III: The World That Burns and the Questions That Remain: https://www.globalresearch.ca/what-bombs-cannot-kill-part-iii-world-burns-questions-remain/5922049) Iran is winning the strategic war. Not because its missiles are more precise than the adversary’s. But because Iran possesses what we call civilizational endurance: the capacity of an ancient civilization, forged over 5,000 years of history, to absorb blows without dissolving. The US and European imperialists sucked out the oil resources from the Arab world and now intend on dismantling the Arab-Muslim world while wagingwar against Iran and the Arabian Gulf region. We, the People reject the violent assumptions of militarization and egoistic triumphs by acts of genocidal plans across Palestine, Iran and humanity. Eric Bogle (1976) sung “The Green Fields of France” a soul searching reminder to humanity:…….But here in this graveyard that’s still No Man’s Land

The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man,
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

And I can’t help but wonder, no Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here, know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you ‘The Cause?’
You really believe that this war would end wars?
The suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame,
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again!

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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: One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution 2019; and 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?ean=9798317619374

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

Between memory and missiles by Mary Long

There is something almost theatrical about a Taiwanese opposition leader standing before the tomb of Sun Yat-sen in Nanjing, invoking reconciliation while the geopolitical temperature in the Taiwan Strait continues to rise. The symbolism is deliberate, a gesture toward shared history at a moment defined by profound division. But beneath the choreography lies a far more complicated question, whether this signals a genuine shift in Taiwan’s political identity or simply a familiar oscillation between caution and defiance.

Cheng Li-wun’s visit is not just a personal or party statement; it is a message aimed at multiple audiences at once. To Beijing, it suggests that there are still voices in Taiwan willing to engage without overt hostility. To voters at home, it hints at an alternative to the prevailing narrative of urgency and militarization. And to the broader international community, it raises an eyebrow, is Taiwan reconsidering its posture or merely rehearsing an older script?

The Kuomintang has long walked this tightrope. Its historical connection to mainland China gives it a unique, if sometimes uncomfortable, credibility in advocating dialogue. Yet that same history can feel out of step with a Taiwanese public that increasingly sees its future as separate, not shared. Cheng’s call for “reconciliation and unity” resonates differently depending on who is listening. For some, it is a pragmatic appeal to reduce tensions. For others, it risks sounding like nostalgia dressed as policy.

At the heart of this moment is a debate not just about identity, but about priorities. Defense spending has become the most visible fault line. The current government argues, with growing urgency, that Taiwan must invest heavily in its own security as military pressure intensifies. The opposition, meanwhile, questions whether an ever-expanding defense budget is the only or even the best response. Hospitals, schools and social systems do not command headlines in the same way warships and fighter jets do but they shape the daily reality of citizens in ways that are harder to quantify and easier to overlook.

This is where Cheng’s gesture acquires its sharper edge. It is not simply about cross-strait relations; it is about redefining what security means. Is security measured solely in deterrence, in the language of missiles and drills? Or can it also be found in economic stability, public health and education systems that make a society resilient from within?

The risk, of course, is that moderation can be mistaken for naivety. In an environment where military signals are loud and frequent, calls for restraint may feel out of sync with reality. Critics of the Kuomintang will argue that history has shown the limits of goodwill, that ambiguity invites pressure rather than alleviates it. And yet, there is also a danger in allowing fear to dictate every policy choice. A society that defines itself only in opposition to a threat may find its options narrowing, its imagination constrained.

What we are witnessing, then, is not the emergence of a “new face” so much as the resurfacing of an enduring tension within Taiwan’s democracy. It is the tension between vigilance and pragmatism, between preparing for the worst and hoping for something better. Cheng Li-wun’s visit does not resolve that tension. It simply brings it into sharper focus.

Whether Taiwan leans toward greater military readiness or a more measured, socially focused approach will not be decided by a single visit or a single speech. It will unfold in budgets, ballots, and the quiet calculations of everyday life. But moments like this, symbolic, contested and a little unsettling, remind us that even in a landscape shaped by power and pressure there is still space for debate about what kind of future is worth defending.

Ceasefire without calm by Fahad Kline

A ceasefire in theory is supposed to quiet the guns and steady the pulse of a region. Yet the recent pause in hostilities between the United States and Iran feels less like a conclusion and more like an intermission, an uneasy silence where the audience suspects the second act may be louder, messier and far less predictable. The Middle East, long accustomed to fragile equilibriums, now finds itself in a state that is not quite war, but certainly not peace.

Part of the unease lies in the asymmetry of restraint. While Washington and Tehran step back from direct confrontation, Israel appears to be stepping forward, particularly in its posture toward Lebanon. This divergence fractures any illusion of a coordinated de-escalation. A ceasefire that applies selectively is not a resolution; it is a redistribution of tension. Pressure, after all, does not disappear, it shifts. And in this case, it has settled along Lebanon’s already brittle borders, where history suggests that even minor escalations can spiral into something far more consequential.

Overlaying this is the peculiar role of political messaging, erratic, immediate and often untethered from policy coherence. Donald Trump’s social media posts, which oscillate between triumphalism and ambiguity, do little to clarify the strategic direction of the United States. In a region where signals are scrutinized with forensic intensity, confusion is not benign. It invites miscalculation. Allies second-guess their assurances; adversaries test the margins. Diplomacy, once conducted through careful channels, is now refracted through the impulsive prism of online commentary, where a sentence can unsettle months of negotiation.

Then there is the quieter, but no less consequential, question of competence. JD Vance’s political trajectory, marked by ambition but shadowed by inconsistency, has struggled to translate rhetoric into tangible influence. In moments that demand clarity and steadiness, perceived ineffectiveness becomes its own liability. Leadership is not merely about occupying space in the conversation; it is about shaping outcomes. When those outcomes falter, the vacuum is filled often by actors less interested in stability.

The cumulative effect is a region that feels more volatile now than during open conflict. War, paradoxically, imposes a certain clarity, sides are drawn, objectives, however misguided, are defined. The current moment lacks that structure. It is a landscape of partial withdrawals and selective aggressions, of loud declarations paired with uncertain follow-through. The danger here is not just renewed conflict, but misaligned expectations. Each actor believes it is operating within acceptable bounds, while the collective result edges closer to instability.

What makes this moment particularly precarious is its unpredictability. Traditional levers of influence, diplomacy, deterrence, alliances, still exist, but they are being applied unevenly. The coherence that once underpinned them has frayed. In its place is a patchwork of decisions that, taken individually, may seem manageable but together form a pattern that is anything but.

A ceasefire should mark the beginning of de-escalation. Instead, it has exposed the fault lines beneath the surface. The Middle East is not simply less secure than before the war began; it is less comprehensible. And in geopolitics, confusion is rarely a prelude to calm.

Ma-Siri & Co #121 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

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

For more Ma-Siri & Alexa, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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The theater of power and piety by Emma Schneider

It is a peculiar feature of modern politics that even the sacred is not spared from the gravitational pull of spectacle. The latest clash, Donald Trump publicly rebuking Pope Leo XIV, feels less like a diplomatic disagreement and more like an episode in an ongoing drama where authority, ego and ideology compete for center stage. But beneath the noise lies something more revealing, a collision between two fundamentally different visions of power.

Trump’s criticism of the pope is not surprising in tone, only in target. He has long framed global affairs as a contest of strength, where hesitation signals weakness and moral caution borders on naivety. In this worldview nuclear ambition, especially from adversarial states, is not merely a threat but a test of resolve. Any voice urging restraint becomes by default suspect. The pope’s position, rooted in a long tradition of moral theology and the catastrophic memory of war, inevitably reads to Trump as impractical even dangerous.

Yet to interpret this exchange as a simple policy disagreement is to miss its deeper symbolism. The papacy even in a secular age represents a form of authority that is not transactional. It does not negotiate in the language of leverage or deterrence. Instead it insists, sometimes stubbornly, on the primacy of human dignity, the limits of violence and the moral consequences of political decisions. When Pope Leo XIV speaks against war rhetoric or nuclear brinkmanship, he is not offering a strategic alternative; he is issuing a moral indictment.

This is precisely what makes him intolerable to figures like Trump. Moral authority cannot be bargained with, nor can it be easily dismissed. It lingers. It reframes the conversation. It asks questions that power would prefer to avoid. What is gained by escalation? Who bears the cost of “strength”? At what point does defence become destruction?

Trump’s response, characteristically blunt, attempts to reassert control over the narrative. By labelling the pope “terrible for foreign policy,” he translates a moral critique into a technocratic failure. It is a clever move, one that shifts the debate from ethics to effectiveness, from conscience to competence. But it is also revealing. It suggests an unease with the very idea that foreign policy might be judged not only by outcomes but by principles.

There is also an unmistakable irony in this confrontation. Trump, a figure who has often positioned himself as a defender of Western civilization, now finds himself at odds with one of its oldest institutions. Meanwhile, the Pope, an American, no less, steps into the role of global critic, challenging the very country from which he hails. The lines of allegiance blur, and what emerges is not a clash of nations but of philosophies.

Perhaps what is most unsettling about this moment is how familiar it feels. The language of war, the invocation of existential threats, the dismissal of dissenting voices, these are not new. What is new, or at least more visible, is the erosion of boundaries. Political leaders no longer hesitate to confront religious figures in public, nor do religious leaders refrain from entering the political arena. The result is a kind of perpetual crossfire, where every statement becomes a provocation and every disagreement a spectacle.

And yet, there is value in this tension. It forces a reckoning. It reminds us that power, left unchecked, tends to justify itself. It needs opposition, not only from rival states but from institutions and individuals willing to question its premises. The pope’s voice, whether one agrees with it or not, serves this function. It interrupts the logic of escalation. It insists that there are limits.

Trump, for his part, embodies the opposite impulse, the belief that limits are obstacles to be overcome. The clash between these two perspectives is not easily resolved, nor should it be. It is, in many ways, the defining argument of our time.

In the end, this is not a story about a president and a pope. It is a story about the enduring struggle between might and morality and the uneasy coexistence of both in a world that demands answers from each.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The contrast is not merely striking—it is damning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Post-Orbán illusion of relief by Thanos Kalamidas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#eBook Edenic visions by Ovi Art eBooks

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

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

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

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

Ovi eBook Publishing 2026

Edenic visions

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Berserk Alert! #096 #Cartoon by Tony Zuvela

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

Ian Glim #007 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

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

For more Ian Glim, HERE!
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