At times, almost every decade can bring about a global change. Consider China: this weak colossus, roughly a hundred years ago torn by colonial powers, eventually became the world’s most populated communist country. As such, it naturally aligned itself with its Soviet elder brother, and this ideological alliance transpired as a huge threat to the West. Next, came Nixon’s ingenious political sleight of hand and China was turned into the Soviet Union’s rival, much to Washington’s delight. And then, when the capitalist economy adopted by the Middle Kingdom seemed to be pushing Beijing into the West’s embrace and anchoring it firmly within the global financial system, China has gradually emerged as a superpower on the rise, a challenger, to be reckoned with. At present, swerving more towards Moscow than Washington, Beijing is pursuing an ambitious policy of its own.

Much the same can be said about Turkey. A sick man of Europe at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, on the verge of disintegration in the early twenties of the previous century, it slowly recuperated and rebuilt some of its former greatness. Anchored in the Western military defence system, it was a reliable foothold of the free world in the Middle East and a bridgehead for possible operations against the West’s archenemy: the Soviet Union. This was not to last long, though. With the fall of the “first country of workers and farmers” and the political earthquake that took place in the following decade or so, Turkey seems to be parting ways with its pro-Western and secular policies and reviving among its population the great ambitions of the long defunct Ottoman Empire. Nor is Ankara’s allegiance to NATO a given. With the purchase of the Russian S-400 air defence system done in open defiance of Washington’s wishes, Turkey exercises its sovereignty like barely any other American ally.

Are we facing a realignment of alliances in the making in the Middle and Far East? The February Gefira issue tries to shed some light on it.

 

Money is the be-all and end-all of any country’s economy. There are renowned professors of economics who maintain that anybody who says he understands money is a liar. There is something to it. History is fraught with economic and financial theories and although they operate on numbers and mathematical formulas, political parties that are at loggerheads with one another employ experts who sometimes cannot agree on the most basic issues, who advance solutions that are very much discrepant. Those who lived in Eastern Europe and are old enough to remember will have recalled that in the universities in socialist countries two incompatible types of economy were taught: capitalist and socialist. One wonders whether economy –  despite its numbers and formulas – is something more of an ideological  persuasion rather than a science.

 

Gefira-Bulletin #40 delves into the problem of the global financial system and its effect on countries and nations. Our analysts present the bare financial mechanism and its origin. In a world where economic and political interests of the many players are often on a collision course, in a world rife with political-cum-financial institutions, accords, compacts, agreements and banks, it is not an easy task to see through this deliberately(?) designed thicket pecuniary problems and get to the core of the matter. We do not pretend to have found the Grail, but we hope to have made the problem more translucent to our readers.

 

By guest author C. van Rijn MD

We are at a crucial point in history. Climate change is seen as the biggest threat humanity has ever known. The feeling of pending disaster, guilt about the climate and a need to do penance seems to be growing in all wealthy Christian countries, but is totally absent from others. The origin of the threat is global warming which is, according to the prevailing opinion, caused by the greenhouse gases. To prevent this alleged catastrophe, we have the intention of investing an enormous amount of money to reduce the use of fossil fuels. This investment will lead to a huge economic downturn, exacerbated by the loss of economic competitiveness with other countries which will not be burdened with this scheme. This will inevitably lead to the deterioration of the prosperity of the Western countries in all areas. So before these extreme expenses are made, it may be wise to look carefully at the scientific basis underlying the global warming phenomenon.

In this article we first consider all the misconceptions and deceit rampant in public debate on this the topic of the green house effect. We arrive at the conclusion that if you omit all lies and exaggerations, the scientific basis appears to be paper-thin. Second, we hope to point out why the European version of the green new deal will be a tragedy.

The past 600,000 years
The empirical evidence for the greenhouse effect over this period has consisted mainly of a chart that suggests a causal link between CO2 and temperature levels.

The fact that CO2 increases have always occurred a few hundred years after temperature rises means that the causality is reversed: a temperature rise causes a CO2-increase. Al Gore who used this graph in the movie “an inconvenient truth” was rightly condemned in an English court for misinterpreting this graph.

The past 1000 years
The warming in this period is notorious because of the iconic hockey stick graph fabricated by hide-the-decline Michael Mann and prominently shown in the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

Rife with warped data, mixing data from tree-rings and thermometers, hiding the medieval warming and using poor statistics, it turned out the be a plain fraud. The author filed lawsuits against the accusations, but lost them all to his denouncers.(Mann vs. Ball, Mann vs Steyn).

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“Ring out the old, ring in the new,” a poet wrote. The year 2019 like a head of state whose term is coming to an end is outgoing and in its place 2020 is incoming. The new year will take up where the old year will leave off. Of the many concerns that we have had to deal with for the last twelve months and are going to face in the next twelve months is the question of national or individual security. Whether we like it or not, the world is driven by conflict: particular people, social, racial, economic, confessional, ideological and national groups have of necessity divergent and contradictory interests and willy-nilly or with ill-intent they position themselves on a collision course with their competitors at different levels of human activity.

The December issue of Gefira focuses on state or national security because if this can be guaranteed, if governments have a strong grip on societies and political, religious, ideological, economic entities operating within and outside the many states, if governments can settle the differences dividing countries in a diplomatic way, then the chances are relatively big that huge upheavals caused by smaller players can be stopped in their tracks.

Security is the reverse of the same coin where conflict is its obverse. Since the side that is viewed as unfavourable cannot be done away with, the only thing that one can do is strike a balance between the two. Our authors have pondered over current many-faceted threats to security which governments will need to brace themselves for in 2020.

 

The European elites pay homage to their new idol: “the refugee”, the immigrant. At the same time their fellow citizens are of little interest to them. They prefer to invest in the electorate of the future: in the arrivals from Africa and Asia, who are slowly but surely replacing the indigenous European population.

Germany
The discrimination against German citizens is embodied in the new Integration Act, which gives “refugees” substantial advantages that the German government does not guarantee the German people. One example is enough: the refugees who enrich German society in this way are given free courses where, in addition to the German language, a daily four-hour programme is also offered, during which they can learn the basics of some trades. Such a programme is not available to the German unemployed.
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Greta Thunberg, a teenager berating prime ministers and presidents over the lack of appropriate conservation of the environment, Pacha Mama, an Inca goddess in the Vatican and the Pope prioritizing the ecological sin as the gravest crime, or the Ecuadorian constitution and Bolivian legislation confers on Mother Earth with legal rights: the world is watching the unfolding events with bated breath. What is happening? Is humanity entering a new era? Is environmentalism to be viewed as a new, universal religion or a mere smokescreen that masks other objectives? The planet Earth as the human habitat can serve as the only imaginable uniting common denominator for all humankind, paving the way for a world government, or the feared the new world order. The agreements and protocols constraining and progressively eliminating the use of fossil fuels signed in Montreal, Kyoto, Paris and other places act jointly like a harness imposed on the whole planet. It is for the first time in the history of mankind that the environment rather than national, social or religious matters seem to be taking the centre stage of global politics and economy. Are we facing a Copernican revolution in the making? The November issue of Gefira takes a deeper look at this nascent phenomenon.
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A piece of stats news has been broken in Poland that the number of surgeons has dropped by a quarter (one fourth, twenty-five percent) as compared to 2006. Within thirteen years. Make a guess: what happened? How did that large number of doctors disappear? Young people stopped being interested in medical studies? No. Make another guess. The demand for surgery is much smaller since society at large is healthier and healthier courtesy of the salutary regulations and decrees of the European Union? No. Make yet another guess. The surgeons emigrated to Western countries? Spot on! Bingo!

The Western intellectual circles regard it as evil to exploit weaker nations, especially the Third World countries. They love calling such behaviour fascism (a very fashionable offensive appellation) or racism or what not. Occupying moral high ground, they applaud sending doctors to Somalia or Nigeria or Bangladesh. Yet somewhat miraculously this principle does not apply when physicians from Eastern Europe keep coming to the Western states, draining East European health care systems. Why shouldn’t they after all? We need them – say Western intellectuals – our societies are growing older, there must be someone willing to take care of them.

How do the Western intellectuals reconcile their indignation at exploiting poorer (Third World) countries with depriving Eastern Europeans of their doctors? Oh, come on, another lofty principle is made use of: human rights, among which the freedom of movement is especially enshrined. So the story goes that “we do not rob the poorer countries of their doctors (engineers, teachers, professionals of any kind): they merely use their human rights and flock to places where they have better economic conditions.”

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