Alice Weidel – Sahra Wagenknecht

A few days ago Die Welt held a TV duel between Alice Weidel, one of the leaders of the Alternative fur Deutschland, and Sahra Wagenknecht from her own political movement: Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht. All Germany is said to have been excited about the event and commented on it afterwards. The moderator – i.e. “a person whose job is to make sure that a discussion or a debate is fair” (an Oxford dictionary definition of the meaning of the word) – did his best to make the debate hard to follow and unpleasant to listen to with all his frequent interruptions and an evident bias against Alice Weidel. But then nothing new under the sun: such debates are held not to help the viewers to form an opinion, but to convince them who is the bad and who is the good guy. But we digress.

There were five topics: 1) Israel, 2) Ukraine, 3) economy, 4) the United States, and 5) immigration. We are not going to cover all the topics nor evaluate which of the women appeared better: all this has been discussed by many media outlets, and the consumers of those media will mostly adopt the evaluation offered to them by the journalists rather than rely on their own senses, but then there you have it.

What we are going to do here is to say a few words about the topic of immigration or rather about what was not said during the duel. Alice Weidel represented that political movement that would like to reduce, stop or even reverse immigration, while Sahra Wagenknecht, although speaking also in favour of reducing or controlling the influx of settlers, was more reserved and – typically for any leftist politician – defended the “rights of the poor people.” What the two women said about immigration was nothing new, as already mentioned. Yet, one invariably wonders why the party that is against uncontrolled immigration or against immigration at all does not roll out the simplest arguments to support their political stance. These are the following:

① A nation – in this case Germans – has the right not to want to see strangers in their own country, just as an individual or a family has the right to have his home for himself, for his family.

② “New” Germans are false Germans or are Germany’s fair-weather friends (if they are friends at all, which in many cases is evidently not true): they have left their own nations in need and have adopted a new national identity only because of material gains. That means that once Germany finds itself in serious trouble they are going to leave for a country with “fair weather.”

③ The argument that Germany needs skilled workers and educated people (we disregard the fact that it is mostly unsklilled and uneducated people that arrive) is another term for exploitation of other nations, of other countries; rather than colonizing a Third World country and despoiling it of its material resources, Germany is going to despoil Third World countries of their best human resources (assuming still that it is the skilled and the educated that immigrate to Germany), thus making it hard or impossible for those countries to ever elevate themselves economically, which is going to generate new waves of “poor” people who will decide to leave for Europe.

④ No political party raises the demographic problem: why not encourage native Germans to have children and thus provide labour for the economy (again assuming that it is labour that the importers of humans are after)?

⑤ The idea that a tiny country like Germany can save the world from poverty and war and exploitation by accommodating even a few million people is ridiculous at best and downright foolish at worst; Africa’s population is booming and exceeding a billion while the economic and political problems are multiplying: there will never be an end to wars or economic crises. Besides, an attempt to save the global population (billions of people) by a tiny Germany (or other European country) is as absurd as the idea of saving the planet in that the same tiny Germany shuts down its power houses operating on coal or uranium.

⑥ We cannot talk about a German nation the moment there are millions of Poles, Turks, Serbs, Croats, Afghans, and members of the many Africans tribes; we cannot talk about German culture or heritage the moment there is a myriad of faiths and creeds, a myriad of cultural codes inside the country, apparently mixed as if in a cauldron, actually living in parallel worlds.

⑦ If Germany feels threatened by Russia (or any other state for that matter) as it is often said, then it needs a patriotic, cohesive society. Is there anyone so gullible as to think that a Nigerian or an Afghan is going to fight for Germany? Is that the reason why this Nigerian or that Afghan has left his own country in need and settled in an affluent Germany? Have all those Turks and Poles and Croats and, and, and come to Germany to fight for it and risk their lives?

⑧ No one dares to point to mental or – if you will – psychological differences between the human biological types, differences that are congenital. Congenital differences cannot be changed, and as such they will always cause unsolvable societal tensions that will erupt in deep divisions and – ultimately – civil war.

These are valid arguments against immigration.

Triad

Each Western European state is socially divided into three castes: the indigenous white population, foreign settlers, and the political class.

The indigenous white population is ethnically monolithic: Germany is the country of the Germans, France is the country of the French, England is the country of the English, Sweden is the country of Swedes, Italy is the country of the Italians, and so on, and so forth. Occasional admixtures of other ethnicities are (i) insignificant, and (ii) culturally almost identical in that they are (post-)Christian, white, European. Such ethnicities have merged over centuries making up a quasi new nations of the British, who combine the people of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, or of Spaniards with their Catalan subgroup and so on.

The settlers by the mass media misleadingly referred to as migrants rather than (which would be far more appropriate) immigrants are increasing in numbers but are by no means a monolithic group. The settlers come from a huge variety of ethnicities, creeds and cultures and as a rule they create enclaves or ghettos or no-go zones or mini states within the state. They barely integrate or assimilate, but they are a privileged section of any Western society in that the authorities, the police, all social services back them, support them, protect them against the anger of the indigenous inhabitants.

The political class is globalist, supranational and as such intensely hostile towards its own ethnicity. In each Western country it suppresses the white – as yet – numerically dominant majority and elevates the many minorities. The political class is deracinated and denounces any real connection with the national base that it once rose from. The political class has no feeling of national or religious attachment or belongingness to the indigenous nations it governs: they don’t think in terms of the interests of Great Britain or France or Germany or Italy. They only think in terms of their own well-being.

Thus the old Marxian division into the exploiters and the exploited (or the haves and the have-nots) has been supplanted by the division into the underprivileged indigenous and the privileged incomers. These two can be and are skilfully pitted against each other by the political class. Consequently, these two keep each other at bay and let the political class remain the political class.

That the settlers are privileged goes without saying. They cannot be criticised by the white majority. Any member of the majority who dares to do so is immediately accused of being racist, which is the most heinous of crimes after antisemitism. Selected settlers are promoted to the highest positions in the state and the administration. The white majority encounters their faces in huge numbers in the mass media, the entertainment, the sports and advertisement. The racially foreign settlers are cast in historical roles of the heroes of the past of the white nations. History, by the way, is being re-written to drum it into the heads of the indigenous people that they have always been societies with diverse ethnicities. Judging by the over-representation of the settlers in culture and politics, once can get the impression that France or the United Kingdom are not majority white countries.

In ancient Rome it was much the same. Having conquered most of the territory around the Mediterranean, the Empire began to suck in foreigners who, at first, did simple jobs, with time, however, began to occupy ever higher positions. The United Kingdom, France, Belgium and the Netherlands have, too, had their overseas empires. It turns out they all have trodden the some political and historical path that the Roman Empire once did. At first the Western powers imposed their will on the far-off lands, and later they accepted the foreigners on their own European soil, enabling them gradually to hold ever more important positions of power.

Apart from playing the settlers off against the indigenous populations, the political class keeps them both occupied with (i) ecology, (ii) sexual perversity, (iii) and war on Russia, China and some other smaller “rogue” states. An average citizen of Germany or France, of Italy or Great Britain – if he takes interest in anything beyond his strictly personal business – is encouraged to join the crusade in the defence of the climate, propagate the use of the many proper personal pronouns for the many genders, and regularly take part in two-minutes-of-hate sessions aimed at the various dictators that tread the surface of the Mother Earth.

The political class promises a bright future for everyone who is complicit in the ecological, social and political project. Since an average citizen of any Western country knows next to nothing about history, economy, the finances and biology, he easily falls prey to the promises of a bright future. People have always fallen victims to such promises. Always. In a sense, therefore, the political class can rest assured that nothing threatens its position. And yet, if they only dug back into the past, they would recognize that the fate of ancient Rome is their fate. But then, I suppose, they still wouldn’t care so long as they can preserve their power and wealth. The Roman aristocracy accepted some members of the barbarian invaders among its ranks and continued to play the role of the aristocracy, even though their consecutive generations gradually stopped speaking Latin and stepwise began to speak Italian, French, Spanish, later German and English. Yet, they couldn’t care less so long as they had their castles and thousands of serfs. Latin was upheld as the language of religion, politics and academia, and so will English for a time.

Consider. Rishi Sunak’s grandparents lived in India, his parents lived in Africa, he was for a time the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister; Kamala Harris is an American of Jamaican and Indian origin. If white British or American members of the ruling class are deracinated to such a huge extent as they are, how much more are people whose immediate ancestry is so much foreign?

The Netherlands and Germany between inflation and recession

For public finances to be healthy, the economy must be sick

The fiscal conservatism of Germany and the Netherlands clearly limits the growth potential of both countries. The 45% of economists and think tanks active in the AIECE research network consider the current monetary policy in the eurozone to be too restrictive, while only 25% consider it to be correct. In particular, the respondents pointed to the governments of Germany and the Netherlands as those that are only insufficiently supporting their economies. The budget deficit of these two countries will amount to 1.6% of GDP this year for the former and 2% of GDP for the latter. By way of comparison, the figure for Italy is expected to be 4.4% and for France 5.3%. At the same time, many countries are struggling with much higher inflation than those between the Rhine and Oder, for example. It’s like between an anvil and a hammer: either you spend less money on stimulating businesses, leading to a slowdown in the economy and ultimately to recession in the country (Germany, Netherlands), or you increase public debt and the budget deficit through excessive spending, pumping money into the economy, which brings inflation with it (Italy, France).

In 2023, it paid off to pursue an expansionary fiscal policy that avoided a recession. In terms of GDP, higher government spending in Italy and France replaced falling demand, leading to positive growth rates. Countries that cooled their fiscal policy achieved lower growth rates and in some cases paid for this with a recession (see the Netherlands, where GDP fell by 0.3% year-on-year according to the latest figures). Denmark stands out from this pattern, as it achieved growth of almost 2% despite its restrictive fiscal policy. However, it is worth noting that economic growth was boosted by the huge success of Novo Nordisk, the manufacturer of weight loss drugs. Without the pharmaceutical industry, GDP would probably only have grown slightly.

At the same time, it should be noted that the higher inflation in countries with a more expansive fiscal policy is due to the fact that government spending has had to react to cost shocks. For example, countries that are more susceptible to supply shocks due to a higher share of food and energy in the basket of goods have taken more comprehensive and longer-lasting shielding measures for ordinary consumers. However, the reversal of these measures is slow, which is also slowing down the disinflation process.

A new threat to inflation is the escalation of wage demands in the major EU economies. Figures from the European Central Bank (ECB) indicate that growth in collectively agreed wages was stable at just under 3% in the fourth quarter. At the same time, these figures are published with a considerable time lag and show a rather outdated picture that ignores the ongoing negotiations between employers and employees. A completely different picture emerges from the internet search data, where questions about pay rises are reaching historic highs in almost all major EU economies. For example, Dutch internet users are now twice as likely to search for terms relating to pay rises than in 2016-2019, i.e. before the pandemic. In such an environment, rapid disinflation is highly unlikely.

Quelle: Google Trends | Gehaltserhöhung = salary increase, Lohnerhöhung = wage increase, Loonsverhoging = wage increase, Salarisverhoging = salary increase, Augmenter = Increase, Aumento = increase

To summarize, the impact of fiscal policy in 2023 has proven to be quite intuitive and textbook, although it is worth noting that the consequences of some fiscal tools will also show up over a longer period than just a few quarters (e.g. investment, education spending, etc.). Countries that pursued expansionary fiscal policies had to accept higher inflation but managed to avoid recession, while governments that focused on central bank support had to accept recession/weaker growth but achieved lower inflation rates at the end of the year.

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 →