Earth’s Wisdom Keepers

The recent World Economic Forum gathering in Davos was accompanied, as usual, by a number of panel discussions. The participants of such panel discussions are very frequently young women. It is said that young women need empowerment. A more plausible explanation is that young women are impressionable and emotive, which is why they are used to advance ideas, but never mind. If you had had some time to spare, and listened to the discussion entitled Earth’s Wisdom Keepers, you would have been treated to a lot of hackneyed phrases and bizarre ideas manufactured by feeble minds.

As said above, it was young (with the exception of Jane Goodall) women taking centre stage, surrounded by effeminate males who created a backdrop to this panel discussion. The participants talked about the bleak future unless we did something about climate and nature. The usual stuff. The participants insisted that science and scientists ought to consult, rely on and generally kowtow to indigenous wisdom keepers, as it was framed.

The introduction was made by Ann Dumalianga from the Philippines, who blurted out of her mouth cliché after cliché after another cliché, the kind that you well expect during such gatherings, to the tune of climate change, mass! extinction caused by the climate change and biological diversity loss along with the lack of the harmony with the natural world, disconnection with the indigenous forms of wisdom, all of which allegedly threatens our collective home (earth) and makes the future of humanity uncertain.

The floor was given to famous Jane Goodall – the woman known for her love of chimpanzees – who continued in the same vein, namely that we are destroying our ecosystems, the only home that we have, that we are (verbatim) heating up the world, that the older generations have compromised the future of the younger generations, which is why young people have no hope. Hysteria in full swing.

Jane Goodall – a big pendant in the shape of Africa on her breasts – reminded the audience of the nightmare that is about to happen in the year 2050: there are going to be TEN BILLION people on the poor planet earth, something that should not happen because – here Jane Goodall quoted scientists (somehow not indigenous wisdom keepers) – to sustain ten billion people we need four planets earth. How did those scientists arrive at that inference? They somehow did. Weren’t we told the same tale when the number of humans was approaching 5, 6, 7, 8 billion?

Marie-Claire – another participant – called on resorting to indigenous wisdom and – yes! yes! – on having more female researchers! You may wonder why it is important to have female researchers rather than good researchers irrespective of sex, but then there you have it. Marie-Claire talked about acting on – listen to this! – acupuncture points, places in the political and economic structures where climate “justice activists” and “climate negotiators” (did you know such a profession existed?) could have the biggest say and consequently influence. And, sure enough, power ought to be relegated to young people (it goes without saying: to young females) because something is the matter with the world where 50% of young people are represented by merely 2% in positions of power. Marie-Claire believes we have a lot to learn from indigenous communities and from nature, which is oh so beautiful and interconnected.

Really, Marie-Claire? You must have seen animals devouring animals, you must have seen animals fighting other animals for territory, for a female or a piece of food, you must have seen parasites destroying healthy bodies, you must have seen or read about the quality of life of the indigenous people before the advent of European civilization with all its medical and agricultural benefits, and you still believe that nature is beautiful and we can rely on its benignity?

Marie-Claire then went and to talk about how much courage the likes of her needed to be different, to challenge people who benefit from the system, to go beyond science (into religion?). Marie-Claire, do you really think you are courageous? Were you not invited to Davos (I suppose with all costs covered) by the people who benefit from the system? Were you sincerely invited by the powerful leaders of the World Economic Forum because they were captivated by your courage?

By the way, if the participants of this panel are so eager to consult indigenous wisdom, then they ought to know that in primeval cultures it was the elderly who held the reigns of power and – what a bitter surprise! – males… If they so desperately advise all of us to consult indigenous people in our ailments, then I assume they never visit professional doctors if they are in need, but go straight to the Amazon medicine men (are there medicine women?) or to shamans, which is the proper term they they have been known for centuries. Is my assumption correct? I believe some of those individuals do snub European, white man’s medicine – I know such people myself – but then the results are deplorable.

Hosana Silva from Brazil revealed frankly what she came to Davos for: “climate negotiators”, indigenous “wisdom keepers” and the company should be paid more! (By whom?) They supposedly contribute so much to humanity and they are underpaid or not paid at all! Thank you, Hosana, for your frankness. To make her appeal stronger, she depicted a terrible world she and the people in Brazil lived in: for instance, for weeks they could not see the sky because such was the pollution! Water, air – about everything – was polluted and people were… dying not only because of the pollution but also because of – lack of food! You take a look at Hosana, at her well-rounded body, and you wonder what she means by starvation, but never mind the detail.

Hosana has solutions! She told a story about African slaves in Brazil how they were capable of figuring out how to deal with the primeval forest and feed on it without, however, destroying it. Now, this “technology” ought to be applied in the modern world. African slaves were so much advanced in this (and I’m sure in many another) respect! Solutions are ready at hand at the lowest hierarchical social level, one only needs to take them. Solutions are offered by simple people without university degrees! Hosana really said: people without university degrees know how to save the world.

Strange individuals in a strange gathering. But then, no wonder. One of them came to Switzerland from the Philippines, another from Brazil, others from other places around the globe. Surely, they did not pay for the journey or the accommodation! They have found a way to make a good – very good – living. You just keep repeating the same clichés about climate change and the impending global disaster and that’s it! You feel important and courageous! You do not need to study something real like physics or medicine, you do not need to raise a family, you do not need to work in a bakery or in the fields. You enjoy yourself to the full in Davos, Switzerland!

Being what they are – all those silly, young women – they have certainly never been bothered with a few simple observations that:

– it is precisely because mankind has subjugated nature that we all live longer and better quality lives;

– it is precisely because mankind has developed technology (which was conditioned on the development of industry) that starvation and epidemics (real epidemics, not the one that was recently proclaimed as such) are basically a thing of the past;

– it is precisely because mankind has put a yoke on nature that we do not fear fire, lightning, heat, cold, drought, disease and the like and we have long stopped bowing to them and offering to those elements regarded as deities human sacrifice;

– it is precisely because mankind has driven away shamans (the right word for the medicine man) that we have stopped deluding ourselves with magic, superstition and irrationality.

What the participants of the panel seem to propose is going back not even to the Middle Ages, but to the primeval times when humanity was totally dependent on nature and feared it. Fearing it, it prayed to it and – let us repeat – sacrificed animals to placate gods – which was nature personified – and not infrequently – human beings.

What purpose does the term “wisdom keepers” serve? What is it for goodness’ sake? What knowledge, what wisdom do indigenous people store? Something about herbs and their beneficial effect on human bodies? If that were so, we wouldn’t stand in need of modern, advanced medicine! Hey, are you, participants of the panel, in your right senses? Do you want to make an impression that the indigenous people possessed wonderful, beneficial, useful wisdom and white people purposefully rejected it although it was oh so efficient and effective? Please…

Quite the opposite is true. The indigenous people were the first to fall under the spell of European technology. Do you know of an Indian who would have preferred his bow and arrows rather than a rifle?

Talking about indigenous people: what would happen to the planet earth if we reverted to their “technology” of tilling land and hunting animals for food and fur? Such questions never bother participants of such panels.

Jane Goodall was asked to conclude the discussion (or rather the exchange of pleasantries and sweet little nothings). Doing so, she showed the audience and the participants a teddy-bear-like monkey gifted to her decades earlier by a blind African artisan (emotions at play). She went to say that she’d been travelling with this monkey for years and that she’d been having people touch it because it imparted something good. She than had the monkey passed around. The young women were more than happy touching, caressing and hugging it. Yes, nature – the kind of nature they do not want to recognize in themselves – got the better of them: they are devised by nature to give birth to children and to raise them. Rather than idly talk about the planet, climate and the bleak future, they all had better have a family and a child to take care of. Why won’t they? Why won’t they follow the voice of this beautiful, resilient and interconnected nature?

Reckoning with the pandemic because the new one is already being planned

The fact is that there were significantly higher death rates in countries with anti-coronavirus measures. While in New Zealand and Australia, for example, which even pursued a zero-Covid strategy, around 20% more people died than usual in 2021, in Sweden, where people lived without corona terror, i.e. as normally as before, it was only 0.1%.

In 2020 in particular, Sweden was pilloried by Western elites for its “recklessness” until Stockholm’s reins were also tightened, and until the Swedish king himself personally apologized for the alleged mistakes made during the pandemic.

A commission was convened against the government, which merely wanted to preserve the freedoms of its people, and lo and behold: in June 2022, its head Mats Melinso reassessed the situation: “If you look at the whole pandemic, Sweden is one of the countries with the lowest excess mortality“. The bigwigs in the vaccine industry must not have liked that.

Even now, in 2024, they are furious, because after the countless side effects, after it has been proven that the vaccines simply don’t work, after trust has evaporated and hordes of vaccination specialists have embarrassed themselves, people are no longer getting vaccinated against corona. The CEOs and gentlemen in the elite circles are scratching their heads and saying: we’ve put too much into the business to give it up so abruptly and easily. And look what is decided in Davos in 2024. Moderna, Astra Zeneca, Johnson&Johnson and Pfizer, which are among the “partners”, i.e. sponsors, of the forum, have recently suffered massive losses. mRNA developer Moderna, which “went from a small start-up to a biotech giant worth more than 100 billion dollars in the wake of the corona scare campaign”, suffered a loss of 3.6 billion dollars in the third quarter of last year.

So at this year’s meeting of the world’s movers and shakers in the Swiss spa town, the head of the WHO rushes to warn of a new “disease X”. It’s bizarre: the Ethiopian communist Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus docilely speaks what the pharmaceutical industry makes him speak, because he is financed by Gates and other bigwigs of the Western pharmaceutical industry… And the founder of the Davos Forum, Klaus Schwab, is meeting with high-ranking Chinese officials for a confidential discussion at this time.

As early as 1997, the French journalist Serge Halimi wrote ironically in his book “Les Nouveaux Chiens de garde” (“The New Watchdogs”): “Every year in Davos you meet some of the 358 billionaires who, together and in ‘diversity’, are helping to change the planet, since they alone own more wealth than almost half the world’s population.” Today there are around 2700 billionaires around the globe, and no doubt their interests will also be represented in Davos.

We are impatiently awaiting disease X and the digital ID cards linked to a bank account announced at the World Economic Forum, as well as “the fight against disinformation and misinformation“.

Re-institute the military draft to fight for Lebensraum!

The piece of news is doing the rounds in the media that the United Kingdom and the United States are considering re-instituting conscription. Why? You guessed it right: because of the threat from Russia (and maybe China) and because the armed forces are short of manpower. There has been no draft in the United States and the United Kingdom for years: both countries have based their military forces on voluntary conscription. Then, year by year, the supply of volunteers has been dropping, which was of ever more concern of the respective governments. Why did voluntary conscription drop, in the first place?

There are a number of important causes that the authorities will by no means address. Where do you recruit soldiers? Well, you recruit them among young, able-bodied men, who – if they are not mercenaries – are of the patriotic cast of mind or who – at worst – want to make a living by serving in the armed forces. You need to recruit men who are tough physically and mentally, who eagerly engage in rivalry and love risk-taking. You need to select from the many candidates because not every man is suitable for any type of military service and some may not be fit to do the military service at all, given their health and mental capabilities, much though they wanted to be soldiers.

Now, all the factors having to do with the recruitment of appropriate human supply have been played havoc with for decades and the outcome is that there are fewer and fewer volunteers. What has been destroyed and continues to be destroyed?

[1] The family and its fertility. In the West, there are fewer and fewer typical families made up of a man and a woman with a bunch of kids – among them boys that can be recruited – with a male father figure that is capable of developing manly features in his sons. All this is gone. Single-mothers are raising at best only sons and they care more about passing onto their offspring the ideas of climate change or equity rather than anything having to do with warfare. Manly features of character such a daring, courage, self-sacrifice, rivalry, dominance have all been suppressed. Boys with feminine casts of mind are not going to serve in the army and if some of them are, they are not going to be anywhere close to becoming warriors in the full sense of the word. Low fertility does not make up for the shortage of soldiers on the ranks. Hence ideas of drafting foreigners, aliens, individuals without citizenship of the country they are supposed to fight for; hence the idea of recruiting foreigners in exchange for… citizenship. Does it not remind us of the late phase of the Roman Empire?

[2] Demise of faith, patriotism and generally higher values. Unless you are a mercenary – i.e. a paid murderer – who fights for wages, you need to believe in the grandeur of your country, your nation and generally in afterlife. On the contrary, if your mind is preoccupied with material things and pleasurable experiences – having sex, travel, having fun, being on the dope – you are incapable of sacrificing not only your life but even a small fraction of it. If all that matters is pleasure and if there is no afterlife, why die for such an abstraction as your nation or country? Haven’t you heard for decades that patriotism is a dirty word? Haven’t you heard for decades that anybody can be a British or American (or French, or German) citizen once he sets his foot on British, American (French, German) soil? Haven’t you heard for decades how terrible, awful, repellent, reprehensible your nation has been for centuries because of its imperialism, racism, because it practised slavery and so on, and so forth? Haven’t you heard for decades that your nation needs to genuflect to the rest of the world for the sins committed by your ancestors, that your nation needs to keep apologizing on and on and dismantling all traces of its past glory? Why should you now want to fight for such a monster? Add to this the culture of shaming and blaming, the resultant emergence of the snowflake generation and your picture is complete. A young man has been showered with entitlements and flooded with the victimhood narrative. If you belong to one of the national-ethnic-sexual minorities that – as you have learned again and again – have been oppressed by your country, why should you fight for this country?

[3] How about ethnic diversity? Diversity was supposed to make the Western nations strong. Why then can’t the Western nations recruit wonderful warriors from all those Pakistanis, Afghanis, Somalis, Kenyans, Mexicans, Colombians and, and, and who have flocked to and keep flocking to the West? They all should be grateful for the opportunity of having a wonderful life in one of the western democracies, they all should readily and willingly join the armed forces. They somehow don’t. Why? The answer is bafflingly obvious. First, you do not relocate to another country, thousands of miles away from your home country, avoiding (as is often claimed) war in your own country, only to take part in another war! Second, it is not people with a patriotic cast of mind who abandon their nationality and adopt a new one. They all do it for economic purposes! If they were not loyal to their own countries or nations why in heaven’s name should they be loyal to the adopyted country or nation? Why should a Muslim Afghan or a Jamaican professing voodoo fight for a (post-)Christian Britain? Why would anyone expect anything like that from them? They did not want to suffer the hardships of life in their country of birth, why should they want to suffer those hardships in an adopted country? Did they immigrate to experience unpleasant things? Why can’t the Western elites understand it?

[4] Wokeism. Even though all the factors enumerated above discourage young, able-bodied men from joining the armed forces, still some of them would do so, but then they are repelled by wokeism. It is drummed into their heads and thrust down their throats that women, lesbians, gays, people of colour they are all better and more desirable in the military ranks than white toxic, racist, sexist and bigoted males. Who in his right sense would like to join any organization in which he is not welcome? If women and homosexuals and Third World people are going to do the job better than white males, why hinder them in that task? Is it not so that the armed forces rather than recruiting able-bodied, higher IQ men, strive to fulfil the diversity quota?

[5] Last but not least, it is all about the policy-making that leaves people astounded. The escalating conflict between the West and Russia is one that has been devised by the Western powers that be. Why all of a sudden is Russia the West’s enemy? What has happened? Do not let yourselves be drawn into the petty news about Mariumpol, Avdievka or Bakhmut. Look at the big picture. What is it?

In 1988 we had two opposing military and economic blocks: in the West it was the EEC and NATO, in the east it was the Comecon and the Warsaw Pact. Two – so to say – empires ready to be at each other’s throats at the drop of a hat.

In the years 1989-1991 the Eastern Empire surrendered, laid down its arms, dissolved itself, abandoned its ideology, opened itself to Western ideological, economic and military penetration. The Cold War came to an end, and it seemed that a new, peaceful era was dawning.

In the year 2022, a war between the Western Empire and the rump of the Eastern Empire broke out. Its battlefield – Ukraine. What happened in between 1991 and 2022, what happened within these thirty years?

Well, the Western Empire kept expanding, enlarging both the EEC (now rebranded as the European Union) and NATO, encircling the rump Eastern Empire in an attempt to suffocate it, to dismember it (like they did with Yugoslavia) and removing it from the world’s political chessboard once and for all. The victory in the Cold War was regarded as insufficient: the enemy – the rump of the Eastern Empire – needed to be crushed and carved up. Naturally, the rump Eastern Empire began to put up a fight, hence the ongoing war.

Now, why should young men in the United Kingdom, in the United States, in France, Germany, Sweden or the Netherlands take part in this fight? To win the Lebensraum for the likes of Sunak, Biden, or von der Leyen? Why should young males have their limbs amputated, why should they come back home maimed? Because the Western Empire wants to wipe out the Eastern Empire?

To top it all, watch the US Army recruitment video presenting a prospective soldier – a girl raised by “two moms” – and you will understand why a mentally healthy man will avoid joining an “army” like this.

Gefira 80: Vampires, cannibals and mindjackers

Why do we have wars, actually? When you come to think of it, then you arrive at a conclusion that ordinary people – you and me – are not in favour of war. We are told to be living in democracies, where the majority of people, i.e. of ordinary people determine the political course of their country through the ballot. Why then do we still have wars? Do common Americans or common Russians want to die in Ukraine? Do Ukrainians want to die in the conflict? Obviously, they don’t. Nobody does. So why, to reiterate the question, do we still have wars?

Part of the answer to this question is the realization that there are psychological categories of people – in plain English deranged, derailed people – who due to their specific cast of mind strive to launch and wage wars. What people are these? Narcissists, neurasthenics, sociopaths and psychopaths. Yes, they make up a minority in any society, but due to the particular traits of their psyche they can make up even a half if not more of these who hold the reins of power. Why? Because narcissists, neurasthenics, sociopaths and psychopaths are individuals who are not hampered by remorses, who satisfy their desires cost it morally what it may, because they easily outmaneuver, outsmart, outperform ordinary people who have psychological limitations in that they have a conscience.

It is not only politics where narcissists, neurasthenics, sociopaths and psychopaths are overrepresented. The same psychological features enable them to amass fortunes. Now, if a narcissist, neurasthenic, sociopath or psychopath has both power and lots of money, he can lord it over millions of ordinary people. Such individuals indulge their hedonistic desires and promote their selfish interests among others through organ trafficking, sex business and scaremongering. They are involved in organ trafficking because this procedure can prolong their hedonistic lives; they are no aliens to sex business because they need to please themselves; ultimately, they love scaremongering (imminent climate change, war, etc.) because it keeps the populace obedient and because it diverts the people’s attention from them.

Gefira Financial Bulletin #80 is available now

Sex business, sexual enslavement
Organ harvesting and trade
Uranium Update
Threatened supply chains

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.

What will 2024 bring us?

The economy is overheated. Or perhaps underheated? Efficiently networked or shackled by fragile supply chains? How can you not lose in a trade war and how can you make money in a conventional war? But only effectively and in the spirit of ESG (taking into consideration environmental, social, government facets). We will be saved by technology, the educated proclaim. Artificial intelligence will destroy us, proclaim the apostles of mainstream wisdom.

In 2024, for the first time in human history, elections will be held in 76 countries with more than half the world’s population, including eight of the ten most populous countries in the world: India, the United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Bangladesh, Russia and Mexico. Every second adult on our globe will be taking politicians to task for the way they have governed in a time of decline, inflation, bloody conflict and widespread disinformation. In place of the shocks that tested the maturity of the political class, more black swans are sure to appear. There has been a pandemic, there is a war in Europe and, to make the end of 2023 even more stark, there is the eruption of a dormant volcano of savagery in the Middle East. The smaller, smouldering armed conflicts that have been going on for years are no longer noticed because they are no longer on our holiday or business agenda. On the other hand, we suppress the threat of war either unintentionally or deliberately.

It will be a year brimming with surprises, in which more than 4 billion voters worldwide will dance to the tune of the new media. Never before has social media been better placed to politically dominate such a large public sphere and supplant the authority of traditional mass media. This seemingly most democratic form of direct contact with the electorate has simultaneously become fuel for manipulation, disinformation, panic and the stigmatisation of opponents. Opinion leaders on Twitter now have infinitely more power to reach and mobilise the electorate than the dinosaurs of old-fashioned campaigning methods. Unverified sources of knowledge, non-existent opinion leaders, ubiquitous fake news driven by the vast capabilities of artificial intelligence…

On Europe’s socio-political radar, the boats of another violent wave of migration can be seen. The EU is supposedly testing new instruments to send people back to where they came from. However, they will prove to be as ineffective as all the previous ones. You don’t have to be a fortune teller to predict this. The EU’s external borders should be impermeable to migrants and solidarity regulations will only deepen the divide between Western and Eastern Europe because coherent Eastern European countries with their traditional societies did not and do not want immigrants.

The countries where elections will be held in 2024 generate more than half of global GDP. This is where the partners and customers who supply us create, produce and employ: with components, raw materials, food, services and expertise. And this is precisely where the economic systems will have to drift to the right or left. And you, as an entrepreneur, have to ask yourself the question: do you prefer a free market that leans to the right or to the left?

Whether we like it or not, we are living in interesting times.