Where are you from? – an offensive question

We are witnessing an assault of abnormality in the Western world to wit that you must ask which of the many pronouns your interlocutor wishes to be addressed with, but you must not ask about where he comes from! To put it otherwise, you are not supposed to be ashamed of the fact that you are evidently unhinged if you think that you are xi or ze, but you are supposed to feel ashamed of the country you or your ancestors were born in. How is that possible that such abnormality took root?

We have long been conditioned by the powers that be that we should not ask anybody about his religion. Why? Because that’s a private matter of each individual, they say. So what? Is not your name or other details concerning your family and your profession private matters of yours? Why should a question about what you believe in be banned? Why should a question about what country you are from be forbidden? Why should a question about your nationality be prohibited? Are these pieces of information shameful? Am I asking my interlocutor about whether he has syphilis? About whether she has HIV? What’s so shameful about anybody’s ethnicity? Hey, we are supposed to believe that all types of heritage are equally valuable; more, we are all told that people from cultures other than European even surpass our – European – cultural achievements. So what’s the matter? All those people of Asian or African heritage ought to be proud of where they or their parents or their ancestors are from; more, they ought to be pleased whenever they are asked about their ethnicity, their faith, their origin.

As it is, everything that we are fed are lies. On the one hand we are told that newcomers contribute enormously to European culture bringing in their own heritage, on the other – God forbid asking them about the country of their origin! Obviously, some ethnicities are perceived by the individuals themselves as shameful. How otherwise? Indeed, if you are asked about your profession and you happen to be a doctor or an engineer, you are more than pleased to give your interlocutor this item of information about yourself. You feel proud and you know that your interlocutor is going to admire you, to envy you, or to hold you in high esteem. Conversely, if you happen to be employed as someone who cleans offices or collects trash, you certainly prefer not to be asked about what you do for a living, and you certainly want to avoid any talk about professions. If such a talk is unavoidable, you resort to using fancy words to (re)name your profession, like you say you are a cleaning lady – as if ladies have ever been associated with doing the cleaning!

Much the same is true about ethnicity, about nationality, about heritage. No one feels ashamed of saying I am American, French, British or Japanese. Somehow people from a large number of countries or nations feel ashamed when asked about their origin. It is not that we make them feel ashamed: they themselves feel so. That only shows the inferiority complex that they have developed and suffer from. Yet, banning questions about someone’s country of origin is not going to help individuals with that inferiority complex. If it is not their speech that betrays them, it certainly is their looks. Children of naturalised foreigners may speak the language of the adopted nation just as native speakers, but their biology – that is their looks – are not going to change unless – of course, unless – consecutive generations of arrivals keep intermarrying with the host race, which in turn is ethnic suicide, is it not?

Gef 87: Through the Looking-Glass, and What we Find There

What would you say if you learnt that Gibraltar is of the national security interest for the United Kingdom, while it is not of the national security of Spain? What would you think if you read that France could not feel secure if Russia occupied Latvia, but Russia should feel secure if Ukraine is a member of NATO? What would your reaction be if you were told that Turkey needs to control Lebanon or else Ankara will feel insecure? Don’t such claims sound absurd?

And yet that’s what the United States is not ashamed of proclaiming, namely, that without having control over Taiwan it is going to feel threatened by China.

What would you say if you read that Denmark is surprised by the fact that Germany’s army is much more numerous? What would you think if you were told that Bulgaria points to the numerical superiority of Turkey’s troops? Are these facts strange, given that the population of Germany or Turkey is much larger than that of Denmark or Bulgaria? Yet, that’s what surprises serious American political and military analysts who point to the large size of the army of the Middle Kingdom as if the size of China’s population were no factor in it at all.

Such are some of the statements that you can find while reading yet another treatise issued by the notorious Research And Development (RAND) think-tank, a treatise that Gefira 87 has delved into. This many-pages boring document echoes the same claims that Washington has been repeating for decades. Nothing new in terms of American take on the world, but a fascinating insight into the psyche of the world’s hegemon, the hegemon who is not ashamed of proclaiming to the whole globe that he is entitled to exercise the exclusive right to rule it over, to boss it over, and to bully others if they happen to hold a different opinion. An insight into a narcissist’s soul, a soul of the narcissist who has accustomed himself to playing the main role and cannot bear other protagonists anywhere in sight; a narcissist who is ready to set the world ablaze in order to maintain its dominant position.

Gefira Financial Bulletin #87is available now

The hegemon’s psyche in the hegemon’s own words
Chinese tiger and Russian roaring lion
America’s inefficiency
Gold oder…?

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.

Orbán’s speech in European Union

On 9 October 2024, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán delivered a speech in the EU Parliament, occasioned by Hungary’s current half-year presidency. He addressed his words to the European government misleadingly being sold off as a commission and the European president, also misleadingly being referred to by some other tricky title. The Hungarian Prime Minister, known for his common sense and a courageous political stance, threw a gauntlet to Ursula von der Leyen’s stiff face, to wit that the European Union must change, and that Hungarian presidency would be dedicated to this task.

Viktor Orbán pointed to the decline in European economy and named the causes: the green transition and the fact that Europe had cut itself off from Russian oil and gas. The green transition was not feasible for the foreseeable future while lack of the cheap energy resources caused the prices of electricity to shoot through the roof.

The hottest topic that the Hungarian Prime Minister touched was immigration. Viktor Orbán has been known for years for his stance against irresponsibly letting in millions of people from outside the continent. As we remember, he had a protective fence built along Hungary’s southern border, and has never slavishly bowed to the EU’s policy of importing settlers from other continents. The Hungarian Prime Minister demanded that Europe be protected by all member states. Evidently in an attempt to win the leftists members of the European Union’s parliament to his argumentation, he said immigration caused a rise in anti-Semitism, violence against women and homophobia – the three points that the left is so sensitive about. Forlorn hopes. Viktor Orbán is regarded with contempt by the European leftists managers who would gladly throw him in Dantesque inferno quite close to Vladimir Putin, Alexander Lukashenko or – for that matter – General Franco or Benito Mussolini. The Hungarian Prime Minister never shied away from explosive topics and never catered to the woke narrative, nor was he afraid of any backlash. Viktor Orbán was unapologetically himself, which cause much huffing and puffing among the leftist parliamentarians.

One may admire Viktor Orbán’s courage and at the same time wonder at his naiveté: does he not know that immigration is wanted, desired, planned? No argumentation against it – be it reasonable or emotional – will ever work.

The Hungarian Prime Minister also advocated Serbia’s membership in the European Union, absent which the continent and especially the Balkans, as he said, would never be politically stable.

Everything and anything that he said was enough to rough a few feathers among the left-minded European do-gooders, but to make them even angrier, towards the end of his speech he said that Hungarians “strive for a Europe that fears God” [emphasis added]. Gee…
No wonder then that the Ursula von der Leyen, the Union’s president, sitting in the director’s chair and watching whether the politically correct script is followed, exploded and said a couple of bitter words aimed at Viktor Orbán.

In an attempt to shame Viktor Orbán and especially to win the audience, Ursula von der Leyen compared Ukraine’s resistance in its war with Russia to the Hungarian uprising of 1956 (a comparison Viktor Orbán vehemently objected to in his response later on as unsubstantiated), and the head of the European Commission had even the cheek to say that Ukraine defended its sovereignty as if sovereignty of particular national states was the value that the European Union cared for! This is insolence pure also in the face of the fact that “Brussels takes Hungary to court over its controversial ‘national sovereignty’ law” because this legislation is in breach of the EU law”!

In a slightly emotional response Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán concluded that the European parliament was not interested in a serious discussion of the problems that he had presented, but, sadly, only in levelling accusations at Hungary. This being so, Viktor Orbán did not feel restrained by courtesy and fired away what he really wanted to say to the audience in the first place, to wit that the European Union’s parliament was known for attacking right-leaning and patriotic politicians or deputies. Viktor Orbán said – this time openly – that the Union had recklessly entered to Ukrainian conflict and grossly miscalculated, but, rather than thinking about talks, about diplomacy, it continued to prolong its failed policy, with no regard for the thousands people who dying every week in the east.

Then the Hungarian Prime Minister hit the nail on the head, exposing the European Union’s hypocrisy as he said that many Western countries were “trading covertly with the Russians through Asia, bypassing the sanctions.” He went on to say that “the European Union exports a billion dollars more a month to certain Central Asian countries than it did before the Russia–Ukraine war. (…) This is how German, French and Spanish companies avoid sanctions. (…) Since the outbreak of the war, you Western countries have actually bought 8.5 billion dollars’ worth of Russian oil from Turkish or Indian refineries. (…) In 2023 you Westerners bought 44 per cent more Russian oil than a year earlier. The tax revenue your companies paid into Russia’s budget was 1.7 billion dollars. And you’re accusing us of friendship with Russia?”

A voice of defiance, indeed. The reception that the Hungarian Prime Minister received from the left-minded majority of the parliament was hostile to say the least. Add to this no or little support from other central European countries like Poland or Czechia, terrified of saying the wrong word and you have the picture: a lone sheriff in a den of wreckers of Europe.

EU tariffs on Chinese EV

In the United States the tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles are 100%. It is now the European Union’s turn to follow in American footsteps. The EU is about to impose a 45% tax on Chinese electric vehicles, which raises a few uneasy observations.

One. Where has the ideology of free market economy gone? One might rather think that the West is all about market competition. The manufacturer of goods or provider of services who can sell better and cheaper products wins the market. It turns out that this rule is binding only so long as the market is dominated by “us”, not by “them”.

Two. Of course, neither the United States nor the European Union violate their own principles of free market competition! Far from it! What they are currently doing is that they fight unhealthy competition. Understood? You know the usual story that is spun by the commissioners: the tariffs are only imposed because the Chinese support their manufacturers while we do not. How can anybody prove or disprove this claim? How can anybody know whether the Chinese support their manufacturers while Europe does not support its? The argument resembles the one about silencing or suppressing free speech in social media and elsewhere. It is not that the European Union is introducing censorship; rather, the EU combats misinformation and disinformation.

Three. The EU commissioners, who are obsessed with green – loop – sustainable economy would like – as soon as possible – to see on the roads only vehicles powered by electricity. As it is, “Chinese-built electric cars jumped from 3.9% of the EV market in 2020 to 25% by September 2023” (AP), which means that the EU’s green policy has economically backfired. Most likely, the EU commissioners once cherished hopes that European electric vehicles would dominate not only the European market but also markets outside the Old Continent. The Americans must have thought the same. What a bitter disappointment!

Four. If it is true that Chinese EVs are government-subsidized, why cannot the European Union subsidize its own EV manufacturers? Is it because Brussels has funnelled all the available resources to sabre-rattling in Ukraine and the millions of imported aliens?

Five. It also turns out that tariffs are after all good for particular economies. Why, then, have they been removed between European countries – EU members? If a superstate like the EU needs the tariffs – more, if the economic superpower like the United States needs the tariffs – why should a small economy like that of Hungary or Portugal, Finland or Croatia do away with them? Things just don’t add up. It turns out that neither Hungary nor Portugal, neither Finland nor Croatia are afraid of economic competition coming from such giants as Germany or France, the United Kingdom or Italy, but the aggregate of these four countries along with their many dependencies is scared out of its wits when it comes to Chinese competition. Hm…

Six. The EU commissioners dream about saving the whole planet from poverty, discrimination and ecological catastrophe, which is why they import millions of non-Europeans and de-industrialize their countries. Why then do the EU commissioners not want to help the billion of Chinese people by buying their products and why do the EU commissioners not want to accelerate the process of transitioning to green economy with the aid of China’s EVs? These are, after all, the two noblest goals of the managers of the world! A weird thought springs to mind: is still profit more important than all that blah-blah about helping Third World people and saving the planet?

As usual, the Western managers of the world fall into their own snares and say mutually exclusive or contradictory things in the same breath. That’s nothing out of the usual. An attentive observer has had time enough to get accustomed to it while EU blind supporters will neither notice these inconsistencies nor, noticing them, will they ever hold them against their beloved EU.

Inside a Chinese EV

Putin has lost this war

It is for some time now that Western politicians have been keeping saying that Putin has lost the war in Ukraine. As proof for that they quote the numerous sanctions imposed on Russia and the fact that Sweden and Finland have joined NATO. They may also add that the whole international community has condemned Russia. Has Putin really lost this war?

① In 2014 Russia incorporated Crimea – in other words, Ukraine, the West’s darling, has lost it;

② since 2022 Russia has been occupying almost the whole territory of the four Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia; it is not Ukraine that occupies Russian territories;

③ the popularity of Vladimir Putin in Russia is at an all-time high, even the Western media admit it;

④ the Russian nation is consolidated like never before for the last few decades;

⑤ Russia and China are politically and economically closer and closer and are more and more effectively opposing the West;

⑥ Belarus, which tried to have friendly relations with all its neighbours, has been compelled to unite with Russia as much as possible;

⑦ Russian tactical nuclear weapons have been moved to Belarus, i.e. closer to the borders of NATO states;

⑧ most of the international community have not joined the West in imposing sanctions on Russia;

⑨ sanctions have backfired and inflicted damage on the Western countries;

⑩ Ukraine, the West’s dependency, has had its economy ruined while its population has been decimated due to war losses and mass emigration.

Putin has already lost this war? Really? Let us view the above from a different vantage point:

① in 2014 the West lost Crimea, a prospective area for Western military presence and the resultant control over the Black Sea;

② since 2022 Ukraine (i.e. the West) has lost control over the four Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia;

③ the international, political prestige of Western leaders due to their political ineffectiveness in Ukraine is waning;

④ the Western governments and nations are split over the issue of the war in Ukraine;

⑤ Iran and North Korea have gained powerful protectors in Russia and China, while Turkey is an unreliable ally of the West ;

⑥ Belarus has ultimately and probably irrevocably been lost for the West;

⑦ the utility of the West’s weaponry has proved not so effective in the Ukrainian battlefield as it has been thought;

⑧ the international community is backing away from the dollar and joining or wishing to join BRICS, where Russia and China call the shots;

⑨ Russian gas and oil has found recipients in no time, and these are China and India to name the two biggest customers, while Russian uranium is still being provided for American power plants, generating revenue for Moscow;

⑩ Ukraine’s political, economic and demographic future is dismal to say the least.

The West may join Austria and Switzerland to NATO to prove that Putin has lost this war, but has he? Napoleon was in Moscow and Hitler was on the Volga (take a map to see how deep inside Russia the river flows!) and in the Caucasus, and for all that they both lost to Russia. Today the West has not even made an appreciable incursion into Russian territory, and still its leaders keep saying that Putin has already lost this war. How mendacious one can be?

Why China cannot – must not – let go of Tibet

China is a multinational country. Its ethnic minorities are not numerous at all, especially in comparison with the enormous number of the people who are collectively known as Chinese. Still, some of the minorities occupy very large territories, and these are Mongols, Uyghurs and Tibetans. Their respective territories make a crescent from the north (Mongols) to the west (Uyghurs), and the south (Tibetans). Compare with a similar crescent round the Western part of Russia: the Baltic States, Belarus, and Ukraine.

Why can’t China let go of the three alien nations and allow them to have their independent countries rather than being autonomous parts of the Chinese state? The answer is simple and anyone who has followed the political events in the last thirty years knows it. It is not without a reason that we compared the political crescent adjacent to China with the similar one adjacent to Russia. If today China withdrew from the three regions and recognized their sovereignty, no later than tomorrow the United States would join the three independent countries to a kind of NATO or AUKUS. and would take control over them and use them against China. That’s precisely what has happened with the Baltic States and Ukraine; that’s precisely what could have happened with Belarus and may still happen.

That is the reason why big states are compelled to enlarge their territories and to institute dependent states around them. That’s how big states ensure their safety and peace on their borders. It was not without a reason that the USSR (effectively Russia) was made up of several republics and had a whole political bloc of dependent countries in Central Europe. Michail Gorbachev, the USSR’s last head of state, naively thought that neither these dependent countries nor the whole of the Soviet Union were necessary for the safety of Russia, for peace in all Soviet republics and the dependent countries. History – or rather the United States – has proved him dead wrong.

If yesterday China had followed in the footsteps of the USSR, it would have war either close to its borders or inside the country. Conversely, if yesterday the Soviet Union had not let go of all the dependent states and had not disintegrated, today it might be following China’s path of development, implementing capitalism under the guidance of its communist party.

The leaders of the USSR may have thought that Central European states would feel at least a modicum of gratefulness for being peacefully released from the Soviet grip. What is the reality? The reality is that almost on the following day former Soviet dependencies joined a military alliance hostile to Russia, and are now – with the exception of Hungary – rabidly anti-Russian. The leaders of China need not harbor the same naive expectations. They can take it for granted that Mongols, Uyghurs, and Tibetans, emancipated by Beijing, would immediately turn into China’s rabid adversaries. Such are tough rules of history: if you do not expand, you begin to shrink; if you do not elbow your way through life, you soon become downtrodden.