China's Threat to Free Speech in Europe

ED Noor: One question. Why has no government ever stood up for the Palestinians as they are regarding the Ughyra Muslims of China? Or the Rohyinga of Myanmar? Just idly asking this as food for thought.  

Meanwhile China is trying to dictate to Europe and that is just not going to fly.

By Soeren Kern

SOURCE

March 31, 2021

~  notoriously feckless European officials fail to stand firm in the face of mounting Chinese pressure, Europeans who dare publicly to criticize the CCP in the future can expect to pay an increasingly high personal cost for doing so.

~ "As long as human rights are being violated, I cannot stay silent. These sanctions prove that China is sensitive to pressure. Let this be an encouragement to all my European colleagues: Speak out!" ~ Dutch lawmaker Sjoerd Sjoerdsma.

~ "It is our duty to call out the Chinese government's human rights abuses in Hong Kong and their genocide of the Uighur people. Those of us who live free lives under the rule of law must speak for those who have no voice." ~ Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith.

~ "Beijing's strategy is to simply crush and silence any global opposition to its atrocity by inflicting crushingly punitive measures on anyone who speaks out. A very concerning development." ~ Adrian Zenz, German scholar.

~ "It is telling that China now responds to even moderate criticism with sanctions, rather than attempting to defend its actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang." ~ China Research Group.

~ "For far too long the EU has believed in the illusion of a middle ground." ~ Lea Dauber, Süddeutsche Zeitung.

~ "In plain language: Beijing wants to decide who in Europe can talk or write about China." ~ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

~ "Beijing's sanctions against the UK and EU ~ targeting MPs, academics, even legal groups ~ show the regime of Xi Jinping will not tolerate dissent from anyone, anywhere." ~ Sophia Yan, China correspondent for the Telegraph.

~ "Beijing's message is unmistakable: You must choose. If you want to do business in China, it must be at the expense of American values. You will meticulously ignore the genocide of ethnic and religious minorities inside China's borders; you must disregard that Beijing has reneged on its major promises ~ including the international treaty guaranteeing a 'high degree of autonomy' for Hong Kong; and you must stop engaging with security-minded officials in your own capital unless it's to lobby them on Beijing's behalf." ~ Matt Pottinger, former deputy White House national security adviser, Wall Street Journal.

China has imposed sanctions on more than two dozen European and British lawmakers, academics and think tanks. The move comes after the European Union and the United Kingdom imposed sanctions on Chinese officials for human rights abuses in China's Xinjiang region.

China contends that its sanctions are tit for tat ~ morally equivalent retaliation ~ in response to those imposed by Western countries. This is false. The European sanctions are for crimes against humanity, whereas the Chinese sanctions seek to silence European critics of the Chinese Communist Party.

The current standoff is, in essence, about the future of free speech in Europe. If notoriously feckless European officials fail to stand firm in the face of mounting Chinese pressure, Europeans who dare publicly to criticize the CCP in the future can expect to pay an increasingly high personal cost for doing so.

On March 22, the European Union and the United Kingdom announced (here and here) that they had imposed sanctions on four Chinese officials accused of responsibility for abuses against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, a remote autonomous region in northwestern China.

Human rights experts say at least one million Muslims are being detained in up to 380 internment camps, where they are subject to torture, mass rapes, forced labor and sterilizations. After first denying the existence of the camps, China now says that they provide vocational education and training.

Among those targeted by the EU are Chen Mingguo, director of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau (XPSB). In its Official Journal, the EU stated:

"As Director of the XPSB, Chen Mingguo holds a key position in Xinjiang's security apparatus and is directly involved in implementing a large-scale surveillance, detention and indoctrination program targeting Uyghurs and people from other Muslim ethnic minorities. In particular, the XPSB has deployed the 'Integrated Joint Operations Platform' (IJOP), a big data program used to track millions of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region and flag those deemed 'potentially threatening' to be sent to detention camps. Chen Mingguo is therefore responsible for serious human rights violations in China, in particular arbitrary detentions and degrading treatment inflicted upon Uyghurs and people from other Muslim ethnic minorities, as well as systematic violations of their freedom of religion or belief."

The EU sanctions, which involve travel bans and asset freezes, conspicuously exclude the top official in Xinjiang, Chen Quanguo, who has been targeted by U.S. sanctions since July 2020. The EU apparently was attempting to show restraint in an effort to forestall an escalation by China.

The Chinese government responded to the EU sanctions within minutes by announcing its own sanctions on 14 European individuals and entities. The individuals and their families are prohibited from entering mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao. They and companies and institutions associated with them are also restricted from doing business with China.

Those prohibited from entering China or doing business with it are German politician Reinhard Bütikofer, who chairs the European Parliament's delegation to China, Michael Gahler, Raphaël Glucksmann, Ilhan Kyuchyuk and Miriam Lexmann, all Members of the European Parliament, Sjoerd Wiemer Sjoerdsma of the Dutch Parliament, Samuel Cogolati of the Belgian Parliament, Dovilė Šakalienė of the Seimas of Lithuania, German scholar Adrian Zenz, and Swedish scholar Björn Jerdén.

The ten individuals have publicly criticized the Chinese government for human rights abuses. Sjoerdsma, for instance, recently called for a boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022. Cogolati and Šakalienė have drafted genocide legislation, while Zenz has written extensively on the detention camps in Xinjiang.

China also sanctioned the EU's main foreign policy decision-making body, known as the Political and Security Committee, as well as the European Parliament's Subcommittee on Human Rights, the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies, and the Alliance of Democracies Foundation, a Danish think tank founded by former NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

In a March 22 statement, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said:

"The Chinese side urges the EU side to reflect on itself, face squarely the severity of its mistake and redress it. It must stop lecturing others on human rights and interfering in their internal affairs. It must end the hypocritical practice of double standards and stop going further down the wrong path. Otherwise, China will resolutely make further reactions."

A few days later, on March 26, China announced sanctions on nine British individuals and four entities. The individuals include Tom Tugendhat, Iain Duncan Smith, Neil O'Brien, David Alton, Tim Loughton, Nusrat Ghani, Helena Kennedy, Geoffrey Nice, Joanne Nicola Smith Finley. The entities include China Research Group, Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, Uyghur Tribunal and the Essex Court Chambers.

On March 27, China announced additional sanctions on Americans and Canadian individuals and entities. China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned Canada and the United States to "stop political manipulation" or "they will get their fingers burnt."

 

EU-China Investment Deal

The EU sanctions, the first such punitive measure against China since an EU arms embargo was imposed in 1989 after the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy crackdown, appear to indicate that both the EU and the UK plan to follow the United States and pursue a harder line against human rights abuses by the Chinese government.

The bedrock of EU-China relations has always been economic, and European leaders have long been accused of downplaying human rights abuses in China to protect European business interests there.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel recently negotiated a controversial trade deal with China.

The so-called Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI), concluded on December 30, was negotiated in great haste. Merkel, facing pressure from both China and German industry, reportedly wanted an agreement at any cost before Germany's six-month EU presidency ended on December 31, 2020.

The lopsided agreement, which ostensibly aims to level the economic and financial playing field by providing European companies with improved access to the Chinese market, actually allows China to continue to restrict investment opportunities for European companies in many strategic sectors.

One week after the deal was signed, China launched a massive crackdown on democracy activists in Hong Kong.

Now that China has imposed sanctions on European lawmakers, the investment agreement may never see the light of day. "It seems unthinkable that our Parliament would even entertain the idea of ratifying an agreement while its members and one of its committees are under sanctions," said MEP Marie-Pierre Vedrenne, a parliamentary point-person for the EU-China deal.

European Responses

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has been strangely silent regarding the Chinese sanctions. Others have been outspoken in their criticism:

"We sanction people who violate human rights, not parliamentarians, as has now been done by the Chinese side," said German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. "This is neither comprehensible nor acceptable for us."

After being put on China's sanctions list, Dutch lawmaker Sjoerd Sjoerdsma tweeted:

"As long as human rights are being violated, I cannot stay silent. These sanctions prove that China is sensitive to pressure. Let this be an encouragement to all my European colleagues: Speak out!"

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson invited several of the MPs hit by Chinese sanctions to Downing Street. He tweeted:

"This morning I spoke with some of those who have been shining a light on the gross human rights violations being perpetrated against Uyghur Muslims. I stand firmly with them and the other British citizens sanctioned by China."

Johnson referred to the parliamentarians as "warriors in the fight for free speech" who have his "full-throated support" and expressed bafflement at Beijing's "ridiculous" actions.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab added:

"It speaks volumes that, while the UK joins the international community in sanctioning those responsible for human rights abuses, the Chinese government sanctions its critics. If Beijing wants to credibly rebut claims of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, it should allow the UN high commissioner for human rights full access to verify the truth."

Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith tweeted:

"It is our duty to call out the Chinese government's human rights abuses in Hong Kong and their genocide of the Uighur people. Those of us who live free lives under the rule of law must speak for those who have no voice. If that brings the anger of China down upon me the I shall wear that as a badge of honor."

Labour MP Lisa Nandy, in an interview with the BBC, said:

"This is incredibly serious. It's a direct attempt to silence and intimidate those who criticize the actions of the Chinese government. If China thinks that this will silence critics, they are completely mistaken....

"This will only strengthen our resolve to be more vocal and more resolute in calling out and challenging the grotesque human rights abuses that we've seen coming out of Xinjiang and the clampdown on democracy in Hong Kong. We are British Parliamentarians who will not be divided on this. Whatever political tradition we come from, we are first and foremost democrats and we will stand up for those values, especially when they are under attack."

MP Tom Tugendhat, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, in an interview with the BBC, said:

"What we are seeing at the moment is a vulnerable and weak China that has failed in its democratic outreach to states around the region, it has failed to undermine the coalition of countries that are standing up for human rights and it has failed to undermine the connection between the UK, the US and indeed Europe, so what they are doing is lashing out.

"Sadly, this is a sign of weakness and not a sign of strength and a demonstration that President Xi is failing the Chinese people, the Chinese Community Party and, indeed, failing the whole world."

British academic Jo Smith Finley tweeted:

"It seems I am to be sanctioned by the PRC (Chinese) government for speaking the truth about the #Uyghur tragedy in #Xinjiang, and for having a conscience. Well, so be it. I have no regrets for speaking out, and I will not be silenced."

Adrian Zenz, a German scholar subject to Chinese sanctions, tweeted:

"Beijing's strategy on Xinjiang is fundamentally shifting. Their goal is not mainly to erase the evidence, although they do that. It is now also less about denying said evidence, although they still do it. Rather, they now feel untouchable about it all.

"Beijing's strategy is to simply crush and silence any global opposition to its atrocity by inflicting crushingly punitive measures on anyone who speaks out. A very concerning development."

The China Research Group, which was established by a group of Conservative MPs in the UK to promote debate and fresh thinking about how Britain should respond to the rise of China, concluded:

"It is tempting to laugh off this measure as a diplomatic tantrum. But in reality it is profoundly sinister and just serves as a clear demonstration of many of the concerns we have been raising about the direction of China under Xi Jinping. Other mainstream European think tanks have also been sanctioned this week and it is telling that China now responds to even moderate criticism with sanctions, rather than attempting to defend its actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang."

The founder of the Alliance of Democracies Foundation, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said:

"We will never give in to bullying by authoritarian states. Our work to promote freedom, democracy and human rights around the world will continue. China has once again highlighted the urgent need for democracies to unite in stemming the tide of autocracy in our world."

Select Commentary

In an editorial, the Financial Times wrote that the EU's sanctions on China are a sign of Western resolve on China.

"China retaliated against EU sanctions by punishing several parliamentarians, analysts, and Merics, a think-tank on China based in Berlin known for its judicious analysis. It also targeted the committee of 27 member-state ambassadors to the EU who oversee foreign and security policy. Beijing has in recent years used a divide-and-conquer approach with national capitals to undermine a common EU front. With its Xinjiang abuses and overreaction on sanctions, Beijing has managed the rare feat of uniting the EU on a foreign policy issue.

"By targeting critics of its actions and analysts who refuse to toe its line, Beijing has demonstrated its totalitarian mindset. By punishing European Parliament members, it has made it all but impossible for that legislature to ratify the investment agreement. MEPs were already clamoring for more concessions from Beijing, namely the adoption of international standards outlawing forced labor. China will need to make a double retreat to put the deal back on track, which seems unlikely. Having used the investment deal to drive a monetary wedge between Washington and Brussels, Beijing may feel it can dispense with it."

The Guardian, in an editorial, wrote:

"The sanctions have drastically lowered the odds of the European parliament approving the investment deal which China and the EU agreed in December, to US annoyance. Beijing may think the agreement less useful to China than it is to the EU (though many in Europe disagree). But the measures have done more to push Europe towards alignment with the US than anything Joe Biden could have offered, at a time when China is also alienating other players, notably Australia....

"Beijing's delayed response to the UK sanctions suggests it did not anticipate them, perhaps unsurprising when the integrated review suggested we should somehow court trade and investment while also taking a tougher line. But the prime minister and foreign secretary have, rightly, made their support for sanctioned individuals and their concerns about gross human rights violations in Xinjiang clear. Academics and politicians, universities and other institutions, should follow their lead in backing targeted colleagues and bodies. China has made its position plain. So should democratic societies."

Lea Deuber, China correspondent for Süddeutsche Zeitung, wrote:

"In response to European sanctions against those responsible for human rights crimes in Xinjiang, Beijing is sanctioning European politicians, academics and research institutes. The sanctions must not be understood as a threat against individuals. They are an attack on the entire European Union, on its fundamental values ​​and freedom.

"Beijing accuses the EU of questioning China's sovereignty. In reality, the regime is trying to force the European Union to take sides in the dispute between the U.S. and China through violence and manipulation. The escalation must be a wake-up call.

"For far too long the EU has believed in the illusion of a middle ground. With a view to the cruel conduct in Xinjiang, Brussels waited for years, only appealing again and again. Even with the sanctions, Brussels had sought a softened solution, disregarding important Chinese players in the region.

"That must come to an end. Berlin must draw conclusions. At the end of last year, contrary to all warnings, the German government pushed through the investment agreement with China. This still has to be ratified by the EU Parliament. That is now unthinkable."

The Frankfurter Allgemeine, in an article titled, "Anyone Who Does Not Sing Beijing's Song Will be Punished," wrote: "In plain language: Beijing wants to decide who in Europe can talk or write about China."

UK MP Nusrat Ghani, writing for the Spectator, noted:

"There is a positive side to all this. The reaction from the Chinese Communist Party shows that some of the work going on in Parliament is having an effect ~ and is reaching the ears of those who matter in Beijing. Twelve months ago, the abuse of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang was only whispered about in Parliament. There was no sense that the UK's supply chains might be affected, or that we could bring about real change. Now the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, of which I am a member, has held an inquiry into forced labor in UK value chains, and we have found 'compelling evidence' of Chinese slave labor links to major brands.

"The Chinese authorities should realize that their actions today have laid down a challenge for Parliament. They have essentially told MPs to stop asking questions and to mind their own business. Throughout its history, our Parliament has never much liked that attitude. I can assure the Chinese Communist Party that I and my fellow MPs will continue to shine a light on their activities, and that Parliament ~ more than ever ~ stands behind us."

Robin Brandt, Shanghai correspondent for the BBC, wrote:

"China has gone for the people exerting the most pressure on Boris Johnson to be tough on China. It's gone for the people who say 'genocide' has happened in Xinjiang.

"The measures are essentially tokenistic ~ it's unlikely these people or entities did any business with Chinese firms or people anyway.

"Targeting Neil O'Brien is personal for the UK prime minister. The MP is in charge of leading policy in Downing Street.

"Going after Essex Court Chambers ~ a group of self-employed barristers ~ for a legal opinion it reached also shows you how China views an independent judicial system. It doesn't believe in them."

Sophia Yan, China correspondent for the Telegraph, in an analysis, wrote:

"Beijing's sanctions against the UK and EU ~ targeting MPs, academics, even legal groups — show the regime of Xi Jinping will not tolerate dissent from anyone, anywhere....

"China is flexing its muscles to challenge a rules-based world order set by the West in a campaign to be treated as an equal. It plays well at home.

"But there are genuine questions over whether the show of force is wise. Beijing's behavior is certainly not winning hearts and minds, and instead appears to be doing damage to its international standing.

"Beijing has long bet that most countries would be wooed by lucrative opportunities with the world's second-largest economy.

"How long that will continue to be the case remains to be seen. Britain, for its part, is unlikely to step back from its criticism of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and it's hard to see how China could cool tensions if it wanted to....

"A key test of whether Beijing can get away with throwing its weight around like this will be whether the EU moves to ratify an investment agreement with China. It has been in the works for seven years, but EU officials were expressing doubts even before they were hit with sanctions.

"Whether the deal is approved, renegotiated, or scrapped entirely will send a message to Beijing ~ either that it can indeed do what it wants, or that it's crossed a line."

Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Matt Pottinger, former deputy White House national security adviser, concluded:

"Beijing's message is unmistakable: You must choose. If you want to do business in China, it must be at the expense of American values. You will meticulously ignore the genocide of ethnic and religious minorities inside China's borders; you must disregard that Beijing has reneged on its major promises—including the international treaty guaranteeing a 'high degree of autonomy' for Hong Kong; and you must stop engaging with security-minded officials in your own capital unless it's to lobby them on Beijing's behalf.

"Another notable element of Beijing's approach is its explicit goal of making the world permanently dependent on China, and exploiting that dependency for political ends. Mr. Xi has issued guidance, institutionalized this month by his rubber-stamp parliament, that he's pursuing a grand strategy of making China independent of high-end imports from industrialized nations while making those nations heavily reliant on China for high-tech supplies and as a market for raw materials. In other words, decoupling is precisely Beijing's strategy ~ so long as it's on Beijing's terms.

"Even more remarkable, the Communist Party is no longer hiding its reasons for pursuing such a strategy. In a speech Mr. Xi delivered early last year...he said China 'must tighten international production chains' dependence on China' with the aim of 'forming powerful countermeasures and deterrent capabilities.'

"This phrase ~ 'powerful countermeasures and deterrent capabilities' ~ is party jargon for offensive leverage. Beijing's grand strategy is to accumulate and exert economic leverage to achieve its political objectives around the world.

"CEOs will find it increasingly difficult to please both Washington and Beijing.... Chinese leaders, as mentioned, are issuing high-decibel warnings that multinationals must abandon such values as the price of doing business in China. Like sailors straddling two boats, American companies are likely to get wet.

"Beijing is trying to engineer victory from the mind of a single leader; free societies like ours harness the human spirit. Therein lies our ultimate advantage. The Communist Party's leaders are right about one thing: American CEOs, their boards and their investors have to decide which side they want to help win."

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.

The Great Nonsense of “The Great Reset”

H/T Lew Rockwell

By Thomas DiLorenzo

March 27, 2021

“The Great Reset” is the latest deceptive euphemism for totalitarian socialism that is being promoted by yet another group of wealthy corporate elitists who think they can centrally plan the entire world economy.  They are essentially the ideological heirs of Frederick Engels and his intellectual puppet Karl Marx.  

“The Great Reset” follows in the rhetorical footsteps of such euphemisms for socialism as “economic democracy,” “social justice,” “liberation theology,” “progressivism,” “market socialism” (an oxymoron, like “jumbo shrimp” or “military intelligence”), “environmentalism,” “fighting climate change,” “sustainable development,” and “green new deal,” to mention just a few. 

ED Noor: Never forget the slogan of the French revolution: 'Liberté, égalité, fraternité.'

The main figure of this movement is wealthy German engineer Klaus Schwab, founder of the “World Economic Forum,” who champions what he calls “transhumanism,” the integration of nanotechnology into the human body so that humans can be controlled remotely by the state.[1]

 

 

As Ron Paul has noted, “Included in Schwab’s proposal for surveillance [of every citizen] is his idea to use brain scans and nanotechnology to predict, and if necessary, prevent, individuals’ future behavior.  This means that anyone whose brain is ‘scanned’ could have his . . . [constitutional] rights violated because a government bureaucrat determines the individual is going to commit a crime.”[2]

Placed in the hands of politicians, this would create a level of totalitarianism the Soviets could only have dreamed of.  In other words, Schwab is reminiscent of that famous twentieth-century German who also fantasized about creating a master race and ruling the world.

 

This is nothing new, Antony Mueller points out, as eugenics, which was all the rage among so many ruling class elitists of the early twentieth century “is now called transhumanism.”[3]  Among the most prominent late nineteenth-and twentieth-century eugenicists were H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Charles Darwin’s son Leonard, John Maynard Keynes, Irving Fisher, Winston Churchill, and Bill Gates, Sr.  Bill Gates, Jr. is an enthusiastic funding source for “transhumanism” research and, like his father, is fond of eugenics.

 During a recent “Ted” talk Gates, Jr. complained that “The world today has 6.8 billion people ... That’s headed up to about 9 billion.”  Have no fear, he said, because if “we” do “a really great job on vaccines [with anti-fertility drugs? Poisons?] health care, reproductive health services [including abortion?], we could lower that by perhaps 10 to 15 percent.”[4]  That in turn will lower carbon dioxide levels on the planet and address “climate change” as well, said Gates.

Keynes was treasurer of the Cambridge University Eugenics Society and director of the Eugenics Society of London.  He called eugenics “the most important and significant branch of sociology” [Eugenics Archive].  Irving Fisher, icon of the Chicago School of Economics, literally wrote the book on the subject, entitled Eugenics.

When he was the British Home Secretary (1910-1911) Winston Churchill advocated “the confinement, segregation, and sterilization of a class of persons contemporarily described as the ‘feeble minded’” [International Churchill Society].  His stated goal was “the improvement of the British breed”.  Accordingly, he supported “compulsory detention of the mentally inadequate”; the “sterilization of the unfit”; and “proper labor colonies” for “tramps and wastrels.”

 

World Government, Anyone?

Antony Mueller also wrote of how the first attempt to create some kind of global governing institution to centrally plan the world was the League of Nations (1920), followed by the United Nations in 1945 under the leadership of Stalin, FDR, and Churchill.[5]  Although Churchill was fond of citing F.A. Hayek, especially The Road to Serfdom, FDR was essentially a fascist whose domestic policies differed very little from fascist Italy and Germany, and of course Stalin was a mass-murdering communist.

Churchill was voted out of office and replaced by the socialist Labor Party’s Clement Atlee in 1945.  The three “allied powers” of World War II were then led by two socialists and the political heir to FDR’s economic fascism, Harry Truman.

The U.N. immediately created UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and the World Health Organization (WHO), whose stated goal was to “manipulate human development.”  

Eugenicist Julian Huxley was the first director of UNESCO who lamented that Marxism’s attempt to create a new type of human (“socialist man”) had already failed because it lacked a “biological component.

 

Neo-Malthusianism and the Birth of “Environmentalism”

[S[ocialism . . . is . . . the society that must emerge if humanity is to cope with . . . the ecological burden that economic growth is placing on the environment . . . .  [C]apitalism must be monitored, regulated, and contained to such a degree that it would be difficult to call the final social order capitalism.” ~ Robert Heilbroner, “After Capitalism,” The New Yorker, Sept. 10, 1990

The above quotation by socialist economist, the late Robert Heilbroner, was written in the context of an article that lamented and mourned the worldwide collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.  The great debate between capitalism and socialism was over, he said, and Ludwig von Mises was right about socialism all along, said a man who had spent the past half century promoting socialism in his teaching, speaking, and writing.  But do not despair, he told his fellow socialists, for there is one more trick up our sleeves, namely, the Trojan Horse of achieving socialism under the guise of “environmentalism.”

The basic strategy was then, as it is now, to constantly frighten the gullible public with predictions of The End of the World from environmental catastrophe unless we abandon capitalism and adopt socialist central planning.

This has always been the one constant theme of the environmentalist movement (not to be confused with the conservation movement which is actually interested in the health of the planet and the humans who occupy it) since the 1960s.  

It ignores the fact that the twentieth-century socialist countries like the Soviet Union and China had by far the worst environmental problems on the planet, orders of magnitude worse than in the capitalist countries.

ED Noor: It still does ignore the international pollution index. 

In 2019 the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) published “Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions” by Myron Ebell and Steven Milloy.[6]  

The study is a compilation of reprints of newspaper and magazine articles that illustrate the seemingly never-ending false scare stories spread by the “environmentalistS” and their media puppets.  The real founder of the modern environmental movement was entomologist Paul Ehrlich, not Rachel Carson, author of the widely-cited novel, Silent Spring.  

Ehrlich was supported by a group of wealthy socialists known as “The Club of Rome.”  His book, The Population Bomb, was incredibly successful, selling millions in just a couple of years, warning that the entire world will soon be destroyed by capitalism unless it is ended NOW and “severe” regulatory measures are taken.

ED Noor: That would be the same Club of Rome that contracted Al Gore to begin his environmental campaigns.

The first article displayed by CEI was from the November 17, 1967 Salt Lake Tribune announcing that Professor Paul Ehrlich of Stanford said the “time of famines” is upon us and will be “disastrous” by 1975 because of over-population.  Such talk was a resurrection of the hoary, thoroughly-discredited Malthusianism of the nineteenth century, cloaked in the words of “modern science.”  Birth control may have to be made “involuntary, said Ehrlich, and accompanied by “putting sterilization agents into staple foods and drinking water.”  The Catholic Church needs to be “pressured” by government to support this, said Ehrlich, who became one of the most celebrated, rich, and famous academics of the twentieth century.

ED Noor: Gates is already on top of the reproductive aspect of control. He has invested heavily in such technology. 

The New York Times quoted Ehrlich on August 10, 1969, as predicting that “unless we are extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam n 20 years.” 

Ice Age Hysteria of the ‘70s

Global cooling that would create a new ice age was the next scare tactic.  An April 18, 1970 Boston Globe article quoted “pollution expert” James P. Lodge, Jr. as saying “air pollution may obliterate the sun and cause a new ice age in the first third of the next century.”

Ehrlich chimed in, naturally.  An October 6, 1970 Redlands, CA Daily Facts article quoted him as predicting that “the oceans will be . . . dead . . . in less than a decade” because of pollution caused by capitalism.  And they will be frozen over.  A July 9, 1971 Washington Post article quoted a Dr. S.I. Rasool of NASA and Columbia University who said that pollution will cause an average temperature drop of as much as ten degrees that “could be sufficient to trigger an ice age!”

On December 3, 1972 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sent a letter to President Nixon predicting a “global deterioration of climate” never before seen by “civilized mankind” that would lead to a new ice age.

A January 29, 1974 article in The Guardian was headlined, “Space Satellites Show New Ice Age Coming Fast.”  This was followed by a June 24, 1974 Time magazine article warning that “telltale signs are everywhere” that we were already in a new ice age.  Global cooling hysteria was still alive and well in 1978.  A January 5, 1978 New York Times article was headlined, “International Team of Specialists Finds No End in Sight to 30-Year Cooling Trend in Northern Hemisphere.

 

The elite cheerleader driving global hysteria.
Pivoting on a Dime: Global Warming Hysteria

By 1988, after more than a decade of warnings of a new ice age unless capitalism is destroyed failed to produce the desired result, many of these same “scientists” and bureaucrats all of a sudden began warning of an earthly apocalypse caused by global warming.  The “greenhouse effect” of pollution was discovered/invented, with nationwide warnings like one in the June 24 Miami News declaring that “’88 On Way to be Hottest Ever as World Temperatures Up Sharply.”  James Hansen of NASA warned in the Lansing State Journal on December 12, 1988 that Washington, D.C. would “go from its current 35 days a year over 90 degrees to 85 days a year” and “the level of the ocean will rise” by as much as six feet.  “Rising seas could obliterate nations,” a “U.N. official” informed the Associated Press on June 30, 1989.  In reality, as CEI points out, is that the number of 90+ degree days in Washington, D.C. peaked in 1911 and continues to decline. 

By 2000 the mantra of the global warming hysterics included predictions that “snowfalls are now just a thing of the past,” and “children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” The Independent announced on September 12, 2015, quoting another environmentalist “expert” from the University of East Anglia.

By 2013 “the Arctic will be free of sea ice” predicted James Hansen in 2008, as reported by The Argus Free Press of Owosso, Michigan.  In the same year Al Gore informed us that “the North polar ice cap would be gone,” as reported by the Associated Press on June 24, 2008.   For such predictions Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey designated Hansen as “a climate prophet.”

 

The renowned atmospheric scientist Prince Charles told The Independent on July 9, 2009 that “the price of capitalism and consumerism is just too high.”  The planet will be destroyed by 2017 if capitalism is not essentially destroyed immediately, said the mega-wealthy prince whose preferred method of travel is by gas-guzzling Rolls Royce and private jet.

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown outdid the prince by informing The Independent on October 20, 2009 that “we have fewer than fifty days to save our planet from catastrophe.”  When New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez publicly announced in 2019 with perfect certainty that the world will end in in twelve years, she was referring to a 2018 United Nations “study” of “climate change” that said the same thing.[7] 

The world will likely end in twelve years, said the U.N. bureaucrats, unless the U.N. is given vast new governing powers over all countries of the world, and vast sums of additional tax revenue.

NONE of these widely-touted and celebrated predictions came true.  Birds did not even disappear from the planet as predicted in Silent Spring.  

Capitalism was not replaced by worldwide socialist central planning; so the environmental “scientists” pivoted on a dime once again and adopted the language of climate change.  It now does not matter whether the climate’s temperature is increasing or decreasing; either will cause a “catastrophe” that can only be avoided by replacing what’s left of capitalism with some kind of worldwide socialist central planning, they inform us.

A quarter of a century of “climate change” hysteria has still not led to the desired result.  The next step in this more-than-a-century-old political crusade for worldwide socialism, therefore, is “The Great Reset.”

The Great Nonsense of The Great Reset

Klaus Schwab holds doctorates in engineering and economics, although he seems ignorant of the most elementary economic concepts when he contends that the entire world economy can somehow be stopped by a god-like hand, pushbutton style, and “reset” and “built back better,” one of his favorite slogans.   He is the founder of the “World Economic Forum,” touted as an organization that promotes “Public-Private Cooperation.”  As Ayn Rand once said, however, whenever the private sector “partners” with government, government is always the senior and controlling partner.

Schwab seems totally unaware of how the institutions of capitalism have evolved over the centuries by ingenuity and efforts of millions and were not magically set or reset by any single man or government committee.[8] 

Money evolved on the free market and did not originate from governmental edits.[9]

Even language evolved, and was not invented by any government bureaucracy.  There is no recognition at all in any of Schwab’s books that he understands (or cares) anything about the spontaneous order of markets, the importance of private property and free-market prices, the economy-smothering effects of government bureaucracy, or the economic reasons for the inevitable failures of socialism.  Like all other socialist ideologues, he does not even bother to address the critics of socialism as he blindly makes his case for world socialism.  It can work, he insists, if only he and his corporate elitist comrades could be in charge.

The “logic” of The Great Reset can be stated in a syllogism: 

1)  Socialism has failed disastrously everywhere it has been implemented;

2) Everyone knows this;

3) Therefore, what the world needs is more socialism on the biggest scale ever.

Schwab is an engineer and believes that world society can be socially “engineered” by corporate elitists like himself.  The Soviets would label this kind of thinking “scientific socialism.”

 

Destructionism

Like all socialist ideologues, Schwab’s starting point is what Ludwig von Mises called “destructionism.”  All socialists, Mises said, advocated the destruction of the existing institutions of society, especially capitalism, the family, and religion, all of which form a barrier between the individual and the controlling dictates of the state. Only then can society be “reset” to create a socialist utopia.  

For “Socialism is . . .

the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created.

It doesn’t build;

it destroys.

For destructionism is the essence of it . . .

each step leading towards socialism 

must exhaust itself

in the destruction of what already exists.”[10]

ED Noor: Now you understand why the Democratic Party encourages the destruction of historic statues and burning of cities. Why the Taliban and ISIS destroy cultural monuments. Etc etc.

This is why Schwab, Gates, Biden, and other proponents of “the great reset” so enthusiastically celebrate the lockdowns that occurred during the so-called pandemic of 2020 and declare that it is time to “build back better.”  Destroy what exists, they tell us, and then trust them to “build back” the entire planet “better.” 

In fact, they were caught on video at their annual World Economic Forum meeting in early 2021 cheering a video of empty city streets and closed-down businesses caused by the government-mandated lockdowns that plunged literally millions into poverty worldwide.

 

The lockdowns are “improving cities around the world,” said Schwab.[11]  They may even moderate “climate change,” he triumphantly chortled.  The unemployed and impoverished residents of those devasted cities would obviously disagree with this rosy scenario.

A “team of researchers” at the University of East Anglia, an institution that is notorious for its “studies” of global warming/cooling/climate change hysteria, has also chimed in to advocate a “global lockdown” every two years to supposedly reduce carbon dioxide emissions as required by the “Paris Climate Accord.”[12] 

These lockdowns would not be related to any virus but would simply be designed to intentionally destroy much of the world economy, leaving millions in abject poverty, causing untold illness and death, for the sake of “fighting climate change” and of course, to achieve their real objective of destroying capitalism and adopting a version of worldwide socialist central planning.

 

Abolition of Private Property

The Word Economic Forum (WEF) socialists reveal themselves as classic Marxists in the sense that many of them call for the abolition of private property which, coincidentally, was the first plank of the ten planks of The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels.  Former Danish Minister of the Environment Ida Auken was given a platform at a WEF event to explain her definition of “a good life” that entailed the abolition of private property:

“Welcome to the year 2030 . . . . I don’t own anything, I don’t own a car.  I don’t own a house.  I don’t own any appliances or any clothes . . . someone else is using our [house] whenever we do not need it . . . .  I have no real privacy . . . everything I do . . . is recorded [by the state].  All in all, it is a good life.”[13]

Auken here is obviously dreaming of “a good life” where governments own all property and rent or lease everything to their subjects.  Of course, that means that politicians will decide for you what you need.  There would be no such thing as consumer sovereignty any more than there was in the Soviet Union (apart from the black markets).  And as Hayek famously said, in such a system the only power worth having would be political power.  Bribery, corruption, and rent seeking run amok would be pervasive in any such society.

They want to spy on your every move, using the latest nanotechnology which probably means implanting devices into your body.  There will no privacy, and that’s all good with Ida Auken and her WEF colleagues.

Auken speaks fondly of how, if she wasn’t “using” a room of her house, it would be perfectly fine for strangers to occupy it in her absence.  Government-approved strangers, of course.  This is eerily reminiscent of how the Soviets socialized housing and forced strangers to live in extremely cramped spaces in communal housing.  It is easy to imagine an Auken army doing the same in the name of “sustainability.”

After receiving criticism of this outrageous view, Auken attempted to soft pedal and disguise her true beliefs by saying that such a world was not actually her “utopia” but only what she believes is the inevitable. 

This is another old socialist gimmick ~ to argue that socialism is inevitable, and it is therefore futile to oppose it. 

Her argument that she was just explaining an inevitable future is not believable.

In fact, the inevitability gimmick is the main theme of all of Schwab’s books on the subject.  They tend to go into excruciating detail about the digitalization of life, nanotechnology, etc., portray it all as “inevitable,” and then make a pitch for why this supposedly means that centralized political control of all societies is necessary.

Exactly the opposite is true, however.  As Hayek pointed out in almost all of his life’s work the more complex society becomes, the greater is the need to rely on voluntarism, private property, and free markets, the only known means of achieving an effective use of knowledge in society.  

Complexity requires the use of many minds (and bodies) to make effective use of increasingly complex knowledge in order to advance.  Not only many minds, but many minds in a regime of economic freedom is necessary ~ again the polar opposite of “the great reset” ideology.

The Soviet Union had many brilliant people but they were largely forbidden to apply their talents in a way that would improve the lives of their fellow citizens.  They were viewed by the state instead as tools to aggrandize the state, not to serve the citizenry. To deny this is to engage in what Hayek called a “fatal conceit.”[14]

The “Stakeholder” Subterfuge

The WEF elitists also employ another subterfuge as a means of essentially abolishing private property.  They do this by advocating the replacement of corporate shareholders with “stakeholders,” which includes just about every type of group of individuals in any community which are said to have a “right” to affect corporate decision making on a day-to-day basis.[15]  Such groups usually involve various left-wing political pressure groups such as labor unions, environmentalists, the “civil rights”/affirmative action lobbyists, ad infinitum.  Libertarians and free-market economists never seem to appear on the lists of “stakeholders” that are espoused by leftist stakeholder theorists.

Public choice economics teaches us, however, that such large groups tend to be disorganized because of their size, diversity, and consequently high decision-making costs and are therefore rarely effective.  It would also subject corporate decision making to profit-destroying bureaucracy and indecision, effectively turning corporations into versions of say, the Department of Motor Vehicles or the U.S. Postal Service in terms of efficiency.

The “stakeholder” advocates surely understand this, which is why they propose that people such as themselves serve as unelected spokesmen for all the various “stakeholders.”  This will require the heavy hand of government to empower them to order corporations to do as they say, not as their customers and shareholder owners say.  It is de facto nationalization, in other words, an effective abolition of private property in corporations.

In addition to offering no clue that he understands elementary economic principles, Schwab also seems completely clueless about the long history of classical liberal ideas such as private property, free markets, limited constitutional government, decentralized government, the rule of law, and much else.  Or, he simply doesn’t care because he is a megalomaniacal tyrant.  He is no different, in other words, than all the other twentieth century socialists who were either ignorant of these things or openly attacked them as barriers to their totalitarian intentions.

ED Noor: I would settle for megalomaniacal tyrant myself. Could he possibly more Dr. Strangelove if he tried?

Moreover, Auken’s utopian daydream is reminiscent of the late nineteenth century book, Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy.  This was another utopian socialist daydream in the form of a novel whereby one Julian West falls asleep in 1887 and awakens 113 years later in the U.S. in the year 2000 when the country had been turned into a socialist utopia.  Auken apparently believes it would only take a single decade to achieve her (and Schwab’s) socialist utopia, however.

 

The Great Reset as Super Fascism

The World Economic Forum claims to exist in order to promote an integration of private enterprise and the state.  This is a perfect definition of economic fascism.[16]  Economic fascism in Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany allowed ostensibly private enterprises to exist (unlike the Russian socialists), but only if it was subjected to a totalitarian regulatory regime that forced all production to serve “the common good” as defined by the political ruling class, not the ruled. Consumer sovereignty was not at all a concern.  Schwab uses this same language of “the common good” to describe his “great reset” agenda.

It is basically a plea

to turn the entire world economy

into a version of Chinese fascism.

 

ED Noor: China was featured many times on the cover of TIME. Every cover pushed the agenda we face today. (((Communism))) is run by the same elite, no matter the nation. They have been pouring money and creating China's industrial base for decades as they moved businesses from other nations. (Why I never shop at Walmart for example.)

In the past several decades the Chinese communist government allowed more and more private enterprises to exist, but they are all still very heavily regulated, regimented, and controlled by the state.  Of course, the same can be said of the U.S. economy; it’s all a matter of degree.  As Robert Higgs has said, the American economic system is a system of “participatory fascism,” by which he meant a combination of economic fascism and democracy instead of dictatorship.

After claiming that the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” in the form of the “digitalization” of just about everything is inevitable, and arguing that that means there is a need for the most centralized government the world has ever known, Klaus and his associates drag out the same tired, old socialist platitudes that Leftists have been promoting for generations as the alleged answers to all of society’s problems.  

 

They advocate:

~ shutting down more and more of the world economy with more lockdowns (destructionism);

~ a huge expansion of the catastrophically-failed welfare state with the unlimited printing of money by central banks in order to hand out “universal basic income” to everyone;

~ the eventual abolition of beef in order to fight “climate change” allegedly caused by cow flatulence;

~ the abolition of virtually all other kinds of meat, replacing it with grass and insects as part of the average diet (presumably not their diet, however);

~ the abolition of the energy industries and their replacement with windmills and solar panels;

~ communal housing, Soviet style;

~ the “leveling” of wage differences by regulating labor markets essentially null and void, which would create communistic chaos;

~ and the effective nationalization of whatever is left of private society with a 400% increase in taxation (for starters).

There is supposed to be no opposition to this recipe for totalitarian utopia because it is all being done in the name of “equity and inclusion” (the mating call of Leftists everywhere), “sustainability,” and “the common good.”  To oppose this latest proposal for a totalitarian world order is, therefore, to be an enemy of society.  The “common good before individual good,” by the way, was also the explicitly-stated theme of the 1920 Nazi Party Platform.[17] 

According to the World Economic Forum crowd this is the “new” ideology that is supposed to lead us all through the twenty-first century’s “Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

 

REFERENCES:

[1] Klaus Schwab, The Fourth Industrial Revolution (New York: Currency, 2016); Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret, COVID-19: The Great Reset (Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2020).

[2] Ron Paul, “The Great Reset is about Expanding Government Power and Suppressing Liberty” (https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/01/ron-paul-the-great-reset-is-about-expanding-government-power-and-suppresing-libety/).

[3] Antony Mueller, “The United Nations and the Origins of ‘The Great Reset’” (https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/11/antony-mueller-/the-united-nations-and-the-origins-of-the-great-reset/).

[4] Gary D. Barnett, “Eugenics is Alive and Well, and the ‘COVID-19’ Scam is the Engine for Accomplishing Depopulation” (https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/02/gary-d-barnett/eugenics-is-alive-and-well-and-the-covid-19-scam-is-the-engine-for-accomplishing-depopulation/).

[5] Antony Mueller, “The United Nations and the Origins of ‘The Great Reset’”.

[6] Myron Ebell and Steven Milloy, “Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-Pocalyptic Predictions,” (https://www.cei.org/wong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-population-predictions/).

[7] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “The World is Going to End in Twelve Years if We Don’t Address Climate Change” (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019/01/22/ocasio-cortez-climate-change-alarm/264281002/).

[8] Nathan Rosenberg and L.E. Birdzell, Jr., How the West Grew Rich: The Economic Transformation of the Industrial World (New York: Basic Books, 1987).

[9] Carl Menger, “On the Origins of Money” (https://mises.org/library/origins-money-0).

[10] Ludwig von Mises, Socialism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951), p. 457.

[11] Jim Holt, “World Economic Forum Deletes Latest Video After Cheering Global Lockdowns that Pushed 100 Million Humans into Extreme Poverty” (https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/world-economic-forum-deletes-latest-video-after-cheering-global-lockdowns-that-pushed-100-millio-humans-into-extreme-poverty/).

[12] Helen Buyniski, “Global Lockdown Every Two Years Needed to Meet Paris CO2 Goals” (https://www.rt.com/news/517146-climate-lockdowns-every-two-years/).

[13] Ida Auken, “Welcome to 2030:  I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy and Life Has Never Been Better” (https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/shopping-i-cant-really-remember-what-that-is-or-how-differetly-we-live-in-2030/?sh=3d95793e1735).

[14] F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

[15] See George Reisman, “Shareholders Not Stakeholders” (https://misesorg/wire/shareholders-not-stakeholders); and Gary Galles, “Why Shareholders are Better Than Corporate ‘Stakeholders’” (https://mises.org/library/why-shareholders-are-better-corporte-stakeholders).(https://mises.org/library/why-shareholders-are-better-corporte-stakeholders).

[16] Lew Rockwell, Fascism versus Capitalism (Auburn, Alabama: Mises Institute, 2013).

[17] https://historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/25points.htm.  

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