It is very often that we come across a statement, a remark, that someone somewhere at a time expressed an anti- (here comes the name of an ethnic group or biological sex) bias or prejudice. Such a statement or remark evaluates the person who has prejudices against a group, a class, a nation, a race, a category of people.

The evaluators of people expressing biased opinions obviously follow this train of thought. You wake up in the morning, you start thinking about a group of people, a nation, a social class and for want of a useful occupation, out of boredom or stupidity or God knows what, you develop a negative opinion about that group, that nation or that class that you have never come into contact with. You formulate your opinion out of thin air and then stubbornly stick to it against the evidence of your senses, even if you mingle with many representatives of the said group, nation or class and are positively impressed. In a word, you create a world of your own and this invented world is more real to you than the one accessible through your senses.

Good heavens! Isn’t it the other way around? Clearly, we do not form opinions about anything and anybody until and unless we come into contact with this thing or that person. Imagine a child who first learns about the existence of Eskimos in a very simple way: he sees a drawing in a children book of a man or maybe a family against the backdrop of an igloo. Do you really think the child will start developing bias or prejudice? What if the drawing is complete with a nice-looking polar bear and a seal emerging from a hole in the ice? Do you really think the child will start forming bias and prejudice?

True, we may take over the opinion of something or somebody, of a collective, from our relatives, friends, acquaintances, from books or films, but then those relatives, friends, acquaintances, the authors of those books and the scriptwriters of those films must have come into contact with the thing, or individual or group of individuals, or they themselves have inherited the opinion from their relatives, friends and acquaintances, but then the same chain of causes and results applies until we reach those who did come into contact with a group of people, an ethnic group and by mingling with them have gathered experience which led them to formulate positive or negative evaluations.

Which of the two explanations sounds plausible? Continue reading →

He was an illustrious representative of the highly developed civilization, a civilization that had swallowed up and internalized a number of cultures. He was a representative of a multi-cultural state that had been absorbing aliens by the thousands and granting them citizenship. He had been immersed in the philosophical and literary trends of the times, he had much knowledge about the physical world and social institutions. For all that, confronted with a convict from one of the far-flung corners of the empire, he was incapable of formulating a definition of what truth is. He went down in history not only as the one who washes his hands in an attempt to exonerate himself from guilt and responsibility: he is also remembered for asking the (foolish) question of: What is truth.

The Convict standing in front of him did not answer that question. Why? Because it was no use. Try telling the modern post-Western intellectual what truth is and he will ridicule you and call into question any and all facts, data and their interpretation, reasoning and – yes – common sense. Not a stone in your argumentation will be left unturned. You will learn from him that there is no truth, or that we all have our own truths, or that everything is relative and changeable, and to claim the possession of truth is tantamount to intellectual dictatorship that leads straight to – yes, your guess is correct – fascism.

That is why the Convict did not try to engage in any conversation on what truth is, since no one is so blind as the one who will not see. Pilate, that illustrious representative of the highly developed civilization, a civilization that had swallowed up and internalized a number of cultures, a man of letters knowledgeable about everything and anything, was left with his question for all eternity. The followers of the Convict, the mostly illiterate dimwits making their living from simple trades and inhabiting the space somewhere between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea, knew what truth is, they knew it to such a degree that they were ready to lay down their lives for it, and so their spiritual heirs slowly but surely subverted the Roman Empire and brought about the downfall of the world of those who did not know what truth is. It is really as simple as that.  Continue reading →

It is a well-known thesis that the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is not really about politics, but about access to water. The Israeli military administration has systematically prevented Palestinian groundwater capture in the West Bank since 1967. In Gaza, on the other hand, anyone can drill a well, and although Tel-Aviv’s policy there is not as restrictive as in the West Bank, there is a huge problem with water quality. Demography plays a big role in this, as water-scarce Gaza is densely populated, while the water-rich West Bank is sparsely populated. This problem is not being solved as the Israelis seek to expand their state eastwards.

In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel occupied the Syrian Golan Heights and the West Bank to secure the water supply for the fledgling state. Since then, about 90 per cent of the Jordan’s water has been piped to Israel, while the 250-kilometre-long Jordan River must also supply water to Syria and Jordan. The fact that the Jordan is such a small river will lead to even more conflicts in the region in the future.

Egypt functions in a similar way. As early as 1929, it secured a treaty signed with the British to the effect that all states bordering the Nile must first ask Egypt for permission if they want to use the Nile water. Egypt’s entire life takes place on the banks of the Nile, from which the country draws 97% of its water. When Ethiopia tried to build dams on its territory in 1980, it almost came to war.

Turkey controls the upper reaches of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers and determines how much water Syria and Iraq get. Erdoğan, the new sultan on the Bosporus, who obviously wants to expand his sultanate, does not necessarily have to intervene militarily in Syria or Iraq: it is enough that he will just turn off the tap once in a while. Just as he cleverly put pressure on Europe with migrant flows, in the future he could blackmail the countries located on the two rivers with access to water.

That wars over water are not just latent or part of history, like the 1948 conflict over the Indus between India and Pakistan, is evidenced by the events of this spring, when a bloody clash broke out between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Heavy fighting between the centralist countries, which left 40 dead and several hundred injured, was triggered by disputes over the water distribution point on the Isfara River. Water was then only a spark in the powder keg of the hostile ethnic groups of Central Asia. While the Western media paid little attention to the events in May this year, the decision-makers in Beijing certainly watched it with great attention – anything that happens on the New Silk Road can thwart China’s plans.

With water it is like with oil: whoever sits at its source has a right to it that no one can dispute.

More on this topic in our latest bulletin.

Jordan River, aerial view, Wikipedia 

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Though it is not the last month of the year 2021, we are looking forward to the world of 2022 and beyond. Why? Because we can see the oak tree in the acorn. That is to say, of course, we cannot predict how large the tree with will be, how many branches and twigs it will have, how sturdy the trunk and how thick the bark will be; we know, though, that it will be an oak tree rather than a birch or a beech, least of all a coniferous fir or spruce. You can predict in a very broad outline the size and type of the building, looking at its understructure. Even a non-expert can correctly infer from the foundations whether they are made for a cottage house or a high-rise; a block of flats or a factory.

What are the foundations for the world of tomorrow? Consider them one by one:

• ubiquitous surveillance;

• Third World people as weapons in hybrid wars between states;

• the increasing role of adolescents as a battering ram in world and domestic policy-making;

• the all-out war on fossil fuels and the crusade to impose “sustainable” economy;

• the big push towards cashless economy;

• the imposition of designed pseudo-reality on the reality as it is perceived through the senses.

Such are the components of the underpinning for the world in the making, of the world of tomorrow. It looks like everything we have been accustomed to must be obliterated, decomposed and turned into fertilizer with which new crops will be grown. We ought to brace ourselves for the changes, we ought to at least be aware of them, to be – at the minimum – mentally and financially prepared.

The reassuring thing is that what the architects of the new world create in the form of blueprints eventually never turns out 100% as they wanted it to be. Reality is too complex for anybody to control it. Still, as they say: throw dirt enough and some will stick. We want to know what will stick. Something tells us that you want it too.