It is a well-known thesis that the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is not really about politics, but about access to water. The Israeli military administration has systematically prevented Palestinian groundwater capture in the West Bank since 1967. In Gaza, on the other hand, anyone can drill a well, and although Tel-Aviv’s policy there is not as restrictive as in the West Bank, there is a huge problem with water quality. Demography plays a big role in this, as water-scarce Gaza is densely populated, while the water-rich West Bank is sparsely populated. This problem is not being solved as the Israelis seek to expand their state eastwards.

In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel occupied the Syrian Golan Heights and the West Bank to secure the water supply for the fledgling state. Since then, about 90 per cent of the Jordan’s water has been piped to Israel, while the 250-kilometre-long Jordan River must also supply water to Syria and Jordan. The fact that the Jordan is such a small river will lead to even more conflicts in the region in the future.

Egypt functions in a similar way. As early as 1929, it secured a treaty signed with the British to the effect that all states bordering the Nile must first ask Egypt for permission if they want to use the Nile water. Egypt’s entire life takes place on the banks of the Nile, from which the country draws 97% of its water. When Ethiopia tried to build dams on its territory in 1980, it almost came to war.

Turkey controls the upper reaches of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers and determines how much water Syria and Iraq get. Erdoğan, the new sultan on the Bosporus, who obviously wants to expand his sultanate, does not necessarily have to intervene militarily in Syria or Iraq: it is enough that he will just turn off the tap once in a while. Just as he cleverly put pressure on Europe with migrant flows, in the future he could blackmail the countries located on the two rivers with access to water.

That wars over water are not just latent or part of history, like the 1948 conflict over the Indus between India and Pakistan, is evidenced by the events of this spring, when a bloody clash broke out between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Heavy fighting between the centralist countries, which left 40 dead and several hundred injured, was triggered by disputes over the water distribution point on the Isfara River. Water was then only a spark in the powder keg of the hostile ethnic groups of Central Asia. While the Western media paid little attention to the events in May this year, the decision-makers in Beijing certainly watched it with great attention – anything that happens on the New Silk Road can thwart China’s plans.

With water it is like with oil: whoever sits at its source has a right to it that no one can dispute.

More on this topic in our latest bulletin.

Jordan River, aerial view, Wikipedia 

Dear Subscribers,

Our website is under reconstruction. If you have difficulties downloading the November issue, please contact us directly at j.szela@gefira.org and provide us with the address the latest issue should be sent to.

With best regards,
Gefira Team

Though it is not the last month of the year 2021, we are looking forward to the world of 2022 and beyond. Why? Because we can see the oak tree in the acorn. That is to say, of course, we cannot predict how large the tree with will be, how many branches and twigs it will have, how sturdy the trunk and how thick the bark will be; we know, though, that it will be an oak tree rather than a birch or a beech, least of all a coniferous fir or spruce. You can predict in a very broad outline the size and type of the building, looking at its understructure. Even a non-expert can correctly infer from the foundations whether they are made for a cottage house or a high-rise; a block of flats or a factory.

What are the foundations for the world of tomorrow? Consider them one by one:

• ubiquitous surveillance;

• Third World people as weapons in hybrid wars between states;

• the increasing role of adolescents as a battering ram in world and domestic policy-making;

• the all-out war on fossil fuels and the crusade to impose “sustainable” economy;

• the big push towards cashless economy;

• the imposition of designed pseudo-reality on the reality as it is perceived through the senses.

Such are the components of the underpinning for the world in the making, of the world of tomorrow. It looks like everything we have been accustomed to must be obliterated, decomposed and turned into fertilizer with which new crops will be grown. We ought to brace ourselves for the changes, we ought to at least be aware of them, to be – at the minimum – mentally and financially prepared.

The reassuring thing is that what the architects of the new world create in the form of blueprints eventually never turns out 100% as they wanted it to be. Reality is too complex for anybody to control it. Still, as they say: throw dirt enough and some will stick. We want to know what will stick. Something tells us that you want it too.

 

The committee granting the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize had obviously a difficult choice to make. Its sights may have been set on climate activist Greta Thunberg for berating heads of states in a bid to avert the ecological Armageddon, political (Russian or Belorussian) dissidents Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and Alexei Navalny (Julian Assange need not apply), The World Health Organization for courageously combating the WORLD WIDE MENACE, the Black Lives Matter movement for opposing ubiquitous racism, President Joe Biden for putting an end to the nightmarish Trump era and many others in the similar vein. I believe you get the picture of possible contenders. The choice was made and the prize was awarded to a Filipino and a Russian journalist: Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of many years’ standing of “Novaya Gazeta.”

Why Dmitry Muratov of all the people? “Novaya Gazeta” since its inception in 1993 has been engaged in issues that the post-West absolutely adores: keeping watch over human rights and the abuse of power in – yes, yes, you guessed it right! – Russia. The paper developed as an offshoot from “Komsomolskaya Pravda” with some fifty journalists as its founders. Mikhail Gorbachev contributed with some of the money from his 1990 Nobel Peace Prize to help it get started and with a 10% share he remains its co-owner to this day. A number of “Novaya Gazeta” reporters or commentators are said to have been murdered or assaulted because of their investigative journalism. Isn’t it one more argument to draw the world’s attention to the paper by decorating its founding father?

Julian Assange has been tossed from prison to prison and is currently awaiting another court ruling that will decide whether he will be delivered to the United States, where a long term prison if not death are in store for him. His journalism has not found recognition, his suffering has not been appreciated, his courage to unmask the inhuman machinations of the United States has not been praised. Why?

Continue reading →

The notorious World Economic Forum headed by Klaus Schwab has spawned two worldwide youth organisations, i.e. the Forum of Young Global Leaders (2004) and the Global Shapers Community (2011). Their websites fraught with snapshots or short films featuring hackneyed images of smiling faces of men and women cooperating in a peaceful manner and necessarily shaking hands and drawing graphs – the usual propaganda stuff we are familiar with – assault the reader with catchy slogans of providing solutions to global issues, improving the state of the world, building a better future, fighting climate change, building inclusive communities, having impact on a global scale, raising awareness of gender equality and the like. None of the items comes as a surprise or does it?

The blueprint is as follows. Young impressionable people are used to bring about change. Young people make up a quarter of the global population. Change is touted as something desirable and ranges from climate to society, from education to governance. It is a creeping revolution, the march through institutions par excellence targeting the world as it is: a repeat of what the Jacobins in France, Bolsheviks in Russia and the Red Guards in China already attempted to achieve. They, too, appealed to young people with images of a bright future and fraternity spanning the globe, with promises of universal happiness and joy, with visions of unstoppable progress and unbridled liberty.

Youth guide

The alumni of the Global Leaders and the Global Shapers – carefully selected, guided and groomed by their patrons – are then helped to find their way to important organisations, institutions, corporations, where their influence is multiplied or – to be precise – where they relay the ideas that they imbibed while being members of the Forum and the Community. Have you ever wondered about how it happens that so many actions are coordinated across state borders at the drop of a hat? Now you know. The Global Leaders and the Global Shapers inform us via their websites that they have members in almost all countries in the world and that they foster lifelong connections. Lifelong, you see. Continue reading →

Gefira 57 familiarizes us with the Ebb and Flow of World Politics. We set our sights on the man-made energy crisis that is in the making in the European Union, which – out of hubris – has decided to ban anything having to do with coal and now is heading for a disaster. The alleged man-made climate change has resulted in a genuine man-made energy crisis… Did not Aesop describe something similar in one of his fables? But then, who learns from Aesop those days?

The energy crisis is coupled with the political and economic tension. We are seeing the emergence of three formidable alliances – three empires – the Anglo-Saxon transatlantic union (NATO, AUKUS, Five Eyes) in which the United States and the United Kingdom reign supreme; the European Union, governed jointly by France and Germany; and the Eurasian bloc of states (SCO), where Russia and China rule the roost. Are those alliances and pacts not reminiscent of the Entante Cordiale and the alliance of the Central Powers of the First World War, or the Axis and Allied States of the Second World War? We may be in for big events.

With Angela Merkel eventually leaving the post of the German chancellor, we are also summing up the 16 years of the denationalization of Germany (as a part of the denationalization of France, England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Italy), sixteen years of the violation of fundamental rights and the lying press, sixteen years of the exploitation of the German taxpayer and the favouritism shown towards Third World immigrants, sixteen years of energy transition and green lies, sixteen years of the collapse of German security, police and justice.