Germany

Nawalny the Saviour

Yes, it happened some time ago now, but it is symptomatic of our times, of what we can observe on a political stage, hence worth taking a look. It was Easter Friday this year when German Bishop Franz-Joseph Overbeck had a sermon that attracted the attention of the media, which are otherwise not interested in what the clergy say (unless some of them dare to challenge new morality, which they usually don’t). Why did the sermon attract the media’s attention? Well, in a long, longish text about truth and notions that are allegedly connected with truth, Bishop Franz-Joseph Overbeck compared the imprisonment and death of Alexej Nawalny to the trial and execution of no less a person than Jesus Christ. A breath-taking statement.

In his homily Bishop Franz-Joseph Overbeck used the word truth a hundred times or so, and intertwined it with – how otherwise? – love and freedom, not forgetting about democracy and ecology. He also drew a comparison between Alexei Nawalny with the assassins of July 20th, 1944, the White Rose circle, and the fate of protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. One more time to let it sink in: Alexej Nawalny was made to appear as a historical figure of immense dimensions and biblical proportions. He is the man who – Christ-like – represents or even embodies the truth, and who courageously stands up to his prosecutors – to his Pilate (read Putin). The listeners could read into the sermon also the comparison between the Russian Gulag (mentioned in the sermon), where Nawalny was imprisoned and the place of Golgotha (not mentioned).

What can you make of it? Why Nawalny found himself in jail – no word. He was incarcerated because… he defended the truth and was the embodiment of truth. He found himself behind the bars, and was later murdered just like the Scholls or Bonhoeffer or Stauffenberg the resistance fighters in Hitler’s Germany. In other words, he faced another Hitler and paid the ultimate price just like the German historical figures mentioned in the sermon. That was – as far as the mass media are concerned – the most thrilling part of the Easter Friday message delivered by German Bishop Franz-Joseph Overbeck.

As said above, the whole text is peppered with the word truth that occurs in a myriad of collocations which are made to put across meanings whose only purpose is to please the expectations of the listeners without regard for logical connectivity. Take one example from the very end of the bishop’s sermon, which reads: Truth is this power that comes from love and enables us to be friends with all people [Wahrheit ist jene Macht, die außer Liebe stammt und uns zur Freundschaft mit allen Menschen befähigt]. It certainly sounds nice to a casual ear of an average listener. But hang on for a moment and consider the sentence. The statement puts together and connects truth, love and friendship. Let us have a closer look at the trio. Truth comes from love? How can one say that truth comes from love? Truth is truth and love is love. Truth is about the correspondence between statements and facts, love is an emotion or also – especially as theologians and some psychologists want it – an act of will. Yes, Bishop Franz-Joseph Overbeck saying love, may have meant Christ himself, but Christ said about himself that he is the way and the truth and the life (not love), but with preachers you can never tell. Then we hear that truth enables us to be friends with all people [emphasis mine]. Really? Does it enable us to be friends with – dare we say it – Putin or Hitler himself? Judging by the contents of the sermon, it certainly does not! Hey, your excellency, has your argumentation just fallen apart in the last sentence of your homily?

Truth is truth, it has nothing to do with love and still less to do with enabling us to befriend all people. Everyday experience tells us that we are incapable of making friends with all people, and only hypocrites can say they respect each human. The truth which uncovers shameful or evil acts performed by certain individuals may just as well make us dislike (to put it mildly) those individuals in the name of… the truth about them.

Making use of such logic, a logic that combines the uncombinable, his excellency can “prove” whatever he pleases (in fact, whatever is politically expected of him because, somehow, the message overlaps with the political demand, does it not?), also a thesis that Alexej Nawalny is an embodiment of Christ while Pontius Pilate has reincarnated in Vladimir Putin.

This comparison between Jesus Christ and Alexej Nawalny is faulty at least in one respect. You see, Alexej Nawalny had the financial, political, psychological support of the whole West in his subversive activities against his motherland. At present this support has been transferred to Nawalny’s wife: Yulia Nawalna receives the same applause and lets herself be used as a battering ram against Putin just as her husband did. Did Jesus Christ enjoy support from a worldly power? Was his orphaned mother on anybody’s payroll? Were his disciples protected by any political entity? Why, no. It took some time and a lot of suffering along with personal sacrifice for their truth to be recognized as such. Alexei Nawalny and his adherents have all the acknowledgment, assistance and finances of the powers that be. They have even more than this: they have constant positive presence in the Western mass media. No need for them to travel long distances on donkey’s back, no need to fear persecution. Even in “scary” Russia they are not going to be crucified, are they? Really, his excellency should have known better while preparing the sermon. Even the Scholls, Bonhoeffer and Stauffenberg did not enjoy the West’s support. Worse, the world learnt about the Scholls and Bonhoeffer relatively late after the war. Your excellency, even your comparison drawn between Nawalny and the figures of the German resistance during the Second World War does not stand! Alexej Nawalny is not another Saviour (or Scholl, or Bonhoeffer, or Stauffenberg), as you would like him to appear, not by any measure.

No more lies about migrants

The traffic light coalition (Ampelkoalition) is like a deer caught in headlights: it has been letting migrants in for years and telling its fairy tales, its lies that it benefits the German economy and demography in the long run. Now there is a defiant professor of economics in Freiburg, Bernd Raffelhüschen, who has calculated exactly what the cost of this madness is. In his study for the Market Economy Foundation, he estimates the cost of “immigration” at 5.8 trillion euros. This is due to the fact that immigrants hardly integrate, and even if they are able to operate on the labor market after years of qualification, the taxes that they pay are too low compared to the transfers offered to them by the state and municipalities to be able to call them “profitable” citizens who contribute to prosperity. Without immigration, the financial gap for the tax and social systems would be 13.4 trillion euros instead of 19.2 trillion euros – i.e. 5.8 trillion euros lower, according to Raffelhüschen.

The traffic light coalition expects a rejuvenation dividend from immigration: immigrants are their godless religion, the politicians living in their unrealistic Berlin bubble worship colorful idols, but even if they hold the office of finance minister, they are not financial experts who care about the positive fiscal balance of their undertakings and decisions. The idiotic welfare state, which functions in a socialist way (everyone is equal and on an equal footing), is in danger of collapsing because the traffic light coalition gives the green light to non-taxpayers and imported recipients of benefits. Wouldn’t it make more sense to transfer these funds to the indigenous farmers in Cottbus and other German cities, to make life easier for those who manufacture foodstuffs?

The Errors of Russia

The end of the old year and the beginning of the new year make one think both about the recent past and the not-too-distant future. The conventional borderline separating the 31 of December and the 1st of January (actually not the precise astronomical turning point, which is 24th of December) makes us not only think about the prognostics based on science, but also about prophecies of whatever kind. Why, science has conquered the minds of the modern man, but it does not – and it cannot – answer all the questions. Strictly speaking, science is about repetitive things – occurrences – phenomena i.e. things that can be checked, and rechecked, and double checked. Yet, we know that reality is also made up of one-time events (all of human history) that can only be experienced once by a limited number of people. We cannot reproduce such events – experiences – phenomena, and yet we cannot do away with them, we cannot pretend that they are not part of our life, part of reality. Such are prophecies. They are experienced by very few and are not repeatable. If you want, you believe in them; if you do not want, you deny them. In any way, if you are open-minded, you take them into consideration and remain on the look-out whether they come true. If they do, then – well – then they are worthy of your attention, of reconsideration.

Such was the Fatima prophecy of 1917. The apparition of Saint Mary, the Mother of God in Fatima, Portugal – because that’s what we are talking about – said a few things about the future. The message was not strictly speaking cryptic; conversely, it was fairly compelling. One of the predictions was that the future world would be infected with the “errors of Russia.” It is important to bear in mind that the apparitions occurred in the same year when the two Russian revolutions or – properly speaking – coups d’état broke out. The first was carried out by the Russian bourgeois, while the second by the Russian social-democrats, better known – especially later – as communists. Consequently, hard times descended on Russia that people in the West have rarely been fully cognizant of. Persecution of the church or any religious faith, the empowerment of the uneducated and the slow-minded over the educated and the smart, mass dispossession of the propertied classes, cultural revolution on a large scale, the destruction of the family and the morals, the egalitarian utopia, the re-writing and re-interpretation of history, the devastation of social cohesion by among others the promotion of informants (even children were used to this purpose against their parents), character assassination (people were often forced to confess and accuse themselves before others), condemnation of the memory of persons that fell out of grace with the current authorities (damnatio memoriae: big public figures were removed from all publications as if they had never existed), and so on, and so forth.

A century has passed since the infamous October Bolshevik Revolution. What do we see? We can see the errors of Russia everywhere in the Western world. Survey the list above and put it up against any Western society the way you would put up a mirror against someone’s face. The Christianity in the West is as dead as it was in Russia in the twenties and the thirties of the previous century; the empowerment of the uneducated people of colour and the protection of the slow-minded (so long as they are immigrants) is in full sway; mass dispossession of the propertied classes is under way with the notorious phrase that is doing the rounds to the tune of “you will own nothing and you will be happy”; cancel culture on a large scale; the destruction of the family and the morals complete with cohabitation, childlessness, parades of homosexuals; equity promoted in furtherance of the egalitarian utopia; the re-writing and re-interpretation of history with people of colour being cast in typical historical or mythological roles occupied by white men and women; social cohesion being more and more diluted by larger and larger influxes of Third World people, which translates into the disappearance of societies and nations (understood as people that are genetically related) and the emergence of multiple ethnic communities; censorship based on a network of informants (mendaciously presented as the opinion of mysterious communities), character assassination by means of magic, powerful words like racist, xenophobe, antisemite, misogynist, right-wing, extreme-right; condemnation of the memory of historical persons – especially white males – and the erasure of their names from books, street names and the like. Enough?

These are the errors of Russia that have spread to the Western world as prophesied in Fatima in 1917. Take note of one fact. The errors were not transported to the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union; rather, they had been trickling on and on since 1917, so that by the fifties of the previous century two big Western (and Catholic, at least nominally) countries – France and Italy – were almost taken over by their respective communist parties. Think about Spain that was for a time and would have remained immersed in the errors from Russia even before the outbreak of the Second World War but for the intervention of General Francisco Franco. Notice also the following glaring fact. In 1989, when the Soviet Union disintegrated and relinquished its grip on Eastern Europe, which till that time had been dependent on Moscow, all those countries flocked to the embrace of the European Union, while the most enthusiastic supporters and champions of the membership in the European Union were former communists! If that does not speak volumes, then I don’t know what does. Surely, former communists did not turn capitalist and right-wing overnight, en masse. They desired to become a part of the European Union simply because the European Union was made up and run by their ilk.

And just such as persons as Francisco Franco of Spain and Antonio Salazar of Portugal were officially hated in the USSR, so they are hated by the European Union. And no wonder. These two were opposed to communism that the Soviet Union stood for, and socialism or liberalism that the European Union stands for; they were conservative and nationalist – in other words: they stood for the values that the European Union strives to – and the Soviet Union strove to – obliterate, expunge, stamp out. 

Pro-Western fifth column in Russia by default

It’s not just a question of how much military power a given side to the conflict has at its disposal; it’s not even a question of whose economy is stronger. It’s more a question of which side prevails culturally, spiritually, or psychologically (psyche is Greek for soul or spirit).

Consider. The names of the months in Germanic and Romance languages, i.e. languages spoken in the West, have Latin origin. The names of the same months in Russian… also have Latin origin. Russians could have named the months giving them names in their native language, as the Poles or Czechs did; or they could have created the names of the months by drawing from Greek. The latter would have been more natural and understandable than taking those names from Latin: after all, the Russian principalities modeled themselves on Byzantium (a state that, although derived from the Roman Empire, used not Latin but Greek). Medieval Russians referred to Byzantium (and rightly so! and correctly so!) as to the Greek state; medieval Russians took Christianity from Byzantium; from the Greeks – Rus’ took (and slightly modified) the alphabet and modeled its own political system on Constantinople, which it called Tsargrad (Царьград) or Carigrad – the city of the emperor or the city of emperors. And yet, Russians adopted the names of the months from Western languages. And not only the names of the months. Those who know the language know how many German and French and now English words have found their way into Russian. These foreign inclusions are foreign to the point that they are not even declined by grammatical cases, although all native words are. Why are we talking about this? Is it because we are interested in proper names or etymology or languages in general?

We talk about it because language reflects the soul of a nation. It’s not the Germans, French or Americans who have Russian words in their own languages, but, conversely, the Russians have plenty of French, German and English words in their language. This, in turn, attests to who has an overwhelming cultural, philosophical, mental, spiritual and psychological influence on whom. It shows who really rules over whom. This is a better litmus test for demonstrating who is subject to whom than finances, the economy or military conquests. Why? Because financial or economic advantage can be coerced, because military advantage is demonstrated through the use of brute force. In the case of language, it is quite different. No one outside Russia told Russians to adopt foreign words! They did it on their own, willingly, and they did it because they recognized the superiority of Western civilization. Patriotic Russians may deny it, but it is the language that is hard evidence that Russians have always considered themselves inferior.

To get an Oscar (or a similar award given in the West) is the dream of every Russian film director; to get a Nobel Prize for literature (or a similar award given in the West) is the dream of every Russian writer. Does any Western film director or Western writer dream of getting an award in Moscow or St. Petersburg?

It is the above-described sense of the inferiority complex on the part of Russians that makes rich Russians buy properties in the West and keep their money in Western banks. In other words, rich Russians are at the mercy and disfavor of the West, which can take these estates and accounts from them at any time it sees fit. Such Russians with estates and bank accounts abroad constitute a fifth column within the Russian Federation. Russians who have accounts in Western banks, who have properties in the West – what’s more – whose children study at Western universities do not think in Russian, whether they want to admit it or not. These Russians are a powerful force, scattered about the country, that works to the advantage of the West and to the detriment of their own homeland whether they want to admit it or not. Continue reading →

America’s helplessness

Nordstream pipes have been blown up. Sure, no one knows who did it, and yet…. everyone knows. At a time when referendums in the four provinces of eastern Ukraine (historically: Novorossiya) are sealing the fate of those regions by handing them over to Russia, at a time when European countries fear the coming winter and hesitate to cut all trade ties with Moscow, at a time when right-wing parties are gaining popularity across Europe, the United States, seeing its policies falling apart, is erupting in hysteria.

Former Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, married to US neocon Anne Applebaum, wrote a message of thanks to the US. Was it a slip of the tongue, or did he act on American orders to indirectly show the Russians who was behind the sabotage? Either way, Russian journalists using open source airborne radar were able to trace the mysterious plane’s flight across the Baltic to Poland, and then across the Baltic again, including over the site of the sabotage: the area around Bornholm Island. That the Polish government and Polish elites are rabidly anti-Russian is well known.

Ukraine is slowly but nevertheless shrinking territorially. This is always the case when a country relies too much on Western aid. President Zelenski was ready to sit down at the negotiating table soon after the outbreak of hostilities. He was quickly barred from doing so. Now the country he leads has lost four pieces of its territory – permanently. No one in their right mind believes that Russia will ever give them back to Ukraine after what has been going on these past few months, after so much bloodshed, after all the sanctions, and now after the disruption of two gas pipelines.

Nord Stream 2 Pins Hope on Germany for EU Gas Rule Hurdle

Nord Stream 2 expects regulators to decide by May whether its contested natural gas pipeline linking Germany to Russia will be able to operate as planned. Already suffering U.S. sanctions, the project led by Gazprom PJSC is pinning its hopes on German regulator Bundesnetzagentur to help it clear hurdles erected by European Union competition authorities. So-called unbundling rules rolled out by the trade bloc last year require the owners of gas and those who deliver it by pipeline or ship to be separate legal entities, even the fuel comes from outside the EU. Source: Bloomberg