Gefira 74: Nothing new under the sun

The names may be different, but the phenomena remain the same. The Western world, which is so free, especially in terms of freedom of expression, has long since abolished censorship, hasn’t it? No, there is no censorship, God forbid. There are community rules that preclude the expression of this or that opinion, or laws against hate speech that silence someone, but certainly no ban on free speech.

It is much the same with wars. Have you noticed that the good old days when country A officially declared war on country B before bombing it are long gone? But then why should we declare war? We don’t fight wars anymore, we conduct military operations to prevent a demographic or human catastrophe in a particular region. Or we fight terrorism, so sometimes we declare war, but not against a country or a nation, but against terrorism, against evil people or evil ideologies.

Different designations can make us think differently about phenomena that are very similar, not to say identical. Gephira 74 compares the events and characteristics of two instances of such hostilities, separated by almost two hundred years: two wars fought between the West and Russia for world domination, or at least for domination in one region, two wars both connected in one way or another with the Crimean Peninsula. One of these wars took place between 1853 and 1856, the other began in 2022.

We are also examining the American and German economy. Unseen policymakers like Powell and Scholz are attempting to appear optimistic, but the reality is that there are many indications that the decline will persist. Immigration is ongoing and is doing nothing to improve the labor market, the reason that was supposed to legitimize these absurd social policies. Companies and big banks are going into bankruptcy, education standards are dropping, while TV presenters only talk about new challenges, rather than an impending collapse.