Showing posts with label Europe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Europe. Show all posts

Sunday, January 21, 2024

The Defeat of the West │ Emmanuel Todd

Emmanuel Todd, historian, demographer, anthropologist, sociologist and political analyst, is part of a dying breed: one of the very few remaining exponents of old school French intelligentzia. Todd was the first Western intellectual, already in 1976, to have predicted the fall of the USSR in his book La Chute Finale (The Final Fall), with his research based on Soviet infant mortality rates [...] The first nugget concerning his latest book, La Défaite de l’Occident (The Defeat of the West) is the minor miracle of actually being published last week in France, right within the NATO sphere: a hand grenade of a book, by an independent thinker, based on facts and verified data, blowing up the whole Russophobia edifice erected around the 'aggression' by 'Tsar' Putin.
 
Behemoth, the land monster (land forces), and Leviathan, the sea monster (sea forces), killing each other.
Engraving by William Blake (1757–1827).

Todd focuses on the key reasons that have led to the West’s downfall. Among them: the end of the nation-state; de-industrialization (which explains NATO’s deficit in producing weapons for Ukraine); the “degree zero” of the West’s religious matrix, Protestantism; the sharp increase of mortality rates in the US (much higher than in Russia), along with suicides and homicides; and the supremacy of an imperial nihilism expressed by the obsession with Forever Wars. Todd methodically analyses, in sequence, Russia, Ukraine, Eastern Europe, Germany, Britain, Scandinavia and finally The Empire. Let’s focus on what would be the 12 Greatest Hits of his remarkable exercise:

1. At the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO) in February 2022, the combined GDP of Russia and Belarus was only 3.3% of the combined West (in this case the NATO sphere plus Japan and South Korea). Todd is amazed how these 3.3% capable of producing more weapons than the whole Western colossus not only are winning the war but reducing dominant notions of the “neoliberal political economy” to shambles.
2. The “ideological solitude” and “ideological narcissism” of the West – incapable of understanding, for instance, how “the whole Muslim world seems to consider Russia as a partner rather than an adversary”.
3. Todd eschews the notion of “Weberian states” – evoking a delicious compatibility of vision between Putin and US realpolitik practitioner John Mearsheimer. Because they are forced to survive in an environment where only power relations matters, states are now acting as “Hobbesian agents.” And that brings us to the Russian notion of a nation-state, focused on “sovereignty”: the capacity of a state to independently define its internal and external policies, with no foreign interference whatsoever.
4. The implosion, step by step, of WASP culture, which led, “since the 1960s”, to “an empire deprived of a center and a project, an essentially military organism managed by a group without culture (in the anthropological sense)”. This is Todd defining the US neocons.
5. The US as a “post-imperial” entity: just a shell of military machinery deprived of an intelligence-driven culture, leading to “accentuated military expansion in a phase of massive contraction of its industrial base”. As Todd stresses, “modern war without industry is an oxymoron”.
6. The demographic trap: Todd shows how Washington strategists “forgot that a state whose population enjoys a high educational and technological level, even if it is decreasing, does not lose its military power”. That’s exactly the case of Russia during the Putin years.
7. Here we reach the crux of Todd’s argument: his post-Max Weber reinterpretation of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, published a little over a century ago, in 1904/1905: “If Protestantism was the matrix for the ascension of the West, its death, today, is the cause of the disintegration and defeat.Todd clearly defines how the 1688 English 'Glorious Revolution', the 1776 American Declaration of Independence and the 1789 French Revolution were the true pillars of the liberal West. Consequently, an expanded 'West' is not historically 'liberal', because it also engineered “Italian fascism, German Nazism and Japanese militarism”. In a nutshell, Todd shows how Protestantism imposed universal literacy on the populations it controlled, “because all faithful must directly access the Holy Scriptures. A literate population is capable of economic and technological development. The Protestant religion modeled, by accident, a superior, efficient workforce.” And it is in this sense that Germany was “at the heart of Western development”, even if the Industrial Revolution took place in England. Todd’s key formulation is undisputable: “The crucial factor of the ascension of the West was Protestantism’s attachment to alphabetization.Moreover Protestantism, Todd stresses, is twice at the heart of the history of the West: via the educational and economic drive - with fear of damnation and the need to feel chosen by God engendering a work ethic and a strong, collective morality - and via the idea that Men are unequal (remember the White Man’s Burden). The collapse of Protestantism could not but destroy the work ethic to the benefit of mass greed: that is, neoliberalism.
8. Todd’s sharp critique of the spirit of 1968 would merit a whole new book. He refers to “one of the great illusions of the 1960s – between Anglo-American sexual revolution and May 68 in France”; “to believe that the individual would be greater if freed from the collective”. That led to an inevitable debacle: “Now that we are free, en masse, from metaphysical beliefs, foundational and derived, communist, socialist or nationalist, we live the experience of the void.” And that’s how we became “a multitude of mimetic midgets who do not dare to think by themselves – but reveal themselves as capable of intolerance as the believers of ancient times.
9. Todd’s brief analysis of the deeper meaning of transgenderism completely shatters the Church of Woke – from New York to the EU sphere, and will provoke serial fits of rage. He shows how transgenderism is “one of the flags of this nihilism that now defines the West, this drive to destroy, not just things and humans but reality.” And there’s an added analytical bonus: “The transgender ideology says that a man may become a woman, and a woman may become a man. This is a false affirmation, and in this sense, close to the theoretical heart of Western nihilism.” It gets worse, when it comes to the geopolitical ramifications. Todd establishes a playful mental and social connection between this cult of the fake and the Hegemon’s wobbly behavior in international relations. Example: the Iranian nuclear deal clinched under Obama becoming a hardcore sanctions regime under Trump. Todd: “American foreign policy is, in its own way, gender fluid.”
10. Europe’s “assisted suicide”. Todd reminds us how Europe at the start was the Franco-German couple. Then after the 2007/2008 financial crisis, that turned into “a patriarchic marriage, with Germany as a dominant spouse not listening to his companion anymore”. The EU abandoned any pretention of defending Europe’s interests - cutting itself off from energy and trade with its partner Russia and sanctioning itself. Todd identifies, correctly, the Paris-Berlin axis replaced by the London-Warsaw-Kiev axis: that was “the end of Europe as an autonomous geopolitical actor”. And that happened only 20 years after the joint opposition by France-Germany to the neocon war on Iraq.
11. Todd correctly defines NATO by plunging into “their unconscious”: “We note that its military, ideological and psychological mechanism does not exist to protect Western Europe, but to control it.
12. In tandem with several analysts in Russia, China, Iran and among independents in Europe, Todd is sure that the US obsession – since the 1990s - to cut off Germany from Russia will lead to failure: “Sooner or later, they will collaborate, as “their economic specializations define them as complementary”. The defeat in Ukraine will open the path, as a “gravitational force” reciprocally seduces Germany and Russia.

[...] Whatever the deadline, inbuilt in all this is a total Russia victory – with the winner dictating all terms. No negotiations, no ceasefire, no frozen conflict – as the Hegemon is now desperate spinning.

 
 

Sunday, March 25, 2018

Europe All Inclusive │ Václav Klaus & Jiří Weigl

[...] comparable to the "barbarian" invasions of
the ancient world that caused large-scale
regression in the development of Europe.
Václav Klaus & Jiří Weigl (Mar 03, 2017) - When the financial and economic crisis of 2008-2009 (probably the biggest in the last 80 years) ended in a stalemate and without the usual healthy recovery, the debt crisis of the hitherto relatively stable Eurozone countries began. Its recent culmination in Greece (again lacking any solution) was another big event. Two years ago we saw the start of the long-prepared and long-expected Ukrainian crisis, often wrongly (probably deliberately) interpreted as a Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Now we witness the migration crisis, which is being tragically underestimated and played down by the European elites. This latest crisis is shaking the continent in an unprecedented way.

All these crises, despite their differences, have a lot in common. Maybe that is why one replaces the other so easily. They serve as yet another example of the irresponsible activism of the political, media and intellectual elites of Europe and the entire West, bringing further limitations to human freedom and political democracy without allowing events to run their natural course.

We are strongly convinced that the current migration crisis is not just another one of the many so-called crises. The ongoing massive migration wave, which is unfortunately still far from reaching its peak, is comparable to the "barbarian" invasions of the ancient world that caused large-scale regression in the development of Europe which it took several centuries to overcome. Later, Europe successfully faced similar attempts by Arabs, Mongols, and Turks, often at the cost of immense suffering and losses. What we see today is a similarly fundamental challenge to the future of Europe.

Unlike in the past, it is unfortunately not clear whether today the will exists to defend ourselves. We lack a consensus on whether there is a need or reason to defend anything. Europe, and especially its "integrated" part, is riddled with hypocrisy, pseudo-humanism and other dubious concepts. The most dangerous of them are the currently fashionable, and ultimately suicidal, ideologies of multiculturalism and human-rightism. Such ideologies push millions of people towards resignation when it comes to concepts like home, motherland, nation and state. These ideologies promote the notion that migration is a human right, and that the right to migrate leads to further rights and entitlements including social welfare hand-outs for migrants. Last but not least, Europe is weakened by the leftist utopia of trying to transform a continent that was once proud of its past into an inefficient solidaristic state, turning its inhabitants from citizens into dependent clients.

The current European elites are behaving irresponsibly by defending and disseminating such ideas, regardless of whether they do so intentionally or not. The consequences of such activities do not yet fully and directly affect them or their families. Their leaders probably think that will never happen because their era will not be followed by infamous Biblical floods (not caused by excessive amounts of water this time, but instead by global warming.)

Saturday, March 10, 2018

The Strange Death of Europe | Douglas Murray

Immigration, Identity, Islam
"Every so often, something is published which slices through the fog of confusion, obfuscation and the sheer dishonesty of public debate to illuminate one key fact about the world. Such a work is Douglas Murray's tremendous and shattering book, The Strange Death of Europe", wrote the British Daily Telegraph. 

The 2017 book by the British journalist and political commentator Douglas Murray is a highly personal account of a continent and culture caught in the act of suicide. Europe almost committed suicide by means of the two world wars, but managed to survive both times. Douglas Murray holds that a third suicide attempt is under way. The context is rather straightforward: Declining birth-rates, mass immigration and cultivated self-distrust and self-hatred have come together to make Europeans unable to argue for themselves and incapable of resisting their own comprehensive change as a society. The intellectual and political pollution of Europe’s 20th century is a dead weight on the spirit of Europe. Communism and Nazism between them crushed beliefs, tradition, and legitimacy. In reaction to the totalitarian monstrosities, the European Union has dismantled the nation-state; its abolition of borders, its shibboleth about the free movement of labor, and its regimentation of virtue leave the continent defenseless and all doors open for whoever cares to walk in.  

This book is not only an analysis of demographic and political realities, but also an eyewitness account of a continent in self-destruct mode. It includes reporting from across the entire continent, from the places where migrants land to the places they end up, from the people who appear to welcome them in to the places which cannot accept them. Told from this first-hand perspective, and backed with impressive research and evidence, the book addresses the disappointing failure of multiculturalism, Angela Merkel's U-turn on migration, the lack of repatriation and the Western fixation on guilt. Murray travels to Berlin, Paris, Scandinavia, Lampedusa and Greece to uncover the malaise at the very heart of the European culture, and to hear the stories of those who have arrived in Europe from far away. In each chapter he also takes a step back to look at the bigger issues which lie behind a continent's death-wish, answering the question of why anyone, let alone an entire civilization, would do this to themselves? 

Germany's Merkel Regime: The Wrecking Ball for Europe
He ends with two visions of Europe - one hopeful, one pessimistic - which paint a picture of Europe in crisis and offer a choice as to what, if anything, we can do next. What is to be done? For Murray, an atheist and homosexual, the answers are clear enough politically: a closing of borders, the proscribing of Sharia, the vigilant hunting down of terrorists, the encouragement of European women to have children (which, surprisingly, they are not as averse to as one might expect). The policies that will protect a civilization that has given the world so much are hardly a mystery. But where is the will?

It seems that no number of rapes, car bombings, Jewish-school massacres, and murdered priests will silence the cry of “racist” and “racial profiling” hurled at those who attempt to stem the flow of Muslim men and women into Europe. It will take a group of politicians and citizens of very stern character and strong faith to withstand the litany of shaming that has become the common reply in media and parliaments to those who would institute immigration reform. If that character is found wanting, Europe, as Bernard Lewis has predicted, will be Muslim by the end of the century. Douglas Murray’s book is another warning of that very real possibility. See also HERE

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Youth Bulge Options - A Demographic Theory of War | Gunnar Heinsohn

Today approximately 44 percent of the world’s 7.2 billion people are under 24 years old - and 26 percent are under 14. A staggering 82 percent live in less developed regions of the world – primarily sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Currently, the global median age is 29.2 years, a sharp contrast to Europe, for example, where the median age is 41. Of the 20 states with the lowest median ages worldwide, 18 are in sub-Saharan Africa. The UN predicts that the median age will rise to 42 years by the century’s end, and with it the world’s population will increase to 10.9 billion people. Developing and least developed countries have the highest fertility rates and many are expected to triple in population by 2100. The populations of Burkina Faso, Malawi, Niger, Mali, Somalia, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia are predicted to increase by 500%. In these countries demographic pressure is already responsible for food scarcity, water scarcity, malnutrition, and disease. 

The Youth Bulge Theory attempts to explain and to predict social conflict, migration, conquest and war, and was first introduced by the CIA in 1995 (The Demographic Backdrop to Ethnic Conflict: A Geographic Overview). Youth bulge specifically refers to a disproportionate percentage of a state population being between the ages of 15 and 24 years old. But the main point of the Youth Bulge Theory is that an excess in especially young adult male population predictably leads to social unrest, war and terrorism, as the third and fourth sons that find no prestigious positions in their existing societies rationalize their impetus to compete by religion or political ideology. 

In his study Söhne und Weltmacht (Sons and World Power: Terror in the Rise and Fall of Nations; 2003) German genocide expert Gunnar Heinsohn investigated family size in various societies in relation to the frequency of violent conflict since 1500 A.D. He concluded, that the presence of large numbers of young men in nations that have experienced population explosions — all searching for respect, work, sex and meaning — tend to turn into violent countries and become involved in wars. Heinsohn’s demographic materialism is not concerned with the absolute size of populations, but rather with the share of teenagers and young men. If the population under the age of 20 becomes 40% or more compared to the total, society is facing a youth bulge. Serious problems start when families begin to produce three, four or more sons.  Faced with limited resources, the surplus sons' competition for power and prestige does only leave six options: #1 Violent Crime, #2 Civil War, #3 Revolution, #4 Emigration, #5 Genocide, and #6 War of Conquest or Colonization.  
  
This is a man's world:
Somali surplus sons warming up for option #2.
Youth bulge can be seen as one factor among many in explaining social unrest and uprisings in society. But Heinsohn essentially claims that most historical periods of social unrest are lacking external triggers (such as rapid climatic changes or other catastrophic changes of the environment). Even most genocides can be readily explained as a result of a built-up youth bulge, including European colonialism, 20th-century fascism, the rise of Communism during the Cold War, the Arab Spring, and ongoing conflicts such as in Somalia, South Sudan, Central African Republic or in Mali. Since more than a decade Heinsohn keeps warning Western politicians about the too many angry young men outside the Euro-American world today — above all, too many Muslim young men in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa. He considers them one of the principal threats to the West in the first quarter of the 21st century, and illustrates this also in the recent examples of Afghanistan and Iraq: Since 1950, Iraqi fathers of all ethnic and religious groups have sired, on the average, three to four sons. They produced a youth bulge. Saddam Hussein canalized this youth bulge in the options #4 to #6 (genocide, war of conquest, numerous Iraqis went into exile). Following Saddam's removal from power the competition for positions of power was transformed into a civil war (option #2) that is being driven by a massive wave of sons. It may not be easy to recognize the current violence as a civil war, because the Americans and their allies are fighting on one of the sides. But the fact that this was a civil war would become clear through its continuation once the US at her allies withdraw. The same phenomenon could be seen — according to Heinsohn in Afghanistan (see video clip HERE) where the enormous surplus of sons could never be absorbed, in spite of the recruitment of large numbers of police and military personnel. War would therefore inevitably continue in one way or another even after the withdrawal of Western troops.

Friday, June 10, 2016

Weapon of Mass Migration | The US War on Europe

Open Gates: Coerced collective
suicide of European nations (
Here)
Artificial mass migration as imperial policy has a long history, and the current mass migration into Europe is the brain child of US military grand strategist Thomas P.M. Barnett. He was a strategic advisor to former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and currently works with the Israeli military consultancy firm Wikistrat, a close collaborator of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) in Stuttgart, Germany. Barnett’s books 'The Pentagon’s New Map' and 'Blueprint for Action' (2004, 2005) have had a major influence on US and Israeli global military geostrategies. Today Wikistrat is heavily involved in the development of ‘crowd sourcing’ and ‘crowd leveraging’ technologies, and most of the Twitter entries encouraging migrants in the Middle East and Africa to travel to Austria, Germany and Sweden come from the UK, US and Australia (Ayn Rand Institute, The Escape Institute, etc.). Barnett came up with the theory of the ‘Five Flows of Globalisation’ — five flows which must come about if US imperialism wants to prevail in the world of the 21st century. These involve the free flow of money, security, food, energy and people. The ‘Five Flows’ theory means breaking down nation-state structures and freeing up resources for pillage by US multinational corporations and hyenas of high finance. The inundation of Europe with migrants is a key feature of Barnett’s geostrategic thinking: 1.5 million immigrants from third world countries to Europe every year. The result will be a mixed new population with an average IQ of 90 - too dumb to grasp anything, but intelligent enough to work.

Not welcome anymore (HERE)
In her book Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion and Foreign Policy (2011), Kelly M. Greenhill argues that one of the reasons for Europe’s rapprochement with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was the latter’s offer to stem the tide of African emigration to Europe. It would be erroneous, therefore, to suggest that the chaos wrought by the Arab Spring, the devastation of Libya and the killing of Gaddafi were unintentional. EU borders have long been deconstructed by EU utopianism of a borderless world. This fits perfectly with Greenhill’s “hypocrisy cost” of wealthy liberal nations which can be coerced by specifically such open border vulnerabilities. Hundreds of thousands of migrants are equipped with welcome booklets published by a George Soros foundation. Written in Arabic, and packed with maps and useful information on where to go, what to do, whom to refer to, and which sob story to tell to the European authorities, these rough-guides are distributed by an ominous NGO called w2eu.info, which stands for Welcome to the EU. One is reminded of the non-violent revolution hand book by Gene Sharp which was used to train activists in the US-Israeli fomented counter-revolutions in North Africa in 2011 (HERE). Since the very inception of the ensuing 'refugee crisis' the multi-billion dollar business of human trafficking into Europe and the booming asylum-industry is controlled by the EU Commission, globalist fifth columns inside EU member states, by the Erdoğan regime, ISIS, the Italian Mafia, certain oligarchs, and the CIA. 

Reporting on services rendered.
In 2015 the Merkel regime certainly had foreknowledge of what would happen when the chancellor repeatedly issued her infamous “Welcome” calls to not only Syrian war refugees and their families but to any asylum-seeker in the world. Merkel had been warned personally by her domestic intelligence and the Joint Centre for Illegal Migration Analysis and Policy that Europe's borders would be stormed and Germany and her neighbors seriously and permanently damaged and destabilized (HERE). But Merkel is clearly cooperating with a script originating from western intelligence agencies that follows the Greenhill recipes. In May 2016, facing a new mega-wave of migrants out of Libya into Italy, Merkel steadfastly refuses to close borders. By mid 2016 1.8 million refugees had invaded Germany. More than 1.5 million of them are young men aged 20 to 35, outnumbering the German army by the factor of 20 already. While thousands of them are ISIS and Al Nusra fighters, thousands of these invaders are actually housed on active military bases. The total cost to entertain 2 million refugees for the next three years was estimated to be 900 billion Euros - more than twice the federal government's annual budget of 2014. Quoting Shakespeare: Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.

Jihad - Muslim Invasion (HERE)
What we are dealing with here is a well-planned strategy of chaos. Washington is the driving force of this strategy that destroys entire states and nations, causing a chaotic chain reaction of division and conflict to be used according to the old method of "divide and rule." We are witnessing a genocidal covert war being waged by the Anglo-Zionist power elite on the nation states and peoples of Europe. Migrants are weaponized to create social chaos and fiscal constraints in order to prevent Berlin’s inevitable rapprochement with Moscow. The migrants cannot possibly integrate into society if the German economy does not integrate into Eurasia, as Germany will have insufficient access to resources and energy, and no viable markets for its exports. Let Europe whither on the vine. Keeping Russia and Germany separate and in conflict has been the primordial geopolitical objective of the US in Europe since 1871. Barnett predicts that both western Europe and Russia would disintegrate in the 21st Century, leaving only India and China to rival the United States. US strategists believe that coercive engineered mass migration into Europe, coupled with the American occupation of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, with terrorism and the destabilization of the Ukraine, with currency wars, trade wars, and hot wars, would altogether prevent Eurasian integration, whilst securing control over Europe and establishing the conquest of Africa would ultimately safeguard future US global supremacy. 

This is the plan and its implementation is underway. However, this will not solve any of the US' major problems: Losing the dominating position in world production, finance, trade, transport, and communication. The center is drifting towards China and other Asian countries. The US financial hegemony is endangered by the collapse of the dollar pyramid of state obligations, and the dollar's position as the world currency is undermined by the processes of regional economic integration, namely by China and Russia. As the US financial and economic system cannot be kept in balance without powerful and growing outside support, it feels objectively forced to escalate military and political tensions and eventually start a world war, that it cannot win. Von Clausewitz would have immediately realized. But Barnett is a brute, a gambler, a mercenary strategist.

HERE
On a larger time-scale, we are currently living through the repetition of the 100 Year War Cycle and the conclusion of Arnold Toynbee's 500 Year Cycle of Civilizations. We are living in a period that Antonio Gramsci termed an interregnum, morbid times, times of chaos, in which the old is dying, and the new is not born yet. The first decades of this millennium are similar to the early 16th century in Europe, times of technological innovations, population growth, migrations, capitalist expansion, but also religious secession, fanaticism and war. The process was finally directed to outer European conquest, and the ascent of the imperial West (HERE). Today the fate of the US empire largely depends on whether Russia will be sufficiently destabilized and subjected to the globalist oligarchy. Russia is the Heartland and has everything necessary to become the cornerstone for the next world system. Whether the new emerging multipolar system of civilizations and big spaces will be able to establish and to defend itself, is currently decided in Russia, by Russia, and through Russia. 

The spin-doctors and architects of this epic mass migration and population replacement unleashed a monster: French, Italians, Germans, Anglo-Saxons, Irishmen, Swedes, Poles, and almost every other European ethnic group are marked for replacement, i.e. demographic extinction. The utopia of multiculturalism failed and is rejected. Instead Europe is headed for ethnic clashes and breakdowns of economic, social, political and international regimes. However, the globalist's Great Replacement project itself may never reach its ultimate end. Naturally it is unacceptable to passively surrender, and to be dominated and replaced by invaders, by barbarians in the literal sense of the word. Pan-European Nationalism is on the rise across Europe. Radicals and fanatics are ready to defend their lands and cultures at all costs. They are prepared to topple and destroy abusive regimes, to wage civil war and pogroms. What nobody seems to be prepared for is how to recover and what should be build instead. Once the US hegemony diminishes, the leftovers of a shattered Europe may finally become absorbed in some Sino-Russian dominated Eurasian empire (HERE).