Ovi magazine; Monday September 25th, 2023

The articles, the opinions, the stories, the poems, the thoughts, the reviews, the photos, the paintings and the cartoons Ovi magazine covers for Monday September 25th, 2023

---

Mediterranean Migration: The Pope in Marseille by Rene Wadlow

The two-day visit, 22-23 September, 2023 of Pope Francis to the French port city of Marseille has focused attention on cross-Mediterranean migration.  The issue of the treatment of migrants and refugees has been a strong concern of Pope Francis, both in his talks and in his visits such as that to Lampedusa, the Italian island where many migrants from Africa and the Middle East first set foot in Europe.  An estimate by the U.N.-related International Organization for Migrations is that some 30,000 persons have died by drowning in the effort to cross the Mediterranean since 2014.  The flow of migrants, often in unsound boats continues despite European governmental efforts to prevent the crossing by creating an agency Frontex.

Migration to European countries is both a political and an economic issue.  Right Wing parties have used the fear of migrants as a political tool.  The idea that Europe would be flooded and the nature of its culture changed by persons especially from Islamic countries has become a standard of the Right Wing media.

Continue reading HERE!

---

Night Winds #poem & #painting by Nikos Laios

“I can hear the night winds 
Whisper to me on a clear night,
The treetops rustle singing their song,
The world turns and under a canopy of stars “

Continue reading HERE!

---

Mika Toxica #63 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

For more Mika Toxica HERE!

For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

---

Ovi magazine
We cover every issue!

Ovi magazine; Monday August 28th, 2023

The articles, the opinions, the stories, the poems, the thoughts, the reviews, the photos, the paintings and the cartoons Ovi magazine covers for Monday August 28th, 2023

---

Migration to Saudi Arabia: Neither Safe Nor Orderly by Rene Wadlow

A 21 August 2023 report by the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch has highlighted the shooting by Saudi Arabia frontier guards of migrants and asylum seekers trying to cross the Yemen-Saudi borter.  Other non-governmental organizations, including the Association of World Citizens, have also focused on the way the armed conflicts in both Ethiopia and Yemen have led to new flows of displacement, refugees, and migrants.

There are some 750,000 Ethiopians currently living in Saudi Arabia. The country is considered by many Ethiopians as the economic eldorado, a place to work and earn money.  For other Ethiopians, Saudi Arabia is an avenue for migration toward European countries.  The same holds true for migrants from the conflicted situation in Somalia.

Continue reading HERE!

---

Crystal Blue Bay #poem & #painting by Nikos Laios

“There’s a gap in the wall,
And they see the world outside,
The crystal blue bay,
And they walk in slow circles 
In their wire cages 
In their orange jumpsuits
With their vacant lonely 
Stares and worn faces,
Looking on in silence.”

Continue reading HERE!

---

Tang & Ram #70 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

For more Tang & Ram HERE!

For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

---

Ovi magazine
We cover every issue!

Ovi magazine; Wednesday March 22nd, 2023

The articles, the opinions, the stories, the poems and the cartoons Ovi magazine covers for Wednesday March 22nd, 2023

---

Trashing Asylum: The UK’s Illegal Migration Bill by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

He was standing before a lectern at Downing Street.  The words on the support looked eerily similar to those used by the politicians of another country.  According to UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Stop the Boats was the way to go.  It harked back to the same approach used by Australia’s Tony Abbott, who won the 2013 election on precisely that platform.

The UK Illegal Migration Bill is fabulously own-goaled, bankrupt and unprincipled.  For one thing, it certainly is a labour of love in terms of the illegal, as the title suggests.  In time, the courts may well also find fault with this ghastly bit of proposed legislation, which has already sailed through two readings in the Commons and resting in the Committee stage.

On Good Morning Britain, Home Secretary Suella Braverman had to concede she was running “novel arguments” about dealing with such irregular migration, not making mention of Australia’s own novel experiment which did, and still continues, to besmirch and taint international refugee law.

In her statement on whether the bill would be consistent with the European Convention of Human Rights, enshrined by the UK Human Rights Act, Braverman was brazen to the point of being quixotic: “I am unable to make a statement that, in my view, the provisions of the Illegal Migration Bill are compatible with the Convention rights, but the Government nevertheless wishes the House to proceed with the Bill.”

Continue reading HERE!

---

Classic 70’s Chick (V2) #poem by Michael Lee Johnson

“Classic 70’s chick
scent of these times
gold digger want to be.
Poet & scholar stuck on
T.S. Eliot “The Waste Land.”
She tracks down a few stray men,
prospect hunks, & greenback dreams.”

Continue reading HERE!

---

AntySaurus Prick #62 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

For more AntySaurus Prick HERE!

For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

---

Ovi magazine
We cover every issue!

Ovi magazine; Monday January 17th, 2022

 

The articles, the opinions, the stories, the poems and the cartoons Ovi magazine covers for Monday January 17th, 2022

---

More diplomatic and political resistance to the Australian ASEAN farm worker visa by Murray Hunter

In the midst of chronic labour shortages on farms across the nation, and a potential food crisis looming, where food prices are rapidly rising, the ASEAN farm workers visa is finding diplomatic and political resistance on a number of fronts.

Solving these chronic problems by increasing the number of Pacific islander arrivals is languishing because of Covid quarantine issues. Supplementing farm worker numbers from the ranks of the unemployed, now at 4.6 percent, with 14.28 percent of the youth population between 15 to 24 years is thwart with institutional and preferred lifestyle issues. In addition, Australia’s pension system is preventing those over 65 from re-entering the workforce, where there are many willing to take up jobs. Thus, the ASEAN farm work visa is the best immediate short-term solution.

Continue reading HERE!

---

Write down #poem & #art by Amir Khatib

“Yes, write down the legend whose author we do not know:
 The gravedigger woke up at dawn, as usual.”

Continue reading HERE!

---

Robert M. Hutchins: Building on Earlier Foundations by Rene Wadlow

Much of our current work for a more just and peaceful world builds on the thinking and efforts of earlier foundations.  An important foundation is the leading role of Robert M. Hutchins, long-time President of the University of Chicago  (l929 -1951) whose birth anniversary we mark on 17 January.

Hutchins’ father, William,was President of Berea, a small but important liberal arts college, so Robert Hutchins (1899-1977) was set to follow the family pattern.  He went to Yale Law School and stayed on to teach. He quickly became the Dean of the Law School and was spotted as a rising star of US education.  When he was 30 years old, he was asked to become President of the University of Chicago, a leading institution.  Hutchins was then the youngest president of a US university.

Continue reading HERE!

---

Sceptic feathers #026 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

For more Sceptic feathers, HERE!

For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

---

Ovi magazine
We cover every issue

Ovi magazine; Wednesday October 27th, 2021

 

The articles, the opinions, the stories, the poems and the cartoons Ovi magazine covers for Wednesday October 27th, 2021

---

Europe does not have only a migrant, but an ideological crisis by Christos Mouzeviris

For the past few months, Europe is faced with yet another refugee crisis. This time though, the entry point is not the usual Mediterranean route, but the borders between Belarus, Poland and Lithuania. According to many EU sources, Belarus’ president Alexander Lukashenko has been shuffling people to the border, in retaliation for EU sanctions, an act qualified by the EU as a hybrid war.

Lithuania’s parliament passed legislation to speed up deportations of those crossing the border illegally. Critics say this might violate their human rights, but the government and lawmakers dismiss that. “This is an extreme situation,” Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite said. “This is not a normal migration, it is not a normal migration path. It is a hybrid war against us, so the response must be adequate.”

Frontex, the EU’s border agency, has pledged to bolster its support “due to the growing migratory pressure at the border with Belarus.” New sections of barbed wire fence were erected this month, with plans to invest 41 million euros to reinforce the entire 678-kilometer border with Belarus. Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said that by encouraging the flow of migrants, Lukashenko is seeking to pressure her country’s infrastructure and politics. “The organized mass immigration is revenge,” she told The Associated Press.

Continue reading HERE!

---

“Gus” #poem by Jan Sand

“Once upon a rainy day
While my mind filled with dismay
I heard a clacking at my door,
A clicking, quacking I’d deplore.”

Continue reading HERE!

---

War Talk from the Mad Monk: Tony Abbott goes to Taiwan by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

No one can stop him. He can barely stop himself. The former Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, seems to be everywhere, fighting the poor cause. At the very least, he is everywhere with the press cameras, the niggling concerns, the irritations that make it into the twenty-four-hour news cycle before sinking with toxic charm. He is the perfect ingredient in a stew of conflict, the agitator, the irritant.

The range of issues that have seen his intervention have taken him to conservative, often reactionary fora, the world over. He has given a gloss of legitimacy to the Great Replacement theory, worried that Christian Europeans have somehow forgotten how to breed, including members of the British Royal Family. He has been praised by Hungary’s authoritarian Viktor Orbán for defending Western civilisation against the dark and swarthy. He has expressed a preference for a social Darwinian model in containing COVID-19, advising governments that the elderly are dispensable citizens. He has sold his brutal “turn back the boats” formula to European states with, it has to be said, some success. The United Kingdom and Denmark, for instance, are increasingly aping his stance in lifting the drawbridge and detaining those seeking asylum.

Continue reading HERE!

---

Worming 21#20 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

For more Worming, HERE!

For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

---

Ovi magazine
We cover every issue

Together #4

We protect the hunted!
An Ovi Magazine ‘Awareness’ Campaign

---

“No one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.” – Warsan Shire

Arizona immigration bill

US immigrant rights groups have sharply criticised a bill approved by Arizona's Congress that makes it an offence for a person to lack the proper paperwork. One group, the National Council of La Raza, said the bill would turn Latinos, regardless of their legal status, into suspects in their own communities. Supporters of the bill say it will help bring illegal immigration under control in Arizona.

It makes you think what would have happened if the natives the real natives of Arizona had done the same a few centuries ago instead of welcoming the new immigrants, giving them food and place to live! Apparently the new immigrants enslaved the natives and the ones they couldn’t enslave they killed! I suppose that’s what Arizona’s congress is afraid of!

Far-right Dutch MP refused entry to UK

Immigration officials prevent Geert Wilders leaving Heathrow airport to attend showing of his film about 'fascist' Qur'an at House of Lords. Geert Wilders, the rightwing Dutch politician accused of Islamophobia, was today refused entry to the UK after arriving at Heathrow airport in London.

Wilders was due to show his 17-minute film Fitna, which criticizes the Qur'an as a "fascist book", at the House of Lords today. But on Tuesday he received a letter from the Home Office refusing him entry because his opinions "threaten community harmony and therefore public safety". He arrived at Heathrow shortly after 2pm and was questioned by immigration officials.

What about the …lords or whoever else who invited him to show the film and give a speech, are they going to be deported or at least face their act? Isn’t that a hate crime?