Chinese install themselves in Switzerland

On March 10, 2020, the Cantonal Council in Lausanne announced to the commune of Maudon that a display of the Tibetan flag on public buildings was not in accordance with the policy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bern. The protesting Tibetans, who had found their new home and protection from the Chinese dictatorship in Switzerland, were not allowed to manifest their freedom of expression on this day of their traditional protest (the commemoration day of the Tibetan uprising).

In the past, Chinese diplomats were like frightened or disoriented sheep running among the Russians and Americans, the bears and sheepdogs. Now the Chinese dragon has been reborn. Now they are more like sly foxes: they infiltrate Western democracies by having their diplomats rather than spies act in the field of culture, cooperation on international projects, or free trade. Beijing achieves its goals by shaping its positive image abroad.

In 2017, protesting Tibetans were arrested during Comrade Xi’s visit. The Confederates in Bern do not mind advocating cooperation with China since the 1970s. It began in 1949 when the country of banks, cheese makers and watchmakers was one of the first to recognize the newly formed People’s Republic of China. China remained grateful and signed new treaties with the country in the mountainous heart of Europe during the Cold War and again and again in the following decades. Most important was the 2013 Free Trade Treaty, which was never challenged by Brussels or Washington. While deglobalizing measures dominated the world stage under Trump shortly thereafter, such as those against TIPP and CEFTA, Bern remained loyal to Beijing profiting from globalism. Switzerland, Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, which are on the fringes of Washington’s and Brussels’ interests, are a training ground of China in Europe. The Middle Kingdom comes and buys Piraeus (Greece’s biggest port), comes where NATO bombs shattered its embassy and the main bridge in the city and rebuilds it. It opens its cultural institutes all over the West, just as Erdoğan weaves his web through Diyanet like a spider, and Western governments swallow this hard-to-digest Chinese soup in the form of forums, NGOs, scholarships, student exchanges, an overarching cooperation. Even before the pandemic, Swiss President Maurer assured of his support for the New Silk Road during his visit to Beijing, and despite the massive repression of Tibetans and Uyghurs at the time.

Professor Ralph Weber (University of Basel) examined the connections between Swiss companies and the Chinese Communist Party: Comrades from the Far East sit on the boards of many Swiss companies – at Nestle, UBS, SWISS RE.

China forced Turkey to deport the exiled Uyghurs back to China. Switzerland doesn’t care about them either, it is mercantile as far as it goes. And where there are high-tech and innovative solutions, there are also Chinese tentacles.

Who does the euro destroy?

After the 2015 introduction of the common currency in Lithuania, much has changed. On the one hand, the euro positively influenced economic growth, as loans became cheaper, resulting in increasing exports and investments, on the other hand, the gap between rich and poor and between the level of living in the cities and in the countryside deepened. Until the beginning of the post-pandemic inflation, prices and salaries increased continuously in the Baltic country, but the latter mainly in the cities. Already between 2015-2019, prices increased by 10%, among others food by 6% and services by 22%. In the post-pandemic period, all Baltic countries are now among those with the highest inflation, with salaries, including those of the richer urbanites, unable to catch up with galloping food prices for a good two years. The ECB’s policy is not helping anyone. If one speaks to a Lithuanian or Latvian on this topic, one hears the following: I used to be able to often invite my girlfriend to the restaurant, now I can hardly afford it (a Latvian truck driver aged around 30). Prices have become European, salaries have not.

However, the argument with growth seems to be a bit misguided. Polish economy with its own currency is growing faster than that of Slovakia and Slovenia, which quickly adopted the euro. Since the introduction of the common currency in the PIGS countries, they systematically lose their growth rate compared to Germany. Contrary to the widespread complaints in the German media about Polish fiscal policy (and the hope that it would be “disciplined” after the introduction of the euro), public debt in Poland is keeping within limits – and this despite the policy of social transfers never seen before. In the euro zone, on the other hand, debt is exploding, despite various formal restrictions. This is true even for the countries that joined the euro without having a public debt problem. The debt has been created over time – precisely in this oh-so-fantastic union. This fact is illustrated in the following graph.

Source: Ameco

The culprit is the crazy idea that one monetary and fiscal policy should fit all countries like a universal recipe (one size fits all). One policy for 24 countries – that can’t work, like a 5 year plan for all Soviets, or one for the so very different regions of China. The same interest rate for the entire Eurozone cannot be effective. It leads to destabilizing and costly imbalances in individual member states, which subsequently spill over to the entire euro area, which cannot develop fast enough vis-à-vis the U.S. and China.

But what’s all the talk about? After all, it’s summer vacation and you want to relax. That’s when we recommend a vacation in Croatia – the latest to enjoy the benefits of the single currency. After the introduction of the euro this year, prices in the once cheap country rose to the level of Austria. The Austrian “Kronenzeitung” even compared the price level with Swiss health resorts. The Croatian newspaper “Slobodnaja Dalmacija” calculates that a kilo of cherries and figs now costs 8 euros – 10 percent more than a year ago. Wholesalers have to pay 5 euros for a kilo of pears, 3 euros for cucumbers and 5 euros for peaches. No wonder tourists are canceling their reservations in the country that depends on them the most in the whole EU (11% of GDP comes from them). Another local newspaper “Jutarnji list” points out the surprisingly high cost of daily rent of a deck chair. On the island of Hvar it costs €40, in Split €35 and in Dubrovnik €33. On Croatian social media, a video of an American tourist is very popular, where she aptly notes that the price of the service remained the same after the currency conversion from kuna to euro. The greed of (small) entrepreneurs is one downside of it all, the other is that the euro is actually always Teuro. So we wish you a nice vacation in Poland.

Three flags of continuity or the West’s failure in subduing Russian spirit

On June 17, 2023, in the park of the tercentenary of St. Petersburg there was a ceremony of raising three huge flags of the Russian statehood. They were the black-yellow-white flag of Imperial Russia, the red flag of the Soviet Union and the white-blue-red flag of the Russian Federation. They fly on 180 meter high masts anchored on the bottom of the Gulf of Finland. Each flag measures 40 x 60 meters (two such flags would cover a soccer field) and weighs half a ton. The ceremony was attended by a number of high-ranking officials, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, who watched the festivities from a yacht, accompanied by a Gazprom CEO who explained the details to him. An orchestra played celebratory music – including the national anthem of the Russian Federation – while actors recited patriotic poems during intermissions. So much for the event.

The flying of three historically successive flags is an important indication of the continuity of Russian statehood. Only a few years ago, no one would have dared to dream that the flag of the Soviet Union would fly on an official mast. Today, after the orchestrated attack on Russia – its leadership, elites and ordinary people have returned to a fervent patriotism. Polls show that the popularity of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union is on the rise. And why? Because of the work of the psychologists of the West. They knew no moderation when it came to propagandizing Russian citizens and dragging the Russian past through the mud. Everything Soviet and everything Russian – that was the message inculcated in the citizens of the Federation – was supposed to be absolutely bad, evil, vile and repugnant. This worked up to a certain point. Then the realization dawned on even the dumbest minds: damn it, when we (Russians) were under the brutal tyrant, the West feared us; now that we are Westernized and want to comply with Western demands, the West began to trample Russia underfoot on a regular basis.

The Western managers of the world are supposedly advised by experienced sociologists, psychologists and masters of propaganda, at least that is what we are told. Strange. Like King Midas, everything these specialists touch turns sour. A frontal attack on a country – any country – usually causes the people to rally around their leader, whether he is a dictator, a satrap or a tyrant. Not for nothing do some historians say that the civil war in the Soviet Union that broke out after the Bolshevik coup d’état, commonly referred to as the Bolshevik or Russian Revolution, actually ended in 1941 and not – as officially stated – in 1923. While fratricide may have ended around 1923, the deep rift that ran through all segments of society did not. Then came June 22, 1941, the German attack that stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and all walks of life and ethnic minorities rallied around Joseph Stalin, even though many had hated him just a day before the outbreak of hostilities.

Certainly, Vladimir Putin does not remotely resemble Joseph Stalin, even if Western propaganda would have people believe so. How much more must the citizens of Russia rally around him now that they are all under relentless attack – economic and psychological? In this context, think of the Germans during World War II and their unwavering loyalty to Adolf Hitler. The Western Allies thought they could break that loyalty when they began carpet bombing German cities. With what result? There was not a single uprising. Even the incineration of Dresden three months before the end of hostilities did not help the Allies in this regard. The civilian survivors remained defiant against the enemy and even more loyal to the authorities. Why do policymakers in the West believe that this time will be different?

Just think of it. If you had listened to President Putin’s speeches over the last twenty years – and I dare say you haven’t – you would have noticed [1] how often he proposed cooperation between the collective West and Russia (including Russia’s membership in NATO), and [2] how often he warned the collective West not to expand its military presence in Ukraine. All of this fell on deaf ears. At the time, Russian elites were willing to do almost anything the West wanted to impose on them, but they expected a certain degree of reciprocity: equal treatment and respect. By 2000, Russia was down and out, displaying a fawning attitude toward everything Western. As so often happens – no less a person than Aesop, the Greek author of moral fables, described this phenomenon more than two millennia ago – the West seeing a weak partner and decided to make a killing. And yes, the West would have succeeded if Russia had been ruled by another Boris Yeltsin. Tough luck, though: Boris Yeltsin was replaced by Vladimir Putin.

But Vladimir Putin, as mentioned above, was also ready to cooperate instead of compete, to reciprocate good deeds instead of retaliating against bad ones, to benefit from each other instead of harming each other. In vain. Early on, he was labeled a dictator and treated as such. For a long time, the world’s Western managers tried to turn some of Russia’s elites against the country’s leader. This could have succeeded: After all, if Russian billionaires and millionaires had their accounts in Western banks, if they bought real estate in the West, if they had their children educated in Western universities, if – last but not least – Russian elites driven by inferiority complexes (so typical of Central and Eastern European nations) desperately tried to shake off their – as they thought – Russian backwardness and adopt the Western way of life, then these Russian elites were easy prey for the Western powers. Unfortunately for the Western elites, their overconfidence, vanity, coupled with utter contempt for their great Eastern partner, led them to overplay their hand. As a result, they must now watch in horror the resurgence of Russian patriotism, the strengthening of Russian consciousness of historical continuity, the reconciliation of Russia with its past, and the rallying of Russian citizens around the Russian leader. Moderation would have led to the West’s gentle domination of Russia; high-handedness has led to a clash. Moderation would have further weakened Russia’s patriotic and compliant spirit; hostility has aroused self-respect and self-esteem.

The three flags flying on the three poles symbolize not only historical continuity, but also unity between Russians of different political persuasions: Monarchists, Post-Communists, Republicans, you name it. Looking at the three symbols, everyone finds something for himself, for his beliefs and feelings. Would an American president dare to fly the Confederate flag opposite the national flag of the United States to please Southerners? Would a French president raise a white flag along with the French national flag to please French royalists? Would a German chancellor fly the German imperial flag – let alone the flag of the Third Reich! – in front of the Bundestag to show the continuity of German statehood? Would a German chancellor allow the flag of the short-lived German Democratic Republic to be displayed in a public place on an equal footing with today’s flag? No, European leaders prefer the flag of the European Union to their national symbols, while some of them – Angela Merkel in particular – are known to regard the national flag with disgust.

France in flames

The dams are broken. The migrants show their true colors. Their rage is excessive and unbridled. The French police are on edge. This will not end well. Naked King Emmanuel Macron blames social media and video games for the riots. Such impudence will not be forgotten. Maybe in the next step he will block social media like once Erdoğan and Trudeau? In Moscow, Warsaw, Prague and Budapest, on the other hand, the streets are quiet. It is not reported that under Erdoğan’s terrible dictatorship hordes of discontented migrants want to set Istanbul on fire. And Brussels is just now enforcing its migration pact with coercion. Who are these technocrats who are plunging once proud nations and admired countries into the abyss? What is their real goal? Certainly not the rule of law.

“You will know them by their fruits” – this quote fits both EU politicians and migrants. But I like to use it in reference to parents and their children, that is, I know what parents are like by watching their children.

The Muslim percentage in many secondary schools in France is not infrequently 60%. Prayers are forbidden in school, yet they are organized by the students. These students also massively bully girls who do not wear appropriate clothing. Their parents don’t seem to mind. Are they able to educate their children to be law-abiding citizens?

The Muslim Brotherhood and the Turkish Ministry of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) have long since infiltrated Western Europe. The decision makers play into their hands by not allowing the special services to stop this process, by censoring critical statements about migrants, by turning a blind eye to what is happening in schools, by not encouraging police in the fight against silent/loud jihad, by making migration pacts, by pressuring Eastern European counterparts in this regard, by giving NGOs on the Mediterranean a free hand when it comes to migrant smuggling, by … Decision makers in France, Belgium, Sweden, Germany, Austria, in the Netherlands, in … .

Why do people trust central bankers?

I can’t understand that. I would rather say: There should be a movement here and there under the prevailing circumstances, a kind of yellow vest against the bankers. But lo and behold, the anti-globalists protest against the “rulers” during the G7 summits, as if they don’t know who pulls the strings in G7. The bankers were, are and will be spared. Look at the history of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, how it was mercilessly swept away by the rulers. You could say: like an oppositional movement in Russia, but in the middle of freedom-loving America. What does the dictatorship of the bankers look like at the moment? And what threats does it pose to us?

Mario Draghi. Remember his assurance that he would do everything to preserve the euro and its stability? Whatever the cost? This is what he said and did in fact, but at the expense of taxpayers. A more recent example: Jerome Powell, the head of the FED assured on June 21 of this year, in relation to the problems of cryptocurrencies in the U.S. market, made by rigorous actions of the FED and SEC against the platforms and banks dealing in this digital money, that he would do everything to preserve the dollar as the main reserve currency in the world. How much will this cost the American taxpayers? Hello, Mr. Powell! Have you lost touch with reality? The Saudis are renouncing U.S. guarantees and reconciling with Iran; China is trading with the yuan with its partners; The BRICS countries are banding together, looking to add new members, including perhaps France – who knows? And you, Mister Powell, together with your colleagues, want to introduce the digital dollar, called “FED-NOW”, sometime in July 2023 at any cost to show every country in the world who rules here? Pride always comes before a fall.

As always, the next crisis is carefully prepared. One day an article appears, for example in “Financial Times”, the other “qualitative” media follow the topic. Then comes the “crisis,” always like a bolt from the blue. What is the “Financial Times” writing now? That the Bundesbank is broke. And that’s true. But then they publish a counter-statement. After all, the “crisis” has to be baptized in the media at the right time. They have to wait until the bankers themselves (the owners of the leading media) will give a sign to the editors; Yes, you may write that now because all the rats have long since fled the sinking ship and the captain never existed.

Why would the Bundesbank need a bailout right now? Because it is, of course, too big to simply let it fall? Yes, of course. But the reason is too boring for the average citizen, so he ignores the facts, but as always only until the headlines sound the alarm or until the next “unexpected” tax increase comes along. It is about bonds, the world of the bankers, which hardly everyone understands and therefore fails as a small investor mostly because he invests against the current, by the way.

Super Mario, otherwise called “Cost what it may”, bought for years from the member banks of the ECB their government bonds so that they (especially his Italian home central bank) could service their debts. Thus, the over-indebted PISA countries did not become insolvent. But, wait, wasn’t that forbidden by the Maastricht Treaty? Yes, of course, but only if the bank in Frankfurt am Main had bought the debt directly from the states. The states, however, wisely sold their debts to the biggest bigwigs in the financial world, including the infamous funds like Black Rock. Thus, the ECB financed and continues to finance the private US money industry, which has done nothing to any EU citizen. These piles of the securities were hoarded in the bunker in Frankfurt and the great Italian banker had hoped that they would not lose value. But then inflation came, and his successor (remember: he himself did not) had to raise interest rates significantly. Since while prime rates were rising, fixed-income securities were losing value, it turned out that the bunker was full of toilet paper. Independent journalists (not those from the leading media) have calculated that the total loss of the EU monetary guardians could be as high as 500 billion euros. If the Bundesbank takes a stake in the ECB of about 10%, that’s already a small problem. But as a well-known German politician once said: Not all Germans believe in God, but they all believe in the Bundesbank. The euro will last forever. Maybe for 1000 years.

BRICS on the march

More and more countries have aspired to belong to BRICS since 2009, but none from the West. The BRICS countries represent 40% of the world population and 25% of the global GDP. Thanks to BRICS, China can impose its vision of international cooperation and Russia can show that it will not be isolated on the stage of global players. The group is a thorn in the side of the Americans all the more so that a dozen other developing countries (marked in orange on the map below) want to join the current five countries of the alliance (red).

What America certainly doesn’t like is the fact that French President Macron communicated the other day his interest in attending meetings of the alliance. France in BRICS would be a trigger for profound changes in the geopolitical landscape. We bet that Turkey can also join soon, which, like the case of France, will weaken the importance of the UN as a purely Anglo-Saxon project and that of NATO. Indeed, the BRICS countries are against the UN’s attempts to link the issues of climate with the issues of security, and France in BRICS can return to the de Gaullean concepts of foreign policy outside NATO.

Source: Silkroadbriefing

A challenge to cohesion in BRICS is the large disparity in countries’ capacities (in favor of China) and the members’ focus on cooperation with the PRC, which results in a smaller number of relationships among the other partners. However, the main factor that has weakened the BRICS in recent years is the deterioration of relations between the largest member states, China and India, since 2017. Border and trade disputes culminated in the clashes on the Ladakh border in June 2020, which almost led to the cancellation of the BRICS summit in the same year and prompted India to deepen cooperation with the United States and the EU.

Now, the West’s involvement in the war in Ukraine is reviving anti-Western sentiments, not only in the BRICS countries. Indeed, it is clear to more and more countries that the war was provoked by NATO’s excessive expansion. The BRICS politicians also want to fight inflation whose cause they perceive not in the Russian attack but in the Western sanctions.

Whether you are pro-Western, pro-Russian, or in favor of the New Silk Road, it is better for all of us to live in a multi-polar world rather than to have all the strings pulled on the Potomac.

Ukraine’s national heroes

May, 1926, Paris. One Sholom Schwartzbard keeps shadowing Symon Petlura, a one-time commander in chief of the Ukrainian army and the leader of the ephemeral Ukrainian People’s Republic. Sholom Schwartzbard, who was Jewish, undaunted, having traced the whereabouts of Symon Petlura, confronts him now in a Paris street, draws out a gun, abuses his victim verbally and fires a few shots at point blank, killing the Ukrainian leader on the spot. Composed, he calmly lets himself be captured by the police, stands later due trial in France and… is fully absolved of guilt. Why? Because Symon Petlura in his capacity as a political leader of Ukraine encouraged or remained inactive while his subordinates decimated the Jewish population in Ukraine during the times of the civil war ensuing after the 1917 Bolshevik coup d’état.

October, 1959, Munich, West Germany. One Bohdan Stashynsky, a KGB agent, lurks in the staircase of a tenement house. Once he sees Stepan Bandera negotiating the flight of stairs, he comes up to him, pulls out a gun and fires or rather sprays cyanide gas, killing Stepan Bandera, who was one of the leaders of the Ukrainian nationalistic movement, morally if not legally responsible for ethnic cleansing, genocide and massacres of tens of thousands Poles, Jews and Russians in Volhynia, then Eastern Poland, today Western Ukraine.

July, 1768, Serby, southeastern Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (today’s Western Ukraine). Ivan Gonta is mutilated, tortured and eventually executed for his leading role in the massacre of Uman (Human), where his Cossacks (=Ukrainians) murdered tens of thousands of Poles and Jews. Ivan Gonta had been surreptitiously captured by Russians, who then handed him over to the Polish authorities, since most of the atrocities that he had committed were committed on the territory of the Polish Crown.

March, 1950, a village near the town of Lvov. Surrounded by the NKVD (Soviet counterpart of American FBI), Roman Shukhevych, a leader of the Ukrainian nationalistic movement (in importance to be regarded on a par with the aforementioned Stepan Bandera) most probably commits suicide, unable to fend off the Russian troops or to break through the encirclement. His identified corpse is burnt and the ashes are scattered in a river. (The same was later done in the seventies in East Germany with the ashes of Adolf Hitler, which – though partially charred – had been kept by the NKVD there.)

July, 1657, in Subotiv, Ukraine, dies Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the leader of the largest Ukrainian uprising against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He dies in his bed, so to say, but he, too, has made a name for himself through numerous acts of slaughter aimed against Poles and Jews, with the victims numbering tens of thousands.

All these individuals are among the greatest national heroes of today’s Ukraine, having many monuments, commemorative plaques and street names to their honour. The voice of Jewish or Polish organizations – representatives of Jews and Poles, two main ethnic targets of Ukrainian ethnic cleansing, massacres and genocide – raise weak objections to the procedure of conferring to these characters a status of Ukrainian national heroes, and turning them into paragons for the Ukrainian youth. Strange. All the more so that the atrocities committed under the official guidance or spiritual leadership of Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych are still within living memory! German nationals with a comparably reprehensible historical record – Adolf Eichmann, who notoriously sent tens of thousands of Jews to concentration camps, or Hans Frank, who in his capacity as governor-general of occupied Poland was responsible for tens of thousands of deaths of Poles – were duly tried (the former in Israel, the latter in Germany by the allies) and executed. The same fate met Rudolf Höss, the commandant of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, who stood trial in Poland and was duly hanged in 1947.

Somehow comparable atrocities inflicted by Ukrainian leaders on Poles and Jews go almost unnoticed. It is strange when we think about Israel, it is strange when we think about Poland, it is strange when we think about the collective West: after all, people in the West are oh so much sensitive to antisemitism even in trace amounts. All of a sudden Ukrainians get a pass: they are allowed to honour those who were flagrantly antisemitic, and they are allowed to elevate those who carried out ethnic cleansing and genocide on an industrial scale. Why? For decades you could think that in the collective West antisemitism was the gravest, unpardonable, unforgivable deadly sin of them all, graver than racism, white supremacism, homophobia, xenophobia and the rest of them. What has happened? Has the hatred towards Russia surpassed the West’s moral code? Khmelnytsky, Gonta, Petlura, Shukhevych and Bandera were antisemites par excellence, and yet they are honoured in today’s Ukraine while the West (and Israel) turn a blind eye to this cult; is it imaginable that the leaders of the NSDAP could be honoured in post-war Germany?

Worse, the chauvinistic salute or greeting “Glory to Ukraine!” with the response being “Glory the the heroes!”, both coined most likely by Roman Shukhevych, were modelled on the German “Sieg heil!” if not “Heil Hitler!” Who are these heroes who merit glory? You will have known by now: Khmelnytsky, Gonta, Petlura, Shukhevych and Bandera, with each name evoking memories of bloodbaths, slaughter, massacres, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Why do Western politicians wilfully and willingly use that salutation while greeting President Zelensky? If they don’t know what that salutation is associated with, then their advisors and counsellors ought to know; if even their advisors and counsellors do not know, then we are governed by ignoramuses.

One final note: even the battle-hardened, death-inflicting notorious SS-troopers were aghast at the atrocities committed by Ukrainians. The German occupation authorities allowed the Polish locals in Volhynia to possess small arms for the defence against the bloodthirstiness, bestiality and ruthlessness of Ukrainian henchmen inspired by the ideology of Roman Shukhevych and Stepan Bandera. Despite all this the West weaponizes the likes of Bandera and Shukhevych to spite Russia. Who can the West field in the war against Putin? Their own citizens? No. So, Washington and London and Paris and Berlin and even Warsaw! resort to Ukrainian nationalists who venerate Ukrainian war criminals, antisemites and Polonophobes because Washington, London, Paris, Berlin and Warsaw badly want to destroy Russia. It turns out that every deadly sin can be absolved by those who have the power to forgive or retain sins if the sinner can do a piece of dirty work in their interests.