The destruction of the element that Rudolf Otto defines as the tremendum, that is, that perception of the sovereign majesty of the divine that generates in man a feeling of creatural finitude, is indispensable for the unfolding of the absolute subjectivism coessential to the will to power and its presupposition of man as an omnipotent and limitless entity. For this reason—Otto explains—the sacred is the authentic mirum, since it shows the “totally other” (Ganz-Anderes), sending back to a different and superior dimension, with respect to that of only human things. The sacred—Otto writes—coincides with the “the emotion of a creature, submerged and overwhelmed by its own nothingness in contrast to that which is supreme above all creatures.” The seductive, as well as treacherous, promise of the serpent—eritis sicut dii—allows us to fully understand how the most desacralizing power, that is, capital, pretends to become more and more similar to God, as omnipotent, unlimited, inscrutable, above everything and everyone. In this meaning, the θέωσις, the “divine becoming” thus emerges as a figure of the unlimited and of pride, quite distinct from the deitas theorized by Eckhart.
At the mercy of techno-scientific Prometheism, and an order of things in which “sudden gains/pride and immoderation have generated” (Inferno, XVI, 72-74), man ceases to recognize himself imago Dei and pretends to be himself Deus-homohomini Deus, with the syntax of the Feuerbach of The Essence of Christianity—in the fulfillment of the ancient temptation of the serpent. Herein lies the arrogant boldness of the man who wants to elevate himself “Who opposeth, and is lifted up above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, so that he sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself as if he were God” (2 Thessalonians 2:4).
Prevailing over the entire horizon, prefiguring ever new disasters of instrumental reason, is the Promethean will of human self-management of the world with no further links to transcendence and, at this point, guided only by the nihilistic logic of the will to power of the planetary technocracy. The biblical image of Noah’s Ark, which saves the living in the name of God, is contrasted with the Titanic, as an image of unbridled technology and Promethean imperialism, which causes the whole world to sink under the deceptive promise of its liberation.
In the reified spaces of techno-form civilization, there are no longer the limits of the φύσις of the Greeks or of the Christian God—in the age of the ἄπειρον, of the “unlimited” elevated to the only horizon of meaning, there survives exclusively the factual limit, id est, the limit that the uncontainable techno-scientific power finds every time in front of itself and that it punctually surpasses, in order to be able to fully deploy all its premises and its promises. The technoscientific Gestell, the “dominant system” of Technik in the sense clarified by Heidegger, does not promote a horizon of meaning, nor does it open scenarios of salvation and truth—it simply grows without limitation. And it does so by surpassing all limits and by self-empowering itself without end. It emerges, therefore, fully justifying the fear of Zeus, in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, when Zeus fears that man, thanks to the power of τέχνη, can become self-sufficient and autonomously obtain that which previously he could only hope to achieve through prayer and submission to divine power.
As Emanuele Severino has shown, if technique is the condition for the implementation of any end, it follows that not hindering the progress and development of technique becomes the true ultimate end, in the absence of which no other can be implemented. So, following Severino’s syntax, with the decline of truth there remains in the field only technique, i.e., the open space of the forces of becoming, whose confrontation is ultimately decided by its power and certainly not by its truth. In addition to this, the techno-capitalist system reduces the world to the limits of calculating reason, so that what cannot be calculated, measured, possessed and manipulated is, eo ipso, considered as non-existent. The logic of the plus ultra, founding of techno-capital, is determined in the ethical and religious sphere according to the aforementioned figure of the violation of all that is inviolable, which presupposes achieving the neutralization of God as a symbol of the vόμος. The libertarian instance of the Enlightenment is reversed in its opposite, as already evidenced in Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialektik der Aufklärung. The annihilation of every taboo, of every law and of every limit, gives rise to the new taboo of life that is sufficient unto itself.
Freedom without limits; or rather—more properly—the anomic caprice and the “infinite evil” of self-referential and deregulated growth, precipitates into the slavery of the compulsion to transgression and the violation of all that is inviolable; hence into the falsely emancipatory imperative that prescribes enjoyment without impediment or delay, aiming only at individual self-interest and the unreflective rage of growth as an end in itself. In this way, calculating reason—the “arid life of the intellect” of which the young Hegel wrote—sets itself up as the judge that distinguishes what is real from what is not real, what is meaningful from what is meaningless, what is valuable from what is worthless. To allow techno-capitalism to develop without limits of any kind, be they material or immaterial—this sounds like one of the most implausible definitions that could be postulated of the regressive myth of progress, civilization’s unreflective cult of integral reification, whose members are increasingly converted, Heidegger emphasized, into mere “priests of technics” and simple apostles of capital’s march of claritate in claritatem.
To provoke the disjunction of Desire with the Law, so that the former can develop without limits and inhibitions, according to the figure of that violation of all that is inviolable on which rests the essence of the absolute chrematistic system as metaphysics of the unlimited, is one of the falsely emancipatory cornerstones of the disordered order of the civilization of the markets. It is what was already glimpsed in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov: “But then, I ask, what will become of man, without God and without future life? Is everything then permitted, everything lawful?” Tod Gottes points to the fulfillment of nihilism as a process of devaluation of values and the twilight of the foundations. It coincides with the “transvaluation of all values,” the Umwertung aller Werte enunciated by Nietzsche.
The nihilism of the death of God seems to be concretized in four decisive determinations, which trace the contours of the epoch of the existing anomic society of the evaporated father post mortem Dei:
on the ontological level, if God is dead, then “everything is possible,” as marketing strategists keep repeating endlessly and as the mechanics of the technical reduction of being to an exploitable depth reveal;
on the strictly moral level, if God is dead, then everything is permitted and no figure of the Law survives;
his means, therefore, that everything is indifferent and equivalent, without a hierarchical rank or an order of values, in the triumph of a generalized relativism by which everything becomes relative in the form of commodity (the “dictatorship of relativism” thematized by Ratzinger);
at both the moral and ontological levels, if God is dead and everything is possible and permitted, it follows that every limit, every simulacrum of the Law and every barrier are, as such, an evil to be overthrown and a limit to be violated and surpassed.
The death of God as the dissolution of every order of values and truth (Nietzsche) and as the evaporation of the very idea of the father (Lacan) is, for this very reason, coherent with the dynamics of development of capital absolutus—in the globalized perimeters of the total and totalitarian market society everything is licit, subject to there always being more and more, and to the availability of the corresponding exchange value, elevated to a new monotheistic divinity. The desertification of transcendence and the depopulation of heaven are coessential to the dynamics of the absolutization of the mercantilized plane of immanence, whose most appropriate figurative expression seems to be identified by the desert, as Salvatore Natoli has suggested.
On the basis of what has been underlined by Heidegger and by Hölderlin, the epoch of economic nihilism corresponds to a Weltnacht in which darkness is so dominant that it makes it impossible to see the situation of misery into which those of us who find ourselves living in the epoch of the fled gods have fallen:
“The default of God means that no god any longer gathers men and things unto himself, visibly and unequivocally, and by such gathering disposes the world’s history and man’s sojourn in it. The default of God forebodes something even grimmer, however. Not only have the gods and the god fled, but the divine radiance has become extinguished in the world’s history. The time of the world’s night is the destitute time, because it becomes ever more destitute. It has already grown so destitute, it can no longer discern the default of God as a default” (Heidegger, “Wozu Dichter?” “What are Poets for?“).
The death of God announced by Nietzsche and evoked by Heidegger corresponds, in effect, to that complete nihilistic de-divinization of the world that produces the loss of meaning and finality, of unity and horizon. The ongoing de-divinization—which, with the Hegel of the Phenomenology, we could also understand as a “depopulation of heaven” (Entvölkerung des Himmel)—corresponds to the emptying of all meaning and of all ulteriority with respect to the capitalist market, which has become the exclusive horizon—capitalist mono-mundane immanentization dissolves any point of reference other than the commodity form, before which everything becomes relative. Things and men, more and more interchangeable, cease to be “gathered” in a framework of meaning. And they are projected, as isolated and unconnected fragments, into the dark infinite space of the global market, hypostatized in the sole sense of petrified universal history.
With Heidegger’s syntax, the “splendor of God” as a value of values and as a symbol of symbols has been extinguished and, with it, the very idea of a sense of the flow of universal history and of a meaning that exceeds mere exchange value. Everything wanders in the cosmic void of fragmentation and global precariousness, ready to be manipulated by the will to power of infinite growth and the déraison de la raison économique. Following Pasolini’s analysis, this is the essence of the new “Power that no longer knows what to make of Church, Homeland, Family”—and that, moreover, must neutralize them as so many obstacles to its own self-realization.
The death of God corresponds to the post-metaphysical nihilistic relativism proper to the unlimited extension of the commodity form elevated to the only horizon of meaning and to the unlimited will to power of technical endeavor. According to the teaching we draw from Weber and his considerations on the Protestantische Ethik, a fully functioning capitalism no longer needs the superstructural system—the “mantle” over its shoulders, in Weberian grammar—that was initially indispensable to it. Taking the discourse beyond Weber, it must precisely discard it, given that now the absence of that powerful support of meaning is as vital as its presence was before.
Post-metaphysical consumerist relativism prevents the recognition of the veritative figure of limits (ethical, religious, philosophical). And, with synergic movement, it empowers the infinite tastes of liberalized consumption, and detached from any perspective of value. Along with that, it draws a reified landscape of monads exercising their will of unlimited consumerist power, free to do whatever they want, as long as they do not violate the will of power of others and, ça va sans dire, as long as they have the corresponding exchange value.
The fanaticism of economics cannot withstand the axiological, veritative and transformative power of philosophy. It is founded, instead, on the power of technoscience, which serves it to produce always new commodities and new gadgets destined to increase the valorization of value. Compulsive consumerism itself, which has become the ordinary lifestyle of the inhabitant of the integrally reified cosmopolis, is nothing more than the subjective reverberation of the techno-capitalist paradigm and its fundamental structure.
The new techno-capitalist power, in Pasolini’s words “is no longer satisfied with a ‘man who consumes,’ but pretends that no other ideologies than that of consumption are conceivable.” It allows the permissiveness of “a neo-secular hedonism, blindly oblivious to any humanist value” to prevail ubiquitously and without any free zones. The new power, with respect to which nothing else is going to be anarchic, does not accept the existence of entities that are not so in the form of merchandise and exchange value: “Power,” Pasolini explains, “has decided to be permissive because only a permissive society can be a consumer society.” Man himself, reduced to the rank of consumer, ends up being himself consumed by the techno-capitalist apparatus.
Diego Fusaro is professor of History of Philosophy at the IASSP in Milan (Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies) where he is also scientific director. He is a scholar of the Philosophy of History, specializing in the thought of Fichte, Hegel, and Marx. His interest is oriented towards German idealism, its precursors (Spinoza) and its followers (Marx), with a particular emphasis on Italian thought (Gramsci or Gentile, among others). he is the author of many books, including Fichte and the Vocation of the Intellectual, The Place of Possibility: Toward a New Philosophy of Praxis, and Marx, again!: The Spectre Returns. [This article appears courtesy of Posmodernia].
Featured: Untitled, by Zdzisław Beksiński; painted in 1978.
For more than 30 years, Mikko Paunio has studied the new-old nature pantheism that was born in the UN framework, with its partners the Club of Rome and the World Economic Forum. This religion has largely replaced Christianity in Western countries. Nature pantheism specifically draws from the “wisdom” of theosophy, which is based on the esotericism and occultism of the world’s most famous con artist, Madame Blavatsky, who claimed to have discovered the “lost truth” that unites world religions.
Many Christians around the world have been worried about the rise of nature pantheism for decades and have harshly criticized church fathers who have stumbled into the new religion, such as the Pope. As an agnostic and a former long-term social democrat, Mr. Paunio finds myself in allegiance with these Christians, because these Christians do not mix faith and reality like nature believers do.
This is the story of how the wacko Temple overlords of Davos (the WEF) took over the world and how the coming winter’s trials, arising from Europe’s green energy reality, and how the trials will trash these wackos’ Great Environment Narrative.
This article was originally given on October 1, 2022, as a commissioned presentation in Finnish, at Mediapolis Tampere, in a Symposium entitled, “Salattu valta”[“Occult Power”].
Esotericists Participate in Social Discussions Covertly, Lest their Hoax-Thinking be Revealed
In the mid-1980s, I did my doctoral dissertation on vaccination compliance and vaccination coverage in the MMR project. The MMR project eliminated measles, mumps and rubella from Finland. In the last part of my dissertation, we sent a letter to the parents of 70,000 unvaccinated children, in which we detailed the aforementioned diseases and their public health significance. Within a week, Helsingin Sanomat (Finland’s The Guardian) published a letter to the editor written by an unknown lady stating that the MMR vaccination is unnecessary, because recent studies have shown that tenderness towards children raises antibodies against these diseases. A few years later, I sat on the Helsinki Health Board as a social democrat politician with the husband of the woman in question, among others. Both he and his wife were esotericists and occultists and had adopted the cult of Rudolf Steiner i.e., Anthroposophy. Later I found out that the author of the letter has translated a large amount of German anthroposophical medical literature into Finnish, including crystal, zone, aroma, and other homeopathy-like therapies. In effect, the occultists have very well positioned themselves—not only in Finland but in the whole world—and that their influence is enormous, considering that in my dissertation I showed that their share of parents was only one tenth of one percent.
Occultists always operate surreptitiously, i.e., they rarely reveal in public their real beliefs, because the justifications for their policy recommendations are so irrational that it is better to be silent about them. However, they make mistakes in the public sphere from time to time, which eventually turns the public against them. Helsingin Sanomat’s readers never got to know the background and motives behind the letter.
The Thinking of Occultists is Based on Nonsense Dressed up as Science
The Austrian mystic Rudolf Steiner, who died in 1926, saw a vision in one of his inner-space flights, and told about his vision in his 1910 lecture in Hamburg, “Natural and Accidental Illness in Relationship to Karma;” that it is favourable, in terms of an individual’s soul journey, that the body contracts measles during childhood. Due to the extremely high contagiousness of measles, it has had an even greater influence in reducing the size of the populations in the history of mankind than the more deadly smallpox, which was less contagious and occurred later and less frequently in life than measles. The aforementioned letter-writer’s whimsical beliefs and their background caught my attention, as a measles expert, and which led to a decades-long interest in the irrational thinking of occultists and the social dangers associated with it.
According to historian Anna Bramwell, a third of the Nazi inner circle were anthroposophists and that greenness was an essential part of the Nazi ideology (Figure 1). A representative figure of the Nazi faction, August Haussleiter, in the first party congress of the German Greens, was chosen to its first presidium. During the party conference in Offenbach in 1979 Haussleiter crafted the politically significant green operational theses (ecology, social, grassroot democracy, non-violence) , which the Finnish Greens copied into their own programs as such, as did other green parties around the world.
Figure 1. August Haussleiter (right), a representative of the Nazi faction, in the first meeting, in 1979, in Offenbach, of The Greens, became the chairman of the German Green Party along with Petra Kelly and Herbert Norman. Haussleiter wrote the politically significant green operational theses (ecology, social, grass root democracy, non-violence), which the Finnish Greens, along with other Green parties around the world, also copied into their programs as such. (From Mikko Paunio’s newest book,Hourulan väen ilmastovallankumous [Climate Revolution by the Nuthouse Folks], 2019). Cartoon Credit: Mika Rantanen.
Anthroposophy is often promoted as being science, even though it is nonsense. In what follows, I will cover a lot of things, the essence of which is that ultimately global agendas based on esotericism and occultism or, more simply, the new nature pantheism, are nuts and therefore socially dangerous. Thus, for example, the policy demand of the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church, which it has imposed on itself i.e., carbon neutrality by 2030, is ultimately cruel and unethical, as I will show.
The Environmental Policies of the UN, the Club of Rome and the World Economic Forum are Esoteric Nonsense
The justifications of the UN and the World Economic Forum’s anti-enlightenment global policies, aimed at subjugating people, are dressed in the form of science, even though they are based on esotericism and the occult and are therefore only the irrational thinking of fools. The central tenets of environment, i.e., climate change and loss of nature, have been credibly dressed in the form of science with the help of the mainstream media. However, the key actors of the World Economic Forum have made big mistakes over the past few years, which will ultimately compromise their pseudo-science narrative of doom and gloom.
Back in 1991, in my first book, Vihreä valhe [The Green Lie], I made the observation that a large part of the activists of the neo-Malthusian Green anti science movement were attracted to anthroposophy or the more original occult thought, i.e., theosophy. Member of the European Parliament and Vice President of the European Parliament Heidi Hautala (Green League) was, for example, the long-time editorial secretary of the theosophical magazine Ruusu Risti, and Pekka Haavisto (Green League) and Finland’s current foreign minister—who has admitted that he was fascinated by Rudolf Steiner’s The Gospel of St John, a work that has nothing to do—despite its name—with Christianity. Anthroposophy separated from Theosophy about 120 years ago, forming its own occultist sect.
Esoteric: Personal. Occult: Hidden or Secret
What is esotericism and occultism? Esoteric means personal, which was described by the singer Pekka Streng, who died young, in his song “Inside me, I found the gate” from 1970. Divinity is in man himself, which can be found through contemplation and meditation with inner-space flights. As an agnostic and as a secular person, I find myself on the same front with devout Christians, because these Christians don’t mix religion and reality like the WEF occultists do, and because I believe these wacko temple overlords are very dangerous folks.
The origin of the emerging nature pantheism, can be found in the esoteric fabrications of the world’s most famous deceiver ever, Madame Blavatsky, at the latter half of the 19th century, although esotericism has itself a long history dating back to the Kabbalah. Blavatsky lied that she had been to Tibet and had found the long-lost truth there with the help of local gurus. With the help of her truths, she held spiritualistic sessions for people who lost their loved ones, where they contacted the other side, or did masterful eye-rolling tricks, believing that she was capable of miracles. She was finally caught when a professional British magician named John Maskelyne exposed Madame’s tricks to the whole world in 1912 with his book The Fraud of Modern “Theosophy” Exposed: A Brief History of the Greatest Imposture Ever Perpetrated Under the Cloak of Religion. However, the hype sold and many Finnish artists were also in love with Madame Blavatsky, such as Akseli Gallen Kallela.
The Covert Influence of Esotericists
When I was a young medical researcher, I became one of the secretaries of the Prime Minister’s Energy Committee in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident in Finland. I myself and the other secretaries had to read an endless handwritten stream-of-consciousness from a committee member called Pentti Malaska, professor of future studies at Turku University of Economics and Business. He was later revealed to have been an occultist. Malaska was also Finland’s Mr. Club of Rome, in the Finnish Chapter of the Club of Rome. In the early 1990s, Malaska had almost an unlimited access to Finnish mainstream media as an energy policy expert, and he was perhaps the most central player when the new 5th nuclear power plant crashed in 1993 in a parliamentary vote. All his handwritten antinuclear comments were nonsensical and useless to us secretaries when we wrote a report to support the conclusions of the Energy Committee released in 1988. The final report of the committee laid the foundations so that Finland decided to accelerate her nuclear program in 2002, despite heavy antinuclear campaigning by the Green League and its allies.
The Wacko Ideas of Well-Known Finnish Futurists
Pentti Malaska, who passed away in 2012, was the chairman of the World Future Research Association in the 1990s. He spoke in 1997 at the association’s Brisbane meeting in Australia. In his speech, he predicted, for example, the emergence of a non-carbon-based new machine Man and made a forecast that the Internet will become the revolutionizing quantum brain of global consciousness. In dressing this theosophical esotericism in new transhumanist patterns and clothes, Pentti Malaska’s fellow esotericist and self-professed economist Paul Wildman, who has been involved in the UN future research programs, further developed Malaska’s ideas by quoting Malaska on a transhumanist platform.
Figure 2. The UN and Finland’s future research is a sandbox for occult mystics. (Figure is from Paunio’s newest book, Hourulan väen ilmastovallankumous [Climate Revolution by the Nuthouse Folks], 2019). Cartoon Credit: Mika Rantanen.
Wildman created four new machine-human categories for transhumanists which, according to Wildman, they come from outer space: 1) Etorgs, 2) Macrorgs, 3) MVorgs and 4) Psyorgs. Etorgs are lizard-like human-hostile extraterrestrial organisms known from Hollywood films, i.e., classic UFOs, Macrorgs are perhaps even galactic life entities according to the Gaia theory, which classifies the Earth as a living organism. MVorgs are apparently micro-life forms, born from bits of consciousness, and finally Psyorgs are angels, draculas and the like, born from the existence of non-material consciousness. Let us remember that Rudolf Steiner presented the true spiritual order of the world, which included angels, seraphim, cherubim, luciferic spirits, astral storms and etheric bodies.
The current dominant religion of Western industrialized countries, i.e., nature pantheism is based on esotericism and occultism, and has been promoted in the Club of Rome, the World Economic Forum and in the UN for decades.
Nature pantheism, which has become a political state religion in Western countries, has had a strong hold from the beginning, in the UN framework of sustainable development and its supporting partners, such as the World Economic Forum or the Club of Rome.
The movement that led to the current neo-Malthusian green dystopian development got a major kick-off by the Club of Rome with the famous 1972 report, The Limits to Growth, which predicted world destruction (Figure 3). The founder of the Club of Rome, the wealthy Italian industrialist Aurelio Peccei, was an occultist and esotericist. For this reason, it is not at all surprising that esotericism has been rampant in the Finnish section of Club of Rome, whose many members have been awarded Aurelio Peccei medals.
Aurelio Peccei, Theosophist
Aurelio Peccei’s 1977 book, The Human Quality, reveals his worldview based on Theosophy and the discovery of the inner self, like the songwriter Pekka Streng. According to Peccei’s understanding, the crisis of humanity is related to man’s inability to understand his role in a changed world. We are neither psychologically nor functionally adapted to life in our new demanding role. According to Peccei, the Achilles heel of humanity is finding a place in a renewed world. For Peccei, the solution to global problems can be found inside man and not outside him. The change that takes place from within a benevolent, albeit destructively behaving person and the spiritualization of his human image, contains the keys to the solution.
Figure 3. The founder of the Club of Rome, an Italian industrialist Aurelio Peccei, was a theosophist, who had stumbled upon Madame Blavatsky’s hoax. (From Paunio’s newest book, Hourulan väen ilmastovallankumous [Climate Revolution by the Nuthouse Folks], 2019). Cartoon Credit: Mika Rantanen.
The new humanism was enough for Peccei, unlike his close collaborator, Ervin Laszlo, who in his careless enthusiasm for transhumanism got sidetracked and eventually had to found his own club. No worries, because this promoter of humbug was later chosen to become scientific advisor to the Director-General of the UN Educational and Scientific Organization, UNESCO. Peccei’s new humanism promoted the distribution of wealth from north to south, in the name of world peace. He also emphasized reducing the powers of states and transferring it to supranational bodies such as the UN. Peccei envisioned a new kind of governing system for the whole world and considered the sovereignty of states to be a big problem. He strongly believed that the surrounding reality forced a person’s inner change and salvation; but he believed that the inner change of a person would take decades before the masses would be taught to live as well-behaving citizens in the Global Empire of Man dreamed up by Peccei.
From the beginning, the World Economic Forum committed itself to promoting the neo-Malthusian environmental agenda as a partner of the United Nations, idealizing poverty and borrowing ideas from the Club of Rome.
Klaus Schwab, the current head of the World Economic Forum, founded his organization on the recommendation of Henry Kissinger, the economic Nobel laureate John Kenneth Galbraith and the real Dr. Strangelove, Herman Kahn, in 1971, apparently partly relying on CIA grants already in the mid-1960s, according to investigative journalist John Vedmore in his recent long article, “Dr. Klaus Schwab or: How the CFR Taught Me to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” The original purpose of the WEF was to secure US hegemony in Western Europe.
Early on, Klaus Schwab recruited the by far ever most influential unelected UN environment official, Maurice Strong, a wealthy, un-educated Canadian industrialist (1929–2015), to head the WEF foundation. Maurice Strong was THE central figure in pushing forward the sustainable development agenda since the UN’s first environmental summit in Stockholm in 1972 (Figure 4). He was also an inveterate occultist and esotericist.
Figure 4. The UN’s most influential unelected environment official Maurice Strong, who died in 2015, was appointed as director of the WEF Foundation early on. He was an inveterate occultist and esotericist. He acquired one million dollars from the UN food for oil program meant for the children of Iraq without consequences. (From Paunio’s newest book, Hourulan väen ilmastovallankumous [Climate Revolution by the Nuthouse Folks], 2019). Cartoon Credit: Mika Rantanen.
Baca Grande: The Wizard’s Big Mistake
The actual slip-up happened in 1990, when a Canadian journalist named Daniel Wood got to spend a week at the home of Maurice Strong and his wife Hanne on the Baca Grande farm in the state of Colorado, USA. Wood wrote a long essay about the visit in the Canada West magazine, entitled, “The Wizard of Baca Grande.” It turned out that Strong and his wife had bought the Baca Grande farm in the southern part of the state of Colorado in 1978 and had built a nature pantheistic sanctuary of all the religions of the world, i.e., Theosophy, in this once one of the largest ranches in the USA. Wood describes what he saw: “All over the landscape there are signs of this latest utopian settlement: a sophisticated Catholic Carmelite monastery; A $175,000 solar-powered Hindu temple; a remarkable mustard-yellow hut; an underground Zen Buddhist center combined with organic gardens; a house containing crystals” used in therapy by anthroposophists, etc.
The most amazing things were revealed in the conversations held for a whole week. Like Peccei, Strong considered that the most important frontline in correcting development was the competition between the innermost of human beings’ and the cosmos. But that was just the warm-up. The article revealed that in the early days, when Strong was walking on Baca Grande with a journalist named Bill Moyers, they had seen a sage bush spontaneously flare up in front of them. This, according to Wood, was a divine omen to Strong that Baca Grande would have an important role in saving the planet. According to Wood, Strong also mischievously developed a game in his mind, in which he would use mercenaries to kidnap the participants of the Davos Economic Forum and hold them hostage and end the planet’s “consumption party.” He doesn’t have to do this anymore, because the top leaders of corporate life have decided—though forced by community SDG directives in the European Union—in their passion for responsibility to stop people’s consumption parties and join hands with the WEF in a joint world management project against the rest of us. Strong’s widow Hanne is a mysticist who imagines herself to be a born-again Indian. Maurice Strong used a middleman to acquire $1 million from money meant for Iraqi children and avoided prison, unlike his middleman.
Global Politics of the Day via Klaus Schwab’s 2016 Big Mistake
Well, now the table is set for a more day-specific discussion, but before that, we’ll glance to 2016, when Klaus Schwab made a really big mistake. In January 2016, he appeared in a television interview with RTS Suisse in Switzerland, where he openly revealed his crazy esoteric occultism.
Anyone can watch that interview with Klaus Schwab because it has been published by so many YouTube channels or on TikTok. In it, Klaus Schwab tells how the microchipping of humanity will begin in ten years. At the beginning of the interview, Schwab says that microchips are first placed in people’s clothes, then under the skin and in the brain, and finally with the help of microchips implanted in the brain, people can be connected to the digital world, i.e., the Internet. According to Schwab, this creates a fusion of the physical, digital and biological worlds.
The interviewer asked to understand Schwab’s thoughts that “we are without feelings naturally connected to the digital world like this?” Schwab replies: “Yes, you speak and say, I want to connect with everyone now.” He continued: “First, we have personalized bots, and I saw Mr. Zuckerberg predicting that by the end of this year we will have such a robot serving him as a butler.” Interviewer: “Like in Downton Abbey, will we have personal butlers and servants or slaves in the future?” Schwab: “Yes, but there is a difference. This AI-equipped servant learns and is thus your intellectual partner in addition to providing physical assistance.”
Everything that Schwab mentioned on Swiss TV in 2016 is simply unethical science fiction. No such technology exists, nor will it ever exist. It’s just a cranky old man’s cranky thinking based on inner-space flights and ideas derived from occult rituals.
Klaus Schwab’s First Lieutenant Yuval Harari’s Big Mistakes, and His Science Façade Created by the WEF
Before I discuss the errors or slip-ups of Klaus Schwab’s top lieutenant, Yuval Harari, I will give an example of how the WEF deliberately created a fake natural science CV for Yuval Harari, who is actually a historian (Figure 5). The profile of globally super popular Yuval Harari, an Israeli thinker, can be found on the WEF website. In it, Harari’s natural science backdrops have been carefully crafted and displayed on the WEF website. He has been made to appear knowledgeable about the natural sciences by mentioning that he has written for the world’s leading natural science publication, Nature.
Figure 5. Yuval Harari is Klaus Schwab’s “first lieutenant” and a transhumanist and irresponsible science populist and storyteller, Figure according to critique directed at him in July 2022. Here he is giving a TED-X lecture in London, which has over nine million views, and counting on Youtube.
My surprise was great, because he actually has an article in Nature, which is titled, “Reboot for the AI revolution.” When writing to the science community, he does not tell the fantastic story he told in the spring of 2020 on the BBC’s Hard Talk and CBS’s 60-Minutes programs that the elite have microchipped people with vaccinations in order to get them under surveillance and under the control of mighty people. Of course, no such technology exists except in the wet-dreams of esotericists, or as they now call themselves, “transhumanists.” If Harari had written in Nature the same lines of thought as given in the aforementioned TV appearances, they would never have been published in Nature, and if they had been published, he would have received a tsunami of letters to the editor. Harari’s Nature article is just flat-out artificial intelligence hype, which everyone can get to know easily by Googling it. In his Nature article, he doesn’t get any closer to Schwab’s and his own fantastical ideas than this:
“So computers could come to solve problems and even analyze human emotions much better than humans, without ever developing emotions.”
In the fashionable WEF or TED-X seminars, to journalists and politicians and to the general public, and in the aforementioned TV programs, Harari delves into the nonsensical—that the scientific problems of microchipping by vaccinations to organize mass surveillance of citizens have been solved with the huge advances in science. When writing to the scientific community in Nature he does not come closer than this to his fantastic storytelling to politicians, journalists and the general public:
“The challenges posed by the integration of information technology and biotechnology in the 21st century are undoubtedly greater than the challenges posed by steam engines, railways, electricity and fossil fuels.”
In the last sentence of the essay, he then aligns with his master and his master’s ideas of doom and gloom:
“Given the enormous destructive power of our modern civilization, we cannot afford failed models, world wars and bloody revolutions. We have to do better this time.”
Klaus Schwab: It is Important to Connect People’s Brains with the internet
In many YouTube videos, Schwab’s comments on the EU Commission’s microchip initiative to Ursula von der Leyen at the WEF 2022 Davos meeting can be found. Schwab emphasized that it is important to create a connection between the human brain and the digital world.
I am not at all surprised that tens if not even hundreds of millions of people now believe that the elite are planning something sinister for the ordinary people who have, for example, refused Covid vaccinations for “reasonable” reasons. One also has to wonder that such recklessness insanity effectively has also infested mainstream media and the politicians in power.
Through Klaus Schwab’s Young Leaders program, the WEF has infiltrated Finland’s cabinet, as the current Prime Minister and Finance Minister are now students in the program (Figure 6).
Figure 6.The Prime Minister of Finland (left) and the Minister of Finance (right) of Finland as student at Klaus Schwab’s Young Leaders program. Photo: Finnish parliament website.
On February 1, 2022, prominent Scottish social media journalist James Melville tweeted with a photo: “So we invade governments,”
Here is Klaus Schwab, in 2017, discussing how the WEF has penetrated the governments of various countries with the help of its Young Leaders—such as Justin Trudeau.
As mentioned, both of Finland’s top young politicians have been selected to attend Klaus Schwab’s training: the World Economic Forum’s Young Leaders program. The length of the training program is five years, after which they are accepted as alumni in this elite group of influencers of WEF. According to Wikipedia, there are 800 WEFs Young Leaders around the world.
The Circular Economy: The Downfall of Modern Industrial Society
Real Clear Energy, a prominent American energy policy discussion outlet, approached me in August and asked me to write a story of Finland’s alleged circular economy miracle and what is meant by the concept of circular economy. With this article, I proved how the World Economic Forum used Finland’s Innovation Fund SITRA and at the time Vice-President of the EU Commission Jyrki Katainen to promote Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset project, both in the EU and worldwide.
In 2016, SITRA, which is subordinate to the Finnish Parliament, delivered a fabricated report on Finland’s circular economy miracle and created the current circular economy concept for the World Economic Forum, which is harmful to the environment, to human health and the economy. By exploiting this concept, the European Union Commission made presentations to the EU legislators, e.g., the green finance taxonomy regulation, Jyrki Katainen’s circular economy package and the massive Fit for 55 climate package, which is still mainly in the hands of EU legislators, and which ultimately will lead to Soviet-style five-year planning and the downfall of modern industrial society.
The 2016 Report of SITRA on Finland’s 21st Century Circular Economy Miracle was Fake News
For 20 years, I have written more than a hundred official evaluations and comments on EU Commission’s waste legislation initiatives and its implementation in an EU member state. I have witnessed from my vantage point the bankruptcy of Finland’s circular economy and green waste policy in the 21st century, and how the forces behind rational waste policy finally got their way and a comprehensive municipal and industrial solid waste incineration plant network was built in Finland similar to that in Denmark and Sweden. This network is currently operating at maximum capacity due to the energy shortages caused by the green policies aggravated by the war in Ukraine. All that remains of Finland’s circular economy are smoking ruins. However, it will has to be faked because of the binding but unenforceable utopian circular economy legislation inspired by Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset.
How the Scenarios of the Globalists will Collapse in the Coming Winter
Thanks to the unconditional support given to them by the mainstream media, WEF’s insane global policies that are meant to impoverish us and aggravate environmental problems, have gained ground in all Western institutions, including protestant churches and the Catholic Church (Figure 7). For example, the Pope announced in his 2015 green Laudato Si encyclical that he had joined the crackpot temple overlords of WEF.
Figure 7. Eco-Pope Francis signed the green Laudato Si Encyclical in 2015. The Pope made a brilliant move to make himself an identity politician, which turned eyes from the Church’s horrific pedophile scandal and made him immune to scandals: “Brilliant idea, identity politician. No pedophile problems.” (From Paunio’s newest book, Hourulan väen ilmastovallankumous [Climate Revolution by the Nuthouse Folks], 2019). Cartoon Credit: Mika Rantanen.
The war against energy production launched by the Club of Rome in 1972 will have its grim final show this winter. This owes to Vladimir Putin’s successful attempts to pay for anti-fossil fuel campaigns in Europe in the 2010s and after Joe Biden came to power also in the US. These prevented fossil energy investments. Just 15 years ago, Europe produced more natural gas than Russia. This winter, Europe is completely at the mercy of Russia, because defenseless Europe, took the decision to impose energy sanctions on Russia.
The aforementioned big mistakes of Klaus Schwab and Yuval Harari, combined with the political turmoil during the coming winter, will undermine the dominance of the crackpot temple overlords and their lackeys. Cold and hunger can make people see through the lies of the environment narrative that the current mainstream media brings home to us every day. The earth’s climate is not recklessly changing and we are not threatened by nature-loss.
The whole world has begun to wake up to the WEF’s scandals of which the mainstream media is still silent and about all the appalling stories—which tells us a lot.
TikTok has a bunch of selected video clips about Schwab’s dreams to microchip the brains of the rest of us and to connect us to the internet. Above Schwab’s microchip TikTok microchip quotes it reads “29.5M views” (it is 64.5 million, and counting).
As far as I know, Finland’s responsible media have not told the Finns that Schwab has bragged that he chooses young politicians to join the WEF in order to gain influence. Finland’s mainstream media have also not told that Klaus Schwab wants to microchip the brains of our people so that he can monitor, control and influence our mental movements.
No such microchip technology exists and the reason why Schwab tells such lies is because of his own esoteric and occult interests.
The 2022 Davos Meeting Discussed Taking Away People’s Cars and Forcing Them to Eat Bugs
Why doesn’t Helsingin Sanomat (Finland’s The Guardian) and Yleisradio (Finland’s BBC) report on Klaus Schwab’s irrational beliefs, but otherwise report comprehensively how climate change is being discussed at the World Economic Forum? In my opinion, this irrefutably proves that the mainstream media is tuned against us ordinary people. Last spring’s WEF meeting discussed how to take people’s cars away and how to force them to eat bugs. Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto (Green League) and Minister of Transport and Communications Timo Harakka (Social Democrat) represented the State of Finland at Davos.
The Mainstream Media is Against Us the People
Why has Helsingin Sanomat and Yleisradio been silent about Yuval Harari’s irresponsible and nonsensical talk of microchipping people with vaccinations, even though such microchips do not exist. They are just the wild wet-dreams of the esoteric occult sect, the transhumanists, rampant in the upper echelons of the World Economic Forum. Harari’s writings have recently been harshly criticized in Current Affairs in July this year with notably few if any follow-up stories. Harari’s ideas were described briefly as irresponsible scientific populism in the newspaper called Tekniikka ja Talous also in Finland.
We the people can get the evidence of the genuine WEF “secret” society of wacko Temple overlords easily with the click of a mouse and by googling. However, we are accused in mainstream media of being “conspiracy theorists” when we wonder about the weirdness of the WEF. In the summer, my brother and I bought t-shirts from the US, that read: “Give us new conspiracies, because the old ones have come true.” There is nothing secret in WEF’s “secret” alliance against us, the people than the fact that the mainstream western media wants to keep the WEF a secret from us ordinary people, which of course will never happen.
The WEF’s Cruel Human Experiment in Sri Lanka
I’m not surprised that hundreds of millions of people think the elite are planning something sinister for us and have thus refused Covid-19 vaccinations for “common sense” reasons. One also has to wonder that the strange WEF hype infects the mainstream media and the politicians in power.
A good friend of mine sent me a link to the 2016 Sri Lanka Economic Forum website. The economic forum in question was one of the regional forums of the World Economic Forum, where George Soros and other actors of the global economy planned the green inclusive sustainable development of Sri Lanka, which—as it turned out—was neither. The academic profile of the meeting was polished, e.g., by engaging Harvard University in the meeting and inviting climate change activist, money printing advocate and economic Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz to be the speaker. The inclusive vision of the meeting extended to 2023, when manna was supposed to rain from the sky in Sri Lanka and macroeconomic stability was supposed to prevail.
In 2019, newly elected Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa—whose political party is described as socially right-wing and economically left-wing—unveiled a grand “Green New Deal” and his vision for Sri Lanka. In many respects, it resembles the European Union’s Great Reset, i.e., the aforementioned community legislation enacted and still to be enacted, which the European Central Bank has supported by printing money. The Sri Lankan Disaster was ultimately caused by the policy directed through the UN and the WEF, which has aimed to steer countries towards meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development so-called SDG goals.
For several years, I have written essays and reports and given presentations in English about the destructiveness of these SDG policies, especially for the poorest countries, based on my work in the World Bank. Particularly destructive is the SDG6 policy, from which the letter H, for “hygiene,” has been dropped. Promoting hygiene, as was done in rich countries during the past century, made it possible to eradicate intergenerational under nutrition, which is a devastating public health problem in poor countries, and now affects 800 million people. Hygiene promotion does not suit those who believe in Malthusian ideas and nature pantheism, because it would require the extension of electricity and water supply to billions of poor people.
Sri Lanka’s Green Transition Reminiscent of the EU and US Green Transitions or Build Back Better Policies
The main cause of the massive disaster was the complete greening of Sri Lankan agriculture. At the beginning of March 2022, the catastrophic consequences of this greening were updated on the pages of Foreign Policy, i.e., four months before the final collapse. It appears from this article that in April 2021, Rajapaksa’s government implemented its green government program and banned the imports and use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides nationwide and ordered the country’s two million farmers to switch to organic farming. The program was called “a vision of splendor and prosperity,” just as now in the EU we are being sold the Fit for 55 Climate Package and the absurd regulations of the circular economy with the promise of an open and brilliant future.
After seven months of absurdity, Rajapaksa’s government had to back down on the green agricultural policy, but permanent damage had already been caused to food security and Sri Lanka had to buy expensive rice from the world market, which contributed to the macroeconomic crisis. At the end of last June, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) visited the country. During the visit, future reforms were agreed upon, with which the collapsed macroeconomic stability will be restored with a loan granted by the IMF. Yuval Harari’s “Useless People”
The catastrophic events in Sri Lanka and the involvement of the WEF in creating this cruel human experiment have made many people wonder, what the ultimate goals of the world’s power elite really are? Now many commentators have drawn attention to the fact that Yuval Harari has spoken and written a lot about useless people. Conspiracy theorists and devout Christians in the US have had an unfriendly eye for a long time on the mysterious Georgia Guidestones, built in 1980, with writing in English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese and Russian, as well as Babylonian, classical Greek, Sanskrit and ancient Egyptian. These writings were meant for the people after the end of the world, which was labelled as the future Age of Reason. The stone was destroyed by blowing it up last July. Its first wisdom read:
“Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.”
We the People Need to Wake Up—and Fast!
I don’t come from a religious family, but from a family that has supported social democrats for three generations. After a long and varied consideration, I made the decision to join the Finns Party, because in recent years the far left thinking has become anti-democratic and finally has become so repulsive that I resigned from Finland’s Social Democratic Party in January 2021, after having paying membership fees since 1977. I have a long career as a skeptical researcher. Science is not a faith but fundamentally based on doubts and questions. I have come to the conclusion that democracies and nation states are threatened with destruction—if the citizens do not wake up to protest the supremacy of these insane temple overlords. I’m sure that next winter’s trials resulting from decades of green energy policies and the revelation of the stupidity of the WEF’s idiots to an ever-wider group of people, even by force with the help of social media, will lead to an awakening.
We the people, ordinary workers and entrepreneurs who love their country and family, must wake up to defend enlightenment, freedom and modern society. Only the pursuit of the good, starting from one’s own starting points, can displace these human experiments conducted from abroad. Finland, as a society in its own right and as historically dominated by other nations, is now a solid platform for some kind of crazy experiments, unless our decision makers are aware of the enormous dangers associated with them.
Mikko Paunio, MD, MHS is Adjunct professor at the University of Helsinki, Department of Public Health. This article comes from a presentation in Finnish in Tampere (Mediapolis), given on October 1, 2022, at a seminar called “Salattu valta” (“Occult power”) which was organized by Jäävuori (Iceberg). The title of the original presentation was, “WEF: nuoret johtajat ja Klaus Schwabin ohjailu” (“The Young Global Leaders and Klaus Schwab’s Steering”).
The Atlantic region is characterized by economic space, where the virtual financial economy is practiced, born from unbacked Dollars issued by the FED to cover the U.S. trade deficit that has existed since 1971. The high talents that govern American finance have forgotten the main economic discovery of Adam Smith: that the source of wealth is Labor. Labor reproducing useful goods or services. Well said.
The unlimited issuance of inorganic money by States has created a mass of money much greater than the Gross World Product that circulates through the financial markets with total independence of the flow of international trade in goods and services. In 1818, the famous Genevan economist Charles Sismondi, the true continuator of Adam Smith, had already discovered that excess of money in the markets created over-investment, which in turn created over-production, with which he explained the periodic bubble crises that shake the Anglo-American capitalist economies.
These bubbles come from a hallucination of the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Say, a hallucination endorsed by David Ricardo, the greatest theorist of Anglo-American-style capitalism. Say’s nonsense says that all production creates its own market, for which it is necessary to resort to Dumping, which characterizes Anglo-American export trade. In the 19th century, dumping of British textiles in India; in the 20th century, dumping of subsidized agricultural products (cotton) by the United States on international stock exchanges and on the markets of developing countries. Dumping favored by the waiver of safeguards and countervailing tariffs against unfair trade implemented by the United States in its “Regional Free Trade Agreements.” It is no coincidence that the economic world based on the dollar coincides with the world of NATO which seeks to remedy the collapse of its financial economy based on virtual money by seizing Russia’s resources.
It is also no coincidence that the BRICS group is made up of countries that stand out as players in the Real Economy, which produces goods and services that come from useful labor, which, as Adam Smith discovered, is the original source of wealth.
A recent report published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) points out that six years after the outbreak of the global crisis, global economic growth remains low: 2.5 percent in 2014. According to the authors of the report, attempts to return to traditional business practices could not and cannot eliminate the root causes of the crisis. The financial sector continues to prevail over the real economy, wages as a percentage of GDP are steadily declining, and there is growing inequality in the distribution of wealth and income within and between countries.
The cause of economic disparity between classes and nations is still there—which is the issuance of money that does not come from productive activity but from debt and credit created with a keystroke.
The financial economy since 1971 is a parasite of the real economy and parasites kill each other to survive.
This article appears through the kind courtesy of El Manifesto.
Featured: 60s Harvest, by Steven Binks; painted in 1997.
Supposedly, “Goal 8” of the 2030 Agenda aims to combat inequality and promote sustained economic growth. The reference to this sustainable growth quickly ties in with the dogmas of the green and gender agenda.
Social and Inclusive Growth
Growth must be inclusive, i.e., positive discrimination of women (and LGTB collectives and the alphabet crew that follows) must preside over economic policy, because “Goal 5” states as a goal: “Adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls at all levels.” In Spain, the new Equality Plan, devised by Irene Montero and her troupe, will receive 20,319 million euros from the budget, which obviously comes out of the pockets of the middle classes. Despite the rhetorical boasts of more taxes for the rich, the harsh reality is that the largest body of taxpayers belongs to the middle class, which, according to data relating to the last decade, contributed 54.4% of the State’s total income. The rich, those who have more than 150,000 euros of declared income per year, are only 0.24% of the population, and it is the companies, together with the middle class, who bear the tax burden on which public spending is based.
Spain is the country that has increased its tax burden the most during 2020. Tax reforms and the impact of the coronavirus crisis have increased the indicator by 1.9%. We now have a tax burden of 36.6% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), more than three points above the average of the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which remains at 33.5%. This increase in the tax burden is closely linked to the increase in public spending, but does not translate into a substantial improvement in public services. The ideological spending on gender policies sponsored by Agenda 2030 means the waste of 10% of tax revenue. A 10% that impoverishes the middle classes and reduces the competitiveness of Spanish companies.
The trompe l’oeil of feminism 2030, masks the harsh reality that today an ordinary household needs two salaries to be part of the middle class, while in the past it was enough with only one salary. This is the real wage gap. To sustain this set-up that puts capitalist production before the family, and prevents each household from having a comfortable and stable source of income, under the label of inclusive policies, abortion, low birth rates and alternative families are encouraged; which, as in Sweden, lead to growing old in utter loneliness. And these policies, as the communist Pasolini sourly criticized in his day, are the ones defended by the good little boys of the new left.
Sustainable Climate Development
Worse still are the climate policies that Agenda 2030 sponsors in its Goal 13. The apocalyptic discourse of the UN aims to intimidate the population into accepting its global governance policies without complaint: “Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time and its adverse impacts undermine the ability of all countries to achieve sustainable development… The survival of many societies, and of the biological support systems of the planet, is at risk.”
The UN has dared to use a hysterical teenager like Greta Thunberg to spread its climate sophistry: “We need drastic and immediate annual cuts in emissions as the world has never seen before… People in power can continue to live in their bubble full of fantasies, such as eternal growth.” The climate ideology serves to justify anything, as we have seen with the intervention of Gustavo Petro before the UN General Assembly this September: “Cocaine causes minimal deaths and coal and oil can extinguish humanity.” This is not the extravagance of an ultra-left-wing Ibero-American leader, the former member of the terrorist group Movimiento 19 de Abril, is merely endorsing the postulates of the UN, which, through its Secretary General António Guterres, warns us: “Either we stop our addiction to fossils or it will stop us. Stop brutalizing biodiversity, stop committing suicide with carbon, stop treating nature like a toilet.”
Well, under this umbrella of nonsense, a decarbonization policy has been imposed throughout Europe that has led us to the current energy disaster.
To begin with, there is no scientific consensus on the causes and consequences of climate change. In contrast to the IPCC, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which points to humans and their economic activity as directly responsible for climate change, there is another platform of scientists (ICSC, the International Climate Science Coalition) that denies that there is any empirical evidence to prove this hypothesis. And if there is no consensus on the causes, there is even less consensus on the consequences. The IPCC itself has changed its forecasts over the last few years. The truth is that predicting what the climate variation will be in 50 years and its effects on life on Earth is more of a guessing exercise than a scientific certainty, no matter how much the UN, large corporations and mass media sell the opposite to us.
What is undisputed is that the very expensive economic and environmental measures aimed at limiting CO2 emissions in Europe are absurd. The European Union as a whole emits 2,724 million tons of CO2 per year, while China emits 10,065 million tons, India 2,654 million tons and Russia 1,711 million tons. None of these three countries will sacrifice their economies to reduce their emissions. So, we Europeans are, in colloquial parlance, the hangers-on in this whole global warming racket. Reaching 2050 with an emissions cut of around 85 or 95% would cost us Europeans as a whole some 9,699 euros of annual per capita income. Naturally, the distribution of this drop in living standards would not affect everyone equally. Once again, the middle class would be the hardest hit.
It is clear that rising energy costs are putting many SMEs on the brink of being unable to maintain their businesses. But far from giving priority to the real crisis that we are suffering today, (last August 22nd, the market price of natural gas traded on the German THE (Trading Hub Europe) was quoted 1000% higher than a year ago)—the UN keeps insisting on the Race to Zero campaign to eliminate fossil fuels, justifying these measures in the supposed climate crisis of tomorrow. Ursula von der Leyen has just announced that the European Union will not rectify the mistake and will remain stubborn in following the goals of the Agenda 2030, because what we must do is “strive to accelerate the transition away from all imported fuels and develop self-sufficient green technology systems.” It matters little that the gas supply cut-off due to the sanctions imposed on Russia has put the truth on the table and shown that the technological development of renewable energies is still far from being able to produce cheap and sufficient energy to cover all the needs of homes and businesses.
We are not going to analyze the report of the Rand Corporation, the most powerful think tank in the United States, on the double purpose of harming Russia and the Europeans themselves with the economic sanctions imposed by the European Union as a result of the conflict with Ukraine. What is clear is that even the dimmest person is capable of understanding that when the cost of energy skyrockets due to its high cost, producing more at the cheapest possible price helps to reduce this price increase. But the recipe that the European Union is trying to give us is not to recover coal energy production due to the extraordinary circumstances we are going through (it is true that in Spain we could never do so because “smart” Sánchez has blown up the thermal power plants), or at least to give priority to nuclear energy with the same emphasis as renewable energies, rather than collecting “more than 140,000 million euros” in extra funds for governments to pass on to consumers with financial problems. In Germany, however, they have had to put up 8 billion euros to rescue the energy company Uniper. That is to say, the European Union’s stubborn stance on energy matters means higher tariffs for consumers and more taxes, which, of course, will end up being paid by the usual people, the middle classes and SMEs. Nor does it seem very adventurous to say that the famous ecological transition of Agenda 2030 has driven an energy policy that can only be described as a “real plague” for Europe.
Economic Degrowth
In view of the situation that exposes the scam of the green transition, which despite the fact that between 2009 and 2019, as recognized by the UN itself, has invested a whopping 2.6 trillion dollars in renewable energies, without having had the slightest capacity to alleviate the current energy crisis, a new doctrine is emerging to defraud public opinion and advance in the establishment of the new world governance.
Economic growth is incompatible with the already excessive consumption of resources, energy and waste generation, which especially in the higher income countries, i.e., in the West, is causing the problems of ecological unsustainability. This is the new movement to justify the impoverishment of Western societies that is causing the climate policy of Agenda 2030. In another turn of the screw, every day more and more voices are heard from the “progressives” in favor of what is already known as “post-growth,” the theory that tells us that the world must abandon the idea that economies must continue to grow, because growth in itself is harmful.
This theory uses two arguments to convince us that being poorer will make us happier. “You will own and you will be happy,” the Davos Forum announced at its annual meeting in 2020. Of course, as you can well imagine, those who preach this have no intention of getting poorer or seeing their standard of living decrease. As with the communists when it comes to distribution, it is the others who must decrease or have nothing to be happy.
The First Argument is Ecological
Unlimited economic growth is responsible for the planet becoming uninhabitable. “Resource depletion and pollution are starting to set limits, and we need to talk about it,” announced Richard Heinberg, American ecologist and university professor (how could we not). “Supplies are running out, and even if we didn’t have to address the problem of war, it would still happen.” Again, the apocalyptic threat. It is not new; since the 18th century, several variants and versions of Malthusianism have been telling us that the earth’s resources will not be enough to support the growing population. In the 1970s, using Hubbert’s peak theory, we were told that oil reserves would be exhausted by the beginning of the 21st century. Today, when that future has arrived, what is exhausting is the drumbeat to stop using fossil fuels.
Now it turns out that what is incompatible is living “within environmental limits” and maintaining the welfare state of advanced societies. The recipe of the ideologues of degrowth is that the richest countries should apply the Goals of the Agenda 2030 to the hilt and collect more taxes to invest in a greener economy, move forward without ley-up in the energy transition to stop using oil and coal, end carbon emissions and embark on a social engineering operation to change the “chip” of an excessively consumerist population to convince them that impoverishment is necessary to be happy. “Decrease to survive,” because in order to keep our economies growing we would be depleting resources and destroying nature.
Of course, it is a lie that there is a risk of depletion of our resource reserves. There are raw materials, energy sources and crops, which together with technological advances, are enough to keep humanity growing. The crisis we are experiencing, the energy shortages we are suffering, the inflation we are experiencing, have political causes, not eco-planetary ones. Nor is it true that economic growth is the enemy of the environment. It is precisely in those advanced economies of the West where there is more respect for the environment and more measures for the care of nature. The West is blamed, but if we look at the list of the 10 most polluting countries in the world, China appears as the most prominent, followed far behind by the United States, India and Russia. Among these 10 countries, only one European country appears, Germany, in seventh position.
The reality is that economic growth encourages concern for the environment; and, thanks to this growth, advanced societies are increasingly demanding environmentally friendly policies from their leaders. The fact that Bangladesh, Pakistan, Mongolia and Afghanistan are among the most polluted countries in the world indicates that in developing countries, where economic growth is in deficit, there is no such concern for the environment. We are certainly not going to hide the fact that the extraction of raw materials in the third world to feed the growth of the most advanced economies leaves much to be desired in terms of labor rights and care for the environment, but the solution does not lie in the degrowth of advanced societies, but in the growth of backward societies, until a strong middle class is established in them, which, as has happened in the West, demands and promotes policies of stability, which first achieve social improvements and then restore and care for the environment in their production processes.
It is not precisely the same people who have largely caused the current energy crisis by their obsessive fight against carbon emissions, who should now be giving lessons, which, in the end, are nothing more than a flight forward in their hasty and irresponsible green energy transition policies.
The Second Argument is Social
The consumerism on which the Western growth model is based alienates the individual and exacerbates inequalities. The increase in economic wealth would not in itself guarantee an improvement in social objectives, a categorically false assertion that is often found among post-Marxist authors. The generation of wealth results in a higher standard of living for all social strata, as is shown by the per capita income figure, which has increased tenfold between 1750 and 2000. However, inequalities have also decreased, since if we look at the Gini index, which calculates the distribution of income among the entire population and ranges from zero (perfect equality of income between individuals) to one hundred (maximum inequality, in which all income is held by one individual), it has fallen by eight points worldwide. This is clearly not a spectacular advance; inequalities continue to be particularly glaring in the Third World; but also throughout the West and in many emerging countries, the decline is evident. Moreover, the poverty rate in the world has fallen by 80% from 1970 to the present day. No one will deny here that large capitalist corporations benefit from growth, ostensibly increasing their bottom line; but no one with a minimum of intellectual honesty can deny that it contributes significantly to the enlargement of the middle classes, progressively incorporating the poorest into their ranks. Authentic sustainable growth must guarantee this social mobility and promote economic, fiscal and labor policies that seek to expand the middle classes.
From the Great Reset to the Great Impoverishment
Maslow’s famous Pyramid theory defines a hierarchy of human needs and argues that as people satisfy their most basic needs, they develop higher needs and desires. In short, when growth is generated, when more wealth is made available to people and their lower subsistence needs are met, social progress is driven. On the contrary, degrowth is a regressive force that prevents the development of the individual and the satisfaction of his higher needs, pushing him to focus on satisfying his most basic needs.
This is the Great Reset they have in store for us. The pillar of prosperity in Western societies is the middle class. Its growth stagnated in Europe in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis; and the pandemic coupled with the current inflationary crisis is reducing it by leaps and bounds. Middle-class households’ consumer spending, especially on energy, has risen much faster than their incomes. At the same time, their taxes and social contributions, far from decreasing, are increasing every day, because the policies of Agenda 2030 do not loosen spending, especially in the green transition, and demand more resources in social aid to cover the enormous damage they are causing to the lower classes.
The supporters of degrowth are in luck—the purchasing power of the Western middle classes, according to various economic analysts, will decrease by 25% due to the consequences of the pandemic, inflation and the energy crisis. It will be this reduction in demand that will succeed in curbing inflation over the next few years. The result will be a society with more inequality and less middle class—the globalist elites will achieve their desired degrowth and the dependence of large masses of population on the State. A State disconnected from the national community and dominated by large capitalist corporations and a socialist-style bureaucracy. In addition, technological advances will soon make possible a social control that Orwell or Huxley only vaguely dared imagine.
The Ministry of Social Rights and Agenda 2030 has just launched an institutional publicity campaign for Agenda 2030 under the slogan “Enough dystopias. Let’s re-imagine a better future.” That better future, thanks to the elimination of the middle classes with their critical spirit, their initiative and their freedom, will not only be a mass society, saturated with media messages that build an artificial narrative from above, as Jean Baudrillard denounced, but thanks to the virtual reality that will soon reach us, it will allow a daily life disconnected from the true reality, which will erase any threat of dissidence. A better future is certainly on the horizon… for the elites who aspire to world governance.
Mateo Requesens is a judge in Spain. [This article appears courtesy of Posmodernia].
The EU is pursuing one of the most radical climate change policies of the major CO2 emitters, having committed itself to reducing its net greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels, and to eliminating such emission by 2050. To achieve this, the EU, unlike China, India or Russia, is willing to sacrifice its economy, its industry and its middle classes to advance climate ideology. Reaching zero emissions by 2050 would require a decrease of 1.4 GtCO2 each year, comparable to the fall observed in 2020 emissions because of COVID-19, to achieve which would imply no more and no less than the paralysis of all Western economies.
At this COP27 climate summit, the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, once again resorted to his usual apocalyptic discourse to say that “we are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.” With the gall of the best trickster at the carnival, Guterres said that “to avoid that terrible fate, all G-20 countries must accelerate their transition now, in this decade.” The same time span, a decade, in which the apostles of the climate religion went from talking about a new Ice Age to a dangerous warming of the planet, between the 1970s and 1980s.
Unmoved by the serious energy emergency we are experiencing, those attending COP27 did not spend a minute reflecting on the need for abundant and cheap energy to maintain the welfare states in developed countries and to promote economic progress in developing countries. Renewable energies today are neither the cheapest nor do they produce enough to supply the demand of homes and industry. What is urgent today is not to save the planet from a climate change whose origins and consequences are unknown. What is really urgent is to solve general inflation and, in particular, food and energy price rises to avoid a global recession.
Regardless, COP27 went ahead with what is undoubtedly the biggest scam in the history of mankind, declaring an emergency for something that is hardly changing our way of life, nor does it really affect our immediate future. The farce of the climate conference in Egypt has given birth to a pact to create a “loss and damage” fund, to repair the worst effects of extreme weather on the most vulnerable nations, spreading the deception that hurricanes, floods and other catastrophes that have always been recurrent throughout history are the result of man-made climate change.
To refute this fallacy that they make us swallow like fools, remember that the year 2021 was the year with the lowest number of hurricanes worldwide since 1980. However, the stupidity that these catastrophes are the planet’s response to our aggressions against the environment continues to circulate. It doesn’t matter that the prophecies of the climate religion have been unfulfilled for 30 years.
The needs and well-being of Europeans do not matter; they are not a priority, as announced by the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunak: “As there are other priorities, we think that the climate can wait, but it can’t. The climate emergency is already here. The climate urgency is already here. We don’t have to wait for tomorrow.” We Europeans are guilty. That’s why we must pay the poorest countries for the damage caused by weather phenomena that climate change caused that is turned caused by our industries. Macron has already said that “we have to stand up and support the poorest countries with 100 billion dollars to fight against the climate crisis.”
The green policies promoted by the globalist elites through indirect carbon taxes and subsidies to things “eco,” to renewable energies and other ecological prohibitions and obstacles, are becoming another way of plundering the wealth of the Western middle classes. But if the climate change business has reached huge proportions in the developed world at the expense of consumers, in the third world it condemns thousands of people to remain in poverty and live a miserable life. When the IMF refuses to provide funds for coal-fired power plants in Africa or forbids the use of synthetic fertilizers in Sri Lanka, the poorest lose access to cheap energy and affordable food production.
After the pandemic, we have seen how science is easily manipulated and its empirical objectivity is easily corrupted to benefit the political and economic elites. When a hypothesis is elaborated by a group of researchers that can serve the purposes of these elites, the doors are opened to the financing of more studies in that direction, more publications, more papers in congresses, and in the end a semblance of scientific consensus. It is more profitable for any university department to focus its studies on the influence of climate change in a given area, than to explore other alternatives. If there is also the backing of supranational organizations and governments, the pressure becomes irresistible. Naturally, the mass media takes it upon itself to reaffirm the official doctrine and ostracize its detractors, while sowing alarm among the population.
The climate-belief apologists serve a more ambitious social engineering strategy, which aims to destroy the social, economic and political model in which we live, in order to replace it with the objectives that, under the label of Agenda 2030, are pursued by the globalist elites. They have given birth to hysterical teenagers like Greta Thunberg, who are followed as a model by brainless ecological activists, such as those who have dedicated themselves in recent weeks to attacking works of art in museums. But above all, they serve the goal of destroying the West as it had been configured up until the end of the Cold War.
The sovereignty of nations has already been considerably reduced with the prominence of supranational organizations and the phenomenon of globalization, which no longer makes it possible to control national financial and economic flows in an interconnected world market. This allowed P. Bobbitt to speak of what he called the “market-State,” referring to a structure whose purpose consists exclusively in its economic functionality. But it is clear that with Agenda 2030, it is being transformed into something different, into another type of State, in which the protagonism of the national community has been replaced by the protagonism of the state bureaucracy—large corporations and globalist elites grouped around conferences, such as the one held in Egypt: the perfect breeding ground for the formation of the new world order.
Mateo Requesens is a judge in Spain. [This article appears courtesy of Posmodernia].
After a U.S.- and European Union (EU)-orchestrated coup in Kiev in 2014 and eight years of civil war that followed, Russia decided to go on the military offensive in Ukraine. The mainstream media is focusing on the war, but very important events are also taking place behind the scenes.
While NATO member countries reacted almost as one behind Joe Biden to denounce Russia and implement sanctions against the Kremlin, this was not the case for most of the “rest of the world.” While the EU and the United States are pouring money into arming and supporting V. Zelensky in Kiev, Russia is weaving its web with precisely that “rest of the world” that is not hostile to it. Among other things, it is strengthening its relations with the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – 41% of the world’s population), which are substantially increasing their consumption of Russian products (oil, fertilizers, grain, etc.) and signing new contracts in national currencies, thereby weakening the all-powerful US dollar, the pillar of the American empire. Moscow has also shown that it is resilient in the face of sanctions that are hurting Europe more than Russia, as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban notes: “I thought we were shooting ourselves in the foot, but now it seems that the European economy has shot itself in the lungs and is suffocating.”
The American Decline
The United States is no longer the power it once was. It is torn by a major political and societal crisis that the last presidential elections exposed and that the mid-term elections of next November will amplify. Their empire, built on violence, is running out of steam. While Europe sees a recession, Russia announces trade surpluses. While the euro falls below the dollar for the first time in 20 years and Germany runs its first trade deficit in 30 years, the Russian ruble strengthens. The EU thought it could do without Russian hydrocarbons by replacing them with imports from other countries and American liquefied natural gas (LNG). The problem is that the United States and Europe do not have sufficient infrastructure to import this LNG, and that the “rest of the world” is not fighting to deliver its hydrocarbons to us. La Tribune headlined in early July: “Electricity: prices may triple this winter.” We, the French, are going to pay dearly for our abandonment of political sovereignty in favor of Washington and Brussels.
Vladimir Putin’s real objective is not the Ukraine but American globalism. He says: “This is the beginning of the transition from American liberal globalist egocentrism to a multipolar world. A world that is not based on selfish rules invented for the sole purpose of pursuing a hegemonic policy, nor on hypocritical double standards, but on the basis of international law and the sovereignty of peoples and civilizations; on their desire to live out their historical destinies with their values and traditions and cooperate on the basis of democracy, justice and equality.”
The US and the EU did not see this move coming. They do not want to see that the “rest of the world” is fed up with the hegemony, hypocrisy and interference of the Atlanticists who practice a systematic double standard to their sole advantage. In Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya… the West has helped itself to hydrocarbons and other natural resources at the expense of international law and respect for the sovereignty of nations. The West has largely tarnished its image in these wars and foreign interference. Also, the “rest of the world” does not adhere at all to the American imperialist program and its woke anthropology, stemming from the cancel culture that Washington and the European and Anglo-Saxon capitals try to impose on them.
Faced with this admission of weakness, Washington is confronted with a historical dilemma: to admit its limitations and adapt peacefully to the emergence of a new world model, or try to go all out in a military confrontation that can only be global and possibly nuclear. Let us not forget that the Americans have already revived their economy twice, thanks to the two world wars. Let us hope that they love their children more than they love their Empire.
Nikola Mirkovic is a French-Serbian graduate of the European Business School and passionate about geopolitics. He has been bombed by NATO. This article appears courtesy of La Nef.
The economic sanctions imposed upon the Russian Federation, for its supposed military intervention in Ukraine, violate public international law on three grounds: (1) lack of authorisation under the United Nations Charter, (2) inapplicability of Article XXI of the GATT, and (3) lack of legal authority based on the International Law Commission’s Draft articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts.
The United Nations Charter explicitly specifies the procedures to be followed in the event of a perceived threat to international peace and security, and implicitly forbids Member States from taking unilateral or concerted action outside the ambit of the UN Charter to respond to perceived threats to international peace and security. Any contrary interpretation would run afoul of the fundamental principles underlying the United Nations Charter.
Article 24 of the UN Charter confers authority upon the Security Council to maintain international peace and security. Article 34 confers authority upon the Security Council to investigate disputes that may destabilise the peaceful relations upon Member States and Article 39 states, “The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security”.
The Security Council has not found that the Russian Federation has threatened the peace or stability of Ukraine, or has committed an act of aggression. Ample opportunity exists to confirm the presence of Russian military in Ukraine through the Open Skies Treaty and the deployment of other surveillance technology available to the US and its allies. No data supports the allegations of President Obama, his representatives, and counterparts in the EU and Australia, that the Russian Federation has mobilized troops and artillery in Ukraine. The accusations may be deemed reckless, provocative, and contrary to principles underlying the international order implemented by Bretton Woods.
Equally devoid of persuasive authority is reliance upon Article XXI of GATT 1994. Article XXI states that the GATT will not prevent a WTO member “from taking any action which it considers necessary for the protection of its essential security interests . . . taken in time of war or other emergency in international relations.” While the GATT, as typical of legal instruments, does not define critical terms such as “considers necessary,” “essential security interests,” “time of war,” and “emergency in international relations”, it arguably allows a State to determine subjectively whether there is a war or “other emergency in international relations”, in direct conflict with the United Nations Charter. In any event, except for Ukraine, Article XXI is not germane for any other country.
First, the United States, European Union, and Australia lack essential security interests in a civil war in Ukraine, unless the concept of “essential security interest” is stretched to an absurdity, as it was under the Clinton Administration when the Caspian Sea was deemed a matter of national security interest. The Russian Federation has not taken any action against the United States or its allies. Indeed, the Russian Federation has taken the opposite tack, providing information within its possession and offering to broker a settlement. Ukraine arguably is the only State that could rely upon Article XXI, but Ukraine has not invoked this provision of the GATT. Noteworthy also is the fact that the WTO probably lacks jurisdiction to hear a dispute under Article XXI.
Further unavailing is recourse to the International Law Commission’s Draft articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (2001) (Draft Articles). First, the Draft Articles are not law, as never adopted by the United Nations. Second, Article 3 of the Draft articles provides, “The characterization of an act of a State as internationally wrongful is governed by international law. Such characterization is not affected by the characterization of the same act as lawful by internal law.” Article 40 states “This chapter applies to the international responsibility which is entailed by a serious breach by a State of an obligation arising under a peremptory norm of general international law.
Nation States cannot rely upon national law, or subjective judgment, to satisfy this requirement, bringing the argument full circle back to the principles of the United Nations Charter. Therefore, the Russian Federation has not committed an internationally wrongful act, in the absence of a Security Council determination of that fact, a prerequisite to any act of retaliation provided under Part Three of the Draft articles.
However, the US, EU, Australia and other countries that have imposed economic sanctions against the Russian Federation may have violated peremptory norms of international law by intervening in the internal affairs of the Russian Federation to cause a modification of its foreign policy, and may have violated peremptory norms of internal law by providing military assistance to Ukraine in its effort to defeat by lethal means its internal conflict in the Donbass region. Ukraine is indiscriminately killing its citizens in Eastern Ukraine, who are exercising rights of self-determination under Treaties signed by Ukraine, US, EU, and Australia.
While public international law is razor thin on what actions a Sovereign may take to quell an internal conflict, killing its citizens, including civilians, children, the sick and elderly, do not accord with the moral principles espoused publicly by the US/EU axis. In addition, the US/EU support of the Kiev regime has enabled Ukraine to destroy schools, hospitals, residences, and transport infrastructure in the Donbass. The international community of States must question, if not condemn, the aggression of the US/EU, and any other countries involved in imposing punitive measures against the Russian Federation in the absence of independent corroboration and a Security Council determination.
Professor Dr. John J.A. Burke holds a PhD in International Law from the Université de Fribourg, Switzerland; a J.D. from the University of Seton Hall, School of Law; and a B.A. from Columbia College. He has held the position of Professor of Law and Chair of the Law Department at KIMEP University, Kazakhstan from 2008-2014. He now is Professor (elect) within the business school at RISEBA University (Latvia).
Featured: “Allegory of Justice,” by Raphael, mosaic, ca. 1508.
First things first: The question of whether climate change is a man-made phenomenon whose sole cause is carbon dioxide particles in the atmosphere is not going to be addressed here. That is the official narrative; and it is from this perspective that the inadequacy of the solutions offered is here demonstrated. Indeed, this perspective should also make everyone doubt the promises of salvation that are made to us, to save the planet.
After a period of silence, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, released a new report this year. The panel, which brings together scientists from around the world to share their findings on climate change, concluded that carbon dioxide emissions would have to be reduced by about 50 percent by 2030, if we still want to avert the great catastrophe that has been announced.
Several years ago, the IPCC concluded that the 1.5-degree Celsius target set by the nations of this world in the Paris Agreement was actually no longer achievable, and that it would prove difficult to limit warming to 2 degrees. Nevertheless, the governments of many countries are spouting an optimism that cannot be understood with common sense.
This is probably fed by the fact that they believe they have found the solution to all this. And the solution is, of course, quite simple: renewable energies and sustainable technologies. Everyone now knows what this means: if we simply generate our electricity from wind turbines, photovoltaics and hydroelectric power, and drive electric cars instead of the dirty gasoline and diesel vehicles, then everything will be fine—or so we are regularly told. But is that really the case?
Dirty Technologies
The problem with renewable energies is that they are not renewable. Of course, wind is always blowing somewhere in the world, and the sun will continue to shine for several billion years. Yes, and even water flows incessantly. The energy sources are therefore not the problem. The situation is quite different, however, with power plants. Wind turbines have to be built first, as do solar cells and hydroelectric power plants.
In the process, the most toxic processes that industry has to offer are used. This begins right with the mining of the required resources. Here, aluminum, copper, gold and the so-called “rare earths” are needed in large quantities. In other regions of the world, the mining of these raw materials destroys entire regions.
Wind turbines, for example, require more metal than any other type of power plant. Rare earths, such as neodymium, are also used here. When this material is mined, large areas of whole regions become radioactively contaminated. This is because the mining process releases uranium and thorium, which are released unhindered into the environment. The same applies to metals and rare earths in general. In addition, wind turbines contain large quantities of plastic resins as well as glass fibers.
This poses a huge problem of disposal. After all, the average life of a wind turbine is 20 years. After that, it has to be dismantled—but recycling plastic resin and glass fibers is not possible. Composite materials, such as those used on the turbines, cannot be separated again and are therefore simply disposed of somewhere. This creates a huge disposal problem with disastrous consequences.
But wind turbines also pose an ecological problem during their lifetime and even before. This is exemplified in the documentary film, Headwind 21, by Marijn Poels. The filmmaker accompanies an activist in Sweden who fights against the deforestation of the pristine forests in the north of the country. The deforestation is being done to make way for a wind farm. For this, entire forests are cleared over a huge area. Often the ground must also be prepared by blasting, before even wind turbines can be placed at all. Large areas of land are completely destroyed in this way just for a few wind turbines.
And this wind-farm will not even serve the country of Sweden, but is being built to supply a newly developing technology park in Finland. Thus, energy that was previously obtained from fossil fuels is not simply obtained in an ostensibly renewable way, but an additional energy demand is covered. This is simply added on top of the previous energy demand. Thus, nothing is gained by the wind turbines—but more of nature is destroyed to gain additional energy—when nature is an important carbon sink that absorbs our emissions.
In addition, wind turbines promote climate change! This is because the wind-farms extract moisture from the soil and additionally warm the ground, which leads to droughts. The wind turbines erected in Germany through 2018 alone have given the country an additional 0.27 degrees Celsius temperature increase as a result—and that’s in just five years. Erecting even more of them, and clearing forests to do so, is absurd—if the fight against climate change were really the issue.
Wind turbines also endanger birds and bats. These are often killed by the rotor blades, as they cannot anticipate this danger. In addition, people and nature are exposed to noise or infrasound, which can lead to illnesses, such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. In close proximity to residential areas, cast shadows also pose a problem. The constant change from light to dark and back again, the so-called “strobe-effect,” is a strain on every organism, be it human, animal or even plants in the field.
Photovoltaic plants or hydroelectric power plants also rely on substances that are highly toxic and whose degradation entails great destruction of nature.
There is also the problem that when demand fluctuates, utilities shut down wind turbines first because it is much more profitable to run nuclear power plants, which can also cover the base-load of the grid. In the documentary Planet of the Humans produced by Michael Moore, all the madness associated with renewable energy is illustrated. Moore shows how power plants have to be started with the help of fossil fuels; how solar plants are built in the desert and then deteriorate—and most importantly, all the destruction associated with mining the materials needed for so-called renewable energy.
Hydroelectric plants also create another problem that wind turbines and solar plants do not. This is because entire rivers are often dammed for such a hydroelectric plant. This interrupts the natural course of rivers, and animals such as salmon can no longer swim up and down the river unhindered. But they have to, because they usually live on the lower course of the river or in the ocean and only return to the upper course of the river to spawn.
This spectacle, called migration, can be witnessed every year unless the rivers are dammed. The dams present insurmountable obstacles for the salmon. After spawning, they often die and are then dispersed by the current in the floodplains and in the course of the river. This makes them an important food source for other animals, bringing nutrients from the ocean up the river. The natural flow of these nutrients is also interrupted by the dams, causing sediments to pile up on them that were supposed to reach the lower part of the river. In this way, dams kill the water body as well as the life around them.
Mobility
Another aspect that is always mentioned in connection with climate change is electromobility. This has been increasingly promoted in recent years. Tesla built a plant specifically for this purpose in Grünheide near Berlin.
But electromobility is not as clean as it might seem. A lot of plastics and metals are also used here. These vehicles are virtually bursting with electronics, the effects of which on the environment have actually been known for a long time.
Then there are the highly toxic batteries needed for these vehicles, because they contain, among other things, lithium, the mining of which is highly damaging to the environment.
For example, there are large lithium deposits in South America, especially in Bolivia, Argentina and Chile. There, the light metal is extracted from salt water by pumping it to the surface from great depths in salt lakes and evaporating it. Chemicals are then used to separate the lithium from the salt and other substances. What remains is a chemical-salty solution that contaminates the surrounding groundwater.
Many people have already lost access to drinkable groundwater in this way, and the regions are becoming increasingly desolate. The chemicals, especially heavy metals, are also spreading in the area, causing livestock to die. In addition, since the water from the rivers is used for drinking and to irrigate the fields, agriculture is no longer possible in these regions. However, the increasing demand for lithium means that more and more new deposits are being developed in previously untouched regions.
The residents of the plant in Grünheide are currently experiencing what the production process of the vehicles means in itself. This region, which has already been struggling with a shortage of drinking water for some time, is now experiencing a further worsening of the situation. Large quantities of water are also needed to assemble the vehicles.
For this reason, the local authorities have already set an upper limit for water consumption. If this is exceeded, fines are imposed. However, Tesla is probably not affected by this, otherwise the company would not have settled there. The company is allowed to use vast amounts of water for the construction of environmentally harmful vehicles and batteries, while local residents have to think twice about every shower.
There was also a recent accident there in which toxic paint leaked out. According to Tesla, this could allegedly be completely removed and did not reach the environment. However, it should be common knowledge as to what to make of such statements on the part of the manufacturer. It also shows that there is a potential for environmental catastrophes here, should the accident or leak ever turn out to be somewhat larger. In addition, the use of toxic paint shows how far off the environmental friendliness of the vehicles really is.
Finally, the disposal of the vehicles causes considerable difficulties. Once again, the batteries are a major factor here, as they are pure poison for nature. In addition, as with all supposedly renewable technologies, there is the energy-cost of production. For example, the emissions backpack of every electric car ex-works is already twice as large as that of a conventional car. In addition, it has to be charged with energy again and again. If the proportion of electric cars increases, the energy requirement also rises automatically.
This energy, however, is usually obtained from fossil fuels or nuclear power plants. Thus, for the feeling of clean driving, whole swaths of land are polluted elsewhere and fossil fuels are extracted and burned. Electric cars are thus not one bit clean or environmentally friendly. Quite the opposite.
The fact that governing politicians cling to the so-called renewable or green technologies—despite all this destruction—has a simple reason: It’s a business.
Elon Musk, owner of Tesla, is now one of the richest people on earth for a reason. Thus, under the guise of saving the world, a market is being created that promises big sales but destroys nature on a large scale. There is also the reason why this meets with so little opposition—the focus on climate change and thus on carbon dioxide as the only factor.
For a long time now, the issue of climate change has been decoupled from that of environmental protection. Supposedly, climate change is the biggest threat of all—the contamination and destruction of nature plays no role in the discussion. The slogan is—carbon dioxide fuels climate change, it will destroy us all, therefore we must avoid every gram of carbon dioxide. The complex issue of nature destruction and environmental protection is thus reduced to a simplistic factor.
Through this narrow focus, people lose sight of the insane destruction that is being wrought. Yet even in the prevailing discourse, it is noted, albeit rather rarely, that the climate is a complex system—if we destroy nature, if we cut down forests as carbon sinks, if we poison the oceans or dry up the swamps, or if we persist in monoculture agriculture, then this has a negative impact on the climate.
Nevertheless, “carbon neutrality” is put forward as the only goal, and now also serves as a label for all kinds of products, so that consumers can get elude their complicity in the destructive system—at least in the way they feel—in a cheaply bought cleansing of conscience, a kind of “indulgence trade.”
At the same time, the blame for everything in this way is actually shifted solely onto the individual consumer, who through his or her choices would have the opportunity to influence the system in such a way that it would promote environmentally friendly alternatives, which of course is not the case. This is because the individual is always faced with a fait accompli in the supermarket or wherever, and has no way of influencing the manner of production, nor any control over the quantity produced. But by means of eco-labels and product descriptions as “climate neutral,” the impression is created that the consumer is contributing to saving the world with his choice.
Distraction
But the real question is quite different: Why do we fixate on a single substance and strive to reduce its emissions at all costs, only to avert something that, according to all the IPCC reports, can already no longer be averted?
Why are people encouraged to buy an electric car or reduce their electricity consumption, but not being prepared to live in a world where climate change is happening right now? Why are we not preparing for floods, for droughts? Why are we not adapting agriculture to these conditions, our cities, our work? Now, some would suggest that this adaptation is not happening because climate change either does not exist or is not man-made. And yes, it is also very striking that while the individual is to be educated with a moral finger to save energy, industry and industrialized agriculture blithely continue to consume energy.
But the explanation is probably quite simple:
A transformation of our society, an adaptation to a changed world, which perhaps really switches off the destruction of nature and uses drastically less energy, is simply not economical. Because capitalism would then actually have to be abolished, and supply would have to be ensured locally again.
But that doesn’t suit those who, in the current system, make very large profits from destroying nature, producing useless goods and shipping them all over the world. Focusing on carbon dioxide and its removal, on the other hand, makes a veritable business out of wind turbines, solar panels and electric mobility. As a result, the debate focuses on these, rather than addressing the real causes of nature’s destruction.
And of course: many of the arguments put forward here also apply to fossil energies or nuclear power. For these, too, nature is destroyed, air, land and water are polluted, and what is to be done with the nuclear waste is still not clear after 70 years of nuclear power. But instead of causing more destruction for a technology that does not solve the problems of our time, we should turn to the causes. Only a society that gets by with a minimum of energy consumption, that focuses on what is really necessary for life instead of constantly throwing new, useless products onto the market, is truly acting sustainably.
To do this, we also have to say goodbye to something that so many still believe in: the idea of eternal progress that would improve our lives. Progress, that is technical innovation, new products and developments. But it is precisely this progress that has led to the problems of the destruction of nature, the extinction of species, plastic waste and sewage and waste in the first place.
The example of so-called renewable technologies shows where all this leads to, where wanting to eliminate the destruction caused by this progress is only through further progress. Moreover, it is a false idea of progress that is being marketed here. Because progress is also reduced to marketable products. Progress is therefore only what can be sold. Social developments, up to a frugality that makes all these goods superfluous, do not appear in this belief in progress.
The history of this progress has shown, however, that it knows no end. It only brings us more and more new problems, new devices and products that have to be consumed and then end up as waste in nature to keep a capitalist machinery going, which leads us to ruin and hardly improves our lives.
Which is not to say, of course, that every discovery and development is exclusively negative. But we should separate ourselves from this unconditional dogma of eternal progress. After all, has the eleventh smartphone, the latest tablet or car really brought us any further or made us happier? Do we live better because we can consume coffee to go, while walking or on the subway? Are we better off because technology corporations and governments can monitor us everywhere, that we are increasingly digitized in order to live?
True progress would be a social weighing, combined with a penchant for less, a frugality that is at peace with itself and the world. However, this should not be a frugality decreed from above, a “Great Reset” that drives this society with momentum against the wall and claims countless victims in the process. On the contrary, a truly human change can only come from below, from the people who are affected by it themselves, who are fed up with a life on the hamster wheel, as a cog in the wheel.
Felix Feistel writes about the idiocy of this world and also against it. In a world reduced to numbers and data, which has always been alien to him, he searches for humanity and the meaning of life. He tries to use his powers and talents to create a world worth living in by opposing injustice and destruction. Despite the madness that is rampant everywhere, he is not ready to give up his belief in the goodness of man and his potential to transform the planet into a paradise. This article comes through the kind courtesy of Rubikon.
Featured: “Castor et Pollution,” by Max Ernst; painted in 1923.
The country of Russia is in a very peculiar state today. It is like hovering between a past that has already ended and a future that has not yet begun; or rather, has begun, but has not yet been realized or accepted. It is about the most fundamental questions—about Russia’s relation to global processes and, above all, to the collective West.
After the collapse of the USSR, we went through two phases:
In the 1990s, we tried desperately to integrate into the Western world on any terms; but this was not very successful, and an external control system was established in the country;
After Putin came to power, we also tried to integrate into the Western world, but only under the conditions of Russia’s sovereignty. We never succeeded, but we strengthened our sovereignty, which led to February 24, 2022.
Why did we start special military operation (SMO)? Trump did not pay much attention to the growth of Russian sovereignty; he was not a convinced Atlanticist, and he judged by the modest performance of the Russian economy, which, from his perspective, was not a serious threat to the United States. He did not care about Crimea. He was far more concerned about China.
Biden, on the other hand, is a staunch Atlanticist and globalist, and he is well aware that any success of Russia in expanding its influence challenges globalization, the unipolar world and American hegemony. That is why he, having set aside the Islamic world for later, shifted his attention to confronting Russia, not forgetting, of course, about China.
By the summer of 2021, the U.S. and NATO began to prepare a military operation to seize the Donbass and attack Crimea. That is why Donbass was turned into a powerful center of future military aggression against Russia—including foreign instructors and mercenaries.
Putin did not wait until early March, when the operation was planned, and struck first. Hence the initial preponderance in the first phase of the operation, which predetermined the outcome in our favor.
But let’s leave the military aspect of the special SMO aside. After it began, the second phase of Russia’s relations with the West in the post-Soviet period came to an end. The very idea of integrating into the Western world fell away for objective reasons. Russia was left only with its own sovereignty, the protection, preservation and strengthening of which proved to be generally incompatible with Russia’s participation in global processes on Western terms.
We have irrevocably and radically broken with the West. But this has not yet been comprehended. The second phase is over, the third has not yet begun.
What is this third phase that the eyes and ears of the Russian elite categorically do not want to perceive? It represents an indefinitely long period of Russia’s existence in isolation from the West and under its rigid and purely negative pressure. If we accept as a fait accompli that this direction is forever cut off for us, the horizons of the future become quite clear. But in order to move into this future, an effort must be made. In the same way, Soviet people could not believe that the USSR and communism collapsed, and the liberals of the 1990s believed that Putin was temporary, not serious, and that everything will go back. It’s hard to believe in the new. Always. Including now.
To be without the West, and, moreover, in a sharp almost military confrontation with it, means to simultaneously implement two vectors:
Russian and
Russian and Eurasian.
They do not contradict each other; there is no need to choose between them. But they are still different.
The first one means a rapid and drastic strengthening of Russia’s sovereignty, ensuring the possibility of relying only on one’s own capabilities, if necessary. Moreover, the point is not about a limited understanding of sovereignty, which is already recognized, however nominally, for each independent state, but about integral sovereignty, which includes
civilization
culture
education
science
economy
finance
values
identity
the political system
and, most importantly, ideology
So far, apart from political and military sovereignty, all our other spheres are either partially Western or completely Western. And there is no ideology. Accordingly, the construction of a truly sovereign Russia, an integrally sovereign Russia, requires profound transformations of all these spheres; their liberation from the liberal globalist paradigms deeply embedded in our society and establishment during the first and second phases of post-Soviet history.
This will require an institutionalization of Putin’s course, not just loyalty to him personally. This will require the establishment of a new ideology, a kind of “Putinism,” in which the basic principles of integral sovereignty will be enshrined. And then other political-administrative mechanisms will have to be fitted under them as well.
Russia is inevitably passing on to the ideological stage. Without a full-fledged ideology of our own, we will not withstand a confrontation with the West. This is an absolutely objective fact, regardless of whether it makes us ecstatic or furious. The ideologization of Russia is inevitable; it is impossible to prevent it.
Russia must strengthen its identity many times over in order to survive not just without the West, but also in spite of the West. Twenty-two years ago, when Putin made a bet on sovereignty, he already predetermined the inevitability of this moment. Today it is here. And no longer halfway, but all in all.
It is either sovereignty or the West. And this is irreversible.
In this case it is not at all about the isolation of Russia from the world, as the West would like. The West, despite its claims to hegemony and universalism, is not the whole world. Therefore, Russia will have to look for new partners and friends outside the West. This should be called a Eurasian policy, a turn to the East.
Discovering the global non-West, Russia will discover that it is dealing with completely different civilizations—Chinese, Indian, Islamic, Latin American, African. And each of them is different from ourselves, from each other, and from the West. Once we were interested in it; we studied the East, and the great Russian poet Nikolai Gumilev composed inspired hymns to the glory of Africa. But then the West captured our consciousness. It is a Westernist intoxication, an addiction to the West. The Iranian Heideggerian philosopher Ahmad Fardid gave this a special name: gharbzadegi, “westoxification.”
Russian Eurasians were the first to rebel against this Westernizing turn of Russian culture, demanding, like the Slavophiles, to turn to their own Russian identity as well as to non-Western cultures and civilizations. This is now the only way out for Russia. Only BRICS+, the SCO, the development of relations with the new poles of the world, with civilizations that seem long forgotten, but today are returning to history.
Where the West ends, the world and humanity do not end. On the contrary, it is a new beginning. And Russia’s place is in Eurasia, not in the West. It used to be a matter of choice. Today it is simply unavoidable. Everything depends today on how we build relations with China, India, Turkey, Iran, the Arab states, the states of Africa or Latin America.
This is the coming/not coming future. It already exists, but the elite refuse to accept it. And the elite have no way out and no choice. Even betrayal, which is unlikely, will not change anything. What’s more, they would rather ruin Russia once and for all. Even this option no longer exists—the place of traitors and liberals is predetermined by the laws of wartime and emergency. The inevitable and absolutely necessary purges of the elite, which, incidentally, have not yet begun, but will definitely begin, is not the main thing or even secondary. In vain, our elite are worried about resignations and arrests. Anyone who does not agree with sovereignty and Eurasianism is already finished. This is no longer the question.
But the question is different—how can we defend and rebuild the new Russia, the third-phase Russia? Life dictates what we should do. But what to do, how to do it, what to start with, and what to choose as a priority are open questions. And here everything is more complicated.
I think that we need to start with the main thing. With ideology. Everything else is secondary. Something tells me that those in power who are truly responsible for the fate of the country and the people feel exactly the same way.
Alexander Dugin is a widely-known and influential Russian philosopher. His most famous work is The Fourth Political Theory (a book banned by major book retailers), in which he proposes a new polity, one that transcends liberal democracy, Marxism and fascism. He has also introduced and developed the idea of Eurasianism, rooted in traditionalism. This article appears through the kind courtesy of Geopolitica.
Featured: “A Bright Future, by Anastasiya Sadofeva; painted in 2021.
The authorities and society, apart from the war, of course, are now most concerned about how to adapt to the new conditions. The novelty of these conditions is that we have been excluded from the West, and we have excluded the West from ourselves. Not that this is something completely new and unprecedented—in our history, we have very often found ourselves in exactly this kind of relationship with the West. And it’s no big deal. And this time nothing terrible will happen. But still, our lives will change significantly.
The first intuitive move in such a situation is the desire to replace the West with something. And we can replace everything. In this way, we will create a certain phantom of the West, which will trickle down to us through third countries, sorts of import substitution hubs. In this way, we will reproduce the West in ourselves. In the beginning it will seem that all these measures are temporary and that the West will come to its senses. But then we will begin to realize that the break with the West is irreversible. It is not possible to return to the old relations with them at all. And a simple reconciliation is achievable either if they fundamentally change, or if we fundamentally change. It’s obvious that everyone will persist in not changing, to the end. And consequently, import substitution will indeed have to happen, too. When this becomes crystal clear, there will be a resonance—of our idea of reality with reality itself.
Here we have an important decision to make: either to import-substitute the West indefinitely, or to do something else. Both decisions are quite responsible, and both will have a huge impact on our lives.
Substituting indefinitely is, on the one hand, easier, since the West remains a beacon and reference point with which we will henceforth have to deal not directly, but indirectly. They’ll think of something there, and we’ll import-substitute it, once and for all. It’s not that hard. But this will make us dependent on the West again, albeit in a new way. Someday this will become obvious; but you can lose quite a lot of time following this path.
If we do something other than import substitution, we need to work out a new strategic plan, a new model, new ways of development. And it is theoretically possible to do this, but this is what our society has really become accustomed to. We perfectly adapt to the conditions, whatever they are; and this is our constant quality, so that we only manage to create something principally new from time to time. It is also possible and sometimes not bad, but it does not happen often.
This second way, of course, is difficult. Here we have only to begin and finish, and most importantly to decide. In this case, Russia will build its own world entirely, on its own principles and using its own methods. There are no ready-made scenarios and textbooks for this case. It is possible to rely on historical experience or on non-Western countries (some of which have achieved impressive results). But much will simply have to be created, created anew, invented. And all this without clear guarantees; by experiment.
Of course, we can assume that our cutting off from the West will be stopped by the fact that the West itself will go haywire without us. Already, the consequences of severing all ties with Russia and frenzied support for the Kiev regime are hurting the politics and economies of Western countries, contributing to the departure of leaders, the growth of mass protests, and political crises. It turns out that we cannot be forced to do anything, and many red lines have been irreversibly crossed. By a combination of factors, and in combination with some other catastrophic processes, the West, or rather the power of the maniacal globalist oligarchy, may also collapse. But it is impossible to count on this; and in the present state we are not capable of delivering a fatal blow to the West. Only as a last resort; but then no one would survive at all. Perhaps this scenario is worth considering, but only in order to avoid it.
If the West’s omnipotence ends by itself, with or without our help, then everything in the world will change. But to make the forecasts realistic, we should still assume that the West will last for some time and remain as it is now. This is the inertial scenario.
And now let’s put it all together.
In the short term, we will be intensively engaged in import substitution. This is perhaps the main and obvious imperative.
Gradually we will realize that this is for the long term, if not forever, and we will create a “simulacrum of the West.” China is partly doing just that, but without breaking with the West as sharply as we have. Although, if the crisis around Taiwan climaxes, the Chinese will find themselves in a similar position. For now, they are closely watching how we are dealing with a similar situation. And they are drawing conclusions.
And finally, either we voluntarily and right away begin to think about building in Russia an alternative and independent socio-political and economic model, or we will come to it out of necessity, when all the resources of import substitution strategy will have been exhausted.
If everything goes by inertia, it is possible to imagine these three phases as consecutive and stretched out over time. But theoretically, we can think about creating something original.
The more clearly we understand that the divorce from the West is a done deal, we will not throw a tantrum and accept the formula, “go away,” the more attention we will pay to the search for alternatives.
Of course, the rhetoric about our own way is already being heard. And it is right and good. But it can simply hide import substitution. Which is necessary and I have nothing against it. But our own way is a very serious topic. I would say too serious for the state of mind of our ruling class, which is used to living in short cycles. But here everything is more profound and fundamental.
The stupidest thing in this situation is to persist in believing that something, if not everything, can be reset to its factory settings, that is to say, before February 24, 2022. Nothing can be rolled back at all. Once we acknowledge that—welcome to reality. Otherwise, we’ll just be delusional.
Alexander Dugin is a widely-known and influential Russian philosopher. His most famous work is The Fourth Political Theory (a book banned by major book retailers), in which he proposes a new polity, one that transcends liberal democracy, Marxism and fascism. He has also introduced and developed the idea of Eurasianism, rooted in traditionalism. This article appears through the kind courtesy of Geopolitica.
Featured: “Horizon,” by Erik Bulatov; painted ca. 1971–1972.
