Author: The Board

Russia threatens to use nuclear weapons once again!

What does that statement – Russia threatens to use nuclear weapons once again – make you think of? Surely, that Russia has already used nuclear weapons. Then, of course, if you are a little bit knowledgeable about the history of the latest 100 years, you begin to raise your eyebrows and search your memory for the event in which Russia used a nuclear weapon.

Russia threatens to use nuclear weapons again – that statement was made by Ursula von der Leyen during her laudation at the 2023 Atlantic Council Awards on September 20. In all likelihood very few people paid attention to the speech. After all, such speeches do not attract many listeners: they are like peas in a pod: the usual clap-trap about democracy, human rights accompanied by attacks levelled at the “political rogues” that is right extremists (somehow never left extremists) and selected states and their leaders: Russia, China, Syria, Iran, North Korea and some others. In her laudation occasioned by the awarding of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Ursula von der Leyen took exception to – how otherwise! – Russia. She used the fact that the Japanese prime minister was born in Hiroshima and, briefly recalling the bombing of that city – she constructed a sleight of hand of mendacity: she said that the remembrance of the bombing of Hiroshima was a warning, “especially at a time when Russia threatens to use nuclear weapons once again (emphasis added). She really said it in public and you can read the script of her speech on the official site of the European Commission.

And you know what? Her face did even go red once she told this glaring lie! See for yourself (6:33 into the clip)! Nor did her nose become longer! She said the sentence matter-of-factly like she was making small talk about the weather.

Sure, she could not let the occasion slip without reminding the listeners of the “butchery in (the Ukrainian town of) Bucha” of a few months ago, which is just another sleight of hand, a phonetic pun. If you happened to believe in the veracity of the reports about Bucha, then von der Leyen’s downright lie about “Russia once again using nuclear weapons” should make you wise up. Whatever we are told by them – the managers of the world, the commissioners, the presidents and prime ministers – are such sleights of hand. 

Could it be that also the Jews dislike Russia more than they like themselves?

The shots taken in Canada’s parliament showing how the assembly gives a standing ovation to one Yaroslav Hunko, a former member of the SS-Galizien, who was touted by the speaker and the journalists as a fighter for Ukraine’s liberation from the Russian yoke has been doing the rounds around the globe. It was only now that some Jewish organizations have raised their eyebrows. What a surprise! As if Yaroslav Hunko was the only and exceptional case of celebrating a neo-nazi or antisemite! Yaroslav Hunko is a Ukrainian naturalized in Canada, and during World War Two he was active in ethnic cleansing in the territories that Ukrainians regarded and continue to regard as their own. The same ideology has not died out: it re-emerged in present-day Ukraine and it is only now that an uproar has been raised. Up till that event Jews around the world did not seem to care about neo-Nazis in Ukraine and have generally sided with Ukrainians in their conflict with Russia. how did this all come about?


Yaroslav Hunko celebrated in Canadian parliament

A short historical aside. As in any nation, so in Poland, among patriotic political movements, it has always been possible to identify broadly two attitudes of action: one guided by emotion and the other guided by reason. More than a century ago, when Poland was occupied by Prussia, Austria-Hungary and Russia, the greatest animosity of Poles was directed against the Russians. This animosity very often obscured the real good of the people and the country. The more enlightened national activists, who proposed to pursue a sensible policy that would maximize profits and minimize losses, appealed in vain not to take steps that would worsen the plight of the nation. The main point here was not to spark armed uprisings, since the previous ones had not only been suppressed, but also resulted in some citizens being killed, some going to prison and some leaving the country, generally forever, while the occupier restricted or eliminated those political freedoms that had existed before the uprising. These sensible activists pointed to the Grand Duchy of Finland, which was also under the rule of the Russian Empire, (since the Congress of Vienna), and whose inhabitants did not revolt, which allowed them to enjoy wide autonomy. Unfortunately, most Polish patriots preferred to explode in anger like a meteorite and die out just as quickly, succumbing to the overwhelming force of the Russians. Such conspirators, insurgents or revolutionaries found satisfaction in the fact that they could give vent to their anger and their rage, that they could kill a few Cossacks, rob a state-owned Russian bank or make an assassination attempt on one or another representative of the occupying power. They cared little for the fact that harsh repressions were visited on their compatriots for such actions and life in Poland became even more unpleasant. The most important thing was to harm the “Russkies”! In such circumstances, sensible activists of the Polish national movement coined an apt saying that among Poles there are very many who hate Russia more than they love Poland.

Such an attitude toward Russia still persists in Poland. Surprisingly, this attitude seems to be shared by other European countries (except Hungary) as well as the United States and Canada. Could it be that they have all become infected from Poland? They all want to harm Russia regardless of the costs sustained: economic, financial, political, or those of prestige. We can observe this self-defeating attitude by looking at Germany and its deteriorating economic statistics; we can see this attitude by looking at the rest of the European Union as well. All of this could be understood to some extent: man does not happen to be a rational being. Man also acts emotionally and follows blindly his beliefs: religion or ideology. Be it as it may, there is a nation in which such an attitude towards Russia is particularly astonishing, incomprehensible and – dare we say it – bizarre. What nation?

It is the Jews: those living in the state of Israel, those living in Ukraine, and finally those scattered throughout the Western world, especially in the United States. Almost all of them – starting with Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoyskyi (and his ilk), through Victoria Nuland or Antony Blinken (people partly responsible for creating American foreign policy), and ending with the Israeli authorities – support Ukraine in the latter’s war against Russia. they don’t seem to have noticed that for years Ukraine has been reviving and paying homage to the memory of Stepan Bandera, that Ukraine has been identifying with the Ukrainian nationalist movement, which both yesterday and today was and remains strongly anti-Semitic. To an ordinary person who knows how sensitive Jews are to the memory of the countless Jewish victims who had been deprived of their lives during World War II not only at the hands of the Germans, but also at the hands of Ukrainians, such an attitude is simply beyond belief! Jewish-Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoyskyi even financed the infamous Azov Battalion, whose members had swastikas tattooed on their bodies; President Zelensky, an ethnic Jew, is completely unperturbed by the cult of Stepan Bandera nurtured in Ukraine; nor are his American sponsors of Jewish origin bothered by this cult. How is this possible? In many Western countries, Jewish communities have led to the enactment of laws that prosecute and mete out punishment for so-called historical revisionism: in this case, statements or publications that claim that Jewish victims during World War II were fewer or that they died in a different way as reported. Lo and behold, mysteriously Jews turn a blind eye to the overt and militant anti-Semitism that currently exists in Ukraine, and they support Ukraine regardless of its Nazi ideology, as long as it does harm to Russia. Could it also be that also Jews (like Poles) dislike Russia more than they like themselves?

Another historical digression. In the 1990s about a million Jews left the crumbling Soviet Union. Was it because they were persecuted there (and now have an aversion to Russia)? No. They emigrated because of the worsening economic conditions. Where did the Jews come from in the Soviet Union in the first place? Jews found themselves in the Soviet Union because they had previously been residents of tsarist Russia. And how did they become residents of tsarist Russia? For the most part, they came from the eastern territories of Poland, which Russia, in cahoots with Prussia and Austria (see above), had conquered and incorporated into their states. The sudden appearance of several million Jews in the Russian state became a sociological problem to be solved. The tsarist authorities feared the domination of the mostly educated Jews, who were primarily engaged in trade and who as a rule ran village inns, over the Russian illiterate peasants. In order to prevent this domination, Jews were restricted to live in the area of the so-called Pale of Settlement (roughly, the lands of the Polish state that had been incorporated into Russia). A ghetto, as it were, was created, with this huge difference to other ghettos that this one had an area larger than any state in Europe, stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Such a restriction (from which there were various exceptions) plus a numerus clausus in universities could have made Jews hostile to the Russian state. This hostility found expression in the fact that they fed the Russian revolutionary movement in disproportionate numbers compared to ethnic Russians. This revolutionary movement eventually led to a change in the political system, the creation of Soviet Russia, in which Jews were no longer restricted. Rather, they occupied important positions in government, industry and the arts. Why then the anger at Russia?

On the contrary, anti-Semitism was revived in Ukraine when it was occupied by Third Reich troops. Ukrainian soldiers or policemen from the Ukrainian national movement (created by Stepan Bandera) proceeded to crack down on Jews (and Poles, and Russians, and Belorussians), committing mass murder. Ukrainians formed a separate division, SS-Galizien, which ruthlessly fought the resistance movement in Ukraine and beyond. From Ukrainians were recruited guards in many a concentration camp, whose inmates were precisely Jews. And today, when three generations have passed since those events, today, when Stepan Bandera and his (anti-Semitic) political thoughts are being honoured as openly and officially as possible in Ukraine, leading representatives of the Jewish community throughout the Western world are supporting Ukraine against Russia! It even came to the point that – as mentioned above – in the Canadian parliament, on the day of the biggest Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur, tribute was paid to 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunko, a former member of the SS-Galizien. Although a weak outcry was raised immediately after the event by Jewish organizations (and even by the Polish ambassador and authorities who support Kiev in its fight against Moscow unconditionally), this does not mean that Jews, both those in the state of Israel and those in the United States or Canada, will stop supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia.

Here we have two issues that are difficult to understand. Why such hatred of Russia and why such a willingness to turn a blind eye to the historical revisionism practised in Ukraine? Could it be – to repeat it a third time – that the Jews dislike Russia more than they like themselves?

Gefira 76: The Birth of Tragedy

The tragedy that Gefira 76 is dealing with is the death of the Western civilization that has been born by the Western elites. For decades now they have distanced themselves from the overwhelming majority of common people. What the elites seek to impose is entirely alien, weird or at times repulsive to the man in the street even though the ideas of the elites are ubiquitous in the media, in entertainment and the educational system. The common man is not interested in the rights of the sexual minorities or in reparations for wrongs committed two centuries ago by a group of individuals to a group of individuals who are long forgotten. The man in the street does not even want to identify with the eco-dictatorship that is enforced on us every single day.

It is obvious that the managers of the world have panicked: they can see that the system – capitalism or whatever you wish to call it – is not going to satisfy the huge masses of the population, and so the managers of the world have decided to rule by mongering fear and instilling guilt or shame (starting with the virus and ending with Russia, terrorists, China, melting icebergs, climate change, you name it). They are planning on harnessing us all, deny us of the comforts of life that we take for granted and restrict our freedom of movement to the infamous fifteen-minute zones. Once the managers of the world abolish cash, we will all find ourselves in a digital concentration camp.

Manageable(?) chaos or controlled(?) damage – in the form of tolerated riots of non-whites, pride marches, military interventions, immigration “crises”, “systemic” racism, cancel culture and so on, and so forth – serve the purpose of stupefying us and making us compliant. Whatever the managers of the world are doing to us resembles the nightmare scenarios from the Book of Revelations. We are witnessing an unstoppable destruction of all values. Gefira 76 presents the target list of things that are to be demolished, removed or changed beyond recognition. Can we, the common people, avert it?

Czech political scientist and economist Petr Robejšek proposes a people’s movement based on four principles, and these are to act in such a way as to always give preference to:
1. slow action over fast action;
2. local affairs over global affairs;
3. face-to-face contacts over electronic contacts; and
4. domestic goods and ideas over foreign goods and ideas.

Who knows? Maybe we can avoid falling over the cliff with this prescription?

 

Gefira Financial Bulletin #76 is available now

  • Civilization of death
  • The big upheaval – the latest ideas
  • Defense industry
  • Artificial intelligence

“It is funny watching all of this unravel right before our very eyes”

A few days ago, seven – some report – eight thousand invaders from Africa landed on the island of Lampedusa. Nothing new under the sun happened. Similarly, nothing new could be heard in the mainstream media. The same mumbo-jumbo could be read or heard about the “migration crisis” and what to do with it, that is, how the better process influx after another influx, because – God forbid! – the invaders cannot be pushed back under any circumstances.

There was something a bit new this time. All interested in the event could see on their screens two women descend the flight of stairs that enabled them to get out of the plane down. Lampedusa was graced with a visit by one Ursula von der Leyen and Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. What a sight it was! Two small girls surrounded by big men bending over backwards to please them, two little girls were doing the tour of the island, inspecting the place, preaching to and moralizing the world. What a sight it was, really! Ursula von der Leyen, a model in an advanced age, always in her spic-and-span, neat and tidy, immaculately custom-designed, made-to-measure suits and the same hairdo, as usual excited about being able to speak English, got new thrills of virtue signalling: she showed how kind, compassionate, empathetic, sensitive, philanthropic and caring a human she was: as usual, all she wanted to do was to save all the people (with some exceptions, which is always said for domestic political consumption) and bring them to the European fold, with Meloni – the latest incarnation of Pinocchio – keeping company. One could almost see Pinocchio’s growing nose: well, she swore to solve the problems of invaders and now she was compelled to accompany Ursula von den Leyen (how aristocratic her name sounds!) in “welcoming the refugees”. The reader will have remembered von der Leyen’s words in the European Parliament, where she championed the cause of “Europeans of African origin” or “Afroeuropeans” or whatever to this tune, so now she simply landed on Lampedusa to extend her welcoming hands to the new arrivals with Meloni as her younger “sister” who came along to get a lesson in European values. 

Georgia Meloni and Ursula von der Leyen visit Lampedusa as migrant numbers soar, The Times and The Sunday Times, YouTube

Now, Ursula von der Leyen must have got yet another thrill apart from speaking her favourite language and walking around like a model that attempts to maintain her youth and vigor. She came to Lampedusa to embrace the many thousands wild males aged 20-30! What a sight for a woman of success! European white men are simply beyond compare. The first, second, third and fourth waves of feminism have turned them into eunuchs! Now women being women are designed to burn with passion for manly, brutal, wild, ferocious men and – lo and behold – a new batch has arrived! That’s what Ursula von der Leyen has arranged for her many sisters scattered across the Old Continent! Clap your hands in acknowledgement!

To think of it. Year after year after another year the same events – now Lampedusa, now Gibraltar, now the Balkans, you name it – and the same hopelessly helpless (seemingly or genuinely?) politicians who solemnly promise to solve the problem only to fail miserably as if by design! Why won’t Ursula von der Leyen invite a number of those African Europeans or Europeans of African origin to her own villas, palaces, rooms, tables… Why? Or maybe she already accommodates some of them? Who knows.

A comment under a YouTube short clip about von der Leyen’s and Meloni’s visit to Lampedusa says it all [emphasis added]: Literally not one world leader has a clue what is going on in the world or how to stop the bad stuff. It is funny to watch them spout off about how great they are and what action they are going to take. We all know nothing is going to happen, the power they profess to have is an illusion and we are all beginning to see that. It is funny watching all of this unravel right before our very eyes, while they think none of us can see it. [@neildraycott5272]

Why is this war being prolonged?

You recognize this fragment, don’t you? Suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. At the outbreak of the hostilities, Ukrainians were very much aware of the proportion of the opposing forces, and so they were willing to negotiate. Such talks even began in Turkey but – lo and behold – Kiev received a command to back out. Now the hostilities are slowly nearing its second year and the number of casualties is rising. More than four hundred thousand (FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND) Ukrainians are said to have lost their life, but despite these horrible losses and despite the ten thousand being played off against the twenty thousand – to adduce the introductory parable – the war continues and there is no sign of it coming to an end. Why? Do Ukrainians really think they can beat the Russian bear? Do Ukrainians really think they can regain lost territories? Do Ukraine’s Western supporters and guardians really think Ukraine can win and regain its lost territories? Anyone in his right senses cannot believe that, especially high-ranking officials, whether in Ukraine or in the West, because they have all the data and, consequently, they know that ten thousand is fighting a losing battle against twenty thousand. If they know it – assuming we are dealing with people in their rights senses – then why is this war being prolonged? 

The Independent

The war is being prolonged for three reasons, two of which are rather familiar to the reader. One purpose in having this war go on is to weaken Russia as much as possible, to keep it engaged in a conflict, to make Russian president less and less popular among Russians and – maybe? – have the Russian people topple him down. A highly unlikely event, considering the highest approval rates that Vladimir Putin gets as compared to all the other leaders around the globe (Western leaders are credited with less than 50% of approval). The other reason is to deplete American stockpiles of arms so as to have a pretext to replenish them i.e. so that the industrial military complex can have new government lucrative commissions for the production of replacement equipment. There is yet a third important reason why the war – a proxy-war between the United States and Russia – is being prolonged. 

The Dive with Jackson Hinkle

Up to February 14, 2022, American troops had carried out military operations or – simply put – outright wars and interventions in very many places of the world, and nowhere did they encounter an enemy to be reckoned with. Whether it was Iraq or Yugoslavia, America’s opponent was significantly weaker, smaller, and usually politically isolated. It is in Ukraine that the American military are encountering an opponent that is a match. It is not only the type and quality of the advanced weaponry that the Russians use, but also the strategy and the tactics that they employ. Americans want to learn about their rival (enemy) as much as possible from the warfare. Ukraine is their laboratory, a military area where a war game is conducted, a war game for real with this precious exception that no American soldier gets killed (save for mercenaries, but that’s a different story). Americans have their advisors there on the ground, they have American mercenaries i.e. American active duty soldiers in disguise, while obliging Ukrainians provide the Pentagon with any and all intel. The war in Ukraine is a huge opportunity to study the Russian army in action. It is a huge opportunity to make Russians reveal the most secret, the most advanced of their weapons. Wars being wars, a hope arises that some of the most advanced types weapons might be intercepted. The reader might recall how the British received the whole V-2 ballistic missile that landed in marshes in occupied Poland and was retrieved, disassembled and documented by the Polish Home Army and then sent in pieces to the United Kingdom by means of a Dakota that flew from southern Italy to Poland and back.

Ukraine cannot win this war, just as ten thousand cannot prevail over twenty thousand. Nor can the collective West win it. Still, the United States can keep one of its global rivals militarily engaged (for more information, see the geopolitical ideas developed by RAND in 61 Gefira Feb 2022), study the Russian strategy and tactics and hope for intercepting as many items of Russian military technology as it is possible. That is why Ukrainians must die.

Joseph II and the EU

The Hapsburg monarchy and the European Union bear very striking resemblances. Of interest is especially the period of the reign of Emperor Joseph II (ruled 1765-1780 with his mother Marie Theresa, and 1780-1790 on his own), who went down in history as the great reformer, a revolutionary on the throne. During his tenure the Hapsburg monarchy was – just like the present-day European Union – an ethnically and culturally diversified political entity. Within its borders the following languages were spoken: German, French, Dutch, Italian, Czech, Hungarian, Slovene, Croatian, Slovak, Polish, and Ukrainian, to name the major ones. The whole structure was ruled from Vienna, just as today the European Union is ruled from Brussels. Though the European Union respects national languages, one may rest assured that its managers will slowly but surely impose one language across the Union and it is going to be English, despite the fact that the United Kingdom has ceded from the EU. Consider Ursula von der Leyen or Klaus Schwab for that matter: you only hear them speak English, not their native tongue, and you can feel the thrill that they get from it even though the latter of the two personages has a hard time pronouncing the English sound represented by the ‘th’ cluster of letters. Who cares? When French was regarded as the language of the managers of the world, not all of those managers mastered the language.

Coming back to our comparison. Joseph II was – just as the managers of the EU are – obsessed with reforming everything he or they can lay their hands on. And just like Joseph II, the managers of the EU adopt the patronizing attitude towards their subjects because they – just as Joseph II – know better what will benefit the people. How do they know that? They know it from the ideologues that they admire, under whose influence they are. Joseph II imbibed the ideas fabricated by John Locke, d’Holbach, Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu, Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), and others. He was intoxicated with those ideas. The managers of the European Union are intoxicated with the ideas of Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Henri Bergson, Antonio Gramsci, Karl Popper, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Yuval Harari, and many, many others. To put it otherwise: both Joseph II and the present-day managers of the present-day Hapsburg monarchy (i.e. EU) draw inspiration not from reality, real life, but from the schizophrenia of the philosophers that they follow. What they – the 18th century revolutionary on the throne in Vienna and the modern revolutionaries in the offices in Brussels – have in common is also the fact that they all want to regulate everything to down to the minutest detail. Consider some of the reforms.

• The abolishment of the capital punishment. Yes, it was Emperor Joseph II who came up with this idea; the managers of the European Union followed suit. No country may become a member-state of the EU unless it abolishes the death penalty if it happens to have it.

• Emperor Joseph II cared very much about nature, about the environment to the point that he prescribed doing away with wooden coffins and either using the same for new burials or burying people in sacks. Does that not remind one of the EU ideas to refrain from eating meat and using fossil fuels?

• Emperor Joseph II believed in the efficiency of central authority. The managers of the EU reflect the same conviction: member-state governments are being constantly deprived of more and more of their prerogatives or competences.

• Emperor Joseph II expanded his administration, and so does the European Union.

• Joseph II would produce edicts, decrees, regulations lavishly and abundantly: 6 000 during his ten-year reign, i.e. two documents per day; the European Union is not lagging behind by any means.

• Emperor Joseph II would prescribe such details as for example how many candles were allowed to be burning during a church service… One need only to think about the EU’s definition of what a banana is or what to classify as fruit or vegetable.

• The emperor was anti-Church: he abolished a number of church festivals (why waste time in idleness?) and gained notoriety due to his abolishment of many monasteries and cloisters which he regarded as useless. Just as today, prayer and divine service are considered superstition to say the least. You remember the adamant refusal of the EU to include Christianity in the preamble to the constitution of the European Union, don’t you?

• The emperor was busy destroying the social cohesion and the ideological foundations of his monarchy (for all practical terms a union of former states): his edict of religious toleration and the emancipation of Jews followed by the permission of imposing interest on loans along with the recognition of marriage as a civil union (yes, already at that time!) slowly undermined the traditional society with its set of moral values, of which usury (interest on loans) mattered a lot. The European Union follows in the same footsteps: the importation of Muslims and Hindus and the suppression of European traditional values are in full swing. This alone slowly brings about the change of European culture. Similarly to today’s changes that enable a Hindu or a Muslim to run an otherwise (at least nominally) Christian nation or to hold an important position in it, Joseph II paved the way for non-Europeans and non-Christians – at that time Jews – to work as civil servants, occupy high posts and be admitted to the ranks of the nobility not because of their pedigree, but because of their wealth.

• Also, it was not the original idea of the architects of the European Union to abolish border customs: Joseph II did it as first within his monarchy, which was, as already mentioned, a cluster of formerly independent kingdoms (Czechia, Croatia, Hungary, Poland). 

Just as during the reign of Joseph II, so, too, now, all these reforms, changes and regulations were/are too many, too detailed, too quickly, and too soon. The reformers behave like they were moulding a figure out of clay: they think that everything goes, they think that the subjects or citizens see eye to eye with them on all these changes, they think that the people at the other end of the reforms are grateful. Why do the reformers think so? Because they live in a fairy land of their won imagination fertilized with the pseudo-intellectual sperm of the respective philosophers. True, Joseph II did his best to learn how common people live: he tarvelled under a disguise across his many lands and abroad, and is even known to have ploughed a stretch of a field with his own hands. Also today we get such clowns: high ranking politicians or activists who love to display how down to earth they are. A day’s labour does not compare to a year’s labour, while a monarch or a politician at a plough is no more than a show for the people. That kind of experience is no experience at all, and consequently does not entitle the monarch or the politician to claim that he knows how to run all businesses.

Managing society or economy or whatever of the kind is like managing your own body. The reality is that you cannot manage or control society anymore than you can manage or control your body. That is you can, but only up to a point and strictly obeying the signals that society or the body provide. Just as you cannot eat to store food in your stomach for later digestion but you need to eat small portions at certain intervals, just as you cannot demand of your body much physical strain or skill without previously training it patiently, step by step for months or years, so you cannot transform society at the snap of your fingers even if your ideas seem to be oh so beneficial. Those ideas only seem to be oh so beneficial, but are they? Reformers of all times and ages seem to be impervious to common sense. Worse, they think they are omnipotent, they think they are capable of taking into account all factors, so that no results produced by their reforms will surprise them. That’s a huge delusion. Joseph II fell for it, and today’s managers of the European Union fall for it. The latter all the more so because they are armed with computers!

Consider: the abolishment of church holidays meant the abolishment of days free of work. Why should labourers be pleased with this change? The abolishment of the capital punishment means that it is not the state but other (secret? criminal?) organizations that henceforth have the monopoly of meting out the severest of all punishments i.e. ultimate power goes to them. Who are you going to obey, who are you going to fear: the government that cannot kill you, or the mafia that can? Joseph II prescribed that 70% of a peasant’s income be retained by the peasant, i.e. all manner of taxes ought not to surpass 30%. It looks very nice on paper and is oh so very humane, but can it be maintained in real life? The emperor never ran a business, never dealt with contractors or employees: how did he know what was feasible and what was not? Ah, surely, he had advisors, but then advisors are usually the people who are good at guessing the wishes of their superior and complying with them. It is very easy to decree something from a desk; it is an entirely different story to put decrees into practice. The managers of the EU are, like the emperor, oblivious to this truth.

Joseph II’s reforms produced chaos rather than a blessing. People began to revolt: Hungarians did and the burghers of Brussels did (the lands of present-day Belgium belonged then to the Habsburgs). What an irony of history! Is Brussels going to rebel in the foreseeable future against the EU commissioners along with their decrees and decisions produced by the thousands? Notice in passing that Otto Hapsburg (Hapsburg!) was one of those ardent activists working towards the creation of the European Union. Obviously, the obsessive idea of bringing different nations into one fold and blessing them with tons of directives and decrees runs in this family.

When Joseph II died, his subjects were relieved. Many of his reforms were repealed. He himself prior to his death had grown to be aware of his political failures and revoked some of his decrees. He had himself buried in a simple coffin (not a sack!) with the following legend on the gravestone: Here lies a ruler who, despite his best intentions, was unsuccessful in all of his endeavors. In all likelihood, the same will be applied to the managers of the European Union. 

Divided we fall, united we stand?

Europe used to be divided into many feuding kingdoms, duchies and republics. Europe used to be like that almost all of the time. The kingdoms and duchies and republics would wage wars and play havoc with each other’s property and population. Yet, at the same time, in the modern era that began with the first geographical discoveries, it was these warring European countries separately that started to explore the world outside the Old Continent, establish colonies and subdue almost the whole rest of the globe. It was not only France, England (later the United Kingdom) or Spain that took possession of vast territories in the Americas, Africa and Asia; it was also such small countries as Portugal, the Netherlands, and Belgium. They each acquired overseas territories that were many times larger than the home country of the conquerors. The people of the colonial countries spilled over to the colonies, populating them and developing there economy along with advancing some degree of education. The European colonial countries did not stop warring with one another during the time of subduing the other continents: conversely, they clashed militarily not only on the Old Continent, but also in the new territories, which sometimes led to the change in ownership but never ever weakened the colonial European states. True, the American dependent territories became independent of the United Kingdom, Portugal and Spain, but they continued to expand and exist just as their former European overlords.

Today all those European countries are united because their managers claim that unity translates into strength. Now, where is this strength? Europeans have long withdrawn from Africa and Asia as colonial powers and have stopped populating those continents. Conversely, Europeans are being colonized by people from Africa and Asia. Today, former colonial powers have heads of states from the Third World while their indigenous populations live in constant fear of the arrivals whose constant influx is unstoppable. Non-Europeans transform parts of the European countries where they have settled and no one in his right senses can say that this transformation is for the better. When Europeans settled in the Third World countries, the transformations were for the better without a shadow of a doubt. Think of all the technology, infrastructure, agriculture, medicine, literacy and, and, and. Of course, the transformation did not benefit all the indigenous inhabitants at once, but then it was a time that also most Europeans did not enjoy all those benefits to the full on the Old Continent.

Let us come back to the titular question: where is this strength of a united Europe especially as compared to the previous centuries? Before the Second World War the United Kingdom alone controlled the whole of India (at that time that term referred to the combined territories of present-day Pakistan, India and Bangladesh), not to mention a quarter or so of Africa. Today the United Kingdom has a Hindu prime minister while the UK’s capital has a Pakistani mayor. Belgium used to control a huge chunk of Africa known as the Kongo: today, though Belgium’s capital is concurrently the capital of the European Union, Belgium is an insignificant country on the international arena while one third of its capital is populated by Muslims who turn their boroughs into extraterritorial areas. France used to control a third or so of Africa and the whole of Indochina; today, the indigenous French people live in fear of the aliens from France’s former colonies and are exposed to repeated tsunamis of street violence complete with shop window smashing and car torching. Yet, Europe is united. It has become united to be strong and influential. At least that’s what is said. It has turned out, that it has become united only to fall easier prey to whoever pleases to grab for it. The agreeableness of Europeans, their welcoming culture and readiness to apologize for all real and made-up crimes of their predecessors of whom an average European has no idea exposes them to predators and parasites.

The phrase, United we stand, divided we fall (attributed to Aesop), has been misinterpreted. It only works for natural unions like those uniting people of the same ethnicity. Beyond that its application is maladaptive because it is in struggle and fierce rivalry that we grow stronger (or perish, as the case may be). A union or alliance of forces is as debilitating as shared ownership in that in either case no one cares about the whole and everyone expects the other participant (ally, co-owner) to do the brunt of the job. We know this famous saying: what belongs to everybody, belongs to no one. The same may be said about unions: they are a kind of shared possession of strength and resources and decision-making and what not: manifestly and demonstrably ineffective. Rivalling nations reflect the economic forces on the free market: they cause products to be better and better and at the same time cheaper and cheaper. A monopoly brings about stagnation, lack of incentives and ultimately death. Which is what we are seeing in the Western world. Unless you want to tell me that France or Great Britain or Spain or Belgium are now – acting in unison – more powerful than they used to be a hundred years back when they each acted on its their own, which goes counter to historical fact invoked above.