Alternative to family or the downward spiral of the Western world

Remnants of the normal family, single mothers by the millions, polygamy, chosen families formed by homosexuals, cohabitation, patchwork family and finally(?) communities of responsibilities – that’s the diversity in full swing in Germany. You might as well part from the family model made up of a mum and dad, of a granny and grandpa, a family full of siblings. This is history.

Deutsche Welle (DW) is a German version of American CNN or British BBC in that the general views laid down in any of them are reflected in the other two, so what we learn from any of these media outlets reveals what the powers that be want the world to look like. Now on February 13, 2024 DW ran an article entitled German society seeks alternatives to family which is an insight into the future of the Western world in terms of the future of the family. The text is about “the German government plans to introduce a new legal mechanism to help people in non-romantic relationships to take responsibility for one another.” Gee… People in non-romantic relationship… It is stated as a matter of fact that the “way that people in Germany live, love, parent and age is changing”. Statistical data are appalling: “32% of people aged 65 and over in the EU (34% in Germany) lived alone in 2022 (…) Today, around 33% of children are born to unmarried parents in Germany, with the divorce rate at 39.9% in 2021.” Hence – as we learn – Germany stands in need of the “biggest family law reform in decades”, which – as we are assured – is agreed upon by “Germany’s coalition government of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP).” What does the reform consist in?

In the new legal concept of Community of Responsibility (Verantwortungsgemeinschaft). Such communities of responsibility would be made up of between two and six people who will be provided by the law with the right and obligation of responsibility for one another like they were members of a family. And you know what? These communities of responsibility are modelled on “chosen families” created by queer people. Wow! Enter the new family. Unrelated single seniors, single parents, single – you name them – who otherwise ought to be anchored in a family and be taken care of by the family’s members will make up “communities” and take responsibility for its members. It does not occur to the managers of Germany to advertise having families and children and good relationships within those families. No, by hell no! The only solution they can think of is to legally accelerate the downward death spiral of the German-cum-immigrant society into the abyss. Sure, there are dissenting opinions and they are voiced by Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and – yes, you guessed it right – “populist” AfD. (The more alert among us have long noticed that the classifier “populist” is supposed to turn us away from a party or a movement or a politician).

To make it manifestly clear: we are going to have remnants of the normal family, single mothers by the millions, polygamy (recognized by German law in the case of such marriages having been concluded abroad!), chosen families formed by homosexuals, cohabitation, patchwork families and finally(?) communities of responsibilities. Diversity at work also in this sphere of human life. When you begin to think that it cannot go any longer, they never stop to surprise you. Lonely and especially elderly individuals, middle-aged childless women duped by feminism to whose principles they have stuck most of their life spurning the idea of having a family make those people profoundly unhappy. What do the authorities and the ideologues do to handle this existential question? They chart a new social course, a course towards a society of atomized individuals lossely recombined in communities. It never occurs to them to answer the question of what accounts for the present state of the family, of why the family has been suffering these injuries for decades in the first place. If they had, they might have arrived at a different conclusion. Rather, they seem to be treating the society that they manage like disposable and replaceable chattel, like farm animals. Isn’t it perplexing to think that just as farm animals usually do not have families or but for a very short time, so, too, humans have placed themselves/have been placed in the same position? For years the family has been attacked wantonly, men and especially women have been dissuaded from getting married and having (especially many) children, divorce has been presented as an attainment of humanity and now we are faced with the outcome that was not all that difficult to foresee, or was it? Either the begetters of the communities of responsibility are incompetent regarding the human condition or they keep enacting laws right out of the playbook of the powers that be. The powers that be obviously tend to think that they can tweak the human nature – both its physique and psyche (Yuval Harari, Klaus Schwab) – and rather than cultivate the family, they experiment on it, trying to replace it with a number of knock-offs. They might want to be reminded of the fact that although we communicate via mobiles around the globe and have landed man on the moon, pregnancy still takes nine months while our lifespan is as limited as it used to be: the only difference being that thanks to better life conditions we have more octo- and nonagenarians. Yet, we do not live to be 120, do we? Contrary to what mad feminists may have said and written – family is a concentration camp for women (Betty Friedan) – family is no invention of the human mind but a biological – and evolutionary conditioned, if you please – fact. Why experiment on it rather than restore it?

Farmers against the European Union

Over the past few weeks, we have heard almost daily about farmer protests and other countries where farmers have taken to the streets with their tractors. According to the latest news, protests have taken place in at least 14 European Union (EU) countries, and they all had a common goal. The fight against EU policies and regulations to be introduced with the Green Deal. According to interviews with European agricultural organizations, the main reason for the protests is the increase in production costs for farmers, while the community is flooded with products that do not have to meet certain quality requirements. Farmers are protesting against EU directives that have been damaging their businesses for years by imposing significant restrictions on them. This leads to a reduction in the competitiveness of domestic agricultural production in favor of products from third countries. Worse, the new plans being considered by the EU could make agricultural production in the European Union completely unprofitable.

According to the latest information, the farmers’ protests have already begun to have an effect. For the time being, the European Commission is withdrawing from one of the projects unfavorable to farmers, but this will certainly not be enough for the protesters.

We hope that the farmers will not give up so easily and that they will get their way. The European Union and the whole world have just recently learned the lesson of the end of the globalization of supply chains, and now something as important as food is supposed to come from outside Europe? The direction in which the European Union is heading, largely due to its insane pursuit of zero emissions, is downright incomprehensible. Soon there will be nothing left to eat, home heating will become a luxury, and we will all switch to horses… unless it turns out that this mode of transportation also produces too much CO2.

Enter Oleksandr Syrskyi or the latest stage of the Russo-Russian civil war

On February 2024, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, replaced Valerii Zaluzhnyi with Oleksandr Syrskyi as commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army. Who is General Oleksandr Syrskyi?

He is an ethnic Russian, born in central Russia to Russian parents with Russian relatives the length and breadth of his family. He graduated from a Soviet military academy and swore allegiance as a Soviet military officer to the Soviet Union. It so happened that during the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union Oleksandr Syrskyi served in Ukraine and was faced with a choice: either to relocate to Russia and serve in the Russian army or to stay in Ukraine and serve in the Ukrainian army. As it were, during the Yeltsin era, when Russia was afflicted with all kinds of crises – economic, social, political – its army was also in deep trouble. That explains why though Oleksandr Syrskyi with the aid of his father – a retired Soviet colonel – sought employment in the Russian armed forces he could only be offered a position that was much below his military rank. That made him reconsider. Since the Ukrainian army offered him a higher rank, he made his choice. In furtherance of his career.

Still, his parents and his brother has remained and continue to live in Russia, loyal to their country and President Putin, taking part in the annual Immortal Regiment marches.

Oleksandr Syrskyi was born in the Vladimir Oblast (region, province), some 200 km east of Moscow, in 1965. His paternal grandfather fought throughout the entire Great Patriotic War of 1941-45, and was awarded the medal For Bravery and the Order of the Red Star; his maternal grandfather went to the front as a volunteer and died in an ambush. Syrskyi has a Ukrainian wife and two sons of which one has been living in Australia for years and remains highly critical of his father’s disloyalty towards Russia.

The new commander-in-chief is said not to enjoy popularity in the army. Contrarily, he is nicknamed either a “Russian officer”, or “Soviet general”, or “Bakhmut butcher”. He earned the last of the nicknames after his inefficient command during the fight for Bakhmut, where it is said he did not particularly economize on the soldiers’ blood. Needless to say, Oleksandr Syrskyi needed to learn the Ukrainian language (just as President Zelenskyy) and speaks it with a Russian accent.

No wonder that President Putin describes the ongoing hostilities as civil war. Russians kill Russians just as Spaniards killed Spaniards during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, or Americans killed Americans during the War of Secession of 1861-65, or the English killed the English during the times of the English Civil War of 1642-51.

Towards the end of the interview that Tucker Carlson conducted with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin told a short story related to him from the front line in Ukraine. The story was about a Ukrainian unit that was encircled by the Russian troops with no chance of either winning the skirmish or making their way through the encirclement. The Russians proposed surrender to which the encircled Ukrainians replied – in Russian: Russians! never surrender. There you have it.

Argentina’s President Milei successful against the Davos elites

In December last year, we wrote about Javier Milei – the recently elected President of Argentina. Now, with his recent speech in Davos, he has turned the bottom into the top.

To understand what happened and what Milei got himself into, you first need to comprehend what exactly the World Economic Forum (WEF) is and who makes it up. The WEF is the world’s elite: the CEOs of the world’s richest companies (only companies with billions in revenue are invited to the Forum), leading bankers and technology specialists, politicians, representatives of major business organizations, lobbyists, selected intellectuals, journalists and activists of all kinds. The WEF meetings are therefore full of people who use their connections and influence to try to steer the world in a direction that benefits them and not necessarily the majority of people. It’s about power and money, not about a better life for ordinary citizens.

The aforementioned elite meet every year in Davos to present their proposals on how they want to intervene in our lives. They negotiate agreements among themselves and exert pressure on the world’s most influential politicians. In the meantime, of course, there is a lot of empty talk and boring debates about the world’s social and economic problems. The founder of the forum is Klaus The-Great-Reset Schwab, who became known as an advocate of collectivism. He is credited with the famous saying: You will have nothing and be happy.

This is where Milei comes into play. In a place where the ideas of feminism, birth control and increased government intervention in the economy are supported year after year, where the foundations for Agenda 2030 and its associated eco-terrorism were laid, Milei looks the globalists in the eye and dismantles their propaganda simply and vividly by exposing the lies of the globalists.

In many of his interviews and speeches, Milei refers to the so-called culture war. In his view, the causes of Argentina’s decline are cultural problems and moral decay. Among other things, this gives rise to the deep belief that the state is the guarantor for the satisfaction of citizens’ needs. At the same time, the Argentinian president points out that state intervention is counterproductive, as it should only contribute to the opposite when trying to solve a problem.

Here we summarize the most important theses of his speech in Davos:

1. Capitalism creates prosperity and is moral

Socialism leads to impoverishment and is based on violence. Wherever socialism has been introduced, it has brought more harm than good.

“The West is in danger because it has opened itself up to socialist ideas. It was capitalism that liberated humanity from mass poverty and created unimaginable prosperity. (…) In the countries where we should be defending the values of the free market, private property and other institutions of libertarianism, parts of the political and economic establishment – some because of flaws in their theoretical approach, others out of a desire for power – are undermining the foundations of libertarianism by opening the door to socialism and potentially condemning us to poverty, misery and stagnation. It should never be forgotten that socialism is always and everywhere an impoverishing phenomenon that has failed in all countries where it has been tried. It has failed economically as well as socially and culturally. It has also contributed to the deaths of more than 100 million people.”

So capitalism, rather than today’s Western neo-Marxism, is the way to abolish poverty.

2. Socialism is a repressive and unjust system:

“(…) Social justice is neither fair nor beneficial to society. Quite the opposite. It is an inherently unjust idea because it is based on force. It is unjust because the state is financed by taxes and taxes are levied by force. Or would any of you say that you pay taxes of your own free will? In other words, the state finances itself through coercion, and the higher the tax burden, the greater the coercion and the less the freedom. Advocates of social justice assume that the entire economy is a cake that can be shared. Yet, this cake did not fall from the sky. It is wealth created by what Israel Kirzner, for example, calls the process of market discovery. If there is no demand for the goods produced by a company, that company will fail if it does not adapt to the demands of the market. If it produces a good quality product at an attractive price, then it will be successful and produce more because the market is a process of discovery in which the capitalist finds the right direction in the course of his actions. If the state, however, punishes the capitalist for his success and blocks him in this discovery process (through excessive regulation, as in the EU – author’s note), it destroys his motivation, and the result is that he produces less and the pie shrinks, which damages society as a whole. By inhibiting these processes of discovery and making it difficult to adopt what has been discovered, collectivism inhibits the entrepreneur and prevents him from flourishing.”

3. The fight for women’s rights or nature conservation is just a pretext:

“When the socialists realized that the workers were not getting poorer under capitalism, but richer, they changed their strategy. Today, the class struggle between capitalists and workers has been replaced by alleged conflicts between men and women or between man and nature. It is claimed that to save the environment, population growth must be controlled; abortion is promoted”.

4. Public opinion is the result of decades of “brainwashing” in the direction desired by the elites:

“The neo-Marxists have changed public opinion in a long process of taking control of the media, the universities and even international organizations. As everyone here knows, the WEF is one of the latter. Socialist ideas must be fought frontally and vociferously.”

5. Socialists have more than one name:

“There are many varieties of socialism in the broadest sense. Socialists are not only those who call themselves socialists, but also social democrats, Christian democrats, communists, Keynesians, Nazis, nationalists and globalists. They all share a belief in regulation and the state”.

6. The real heroes are the entrepreneurs. The state, on the other hand, is only a threat to freedom:

“The real heroes of society are entrepreneurs. They are creators of wealth who can be proud of making profits by meeting the needs of others. They should not be allied with the state, not even through the WEF. The state is not the solution. The state is the problem. The state is a threat to freedom.”

Since Milei’s speech, the number of views of his video on the official WEF channel has exceeded half a million. Is that a lot? Just look at the other “great speakers” who have lagged far behind. The conversation with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, for example, reached 56,000, the speech by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen 42,000, and the other speeches received even less attention. (As at the end of January 2024)

An interesting case is the speech by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who, as the country’s extreme socialist leader – i.e. in complete opposition to Milei – made a staid appearance and barely reached 12,000 views. In his speech, he talks about everything and nothing. He mentions the current problems and challenges, but offers no solutions. The Spanish Prime Minister’s speech was preceded by congratulations on Spain’s strong economic growth, which the Prime Minister himself also boasted about. So let us quote here the conclusions of one of Spain’s leading independent economists, Daniel Lacalle, who summarizes it as follows: ‘The reality in which Spain finds itself today is different from the one presented by the Spanish government under Pedro Sanchez. The ruling socialists are using the same techniques that the Greek socialists resorted to at the end of the 1990s. Namely, they are increasing public spending and debt to hide the fact that investment and consumption in the country have stalled and exports are falling. Taxes are being increased because/although tax revenues have been falling in recent years. The choice between because and although in the last sentence reveals what you think about the right economic policy.

The interview of the year

On February 6, 2024, Tucker Carlson, a popular television star, conducted a two-hour interview with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Here are the main take-aways:

[1] The Russian president firmly believes that Russians and Ukrainians are one and the same nation divided by history. He proved this point by giving Tucker Carlson a brief overlook of the past, commencing with medieval Rus’ and ending at the present day. Russia’s president was well conversant with the history not only of his own country, but also with the history of this region in Europe. This lengthy narration was to set the basis for the explanation of anything that followed during the interview.

In this historical narrative President Putin appears to have tried to drive a wedge between several European countries in that he kept saying that before the Second World War Poland collaborated with Hitler (which is why it took part in dismembering Czechoslovakia), and after World War Two was given formerly German territories as compensation for the territories that it lost to the USSR in the east. It could be read by Germans as an invitation to lay a claim to Polish Western territories (formerly German eastern territories). Four times Germany (Prussia) and Russia (USSR) divided between themselves the territory of the Polish state, annihilating it from political maps. Putin’s verbal assault on Poland will most probably have been triggered by the bellicose attitude of Warsaw against Russia and the fact that – as he said – Poles make up the largest contingent of mercenaries in Ukraine, followed by Americans and Georgians.

Similar gestures were made towards Hungary and Romania: these countries, too, lost small chunks of their territories to the then USSR, to be precise to the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, and as a result they are still held by Kiev.

[2] Then the Russian president retold the events running up to the current hostilities. These included:

[a] the five waves of NATO expansion;

[b] the support given by the United States to separatist forces in Russia;

[c] the deployment of missiles in eastern Europe allegedly to defend it against Iranian missiles;

[d] the invitation of Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO (Bucharest NATO conference);

[e] the support of the Nazi elements in Ukraine by the Western powers; and

[f] the coup d’état carried out in Kiev in 2014 against President Yanukovych.

[3] Being asked by Carlson whether the conflict could be resolved by way of negotiations, President Putin said that:

[a] Russia has been ready to negotiate since day one; as proof he mentioned the Istanbul talks of March 2022, which were prevented from finalization by Boris Johnson;

[b] President Zelensky issued a ban on negotiations;

[c] it was now the West’s turn to come to resume talks as it was the West thwarted the negotiations.

[4] To the question whether Russia was not about to attack Lithuania or especially Poland, the president answered that such an attack was only possible if Poland launched an attack against Russia.

[5] Being asked whether Russia did not fear China more than the United States, Vladimir Putin said that China and Russia had always known how to cooperate and that China had always been presented by the West as a boogeyman, which, however, did not correspond to reality.

Generally, Russia’s president believes that the West overplayed its hand out of conceit and at present does not really know how to solve the problem. The many sanctions did not have the expected effect: worse, Russia is developing while the dollar’s role as a means of international business is diminishing because of the same sanctions. Vladimir Putin quoted from memory that if a few years earlier 50% of Russia’s transactions were conducted in dollars, it is down to 13% nowadays.

The whole talk ended on a somewhat optimistic note: Russia is ready to talk over Ukraine, but the initiative rests with the West. The West has committed the mistake of drawing Ukraine into the war, the West ought to rectify it. There should be found ways, said the Russian president, how to do it with dignity, meaning: how to save the West’s face.

The United States in death throes

The United States – once such a great country, a great nation – is plummeting with an ever increasing speed to the disbelief, amazement, wonder, surprise of the whole world. What is happening?

The United States is suffering from ailments compounded by other ailments and the nation seems to be on a suicidal path. It involves itself in conflicts around the globe, policing (a polite word) or bullying (the right term for the phenomenon) smaller nations, which is a huge drain on its financial resources and which turns more and more countries into sworn enemies of the United States. The proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is about to be lost, which is a huge loss of prestige and the money invested in it! China is constantly framed by American government propaganda as America’s most formidable rival while Israel, the tail that wags the American dog, demands that Washington commits itself more and more in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To make things even worse, hawks in Washington are vociferous about launching a punitive attack against Iran. Let us sum it up: the United States is taking on – simultaneously – Russia, China, Palestinians and Iran not to mention the Houthies in Yemen.

The United States is governed – at the face of it at least – by a senior citizen who has become the international butt of unkind jokes. This senior citizen either does not know how to run the country or quite purposefully is hellbent on having it nosedive into a bottomless pit. The country’s southern border has been opened wide for the whole period of Joe Biden’s administration, letting in hundreds of thousands of aliens. It is said they are from Mexico: properly speaking, they cross the border where Mexico neighbours the United States, but they are from all over the Third World: from the whole of Central and South America, from Africa and Asia. What policy is the Hill pursuing? Is Joe Biden following in the footsteps of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who in 2015 let in roughly a million of Third World aliens? Joe Biden has let in THREE MILLION so far. What purpose can this huge influx of foreigners serve? A possible explanation says the democrats want to enlarge their voting base: grateful immigrants once they are granted US citizenship will always vote for the democrats. If that is true, then the extent of high treason to the nation committed by the American democrats just blows everybody’s mind.

Texas, one of the most prosperous states, has begun to rebel against this policy. Its governor decided to put up razor wire along the border to prevent aliens from entering. This met with the resistance on the part of Washington. Texas is supported in this respect by more than twenty republican states. A run-up to a civil war? We have witnessed the dissolution of the Soviet Union, we may become witnesses to the dissolution of the United States of America.

That’s not all. America is riddled with crime and drug addiction. Crime has been condoned for years by strange forces behind the scenes, forces that incapacitate the police and pass laws that depenalize petty crime: California is a notorious example. Here, one can shoplift up to a certain amount of money and must not be bothered about it by either shop-owners or the police. Fentanyl – a strong drug – is being traded in American cities and towns on a large scale causing ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DEATHS annually. Due to the open border, the cartels that deal in drugs have easy access to the whole of the United States. This is Mexican organized crime in action. Rumour has it that China has its hand in it as well: an act of revenge for the nineteenth century procedure imposed on the Middle Kingdom by the Western powers (including the United States) of selling drugs to the Chinese population. Two prolonged wars were fought against China (Opium Wars: 1839-1842 and 1856-1860) to force the Chinese authorities to agree to having its own people be put on the dope. So, who knows? Fentanyl is produced in China.

Does all this close the list of ailments that the United States is suffering from? Hell, no! The woke ideology is finishing the job off. God, the morals, tradition, values such as the family or marriage have been for the most part done away with; instead, wokeism is gaining ground. Everything traditional is scorned, derided, frowned upon or destroyed; conversely, everything hitherto abnormal is given a status of something grand, progressive, humane, wonderful.

We have had such societal and moral revolutions in history: the French and the Bolshevik revolutions are the first that come to mind. During those times of upheaval, the then do-gooders or progressivists were also hellbent on destroying everything that they could lay their hands on: the faith, the family, the calendar, even the names of months. Christ was replaced with the cult of wisdom or the adoration of Marx while all the traces of the past had to be demolished, crushed, erased, turned inside out or put upside down. Precisely as it is in today’s Western world in general, and in the United States of America in particular.

Do they who run the United States know what policies they are pursuing? They haven’t finished the war against Russia, and yet they want to bomb Iran; they have the Gaza conflict on their hands, and yet they want to challenge China over Taiwan; they have difficulties drafting sufficient numbers of troops, and yet by putting the US Army on the Woke platform they do everything to discourage patriotic, healthy and mentally sound men from joining the troops; they say they need to fight Russia in Ukraine or else Russia will invade the whole of Europe, and yet they are complicit in the invasion of their own country; for years they have been outsourcing the American industry to China and India, and now they have found out that they have become dependent on the outside world and that people who are flocking inside the United States will find no employment; they have tried to stage colour revolutions here and there around the globe, and now they are about to have a national split on their own turf due to their weird policies; they imposed the dollar as the currency of international business, and now they are facing the budding process of de-dollarization. Are these America’s death throes?

What else can we expect? The enmity between the democrats and the republicans is such that one cannot exclude that one of these days Donald Trump will be eliminated from the presidential campaign before he gets elected. America knows how to remove individuals who dare to challenge the powers that be: two Kennedies were murdered, while recently Jeffrey Epstein – the guy who procured teenagers to slake the sexual appetite of the powerful of this world – has been made to kill himself.

I am not original in drawing the comparison between the United States and ancient Rome, but it imposes itself: rising inflation, influx of foreigners, childless families, corrupt morals, reliance on aliens, a deep split within the country (eventually the eastern – Byzantium – and the Western parts of the Roman Empire went their separate ways), the impotence to control borders, the teeming wretches in the big cities with their ever increasing entitlements, the babel of nations and races that was so characteristic of the twilight of the Roman Empire, and, and, and. Are these death throes?

Sure, ancient Rome did not die overnight. It took some time. Yet, once Romans began their suicidal journey, there was no stopping it. Sure, this or that emperor was successful in reversing the downward trend, but only for a while. The general process could not be undone. Remember: it was the foreigners who eventually devastated the cradle of the Roman Empire, the foreigners that the emperors let in.

Psychologists have worked out the concept of five mental stages that precede the death of an individual. These are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. What stage is the United States in? It is certainly denial: few Americans would agree that their Empire is about to die. It is certainly anger: Washington is throwing its weight about around the globe as if there was no tomorrow. It is bargaining: the Empire is trying to buy time by enlarging its military alliances, by waging proxy wars, by sabre-rattling, by trying to invigorate its decadent population with the influx of foreigners. It is depression: you can see it in terms of decaying morals, low self-esteem, the finances and economy of the Empire. What remains? The very last stage. Once Americans have been convinced that their ancestors were evil people (slave owners, racists, oppressors of women), once Americans have been made to believe that women are better than men (and so should oust men from all their positions, also in the military), once Americans have been induced to dabble in and argue over “gender-reassignment” (boys becoming girls and girls becoming boys, boys and gilrs identifying as a third sex/gender), once Americans have SLAUGHTERED SIXTY MILLION PEOPLE in the wombs of their women since Roe vs Wade (1973), there is no one to fight, there is nothing to fight for, there is nothing to fall back on. The last phase – acceptance – will follow any time soon.

A coven with a high priestess

A rational, reasonable man just cannot wrap his mind around it: the World Economic Forum did not only invite and accommodate and give the floor to shamans from Brazil’s Indians, but it also held a coven with a high priestess!

In one of the panels there were a number of carefully selected participants from different continents, of varied skin colour and different sexes (or genders?) who kept talking for an hour about: humanity in crisis, climate change and climate emergency, (the levers of) system change; about the need to turn the tide of history and transform economies, about acupuncture points (this term will become widespread sooner than you think) that is places where pressure can be most effective, about political and social change, about unlocking human potential, about – yes! yes! – inclusive and sustainable world (these two words just must, must, MUST turn up in each and every speech); about overuse of nature and its resources, about the “journey fuelled by hope”, about embracing challenges and “accepting responsibility without having all the answers”; about women empowerment, about being resource-smart, nature-smart and climate-smart (whatever these term mean); about equity – yes! – and a better future for our children (in this otherwise increasingly childless world). I think you have got sick of these words and terms by now.

Really, everything that every speaker needed to do was to put all those cliché – hackneyed – unoriginal – timeworn – unimaginative – overused – trite – dull words and terms so typical of the newspeak of our time into a cup or bowl, shake it and throw the contents on the table. Just about any resultant arrangement – configuration – constellation of the said words and terms will produce a ready-made text of a speech full of (let us say it again, let it soak in!): climate change, systemic crisis, climate emergency, inclusiveness, hope and respect, a better world in a better future or a better future in a better world and so on, and so forth, long-windedly, more than one can stomach, to the point of queasiness. You will have heard hundreds of speeches and you will have read thousands of texts peppered with strings of such terms for years by now.

The end of this coven was graced by the presence of and sorcery performed by a genuine shamaness from Brazil – one Putany Yawanawá. She performed her mumbo jumbo wizardry, then noisily blew air in a few directions and went on to blow air (Amazon spirits?) into the heads of the honourable participants – Director of the International Monetary Fund Kristalina Georgieva, atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe, CEO of Ingka Group Jesper Brodin, Swiss billionaire André Hoffmann, President of the World Bank Group Ajay Banga, Managing Director of the World Economic Forum Gim Huay Neo – who all showed themselves to be more than happy and grateful for that act of accepting Mother Earth’s spirit (Watch from 1:02:20). One only wonders whether the participants “blessed” with the spirit have ever watched the 1973 American movie “The Exorcist”. Soon they might stand in need of one.