“THIS IS AN EMERGENCY. Life on Earth is in crisis. Our climate is changing faster than scientists predicted and the stakes are high. Biodiversity loss. Crop failure. Social and ecological collapse. Mass extinction. We are running out of time, and our governments have failed to act. Extinction Rebellion was formed to fix this.” This catastrophic prediction assails the reader when we visits https://rebellion.global. Up to the 20th century such ghastly, disturbing and bleak visions were conjured up by individuals who the modern man is inclined to call religious fanatics, religious fundamentalists or – more scientifically – mentally deranged. It is the proverbial Middle Ages that were fraught with itinerant preachers who would scare their listeners out of their wits, who would call on them to repent and put their life to rights or else. It is by no means different nowadays. Present-day moralizers have merely changed the religion. It is no longer imaginary hell – spiritual death – but extinction of all life; it is no longer eternal salvation but comfortable existence here and now; it is no longer Satan and his devils but technology and governments; it is no longer God and his angels but humanity in its many manifestations like “ethnicity, race, class, gender, gender identity, gender presentation, sexuality, age, income, ability, education, appearance, immigration status, belief or non-belief and activist experience” (the usual string of words); it is no longer moral sin but pollution of the environment; no longer virtuous life but life dedicated to ecology; no longer God’s wrath but nature’s wrath; no longer the Mother of God but Mother Earth.

The 21st century crusaders – operating in 75 countries and forming 568 local groups that are present at Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube – demand aggressively that governments:

1. TELL THE TRUTH i.e. declare a climate and ecological emergency;

2. ACT NOW i.e. halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025; and

3. GO BEYOND POLITICS i.e. create and be led by the decisions of a Citizens’ Assembly on climate and ecological justice.

Whoop-de-doo! Net zero greenhouse gas emissions in just four years’ time! Climate and ecological justice! What does the latter mean? An equal spread of precipitation and temperature across the globe? Wow!  Continue reading →

It is a month or so now that Canadians have been fed a sensational story about hundreds of unmarked graves found in British Columbia and Saskatchewan, graves allegedly filled with corpses of the hundreds of the children of the indigenous peoples, graves which are – as dramatically highlighted – located in the precincts of Catholic residential (boarding) schools. All the national news outlets and these from abroad seem to be obsessed with but one story: atrocities of the white man in Canada, trauma of the Indians, who today go by the name of First Nations, writ large, and the empathy offered by all decent people. The United States has its Black Lives Matter, heralding the interests of Africans, now Canada can boast its counterpart: the Idle No More movement, championing for the interests of the descendants of the primordial inhabitants of the country.

Down with Queen Victoria!

The appalling discovery was made just ahead of the national holiday – Canada Day – and prompted calls aimed at abolishing the festivity or at least changing its character to wit that Canada – at least as we know it today – needs to be cancelled. That’s at least the belief of the Idle No More movement activists. Their leaders exploit all the techniques of disrupting society that have been successfully used in Ukraine, Libya, Yugoslavia or Georgia, to name just a few countries. They

• propagate rallying calls, like No Pride In Genocide;

• apply poignant symbolism like placing large numbers of children’s shoes (memorials of shoes) or putting up small solar lights at the places marked as graves;

• call on their supporters to wear orange (in keeping with all those colour revolutions) to lend them high visibility;

• go on a rampage of pulling down monuments of white historical figures (the devastation of the Queen Victoria monument, pictured);

• create nationwide support by e.g. opening a crisis line where citizens are invited to express their support;

• stage sit-ins, service disruptions, marches, rallies, round dances, banner drops – all in the spirit of Rules for Radicals written by the old chap known as Saul Alinsky, Hillary Clinton’s mentor and guru;

• call for the empowerment of the minorities that are – of course – exploited, discriminated against, and what not;

• protest against police violence and demand that the police be defunded, and

• honour the many lives lost to the Canadian state that is (i) indigenous lives, (ii) black lives, (iii) migrant lives, (iv) women lives, (v) trans lives and (vi) 2Spirit lives (look the last term up in the internet if you have any stomach for it).

No Pride in Genocide (Source: idlenomore.ca)

Continue reading →

Humankind has since time immemorial had two categories of people: those who accept and even embrace reality and those who rebel against it and attempt to flee it or remedy it. Perhaps it is a psychological thing: there are individuals who can cope with the world as it is, whatever may happen, and individuals who cannot and need to take the sabbatical every now and again.

Every year in ever increasing numbers young, professional, mainly white Americans and Canadian zero in on Black Rock City, Nevada, somewhere in the Black Rock Desert, north of Reno, in vehicles turned into juggernauts to spend their time – eight days – pleasing themselves, doing yoga, listening to music, sharing and gifting, as they say, and bowing down to all the present-day forms of superstition. The seemingly ad-hoc created community has its ten commandments called principles of burning man and these are:

 1 radical inclusion (everyone is welcome);

 2 gifting (without expecting reciprocity);

 3 decommodification (no commercial sponsorship);

 4 radical self-reliance (reliance on the inner resources of one’s self);

 5 radical-self expression (meaning determinable by every individual);

 6 communal effort (cooperation, collaboration and – to quote the third synonym used on the Burning Man website: interaction);

 7 civic responsibility (compliance with the law);

 8 leaving no trace (cleanliness of the environment);

 9 participation (being through doing); and

10 immediacy (immediate experience). 

Continue reading →

It was eighty years ago, at about four after midnight, on a Sunday. A heavy shelling of Brest Fortress began. The place was attacked by German artillery and air force, soon surrounded by German troops, whose task it was to capture the stronghold within eight hours. Had not Belgian Fort Eben-Emael been taken within hours a year earlier? The Russians can’t be better than the Belgians, thought Hitler’s generals. Yet, Brest Fortress withheld the first, the second and many other assaults. It resisted the attacks even though the other German units had moved further east and were approaching Smolensk. It took Germans eight days to quell the obstinate resistance. Still, individual defenders remained in the recesses of the ruined fortress much longer and continued to pose a threat to the occupying forces. So it was. After the war a graffiti was found on one of the walls, reading: “I am dying, but I won’t surrender. Farewell, Motherland!”

Alexander Lukashenko delivering a speech at Brest Fortress. Russian audio here.

Precisely these words were quoted in the televised speech delivered by Belorussian President Alexander Lukashenko and occasioned by the 80th anniversary of Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union, which opened the Great Patriotic War of the years 1941-1945, a war that is still vividly remembered and commemorated in Belarus and Russia. The president’s speech, impassioned as it was, was at the same time a strong political statement and an address not only to Belorussians but the Western world. During the approximately 20 minutes, Alexander Lukashenko recalled the blitzkrieg of 1941 and compared it directly with the “colour” blitzkrieg of 2021: just as in 1941 the whole of Europe pounced on the nations of the Soviet Union, so did the whole of the European Union charge against Belarus, with the difference being that this time it was the hybrid war rather than its hot equivalent. To add insult to injury, said Belorussian President, one German Minister Maas – as President Lukashenko condescendingly put it – imposed economic sanctions on Belarus precisely at night on 22 June. Was this symbolism intended? asked the President. 

He gave his speech against the backdrop of a huge Russian soldier – or, to be precise, a huge stone head mounted on powerful stone shoulders of a 1941 defender of Brest Fortress – whose stern countenance of a formidable warrior lent gravity to the President’s words. Can it be – continued the President – that history taught them no lesson? Is the German minister – asked Alexander Lukashenko – acting in his capacity as an heir to the Nazis or as an apologizing German? Have the Germans forgotten what harm they did to the many nations of Europe? Have they forgotten how often they have apologized, shed tears, went down on their knees ever since?  Continue reading →

Mankind has known coercion since its inception. A group of people, not to mention large tribes and eventually nations, obviously needs a hierarchy, someone to lead and the masses to follow the leader. The leader figure may be embodied by an individual or an elite. There must be a set of rules for society to function. Hence coercion. People are forced to abide by the commandments set proverbially from on high or merely agreed upon by a number of the more powerful leaders. The coercion meant that some worked, others divided the fruits of the work; that some spilt their blood in wars, while others declared those wars and concluded peace treaties; that some served while the others were attended to. Our age is no different and yet very much different: those who rule demand that all men and women tolerate, approve of, like – nay! – love each other. Hate – what do I say! – mere dislike, not to say disgust, disapproval, criticism are forbidden. We are entering the age of the dictatorship, the tyranny, the despotism of all-embracing, all-levelling love.

Think of all the hate-speech laws and the resultant penalties for raising an eyebrow at the sight of a tattooed individual, for looking twice at ostentatious behaviour only yesterday regarded as obscene. All such acts are microagressions to say the least and need to be nipped in the bud. The tyranny of love does not extend to its opponents who need to be reeducated, reshaped, remoulded; failing which, the opponents of the all-embracing love are fair game. Like those poor chaps tied to medieval pillories, with their faces and buttocks exposed to the projectiles of all kinds hurled at them by a passer-by who pleased to entertain himself in this way.

The ideology of the all-embracing love has not been born within the latest twenty-four hours, nor within the latest decades. It has been developing for three or so centuries, beginning at least in the Age of the Enlightenment. This ideology has worked its way from the theocentric to the anthropocentric view of the world, where now the working class, now women, now non-whites, now homosexuals are venerated. The same ideology is now intent on dethroning man and put nature – the planet, the Pachamama, the mother earth, the environment – in his stead.

It is the feature of ideology that it has nothing to do with logic, with thinking. Ideology invades and affects minds making use of evaluating terms and creating ideals. If reality belies them, so much the worse for reality. This man-cum-earth venerating ideology is the world religion of the 21st century, attempting to incorporate the other creeds. The 2019 Abu Dhabi Declaration signed by the leaders of the three Abrahamic religions and stating that it pleases God to have diversity in the form of the many creeds speaks for itself.

Gefira 55 traces back the birth of the modern ideology and doctrines that seem to be encompassing or be forcefully imposed on the world. It also conducts a comprehensive, if short, survey of the current critical points in world politics in an attempt to zero in on where the future Gavrilo Princip will fire the ominous shots in the Sarajevo of the future.