By Jan Mortier*
The ancient Indian texts, the Vedas tell us that we are living through the age of the Kali Yuga, an age of deceit, quarrel, irrreligiosity and conflict, where the rich are revered as the purveyors of truth, no matter how immoral they may be and those who tell the truth are ridiculed. The Kali Yuga, of which we are 5,000 years into already, is to last 432,000 years of time. The Vedas prophesize that humanity is to one day degrade into small troll like cannibals, who will all be slain by an avatar at the end of this Yuga who will then usher in a new Yuga for a recreated humanity who will live in peace.
No sane human would wish for or hasten such a proposed future, yet it appears that the door to this anti-future has been opened by the tampering with the human genome and altering the genetic code of life on Earth for profit or plots to enslave mankind. Whether it be GMO; AI; MRNA; EMF; heavy metals or nanobots, all of these technologies have the capacity for generational degradation of the quality of the human species as forewarned by the Vedas by those who would dehumanise the human.
Morality at the world level has been defenestrated, as the dogs of war have been unleashed upon people; which poses a danger to all humans and to all life on Earth as it does to the countless thousands who are presently suffering in war. Not only does war call into question the legitimacy of the institutions that nations and peoples entrusted to govern the world’s peace, specifically, the international architecture that was set up after World War II, which broadly affirmed the Human Rights, but the situation of imposed chaos on the planet has de-legitimized these institutions and allowed groups to assume governance in a vacuum of power and trust.
We need a new moral power to govern the world, as nothing is being done to stop the states and corporations racing to create diabolical weapons and technologies. They tell us that these technologies will “transcend” mankind, while each of these technologies can, in reality, enslave and dehumanize mankind beyond recognition. They offer the most abhorrent dystopian future in the wrong hands, or even, in any hand.
The trouble with technology and invention, is that it always falls into the wrong hands, or more specifically, is always weaponized. Dystopia appears inevitable for all, as humanity is being hoodwinked into giving away its hard fought for rights from power over the thousands of years of past struggles, only to be destined to become serfs to a non-human intelligence that will see, hear and control everything.
The lock-downs revealed to us that World Economic Forum presently rules most of the planet, it is run by the large donor corporations and led by an academic who has never held a real world job but received some start up funding from the European Commission. The WEF, also known as Davos, has assumed to itself, in the fashion of a plutocracy, the power to govern nations, and has partnered as a donor with the United Nations without a single national parliament or vote on the planet ratifying this mega-transfer of political power.
When a new leader goes to Davos, it is considered that he or she has “arrived” and the leader usually bends to whatever consensus agenda this self appointed corporate gossip salon deems in fashion to insert into them. Justin Trudeau being a prime example of this intimate and exploratory technique in governance of the “penetration of the cabinets”.
The present vogue at this salon is to destroy the essence of the human to replace us with, what James Lovelock so simply and powerfully warned us in his last book, Novacene, would be: Cyborgs. A cyborg would be a chimera of humanoid fused with digital tech and plugged in to an eternal 247 virtual reality and artificial intelligence (AI) centre. Such an horrific scenario for humanity probably fits the legal definition of cruel and unusual punishment of a living being, yet we are being nudged by the tech overlords towards this scenario where the human will become patented property of a corporation and argued to be devoid of human rights on the grounds that a human is no longer deemed human because they have been altered, irrespective of whether they have a soul, consciousness, feelings and humanity.
Lovelock, who when I spoke with him years ago, was most concerned about his high gas bills in England, also warns us in Novacene that: “The subtle takeover of our world, of Gaia, by life forms spawned from artificial intelligence, is, so far, nothing like the battles with robots, cyborgs and humanoid look-alikes imagined by science fiction. Even so, it might seem that conflict is inevitable and that a global-scale battle will soon begin for possession of the planet.”
Not one of the so called “prophets” at Davos have explained to humanity how they will prevent the hacker terrorist group “Anonymous” from hacking peoples’ brains once they are hooked into the neural link “transcendental” AI (control) grid. And their shameless declarations that large sections of humanity will simply not be needed or be relevant to the future proposed by Davos as the work of humans will be replaced by robots and AI. We are expected by them to celebrate the end of everything that is human, to which we humans have not consented to.
Humanity doesn’t want or need AI or to become cyborgs, but our new aspirant feudal overlords, safe on their mountain in Switzerland are hell-bent on us accepting this fate by any means. Their agenda appears to involve destroying the present economic, food production and morality systems of the planet and enslaving the survivors with technology via techniques that would make Orwell blush.
In 2001 an antidote to Davos was founded, that was the World Political Forum, it brought together many former heads of states and governments along with philosophers, poets and civil society leaders, at the invitation of President Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, the last President of the USSR, who in the words of President George H.W. Bush “conducted the affairs of the Soviet Union with great restraint”. Gorbachev was adored by the Western glitterati as a celebrity, but not so much liked in Russia for his role in the the demise of the Soviet Union. Viewed as a national humiliation by Russian elites, the demise of the USSR did have the outcome of the resurgence of Constantine’s Orthodox Church across Russia which at least gave the people a new moral code to live by. More than could be said for the collapse of the British Empire after World War II, reminding us all that wars have unforeseen consequences.
At the World Political Forum, Gorbachev, and the invited historical personalities began a conversation about the philosophical foundation of a genuinely new civilization, based on long term discussions over several years for a new political consensus between cultures and nations. The discussions weaved through what this new civilization might look like, and what could be its universally agreed pre-norms. Pre-norms as in their deliberations on values upon which to build a normative consensus in international politics and law. Universality, as in all cultures and all nations, many of whom were orbiting and landing at the forum’s historical dialogue and intellectual foray into the pressing global challenges and proposals for new futures.
The apparent disregard for the international normative architecture by the protagonists of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, were a cause of great concern for many at the forum who all reaffirmed the validity of the architecture of the United Nations. The debates included at the table, those who sit at the heads of many tables, as well as the bankers, and they presciently foresaw the unraveling of the international order; the consequences of which are evident in the contemporary international disorder that historians may one day view as the start of a third world war.
At the World Political Forum, poets and presidents discussed peace and cooperation as well as workable means to build the path towards a better civilization. Unlike the banality of proposals emanating from the World Economic Forum’s technocracy for all for the profit of a few agenda, the World Political Forum discussed reducing the imbalances of the world political situation and seeking out paths to peace. Human rights and poverty reduction got quite a billing too at the annual assemblies which were astonishing intellectual occasions both for the frankness and wisdom shown by the speakers, who collectively held centuries of experience and hindsight as former leaders of states and international institutions.
President Gorbachev who was a self-declared communist, did invite Pope John Paul II and Catholic Church representatives to the forum. Gorbachev had been in dialogue with the Pope during the Cold War to avert nuclear conflict. The important encyclical of Pope John XXII Pacem in terris on the moral order of states and humanity was propounded at the World Political Forum as complementary to the conceptualized new civilization. It was poignant that the Catholic Church had been seminal as a peacemaker between the White House and the Kremlin during the Cuban missile crises. Not only was the Church welcome at the forum, but western leaders such as former US Ambassador Jack Matlock, and former British Ambassador Rodric Braithwaite gave their insights into their experiences of the Cuban missile crises and as ambassadors to Moscow. There was a general feeling of goodwill, of former colleagues who had diplomatically worked so hard to avoid the Cold War becoming hot. Former advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Lord Geoffrey Howe and former Chancellor of Germany, Helmut Kohl put in a showing at the forum too, the latter in a joint session with President Gorbachev and former Prime Minister of Italy Giulio Andreotti on “Europe Without Old Walls.”
President Gorbachev even shook the hand of one of my more brasher junior associates at the New World Architecture international seminar in Bosco Marengo. Another, junior associate, who was more appropriately modest at such settings, was in such awe of the discussion that they heard they later joined the priesthood. Not presuming myself to ever request to shake the hand of the president, I recall during a press seminar organised by Giulietto Chiesa for the forum which Gorbachev gave at the Meridien Lingotto in Turin, on “Media between citizens and power” that we both gazed into each other’s eyes for some moments, I saw in him a deep soul dedicated to the work for the betterment of mankind in his role as president of the World Political Forum.
All of us in the small Civitatis International delegation of rapporteurs, who also had the occasion to debate with the discussants in a break out session on international law for the New World Architecture seminar, were convinced that we were witnessing not only history in the making, but the hand of God at work in the serious efforts for international peace at the World Political Forum. Indeed one WPF session was held in the Palazzo Ghilini, which was once key to an historic Middle East peace deal and the representative of the King of Jordan declared to the participants of the forum, that “we are all people of the book”, in reference to peacemakers searching for a commonality of people’s seemingly divided by religion, but all searching for the same truth.
Everything about the forum was as historic as it was optimistic for a reasoned and pragmatic international relations in a post Cold War world searching for better world order via altruistic pragmatism and enlightened analysis. The World Political Forum aimed to be an open forum for the whole world welcoming leaders of relevance in the spirit of dialogue and cooperation between civilizations. Most importantly, and unlike Davos, the World Political Forum never proposed an ideology; although one annual assembly dissected the historiography of Perestroika and Glasnost, which one might say, could be interpreted as analysis of ideological policies that sought to restructure the ideology of totalitarianism.
The World Political Forum, had a magnificently Italian flavor of a historically significant gathering at a cross roads of cultures and civilizations with a soupcon of Russian intellectualism overseen by Dr. Andrey Serafimovic Grachev, who served both as Gorbachev’s press secretary and spokesman during the days of the USSR, and CPSU member. Andrey chaired the forum’s Scientific Committee, (which was the sentience of the forum) and always ensured the most rigorous and lively debate, his summations at the end of each session always gave participants more food for thought to energetically kick of the next session. The Scientific Committee, together with the best of a few hundred other intellectual and political leaders of nations, who took part in the forum over the years, proved to be a wonderful world mix of ideas and good will working on ideas for peace, which historians might one day say became a kind of informal G77 or even the intellectual progenitor of the BRICS movement of nations who don’t want to live anymore under a uni-polar empire but would prefer a multi-polar world, where agendas of poverty reduction and mutual development are the priority.
The World Political Forum was inspired more by the historical reverence for Gorbachev and his celebrity as Cold War peacemaker than geopolitical soft power machinations. The forum benefited from the generosity of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and the sponsoring Italian banking foundations who offered all necessary support and logistics for the forum’s good works. The Pontifical Swiss Guard welcomed the guests and the Italian cities of Turin and Alessandria and the province of Piemonte became the intellectual home of the forum, in particular the City of Turin which was the seat of the hard working secretariat of the forum, led by the dedicated Dr. Rolando Picchioni and his team that included, Maria and Lucia, Max and Maria who worked tirelessly to bring so many high-level participants together for the forum’s annual assemblies. I will never forget the warmth and kindness of the WPF secretariat staff, as when I took a break from rapporteuring and the hundreds of pages of texts of speeches of leaders I was editing for them to care for my mother during her terminal illness, their kind words, “be strong for her” gave me daily strength during that difficult time. As did the memory of my exploring the beautiful churches of Turin in particular one above the river Po that I climbed a hill too, to find a small humble mass being sung by some old Italian ladies and one priest in a small church as the sun illuminated the little church. I realized that I was missing out, as I did not understand their beautiful songs that were the same format across every Catholic Church in Europe. This prompted me to take a course and get baptised by Cardinal Vincent Nichols in London so now when I visit churches in Europe to view their architecture, I also comprehend their purpose a little more.
The World Political Forum had an enormous church, the government gave them the beautiful monumental complex of Santa Croce at Bosco Marengo, a former Dominican monastery where the vacant tomb of Pope Pius V lies among the beautiful murals of Giorgio Vasarai. Pope Pius V was the pope who ex-communicated Queen Elizabeth I! Although he is buried in Rome, you can see his vacant tomb and his effigy in the Church of Santa Croce, Bosco Marengo and the local restaurant hotel has one of Italy’s best chef’s according to Dr. Roberto Savio to which I and my small team of rapporteurs heartily agreed after dining with them.
Once the scene of Napoleon’s greatest battles, the Battle of Marengo (1800) where over 58,000 men fought in Napoleon’s first victory as head of state of France against the Hapsburg army of Austria. The former Dominican monastery of Bosco Marengo became the spiritual and working home of the World Political Forum’s multilateralist thinking for a new civilization of peace. Those that assembled there and in Turin and Alessandria at the invitation of President Gorbachev and the Italian sponsoring committee took seriously their duty to conceptualize a new order and the missed opportunities as they had dismantled the old Cold War order, most aptly commented on by the writer, Bernard Guetta who beautifully observed: “with the end of the Cold War we lost the illusion of an ideal, the search for peace on a global scale but we still have room for hope to eventually build peace and this paradise, which at the moment, seems to be lost.”
It was clear that the era of the World Political Forum was resolutely characterized by the desire for optimism of leaders on both sides of the East and West who were seeking out this paradise of universal peace, and the many important men (yes in those days it was men) who surrounded the two main Cold War leaders, who all worked very hard to avert a nuclear war, some of whom were instrumental in the philosophical and intellectual works of the forum. Yet a decade of soft diplomacy at the World Political Forum did not transpire into lasting formal cooperation between East and West, and nor of the West’s acceptance of Russia as an equal partner, the Europeans warmed to partnership potentials but the Americans never did. Pessimism about global international relations set in and the world began to divide into fault lines once again.
From the World Political Forum’s grand, and even, monumental inception, where its participants declared a new civilization as the path to a universal culture of peace, to its gentle demise, the works of the World Political Forum are a testament to a process indicative of the willingness of previous leaders of nations to collaborate to selflessly reduce the global imbalances and increase the paths to peace. The WPF was an example for leaders to take account of the wisdom of their predecessors and for every state to try to find a common ground towards a peaceful civilization for all of humanity, no matter how narrow and how difficult nor seemingly distant the path to peace may be.
The World Political Forum certainly represented the era of post-Cold War cooperation and optimism where “we were all Europeans now”, and where some, the author included, dreamed that the path to world peace lay in the vision of the founding fathers of the European Community, and that their working peace system was a successful model of relevance to the other regions of the world that were keenly observing its progress.
If the founding fathers of the European Community were around at the start of the XXI Century, they certainly would have gravitated towards the World Political Forum, and would have debated there, more than anywhere else, as their natural intellectual home. Dare we dream today of a more democratic structure for the European Union, a simple constitution and a bill of rights for the people’s of Europe, maybe written by a sovereign European Parliament? Should Europe be expanded from the Atlantic to the Urals? Does the path to world peace include the radical prospect of uniting civilizations under a universally common desire for peace and prosperity and win-win socio-economic and political cooperation? The ideas propounded for a better world at the World Political Forum are already mostly lost to history, as no comprehensive formal record exists of its works.
Even without the historical record of the forum’s enlightened debate to guide us, could the path to mutually beneficial outcomes for all be in a cessation of all hostilities everywhere and the commencement of a genuine dialogue for long term political and economic cooperation towards unions of civilizations around the globe, free from the constraints of any particular ideology or “ism”?
What in real terms could this model for peace mean for the European civilization? Could it mean that Ukraine is to be considered as European and admitted as a member to the European Union? Could it mean that negotiations between EU countries and Russia could begin for the long-term goal of an economic community between the Russian Federation with the European Union where conditions for mutual investment and prosperity could be discussed even if it was to a hundred year timetable? Such ideas are heresy now, but were not always so as the concept of Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals stemmed from Francois Mitterrand, President of France, in response, Gorbachev proposed the concept of the Common European Home.
What values would be required to ensure that the Russians and their sphere of countries could join a kind of new European Union, where they might enter, which would be key for the Russians, into a union of equality of mutual respect and of importance, as two great unions joining into one mega-economic union? Might America and the Middle East wish to join this union also one day? Would the political capital of Europe have to be moved eastwards from Brussels? Dare we imagine a new political centre for a European civilization of peace and prosperity? And what of Turkey, accession prospects for whom, have stalled? Once leaders realize that not all imposed policies are popular with the people such as unrestricted migration, and they come up with some policies to solve it, perhaps the European project can get back on track. If we humans can put nationalism and ideology aside, and strive to build peace, we will see that prosperity and development is in everyone’s interest. So is stopping the needless killing and suffering of people on all sides of all wars.
The world is in dire need of new norms of governance that the East and West are going to have to agree, if only to restrain the Davos villains from causing further chaos and doing further damage to the planet and species.
If the East and West could reduce tensions and start cooperating, would there be genuine reductions and disarmament of nuclear and conventional weapons, like we had in the Reagan-Gorbachev era? And would we have free movement of peoples and goods in a customs union and grand infrastructure projects. Why not? India and Japan are doing something similar with the mega-projects of the Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor. The fate of Europe need not be post-industrial and post-imperial malaise it can be progress and prosperity, and that is a lesson for all powers in a world of changing international relations.
Would a Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals encompass the new common language of international business or a multitude of dialects? Could western business and investment be attracted back to Russia if respect for the law of contracts for business and universal norms of civil society and human rights such as those articulated by the Council of Europe protections were implemented there? Do the potentials for extraction and sale of oil reserves and critical minerals in the Arctic and Ukraine show an avenue for East-West cooperation and mutual development, in particular for the prosperity of Ukraine or are they a curse for intractable and unsolvable for cycles of East-West conflict?
Would a new bigger Europe have to become a fortress to protect its globally significant culture from dissolution from millions of migrants from around the world who are on the march seeking a better life in our home? Or could the new Europe, mindful of its historical mission to expand its zone of peace and prosperity, carry out massive investments in the MENA region and build prosperous civilizations and new cities in partnership with local people who desire the development, human rights and prospects afforded by life in Europe?
Dare the world leaders renounce war and dream of such noble and humble goals as peace and improving the human condition? And shouldn’t we as a human family and civilization start seriously thinking about exploring the abundant resources of space and ending poverty instead of dwelling on the perceived inevitability of the destruction of our fellow men, women and children? As humans are we not more than protagonists in conflict?
Perhaps the world is not ready for such goals, nor for a genuine forum for international peace, in which case humanity is condemned to the banality of the visions of our aspirant feudal overlords hiding in Switzerland and Silicon Valley who wish for us to enter a dehumanized dystopia as controlled cyborgs.
If the villains are permitted to get their way, the question for the human species then, is whether Lovelock’s cyborgs will appear before or after the nuclear apocalypse? In any case, we can take comfort in the Vedas as some of the oldest spiritual texts on Earth, in which human history is described as not to be linear, but rather to be cyclical, via four great repeating cycles of time called Yugas. What has been before will be so once again. So one day humanity may have to start the project of civilization over unless we dare to dream of peace in our time.
The article was submitted to Other News by the author
*Jan Mortier is the founder of Civitatis International [ https://www.civitatisinternational.com ] Jan also served as the rapporteur for the World Political Forum in its early years.