Let’s begin with good news. Resplendent August, the last summer month, has blessed the North! The sun is shining, the lakes are still warm enough for swimming, the mushrooms are ready for picking, the wild raspberries are crimson and sweet, the ginger Bambi fawns frolic in the forest as it reaches up to our summer house; God’s in His heaven— all’s right with the world! Or is it? Despite unabated efforts to tip us into panic and despair, this sturdy world isn’t easily thrown into turmoil, and there are even signs of improvement (though thunder clouds still hover at the horizon).
People are moving out of the big cities into smaller towns, reversing a long trend. The overcrowded capital cities began to unload their surplus dwellers. Stockholm began to release its population; so does Moscow. Innovative Russians ponder plans to rebuild their capital in faraway Siberia, leaving Moscow high and dry. Salaries of agricultural workers and builders go up, for guest workers are not easy to find. As the flow of migrants and refugees dries up, workers’ salaries have begun to grow.
International travel has become so difficult that only the very rich or the very obstinate still venture abroad, and so there is more domestic tourism – something that was almost extinct. Why would a sane Swede, Briton or Russian holiday in his own country, when it is cheaper and more exotic to go to Spain, Turkey, Greece? Now with these endless encumbrances they would rather spend their time and money in their own country. A Swede will discover the mountain forests of Bergslagen or the medieval town of Gotland; a Russian may visit the Vologda monasteries forgotten centuries ago in the Northern wilderness, or tour the lovely Altai Mountains; a Briton, instead of the Canary Islands, now may go to rugged Cornwall or visit the lofty Salisbury Cathedral. We never thought much of globalisation, and our desire was granted: globalisation is out. This is definitely a positive outcome of a very negative development.
However, regime tightening-up continues all over the world. Some elementary freedoms nobody doubted, so basic we didn’t even knew they were freedoms – going to a pub, lighting a cig, driving a mile, chatting with pals, flirting with gals, spending pocket money, speaking your mind – have been discarded like chaff on the threshing ground. The right to gather, to demonstrate, to decide one’s own fate, even the right to control our own bodies is now dismissed as unsanitary and villainous. The authorities always pretend to do it in our interests, because they know what is best for us.
Years ago, they went after tobacco companies; the judges found them guilty for every case of cancer and fined them billions. People applauded; nobody likes big companies. Only later did they begin to make life hell for people with the innocent habit. Now they go after oil companies. They are big and dirty; nobody likes them. But very soon, our heating bills, our transportation and food costs will skyrocket. And then we’ll discover that to stay warm in winter is not a natural right, but a great luxury.
Today the price of oil went south again, continuing the downward trend. Yet the price at the pump never goes down, so we do not get to enjoy this result of the oil war. But somebody does: the digital giants. Mammoth oil has been defeated in the discourse by sleek digital giants. Twenty years ago, when the US went to the Middle East wars, it was tactful to call each a “war for oil”, unless you were prepared to face a charge of (God forbid!) anti-Semitism. In vain did we point out that Big Oil didn’t need Iraq’s oil and could not profit from it. We noted that Afghanistan had no oil, but the invasion was still called a War for Oil. The oil companies were powerless to counteract the charge without pointing at Israel, and so they sat and fumed in stony silence.
Now there is a serious offensive against oil companies. The Dems drafted a bill that would tax Exxon, Chevron and a handful of other major oil and gas companies, claiming that the biggest climate polluters should pay for the floods, wildfires and other disasters that scientists have linked to the burning of “fossil fuels”. The tax is estimated at $500 billion for the next decade. Before you cheer at the downfall of warmonger Big Oil, remember that they will transfer every penny of this tax onto you, their customers. And who is pushing for the tax? Our beloved philanthropists, says the New York Times:
“These oil companies and their executives are by far the most responsible parties for the climate crisis,” said Lee Wasserman, director of the Rockefeller Family Fund, a philanthropic group that helped develop the proposed legislation. Oil companies have accused the Rockefeller Family Fund of bankrolling a climate conspiracy by funding research that has been used in litigation against the fossil fuel industry.
The story goes back to 2016, when the Rockefeller family was accused of encouraging and bankrolling the investigations and campaigns against oil companies. We continue in the un-paywalled version:
Both journalism organizations that investigated the Exxon Mobil were financed by Rockefeller philanthropies, though the organizations say that their donors have no control over what they write.
This is a very likely claim, for sure! The donors are as likely to support The Unz Review as the publications they do actually support, indeed!
Rockefellers have also supported groups like Greenpeace and 350.org that have investigated and criticized the company. A conference on oil and climate was held at the offices shared by two Rockefeller family funds with intent to “establish in public’s mind that Exxon is a corrupt institution that has pushed humanity (and all creation) toward climate chaos and grave harm.” Alan Jeffers, an Exxon Mobil spokesman, said in an interview, “At every turn, as we saw the company coming under attack, there was a link back to either the Rockefeller Brothers Fund or the Rockefeller Family Fund.”
For us it is particularly relevant that the earliest known script of the Covid pandemic and the preferred response to it (Lockstep 2010 – here is a rather ridiculous “debunking of this accusation”) was created by this same Rockefeller family, that old enemy of mankind. Their unique hold on the US had been ostensibly broken in 1911 by a Supreme Court decision, but like the mythic Hydra, it grew new heads and is back at its old games of control. Covid and the Green Agenda seem to be inseparable as Siamese twins, both born and weaponized by these international “philanthropists”.
It wasn’t long ago that they urged us to discard our trusty refrigerators because they cause “ozone holes”! I really do not care much for the Green Deal and its mandatory austerity.
Underneath the noisy battle against oil companies, the real economy is quietly being strangled by the digital economy. You may choose to look even deeper into the rabbit hole and glimpse what lurks below. There you will discover the trans-humanist agenda, a peculiar idea of creating android-supermen and discarding ordinary humans. The denial of God is at the foundation of this idea. Nietzsche made it popular in the beginnings of the 20th century, after announcing his famous quip “God is dead”. Julian Huxley gave it the name of transhumanism.
The idea has gotten a boost in the peripheries of Soviet thought due to its thoroughly godless environment. The pop version can be found in the sci-fi books penned by the Strugatsky brothers. They posit that transhumanity is the next logical step of evolution, inevitably resulting in immortal, computer-connected, incredibly smart creatures. Transhumans will inherit the earth, while ordinary humans will be allowed to live out their natural lives and then go extinct. Here is where the idea of Universal Basic Income comes in, as the modern version of Roman bread and circuses – this is money provided by superior transhumans to allow ordinary humans to carry on their useless lives until their natural demise.
This strange post-Soviet (or rather anti-Soviet) idea was imported into Silicon Valley by the Russian-Jewish IT techies who formed the nucleus of Google. From there, it spread among the high tech personnel until it attracted the attention of the super-rich, who always wanted to be special and not just rich. Yuval Noah Harari, an Israeli bestselling writer, became one of the prophets of transhumanism, denying the very existence of a human soul and free will.