Voices from the Margins: Healing, Truth and the Collapse of Old Narratives

Letters to the editor

Words that lift the gloom and doom

There were many gems in Sanjit Hannuman’s piece, Success Breeds Contempt In Those Who Cannot Match It.

Among these:

• “They found no wrong with the rose, so they complained it has thorns.”
• “Every time you celebrate rather than criticise, you create space for excellence.”
• “Your excellence is not an apology. Your unconventional path is not a liability. Your boundaries are not character flaws.”
• “Finally, the garden grows richer with diverse flowers.

”Indeed, Sir, these are inspiring words that lift the gloom and remind us of the value of celebration, individuality, and diversity. | BRIJLALL RAMGUTHEE Newlands

Truly inspired by Yumna Zahid Ali

Beyond beautiful prose and brilliant concepts lies the highest art: the rearrangement of a reader’s inner world. This is where Ms. Yumna Zahid Ali writes from.

I relate deeply to her writing, particularly her essays on education, because I lived what she writes about. In school, teachers insulted students openly, sometimes in front of the entire class.

I was made to stand outside the classroom as punishment, not just for mistakes, but sometimes for asking questions or not understanding fast enough. Humiliation was used as a teaching tactic. The laughter of classmates, the silence of others, and the cold indifference of teachers stayed with me long after the bell rang.

Over time, that fear did not stay inside the classroom. It followed me almost everywhere. I began to feel anxious even before school started, sometimes the night before, sometimes the moment I woke up. My chest would tighten so badly for no clear reason, as if my body knew something my mind completely shrugged. My heart would race when a teacher raised their voice, even if the anger was not directed at me. Sometimes I struggled to breathe, my hands would shake, and my thoughts would scatter until my mind went completely blank. It lived in me, wordless. I did not know these were panic attacks. I only knew that I lived in a never-ending state of agitation.

The trauma settled quietly and deeply. I became alert all the time, watching every movement, every tone, every expression. I learned to read faces instead of focusing on lessons. I sat in class preparing myself for humiliation before it happened. Even nanoscopic mistakes felt like red flags. A wrong answer, a pause, or a confused look could turn into public embarrassment. I would replay incidents again and again in my head, long after the school day ended, questioning every word I had spoken and every reaction I had shown.

I carried a constant fear of being singled out, exposed, or embarrassed. This fear did not switch off when I left school. It followed me into other spaces, shaping how I spoke, how I responded to authority, and how I saw myself.

Only much later did I understand that these panic attacks were not a personal failure. They were not weakness. They were my body responding to years of fear, control, and humiliation that had been normalized and defended as “discipline.”

For me, her essays were more than eye-openers, they were a release from my school bullying. They helped me understand that the insults I endured were not lessons and that humiliation should never be part of education. Yumna Zahid Ali did what many could not – she broke a damaging legacy of complicit silence and made space for truth.

Can’t wait for her upcoming essays! | Sana Zeeshan

Davos winds of change at signal demise of narratives

As the opening of the Overton Window widens, the credibility of the mainstream media and the ideology it disseminates is imploding. That is the only real takeaway from the WEF’s annual jamboree in Davos, Switzerland.

The temple of the globalists was shattered by the Trump Administration when Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, bluntly declared, “Globalism has failed the West”. He lectured them on the stupidity of “offshoring your medicine, your semi-conductors, your entire industrial base upon which you should be dependent, for that is fundamental to your sovereignty.”

Such policies have exacerbated unemployment, increased taxes and welfare costs. In contrast, the Trump Administration has put the interests of the American worker first. Lutnick’s remarks were supported by the new German Chancellor Freidrich Merz who delivered the strongest internal critique the EU has heard in years.

Merz accused the EU of wasting its potential for growth by curtailing individual freedom and entrepreneurial innovation while bloating bureaucracy. “Europe has become the world champion of over-regulation. That has to end!” he said. Referring to the exorbitant cost of electricity because of adherence to green ideology, Merz admitted that the shutting down of nuclear plants was “a serious mistake.”

Blown back by the incontrovertible realities of why EU policies are a failure, there was no respite for the globalist faithful as Nato chief Mark Rutte told them Trump was correct about the security of Greenland in the light of increased Chinese and Russian activity there.

Rutte’s remarks came in the wake of Trump’s reminder that for 20 years Denmark had been told to thwart the Russian threat to Greenland, but had done nothing. Denmark’s claim to Greenland, therefore, lacked credibility seeing as the US foots the bill for defending it.

The final crunch for the globalists was Trump’s use of the WEF’s platform to launch his International Board of Peace. Endorsed by the UN Security Council in November, besides the 20 members present on the dais, Trump indicated that a total of 59 states have indicated their support.

The complete absence of the pillars of the EU from the Board of Peace was conspicuous because the EU is committed to war in Ukraine having just provided €100 billion to their puppet Zelinsky to continue the conflict

Economically, ideologically, strategically, politically and internationally Trump is wresting control away from those who have been determining the narrative on issues.

For the various installed leaders like EU president Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, and Canadian Prime Minister Michael Carney and the mainstream political parties elsewhere like in Australia, the winds of changed discourse signal their demise. | DR DUNCAN DU BOIS Bluff

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