A few days ago a substantial majority of the citizens of the Russian Federation said their yes to the several amendments to the constitution. The turn-out was large enough to legitimise the changes. What are they, these amendments?

We can group them under three headings:
[1] social,
[2] political and
[3] moral.

[1] The Russian Federation attempts to be a semi-socialist state, but since the word socialism has no good press in Eastern Europe, the socialist principle is re-branded as social or societal partnership, which
[a] guarantees the minimum wage and at least
[b] a yearly indexation of retirement pensions.

[2]The new constitution lays strong emphasis on Russia’s sovereignty, which is protected in the following manner:
[a] Russian law has precedence over international law;
[b] individuals holding high state-posts must not have citizenship other than Russian nor bank accounts abroad;
[c] Russians and the Russian language are named as factors uniting other nations into a multi-ethnic nation that creates statehood;
[d] an individual may be the country’s president for two terms with this stipulation, however, that the terms held up to the time when the amendments have come into force do not count, which is a rather clear indication that Vladimir Putin is thinking about continuing as the head of state.

[3] The Constitution, mentioning the belief in God as an important historical heritage, is tasked with
[a] protecting marriage as a union between man and woman along with
[b] guarding the memory about and the good name of the patriots who defended the motherland.

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Every few years an event sends shock waves around the globe:

2001: the attack of hijacked planes on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the White House;
2008: the financial crisis;
2015: the immigration “crisis;”
2020: the “pandemic;”
202?: …?

There have always been individuals who have questioned the unfolding events and were – yes, you guessed it right – categorized as followers of conspiracy theories. Vigilant and observant people could not understand why a superpower was paralyzed by a group of amateur pilots; why large staffs operating the most important banks did not see the financial bubble; why all of a sudden Africans and Asians began storming Europe and the United States although they had not done so for a millennium; why a type of flu was declared a pandemic and stopped the economic life of almost the whole world; what is being prepared for us within the next few years. No wonder then that also the current “crisis” poses questions.

A number of German and Austrian scientists, physicians, sociologists, experts and others have decided to call into being the Extra-Parliamentary Corona Committee of Inquiry (Außerparlamentarischer Corona Untersuchungsausschuss – ACU) into the so-called pandemic. Their claim is that there is no pandemic, that the wave of corona-induced diseases is comparable to flu waves that from time to time sweep across the globe and that the precautions and measurements taken by the German government were excessive and unwarranted, leading to larger collateral damage than the virus itself. The members of the Committee seem to have been sprung into action by the inactivity of the ruling parties and those in the opposition in this respect plus by their own professional observations and the internal report of the Ministry of the Interior that “90% of all necessary operations in Germany were not carried out” because of the pandemic.

The committee members are afraid that the vaccine that is being designed is dangerous as it an RNA vaccination which is “able to alter the genetic material” and that under the guise of the infection protection laws a “surveillance state with mind control and surveillance apps” is in the making. The grass roots resistance has found its representatives: big calibre people.

Committee members: Bodo Schiffmann, Heiko Schöning and Martin Haditsch. Will they, too, be dismissed as conspiracy theorists?

We all remember those shots. American troops are entering Baghdad. A tank stops somewhere in the city, cautiously, in the vicinity of a Saddam Hussein monument. After a few minutes of apparent inactivity, a crowd is beginning to form around the monument. The crowd is not all that big. It rallies around the figure of Iraq’s president. Soon an American soldier climbs the monument and puts an American flag on it. An Iraqi intervenes, so the flag is replaced with the Iraqi one. And then, then some individuals begin to climb the statue, a crane arrives from somewhere, a steel rope is attached to the monument and the crane drives slowly back, taunting the line and gradually slanting the president’s image to its feet. Eventually the figure drops to the ground and the cheering people dance around it, deliver it kicks and carry some of the pieces that fell off in the process away.

The alien forces have conquered the capital city of the enemy and performed an age-old ritual that victors used to perform in the presence of the vanquished: Americans demolished the material symbol of the enemy’s sovereignty and by doing it they also humiliated the routed nation.

In the nineties of the 20th century we could all see angry Russians in Moscow, but also angry Poles in Warsaw and equally angry residents of other European capitals tearing down monuments from the communist era, especially those of Comrade Felix Dzerzhinsky, the notorious head of the Cheka (from: Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, i.e. Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya = The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission).

Since the dawn of history monuments would be put up and torn down. Either act reflected a huge political, social, religious or demographic change. Monuments are erected by common consent of the majority of a given (national, social, religious, political) community, in which case they are wanted as a tribute to or a memory of the community’s most cherished heroes or values, or they are enforced by occupying forces, in which case they are hated by those against whose will they have been put up.

Monuments are only desecrated, defaced, toppled or destroyed by the enemies of those who built them. Americans in Iraq and a part of Iraqi nation was against Saddam Hussein; a rather large part of the Russian nation nurtured bitter memories concerning the henchmen of their ancestors like Felix Dzerzhinsky, so they vented their anger on his images the moment an opportunity presented itself. The divide between those who put up the monuments and those who hated the sight of them was in each case insurmountable. What was dear to the former, was abhorrent to the latter.

Recently a huge wave of monument desecration and monument removal has swept the United States and to a much lesser extent Europe. It is mostly the heroes of the American South – generals of the Army of the Confederate States – that are targeted, but not only. Also abolitionists, fighters for American independence of other nationalities, Christian missionaries and even Jesus Christ himself. John Wayne may not be spared the same fate either so much so that a monument to a Portland elk – his ancestor was presumably a slave owner and the elk – a confirmed racist – fell victim to the rage of American iconoclasts.

If Americans torch their national flag, then US needs no enemies.

All this is taking place amid riots caused by the death of a frequent prison inmate who was caught by the police while suspected of paying with counterfeit money. The activists of the Black Lives Matter movement, supported by Antifa and heavily sponsored by the powers that be and spurned on by the democrats performed the usual acts of protest: burning cars and looting shops. This time two qualitatively new elements have been added: one is the toppling or desecration of monuments and the other is forcing the police officers to kneel to the rioters. All this is happening because it is wanted by at least a significant part of the establishment, democrats in the first place, who having failed to impeach Donald Trump, having stopped America’s and the world’s economies due to the so called pandemic now are playing another trump card in yet another effort to thwart the president incumbent from being elected for the second term.

Shamelessness as a revolutionary act (which see)

The democrats have decided to use American blacks to create chaos and make a distressing impression on US citizens who should come to the conclusion that Donald Trump is not capable of running the country. History provides ample examples when a part of the elites willing to topple the current ruler would resort to the help of the masses in order to force the ruler’s abdication or resignation. Such was the case in France in the run-up to the French Revolution, such was the case in Russia in the run-up to the Russian revolution. In France it was the so-called third class that was used for the purpose, in Russia it was the proletariat, now in the United States it is the easily excitable blacks. History teaches us that a genie let out of the bottle cannot be put back at a moment’s notice. Either the democrats have not been attentive during their history classes or their hatred of Donald Trump is so intense that they don’t care.

What a splendid alliance!
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Gefira 45 draws the reader’s attention to the Middle Kingdom and the challenge that it has thrown down for the United States to take up. The Cold War ended, anther cold war is in the making. The Land of the Free has vanquished the Soviet Union by sleight of hand: without a shot being fired or a missile being launched. Can the United States do the same with China? The USSR was a socialist state and so is China, at least according to Beijing’s declarations, because for all practical purposes this gigantic Asiatic tiger favours capitalism. The skyline of many a Chinese city resembles that of Manhattan, the yuan has been added to the SDR basket, while Chinese economic and increasingly so political and military leverage is on the rise. The Middle Kingdom nurses some resentment against the West for the long period when China was exploited, harmed, kept weak, and subdued to the dictate of the European powers plus Japan and the United States. The Middle Kingdom may want to have its revenge. Today Beijing is a player whose influence is felt globally and its policy is more and more frequently on a collision course with that pursued by the United States. When will the decisive showdown occur? What form will this showdown take? Who is going to emerge victorious? What are the weak and strong points of the rivals?

 

In Gefira #44 our analysts are pondering the world in the aftermath of the pandemic or rather the handling of it. From the dawn of history great disasters have been regarded as harbingers of great historical events and changes. We may incline to believe in it or denounce it, but the fact remains that before the Soviet Union collapsed, there was the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station spectacular failure. The pandemic is going to wreak havoc with the economies of many nations, so at least in this sense it will have had a far-reaching effect comparable to that of a world war. Between the two theoretical extremes that nothing much will change or that the world will be markedly or even strikingly different, the most probable development falls somewhere in between. The question is to which of the extremes it will tend more. As it is the case with hot war, also the pandemic will do more harm in some places, less in others; as it is the case with big crises in general, there are those who stand to win, and those who stand to lose. A kind of reset in international relations, alterations in world finances, re-evaluation of the role of technology, a large-scale redistribution of property, the death or a new life of globalism, the emergence of new or the intensification of some of the old social ills are among the many major phenomena that could be heaving in sight. Our readers are offered an insight into the possible scenarios across various sections of human existence so that they can make an informed decision as to which measures to take and what to expect in their businesses, professional careers and private lives.