The West: a reincarnation of Midas gone wrong?

Holy smoke! says Blinken, Holy smoke! says Biden, Holy smoke! says (von der) Leyen. Are we a reincarnation of Midas? With this huge difference, though, that whatever we touch turns into shit rather than gold…!

The United Kingdom announced providing the Ukrainian military with depleted uranium missiles, and so Vladimir Putin decided to deploy tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus. Gee, how can we ever now so much as dream about a regime change in Minsk? Once Russians have their nukes there, they will go out of their way to suppress any what of we call peaceful protests.

Holy smoke! The American president – the American president, mind you! – wanted to call the Chinese leader and was – can you imagine that? – snubbed! For all practical purposes Xi Jinping told Joe Biden – through one of his secretaries! – I am busy now. Can’t it wait? Maybe some other time.

The leader of the Kiev regime also demanded a meeting or at least a telephone conversation with Xi Jinping and his plea fell on deaf ears, but that was a puppet! President Biden himself would not stoop so low as to talk to a Zelensky, but to snub the American president?

Holy smoke! What are the Saudis doing? They are burying the hatchet and began a process of reconciliation with Iran? The Saudis, our besties in the Middle East (second only to Israel, of course) are doing it through Chinese intercession and with Russia’s blessing? They are not complying to American wishes anymore concerning oil extraction? Worse, they are playing with the idea of switching from the dollar to the renminbi while trading in oil?! Hey, you old chap Kissinger! Could you not give us a hand with it? You brokered excellent relationships with the Saudis and China, look what it came to pass now!

Now France. Millions are taking to the streets and they’ve been rioting for weeks now. What has come over those people? Have we not tried hard enough to mix them up with Third Worlders so as to break their national or social coherence and to avoid having people protesting in the streets like this? No expected effect? Gee… Maybe we have injected too few immigrants…

Now the Netherlands, now Belgium, now Brussels – the political centre of Europe – of all the places! Dutch farmers are blocking the highways and streets with their trucks and tractors. Why can’t they understand that nitrogen kills us all? Have we not pumped enough money into the cardboard cutout Greta Thunberg to make people believe in the man-made climate change story and consequently make them follow our leadership in this respect?

Look at small Georgia. They are about to apply for membership in the European Union and NATO, and despite that their prime minister has dared to issue a nationwide warning about the Ukrainization of Georgia. What does he mean? We know what he means. Yeah, he does not want to have his country turned into another war zone between the West and Russia. ok, but wait a minute, mister prime minister! Do you not remember Madeleine Albright, who (in)famously said in an interview that the lives of thousands of children were a small price for the abolition of communism? Can Georgia not sacrifice itself in the crusade against Russia? Can’t three and a half million Georgians – what a laughable number! – sacrifice themselves on the altar of the good of humanity? Hey, you Georgian prime minister! Do not worry! We will take care of you, the way we will take care of Mr Zelensky!

Now the worst of it all is the dedollarisation. Holy smoke! If we lose that global leverage, we are done. Done once and for all. We have had such a wonderfully effective stranglehold on all nations in the world: just printing dollars or freezing a nation’s deposit made nations prostrate before us and lick our boots. What now? Will we need to go to actual war with all the disobedient countries whose number is rising?

Holy smoke! Mexico, Brasilia, Saudi Arabia, Argentina – who else? – they all drift away from us and swerve towards BRICS. What’s that? How could they spurn our values of human rights and democracy and LGTB rights and the fight for the climate agenda, and, instead, look to dictators and regimes as a political, economic and cultural alternative?

Holy smoke, even as small a country as Hungary or Slovakia are rebellious: the leader of the former does not understand the importance of doubling down on the military and economic war effort with Russia, while the people of the latter protest against NATO! Against NATO – of all the organizations – that protects them against the Russian bear? Are they insane? No, these must be Putin’s agents operating there. Mentally healthy people would never ever protest against NATO, the European Union or the United States!

Holy smoke, by now we have agreed on the eleventh set of sanctions against Russia and… we are running out of them! What is more there to sanction? Yes, Russian music, art, films, literature… That would be the twelfth wave of sanctions. When then? What will we sanction? Russian personal names? Yeah, Boris Johnson would have to drop his… How about that? This will ultimately break the Russian bear. 

Would you not go mad?

France is being torn apart by protests against the government’s plans to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 years. The French authorities appeal to the citizens to understand the problem and the citizens somehow refuse to understand. Why? Here’s why:

It was during the presidency of Francois Mitterrand that the retirement age was lowered. What was the argumentation then? Ah, elderly employees would make jobs available to younger people, i.e. unemployment would be lowered. Why does this mechanism not operate anymore? Why was it beneficial then and is not beneficial now?

(We will mention only briefly that promising people an earlier retirement age and reducing unemployment were mere political manoeuvres to win more votes. That’s what democracy is all about: you need to play up to your electorate.)

The retirement age needs to be raised because there are not too many working people to support the pensioners. Why then did consecutive governments and the powers that be discourage people from having children, claiming that the world was overpopulated?

Today’s citizens might well understand the economic necessities of raising the retirement age, but why should they believe that the government is running out of money:
    (a) if it always has an inexhaustible source of finances to accept, accommodate and take good care of the endless influx of Third World people? and
     (b) if it funnels millions or billions into Ukraine where – to top it all – all that money is being invested in a non-win game?

The French authorities are oh so angry with the popular unrest in Paris or Lyon, but why are they so much happy about similar popular protests in Minsk or Kiev?

We all know the answer to the last question: protests in other countries are – yes! – legitimate while protests in the country that we are running are not. It’s as simple as that.

To reiterate: the government has money for the influx of immigrants and the government has money to support the Zelensky regime in Ukraine, but it somehow does not have money to pay the retirees. Isn’t it strange?

Picture to yourself that you live centuries ago, when there was no state-run support for the elderly. You are dependent on your son for your survival. You are an elderly person and your son tells you that he will cut down on his support for you because… well, because he plans on accommodating a couple of drifters and he also needs to lend some money to an acquaintance living God knows where who in turn needs this money to cover the costs of his advocate in a legal dispute with someone else. Would you not go mad?

Uganda sends moral shock waves

Tee-hee and ha! ha! Uganda’s bill banning, prohibiting, criminalizing, punishing, stamping out homosexuality flies in the face of two idols of the liberals: homosexuals and black people. Ugandan parliament with but one abstainer adopted a law that challenges everything the West has thought about progress and Africans and freedom and modernity, and, and, and. What an event! Ugandan parliament, packed with all black MPs (Why are there no whites? Is diversity not Uganda’s strength?) in a debate and in a place both modelled on the British parliamentary debate and parliamentary venue has made homosexuality a grave sin. The black man (and woman!), so much worshipped by Western liberals, has challenged the liberal articles of faith and joined ideologically – how shall we put it? – white extreme far-right movements? White fascists? Gee… What an event!

The BBC is flabbergasted! “Life in prison for saying you’re gay”! In certain cases also death penalty is envisaged. This is “deeply repressive legislation” that will “institutionalize discrimination, hatred and prejudice against LGBTI people” (notice the I added to LGBT; the initialism keeps growing!)”. The law is condemned by UK’s Africa Minister Andrew Mitchell, a white man! (how dared he condemn a sovereign decision of blacks, him being white?) and the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (not black either!). How could that ever happen? It is not white, far-right, catholic, regressive, suppressive, dark forces that came up with such an abominable and deplorable act but the most celebrated race among the races (of course there is only one race, the human race, but still for the sake of argument… and fun), the black race, a moral paragon held for whites around the globe, a moral paragon that they are supposed to emulate, pray to and genuflect to. Shame on them, really…

Shame on whom, actually? On the blacks? God forbid! The event will be readily explained away by – yes! yes! you guessed it right! – white racism! How? There you are! The ancestors of black Ugandans and in fact the ancestors of blacks everywhere in the world suffered such enormous trauma at the hands of whites (slavery then, “systemic” racism now) that it still manifests itself in their collective psyche. Never mind that present-day blacks in Uganda have had nothing to do with white oppression: it is enough that a handful of their ancestors suffered SLAVERY some two hundred years ago to make their distant descendants still psychologically troubled. Criminalizing homosexuality might be just a manifestation of their resentment against the injustice of whites from two centuries ago, a resentment that today’s Ugandans take out on… their black brothers and sisters who indulge in same-sex relationships. White psychologists and other experts will readily concoct an explanation like that and white gullible, impressionable men and women and those who identify as neither, in Europe and America, will readily believe it wholesale. You wanna bet? Before you do, recall all the crackpot ideas that Sigmund Freud churned out for the consumption of the educated people and how those educated people bought it lock, stock and barrel!

Or it will be explained away by the suppressive, oppressive Christian faith which whites, WHITES! – the eternal culprit! – brought to Africa, to Uganda, imposed it on blacks, forced it upon them and through it taught them extreme intolerance stemming from far right European political ideas. You see, Ugandans copied one-to-one the British parliamentary system, complete with wigs worn by the Speaker of the House of Commons and Hansard – the name for the official written record of everything that is said in the parliament, so similarly they must have imbibed the poisonous far-right European ideology of former centuries. Now they need to be cured of it. But then… are whites to cure them of it? Does that not smack of racism and colonialism, of adopting a patronizing attitude to Africans… again? Yikes! What a vicious circle…

Ugandan MPs debating the new law. No whites or at least Hindus among them?

Do Ugandans not know that ethnic diversity makes nations stronger? Yikes!

Standing on the right side of history

We stand on the right side of history, were the final words of the statement made by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the end of his three-day visit to Russia. We stand on the right side of history.

The divide between East and West is large and rising. Leaders like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin along with their ministers and their entourage must really look down on their Western – once partners – today opponents: sneaky, craft, cunning conmen and – for that matter – conwomen from the European Union and the United States. Are we insulting them? Not by any means! According to their own words (those of French President Hollande and German Chancellor Merkel) the deals that they make or broker are not worth the paper they are written on. The divide between East and West is for the foreseeable future irreversible. Consider two unrelated events: the agreement struck between Moscow and Beijing to build the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline (through Mongolia) and the International Criminal Court issuing a warrant arrest for Russia’s president. The pipeline begins on the Yamal Peninsula, the same peninsula from where ultimately natural gas was transported through the NordStream lines. The sign is crystal clear: Russia has stopped deluding itself about the possibility of reversing political or economic relations with the West. The court’s pronouncement makes it also crystal clear that the West will never ever sit down to the negotiating table with the sitting president of Russia. Two points of no return. Add to this: [1] the official incorporation into Russia of four provinces that belonged to Ukraine and [2] the decision taken by Moscow and Beijing to make financial settlements increasingly in the Chinese currency.

It is imaginable that the West will accept the incorporation of the said territories, but it will never ever accept the dedollarisation! Perhaps that alone explains why the West is so hell-bent on prolonging the war between NATO and Russia, to the point of granting Ukraine – the prime battleground of these hostilities – through US-controlled International Monetary Fund a loan of over 16 billion dollars. There are many countries around the globe in need of aid, much smaller aid, and they will never ever as much as be considered for it by the International Monetary Fund!

As soon as the war between NATO and Russia erupted, the West resorted to sanctions of mass destruction in the hope of seeing its opponent brought to its knees. Lo and behold, it is the American banks along with one Swiss that are in serious trouble! Furthermore, the emerging economies (in today’s parlance) or Third World countries (in yesterday’s parlance) have all flatly refused to join the sanctions of mass destruction. Much though the West may not like it, the non-Western world is waiting with bated breath who will come out victorious and they are hoping it will not be the West. Why? Because the whole non-Western globe has grown sick and tired of the moral globalism imposed by the United States and the European Union, of sanctions heaped on disobedient countries and of the policing done on the part of the world’s hegemon by the hegemon’s troops. Even America’s bestie like Saudi Arabia is drifting away from Washington and closer to China, and resuming diplomatic relationships with Iran, one of America’s top enemies.


The Power of Siberia 2 pipeline: does it not remind you of NordStream 1 and 2?

The difference between the distance from the Yamal Peninsula to Germany and that to China is not all that big.

Who do you think will blow up the Power of Siberia pipelines to harm Russia and China?

It all looks like the balance of power is shifting, it all looks like the West is increasingly losing ground. It resembles a number of similar shifts of international power that we know from the past. Recall that after the peak of ancient Greece’s expansion under Alexander the Great, there began a process of decline as a result of which Rome, a rising power, gradually dominated Greece. Recall the Roman Empire being replaced by “emerging” barbarian kingdoms. It looks like the West is facing its end. It may be slow with some elements of the Western culture surviving for a time (e.g. the English language as a lingua franca, similarly to Latin surviving ancient Romans and utilised by barbarians for several more centuries after the fall of Rome) but it is inevitable. It is inevitable so much so that the West is intent on committing suicide: Third World immigration continues to be encouraged, Christian morality continues to be destroyed, self-loathing white Europeans and white Americans continue to multiply like rabbits.

Europe and the United States will not save the world by diversifying their own populations; rather, by doing so they breed contempt among the newcomers who despise the West and they are accelerating the downfall of host countries. In fact, the host countries are not diversified, as it is claimed: they are internally more and more divided. And we know: a house divided against itself will not stand. It is obvious to anyone outside the West and to very few inside. It is obvious to Xi Jinping, which is why he stated confidently: We stand on the right side of history.

Gefira 72: Weltmacht oder Niedergang

Are we sleepwalking into world war three? Is the prospect of world war three looming large? Actually, it is. Consider:

• the United States is already at war with Russia in Ukraine;
• the United States is poised for war with China over Taiwan,
• Iran is said to be about to manufacture its nuclear weapons,
• Iran, Russia and China seem to be making up an anti-American alliance;
• India refuses to cooperate with the West;
• politicians in Washington and the European Union (especially women driven by feminist madness) are war-mongering like never before;
• the United Nations (i.e. those who pull the strings behind this facade) is preparing a global pact against new outbreaks of pandemics (in plain English: the managers of the world prepare tools to nip in the bud popular riots and suppress revolutions which they expect to soon take place and which they are scared of);
• Third World people are continuously being resettled to white man’s countries, which results in the emergence of parallel societies and enhanced ethnic tensions;
• pervert ideologies of gender reassignment, critical race theory, equity of outcome (communism pure) rather than equality of opportunities are gaining more and more ground, leading to enhanced social tension,
all of these and many more make an impression that we are not years but months or weeks away from a BIG BANG.

Sadly, it is not the common people who control their own destiny: it is the few managers of the world who control the destiny of the whole of humanity. They engage in war games – at first in theory, then in reality – and take utmost pleasure at it. They view ordinary human beings, nations and countries, cultures and religions as chess pieces that they can capture or replace, with which they can castle, mate or checkmate. They carve territories and assign people to states as they please. Truth means nothing to them, solemn promise means nothing to them, human tears mean nothing to them. All they are after is world dominance. They will set the whole globe ablaze to gain global power. WELTMACHT ODER NIEDERGANG, that’s what’s emblazoned on their banners.

 

Gefira Financial Bulletin #72 is available now

  • The Great War for Raw Materials and Bretton Woods III
  • Gamblers on the Potomac and the Thames
  • The emergence of cryptocurrencies
  • Can cryptocurrency brokers, interest rates and liquidity

The fate of client states

In 1968 East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria invaded Czechoslovakia. Why? Because they were client states of the Soviet Union and because the Soviet Union needed to defend socialism there. In 2022/23 Germany, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria are more than impatient to intervene in Ukraine. Why? Because they are client states of the United States and the United States needs to save democracy and LGTB rights in Ukraine.

In 1968 Romania bravely resisted participation in the intervention in Czechoslovakia and so did not deploy troops there. In 2022/23 Hungary is courageously resisting involvement in the military affray in Ukraine. History can repeat itself, it can! All the other European states – west or east – are compliant.

Such is the fate of client states. The Warsaw Pact countries of eastern Europe wanted badly to liberate themselves from the Soviet – as they put it – yoke. The time came that it was possible. What did they do next? They gladly imposed on their necks the American yoke and continue to comply. What did they do? They changed their overlord. The funny thing is that the fief or territory that they received from their new overlord remained the same as they had received from their old overlord: their own countries.

It has never been different throughout recorded history. When the Third Reich reigned supreme, it had its vassal or client states which were compelled to invade the Soviet Union; when Napoleon Bonaparte appeared to be an invincible god of war, he, too, had his vassal or client states with the help of which he invaded Russia or imposed a total trade blockade (in today’s parlance: sanctions) on the United Kingdom.

The fate of client states! This fate translates into being a stooge of the mighty sovereign to the detriment of the client state’s interests. What imaginable sense did it have for the German Kingdom of Saxony to invade Russia in 1812? What sense did it have for Hungary to deploy its troops somewhere in the vicinity of Stalingrad in 1942/43? What sense did it make for Poland to get involved in the street riots in Minsk, Belarus, in 2022? How could Saxons benefit from helping Napoleon conquer Russia? How could Hungarians benefit from helping Hitler defeat Stalin? How can Poland benefit from – as they put it – regime change in Minsk? Continue reading

Silicon Valley Bank – what is this all about?

It is not inflation, nor the Fed, nor the NFP, and certainly not the hostilities in Ukraine that is attracting investors’ attention, but the major problem that the U.S. banking sector is beset with, rendering especially Silicon Valley Bank barely capable of making payments to its customers. All this reminds us of 2008, although there are no clear signs yet that we are on the verge of collapse.

SVB is a very specific bank in the US market. It is a bank that deals mainly with technology companies. Though it provides financial services to them, primarily it takes deposits from them. The bank participates in venture capital projects (venture capital), but it has also invested the surpluses in the US bond market or in MBS. The sharp rise in interest rates and the resulting significant revaluation of bonds resulted in a large financial loss in the bank’s portfolio, which is nothing unusual. In fact, this was something normal across the financial sector. However, this is where the peculiarities of SVB itself come into play. It is a bank that manages hundreds or even thousands of technology companies or start-ups. This sector, in turn, has been struggling for some time to catch its breath after the strong last 2 years. Companies have begun to slow their growth, look for savings and reach for capital from deposits. In order to get liquidity, SVB was forced to sell all liquid assets worth over $20 billion, incurring a loss of almost $2 billion! That’s a sizable hole in the bank’s balance sheet. At the same time, the bank announced an additional equity offering to close the gap, prompting investors to divest themselves of the bank’s shares. Yesterday (March 9, 2023), the shares plunged by as much as about 70%! These problems are still deepening today before the weekend, which is why some have already drawn parallels with 2008.

Of course, it’s important to remember that SVB and the tech industry are a specific sector and may have less overall impact on the overall stock market than the collapse of Lehman Brothers or the problems that occurred at Bear Stearns. The key question is whether this is just an isolated incident or a major problem across the industry.