Ovi magazine; Monday March 27th, 2023

The articles, the opinions, the stories, the poems and the cartoons Ovi magazine covers for Monday March 27th, 2023

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Imperial Visits: US Emissaries in the Pacific by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

For some time, Washington has been losing its spunk in the Pacific.  When it comes to the Pacific Islands, a number have not fallen – at least entirely – for the rhetoric that Beijing is there to take, consume, and dominate all.  Nor have such countries been entirely blind to their own sharpened interests.  This largely aqueous region, which promises to submerge them in the rising waters of climate change, has become furiously busy.

A number of officials are keen to push the line that Washington’s policy towards the Pacific is clearly back where it should be.  It’s all part of the warming strategy adopted by the Biden administration, typified by the US-Pacific Island Country summit held last September.In remarks made during the summit, President Joe Biden stated that “the security of America, quite frankly, and the world, depends on your security and the security of the Pacific Islands.  And I really mean that.”

Not once was China mentioned, but its ghostly presence stalked Biden’s words.  A new Pacific Partnership Strategy was announced, “the first national US strategy for [the] Pacific Islands”.Then came the promised cash: some $810 million in expanded US programs including more than $130 million in new investments to support, among other things, climate resilience, buffer the states against the impact of climate change and improve food security.

Continue reading HERE!

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Clouds and stones #poem by Amir Khatib

” The clouds are flying stones, cratered, gray,
 tinged with anxious redness when the sun rises,
 And a very sad redness, the hour of her absence…
 But the clouds keep looking down on the rocks on the ground,
 She wishes to be quiet, humble and earthly like her,
 Stones remain on the ground, for eternity,
 Looking at the clouds and wishing they would fall,
 To be like a celestial blue transcendent.”

Continue reading HERE!

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Insert Brain Here 2.0 #037 #cartoon by Paul Woods

For more Insert Brain Here 2.0, HERE!

For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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Ovi magazine; Thursday 21, 2021

 

The articles, the opinions, the stories and the cartoons, Ovi magazine covers for Thursday 21st, 2021

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Religious extremists in South Asia are a threat to regional stability by Dr. Habib Siddiqui

Religious harmony is becoming an illusion these days with the election win of extremist forces in some parts of our world. Organized violence directed against vulnerable minorities, scripted by ruling power, is often the norm than an exception. Nowhere in South Asia is this fact more plain than in Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled India where the ruling party is in a competition of its own to prove to the Hindu-majority India that it is the only trustworthy political party to represent Hindu interest. Hindutva, or militant and political Hinduism, has become the party’s religio-fascist ideology to make India Hindu again (akin to Donald Trump’s slogan for making America great again!).

Through a series of bigotry-ridden and anti-Muslim laws and acts, touching the lives of hundreds of millions of Muslims from Assam in the east to Kashmir in the western flank of India, Narendra Modi and his BJP have proven beyond any shadow of doubt that they are serious about making India for, of and by its Hindu majority in which people of the other faiths (esp., Muslims and Christians) have little to no rights in this country of nearly 1.4 billion inhabitants. Since Modi’s ascendancy in 2014 as the head of the government, India has tattered and dropped its pretense as a secular democracy. It is less hypocritical today about what modern India stands for than any time before in its checkered history. Political parties must now prove how anti-Muslim or pro-Hindu they are to be relevant in Modi’s India.

Continue reading HERE!

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“A fast” #poem by Bohdan Yuri

“Cosmic order, young or old,
eternal life shed from bright,
move along on stilted visions,
swiftly set our hearts afire.
Speck our path, give us quarrel,
make us guess, create our best.”

Continue reading HERE!

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Funeral Rites for COVID Zero by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

It was such a noble public health dream, even if rather hazy to begin with. Run down SARS-CoV-2. Suppress it. Crush it. Or just “flatten the curve”, which could have meant versions of all the above. This created a climate of numerical sensitivity: a few case infections here, a few cases there, would warrant immediate, sharp lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, the closure of all non-vital service outlets.

Then came mutations and variants. Delta became the word mentioned like a terrorist saboteur, placing bombs under the edifice of the health system. The pro-market factions within governments receptive to using lockdown formulas could claim that harsh stay-at-home rules were not working. It was time to open up the economy; time to live with the virus, and, consequently, a good number of deaths. It was time for the epidemiologists to do more modelling.

Continue reading HERE!

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Tang & Ram 21#19 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

For more Tang & Ram HERE!

For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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Burma neighbors in talks

The Association of South East Asian Nations is holding urgent talks to discuss ways of helping Burma's cyclone victims.

Foreign ministers meeting in Singapore hope Burma's military rulers - who have so far blocked most large-scale foreign aid offers - will accept Asean help. But correspondents say the grouping cannot force a solution on a member, as decisions are only made by consensus.

Burma says some 78,000 people have died since the cyclone hit on 2 May. But aid agencies say many more may die without urgent help - according to Save the Children, some 30,000 acutely malnourished children less than five years of age in Burma are threatened by death from starvation.

Let’s see, a bit more push and the dictators might go to a cyclone …hell for good and leave Burma free!