10 BEST PRACTICES FOR BUSINESS AND LIFE
Staying ahead of the collectivists and globalists
I thought I would bring some positive information to my Sons of Issachar readers this week. In my weekly posts, I sometimes depress myself with the gloomy story of the globalists at work, trying to usher us into 15-minute cities, own nothing and eat bugs.
I have been thinking this week about the power of language and the way that the Marxists have been able to falsely label themselves as “progressives” (in fact, they are “regressives”), which sounds appealing. After all, we all want to make progress! Thus, Kamala Harris and her new running-mate Tim Walz are described as “progressives” but their policies are all collectivist and they want to control the lives of everyone in the US, while opening the US border to all.
We need to pay attention to language because it is powerful and impacts our views, even before we know the facts. Thus, abortion is re-labelled as “reproductive rights” (where the baby has none). Cutting off children’s genitalia is called “gender-affirming surgery”. Throwing US$1.5 trillion of government funds into the US economy was labelled “the inflation reduction act” (which not surprisingly caused massive inflation). The “Trusted News Initiative”, is nothing less than a draconian attempt by the mainstream media to censor information. Government-mandated killing of surplus people in Canada is called MAID (medical assistance in dying). Being locked into a city, and unable to leave is called a “smart city” or “15-minute city”. Having AI in charge of the world, eliminating jobs and creating government dependency is called “universal basic income” (where you will have no job). Bringing wolves into areas of Britain where they haven’t been for hundreds of years to kill all the livestock is called “re-wilding”.
I am sure that you can think of many more examples. This language manipulation is not an accident, where the issues are 180° away from the stated name, and it seems to work. The dictators of North Korea were many years ahead of the “progressives” when they labelled the most repressive and dictatorial country in the world, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The plan to control us and herd us into controlled enclaves is depressing news, but the collectivists have not succeeded yet. However, as Dr Jacob Nordangård outlines in his substack post this week, the UN Summit of the Future is almost upon us (22-23 September 2024) where world leaders will sign a Pact for the Future (more on this later in the newsletter). We need to be aware that these folks have a plan for our future and that we will have no say in it. However, there is much that we can do to control what we can and live life to the full.
I have long believed in the truth and wisdom contained in the Bible and that it can help us in everyday life. My book Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times attempted to distill some of the lessons of life that I have learnt from the ancient texts with application to modern life. Knowing of my interest in this area, Sir Steven Wilkinson, who writes the excellent Pitchfork Papers, alerted me to a book written by a friend of his friend, titled Ingredients for Success: 10 Best Practices for Business and Life by Joseph James Slawek. I have read the book this week (it is only 119 pages) and found it very valuable, so I thought I would share Mr Slawek’s best practices and encourage my readers to buy the book.
Ten Best Practices for Business and Life
Figure 1. Joseph James Slawek’s book, “Ingredients for Success: 10 Best Practices for Business and Life”
Mr Slawek was the founder, Chairman, and CEO of FONA International, a company that “creates and produces flavors for many of the largest food, beverage, and nutritional companies in the world.” In December 2020, McCormick and Company Inc. acquired FONA International for US$710 million in cash.
In 2011 Mr Slawek was the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year winner. As the founder of a successful company, one of the key ingredients for his success was a realization that, as he writes in the introduction to his book, “God had business strategies that worked, and he also had the desire to help me succeed.” He realized that the Bible contained great wisdom, and he discerned that the principles there “are predictable, universal, and trustworthy.”
Mr Slawek said he was “repeatedly attracted to the parables and sayings of Jesus recorded in Matthew 25”. These sayings and parables of Jesus came at a significant time: in Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives, just a few days before Jesus’ trial and crucifixion. Jesus gave his disciples a private briefing about the signs of His coming and the end of the age (Matthew 24:3). In Matthew 25, Jesus tells two parables, the ten virgins and the talents, and concludes this chapter with information about the final judgment. In essence, these words of Jesus were advice that His disciples should be awake and be prepared.
Here is a link to Jesus’ briefing to His disciples in Matthew 25. This must have been of great importance, given that Jesus knew He was going to die in just a few days. Jesus was warning his disciples about His return to claim His kingdom and their need to prepare, work hard, and remain vigilant.
Mr Slawek writes: “These verses spoke to me mightily about the way I was conducting my life and my business”. Remarkably, this chapter of the Bible, he says “changed the way I did business- and life. From the wisdom (in Matthew 25), I gleaned ten principles, or best practices….If you do these things, you’ll begin to see your work differently, you’ll find the purpose in what you’re doing…”.
In the book, there is a chapter devoted to each of the ten “best practices,” which I found helpful and significant. The chapters have a lot of detail, as Mr Slawek unpacks some of the lessons he gleaned from understanding Jesus’ stories and parables. Here are his ten best practices:
Boldy, yet compassionately, tell the truth. We must tell the truth in order to define reality and fight denial. Truth-telling is an essential practice for anyone at any level of any organization. As Jesus said: “You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:28). Never skimp on the truth.
Plan ahead but be ready for surprises. We are responsible for planning and preparation and also for responding to surprises or crises. In planning, there are four fundamental principles:
a. Strategize in three key areas. It is important not to have too many areas of focus;
b. Follow the natural order. For example, start with customers, then how to get your product or service to them, and then the financial plan.
c. Set goals for three time periods: the next year, the next three years, then the next ten years.
d. Create a calendar. This should have the goals and specific plans for these periods.
Know, develop, and use your unique abilities. God assigns to each of us a certain amount of specific talents, gifts, resources, and abilities, along with unique personalities and the responsibility to use them. You need to make a frank assessment of your abilities and use them accordingly. You need to assess your strengths and work to develop them.
Use your talents responsibly, or you’ll lose them. We are entrusted with God’s resources in the form of our talents, skills, abilities, gifts, resources, etc. We have a responsibility to use them or lose them. Responsibility is an obligation. We are each to use our talents not just randomly or foolishly but responsibly.
Be ready for accounting. There is always an accounting—daily, weekly, monthly, and annually. Eventually, there will be a final accounting from God—an eternal audit of your life and what you did with your talents. You need to be ready for accounting, and keep your eyes on the figures.
Invest your talents faithfully for maximum return. We will all get the same reward from our master if we use our respective talents properly. He will say, “Well done – good and faithful servant”. It is crucial to establish and nurture a high-performance work environment. This involves providing feedback and expressing “well done” when excellence has been achieved. It is important never to provide the reward before an accounting of the outcome. In other words, don’t reward based on intentions but rather results.
Aim for excellence, not perfection. There are only four outcomes at home or work: failure, mediocrity, excellence or perfection. Excellence is our target because it requires and motivates us to get better. Excellence will never happen unless we see our talents as a wonderful gift from God, not an impossible assignment. We need to believe and embrace the truth that God has gifted us so we can work diligently to create excellence in our craft.
Be strong and courageous. Fear, though a normal part of life, can cause us to bury our talents. Fear and perfectionism both create procrastination. The most common form of fear is fear of failure. Fear can lead to paralysis, but the best way to fight it is through the pursuit of excellence. Fear can lead to procrastination, and a good tool to avoid procrastination is having a “stop time” for a project, i.e. a specific time to stop working on a project because it is unproductive. Fear is normal. We can choose whether it will motivate us to be courageous, or we can let it paralyze us.
Redistribute unused talents and resources. Unused gifts, resources, and talents are always recycled to someone who will use them faithfully. When we don’t use our gifts, they’ll be given to someone else. This is the simple principle of “use it or lose it”. It’s about being good at what you do and faithful enough to be trusted with the task.
Express gratitude to God and others. Gratitude is our first priority, and it precedes all rewards. It is essential to have an attitude of gratitude for the day-to-day things: food, a job, accommodation and clothing. St. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: “In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
I found the 10 Best Practices for Business and Life an excellent, easy-to-read book. Mr. Slawek has some great personal stories that illustrate the ten principles. The book is simple and practical, and I know readers will find it helpful.
To conclude this section of my newsletter, I will share something from Steven Wilkinson’s Pitchfork Papers. This week, Sir Steven Wilkinson shared excellent advice from a 1910 essay: The Science of Getting Rich. I thought that this advice from William Wattles was an encouraging conclusion to Mr Slawek’s ten principles for success:
“Guard your speech. Never speak of yourself, your affairs, or of anything else in a discouraged or discouraging way. Never admit the possibility of failure or speak in a way that infers failure as a possibility. Never speak of the times as being hard or of business conditions as being doubtful. Times may be hard and business doubtful for those who are on the competitive plane, but they can never be so for you; you can create what you want, and you are above fear." (William Wattles “The Science of Getting Rich” Chapter 7).
In his extended essay, Mr Wattles encapsulates everything in a simple sentence that also summarizes what should be our focus for the present time:
“The very best thing you can do for the whole world is to make the most of yourself. (William Wattles “The Science of Getting Rich” Chapter 10).
ARTICLES THAT CAUGHT MY ATTENTION THIS WEEK
The UK’s Multicultural Disaster
The riots in various UK cities this week have had a long prelude, going back more than 50 years when immigration to the UK started to increase. Neither Conservative nor Labour governments have attempted to control immigration, and one wonders if those in charge are responding to the UN’s vision for migration (“Making Immigration Work for All”). The UN says (optimistically) that:
“migration is a powerful driver of sustainable development, for migrants and their communities. It brings significant benefits in the form of skills, strengthening the labour force, investment and cultural diversity, and contributes to improving the lives of communities in their countries of origin through the transfer of skills and financial resources.”
Behind this vision lies the belief that borders are discriminatory and that mass migration needs to be facilitated and national borders removed for “sustainable development” (the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals). Unfortunately for the UN (and the citizens of the UK), one population is not the same as another. As the UK population has changed (particularly the significant increase in the percentage of Muslims), there has been severe conflict because of differences in world views.
Melanie Phillips writes about this issue in her recent substack post. In relation to the current protests and riots in many UK cities (Elon Musk has even proclaimed that “civil war is inevitable”), Ms Phillips writes:
“This is the result of years of ignoring the incendiary twin developments of mass immigration and progressive Islamisation, which I wrote about in my 2006 book Londonistan and which have got so much worse since then.
There’s been a remorseless series of attacks by Muslim extremists. After the 7/7 London bombings that killed 52 people in July 2005, the attack in 2017 on an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester killed 22 and injured more than a thousand. Eight people were murdered and 48 injured in the London Bridge attack a month later. In 2021, a teacher in Batley, West Yorkshire, went into hiding for his life after showing an image of Muhammad to his pupils in a lesson about the limits of free speech; he is still in hiding. In 2023, a 14-year-old autistic boy in Wakefield who dropped a copy of the Quran in the corridor of his Wakefield school during a prank received death threats and was harassed and demonised. Earlier this year, Muslim activists took London’s secular Michaela school to court in an unsuccessful attempt to get the school to kowtow to demands for a prayer room.
These and other such incidents are never discussed honestly. The issue of Muslim aggression that underlies them is ignored or censored. Problems with Islamic religion or culture are regarded as taboo; the issues are discussed in euphemisms. Anyone who does speak plainly about such matters is immediately hung out to dry as “right-wing” or “far-right”, the incoherent labels that are fixed onto anyone who contradicts left-wing dogma in order to stigmatise and silence them as social pariahs. “
Ms Phillips does not excuse the violent behaviour of the protestors. Still, she points out that “this is a tinderbox that has been under construction for years by successive administrations, starting with Tony Blair’s government which set out to transform the country into a multicultural society through mass immigration”.
Ms Phillips has identified the culprit for the current problems as multiculturalism. She writes:
“Multiculturalism, for the benefit of those who have been asleep inside a cocoon for the past several decades, is not the template for a tolerant society. Tolerance of other cultures and ethnicities should be a given in any civilised country. Multiculturalism, by contrast, is a doctrine which says all cultures must be deemed to have values that are no better or worse than any other. Multiculturalism therefore makes it impossible for a western society to require new arrivals to conform to its precepts such as equality for women, freedom of speech and tolerance of minorities.
It is therefore a recipe for the destruction of the west — and indeed of society itself, since it effectively produces tribes warring against each other for power and supremacy, creating divisions which destroy a unified society. Far from producing racial harmony, multiculturalism is a formula for racial and ethnic hatred and worse.”
Unfortunately, the violent behaviour of some of the protestors (which was excused by the Left, at Black Lives Matter protests) has focused attention on the need for law and order, and the new Labour Government may be able to avoid addressing the underlying problems. It also will be an issue where there will be claims that these are “extreme right” agitators who are racist rather than addressing the disastrous policy of multiculturalism.
This will be an ongoing problem in the UK and Nigel Farage has drawn attention to “two-tier policing”, where there are different rules for different populations. The UK Government has no solutions apart from claiming those who disagree with the policies of massive immigration are “racist” and Elon Musk may be correct when he posted on X that “civil war is inevitable”.
New Zealand’s Dictatorial Pandemic Plan
New Zealand Health has just released a 2019 Pandemic Plan (A Framework for Action) that you can obtain at this link. You wonder who writes these plans, which have almost incomprehensible language.
To introduce the document, the authors (unknown) write:
“This plan will be exercised under the National Exercise Programme, which is chaired by the National Emergency Management Agency. Its main objective is to build capability across government through a coordinated series of interagency readiness activities, measured against a set of national objectives. “…..
Who knows what this means?
There are many troubling elements of the plan (including that a pandemic doesn’t necessarily need to be declared in New Zealand—it can be overseas). Undoubtedly, the plan has its origins in the World Health Organisation (WHO). The plan may even signal that a further pandemic is being planned, given that the lead-up to the COVID-19 pandemic was preceded by various plans and warnings, some months in advance in 2019.
New Zealand Health has referenced the WHO, and the document is full of almost incomprehensible verbiage. In the New Zealand Health document, the authors quote from the WHO document:
“PRET’s Module One focuses on respiratory pathogens such as coronaviruses,
influenza and paramyxoviruses (such as respiratory syncytial virus). The PRET resources:
outline relevant principles, such as equity, inclusiveness, evidence-informed decision-making and continuous learning;
recognise the interdependencies between different government and non-government sectors and resilient communities;
describe different operational stages to inform planning, including prevent and prepare, respond, recover and the return to prevent and prepare.”
You can guarantee in the UN documents that words like “equity”, “inclusiveness”, and “resilient” are used and that it is almost impossible to understand what the document means.
I worked through the 219 pages (there are more than 100 pages of appendices) and discovered some hidden draconian proposals. These are important, not just for New Zealanders (and one hopes that they are taking to the streets) but for the rest of the world because, undoubtedly, the document will be used as a template for other countries. Here is a diagram of the government’s planning approach:
Figure 2. Figure from the New Zealand government’s planning approach to pandemics in the document “New Zealand Pandemic Plan: A Framework for Action”
You can see that the approach is top-down, run by “experts” and eventually the New Zealand population simply has to comply.
Mandated Measures (outlined on page 122) appear to include forced vaccination. The document states (bolding done by me):
“Mandated measures may include:
requirements for people to be tested, screened or vaccinated (may include arrivals to New Zealand);
quarantining or isolating people (ie, supporting those potentially exposed and those with the disease in a quarantine or treatment/isolation facility (or at home) or prohibiting them from leaving a particular facility/home);
restricting the movement of people into or out of an area;
restricting travel (within or out of New Zealand)
imposing a duty to supply information for risk assessment or contact tracing (eg, future travel plans or past travel history)
requirements for people to undergo preventive treatment
requirements for people not to go to work or other public places or to do so only under certain conditions
commandeering of resources (eg, land, buildings or vehicles).
Special powers under the NZ Health Act 1956 will allow:
“The power to prescribe preventive treatment allows a medical officer of health, in respect of any person who has been isolated or quarantined, to require people to remain where they are isolated or quarantined until they have been medically examined and found to be free from infectious disease, and until they have undergone such preventive treatment as the medical officer of health prescribes (section 70(1)(h)).”
Furthermore, the police can be involved. On page 125, the document states (under special powers):
“Section 71A states that a member of the police may do anything reasonably necessary (including the use of force) to help a medical officer of health or any person authorised by the medical officer of health in the exercise or performance of powers or functions under sections 70 or 71.”
Freedom is disappearing from the West right before our eyes as governments implement draconian powers to “keep us safe”.
Trump’s Appeal
James Allan is a Canadian-Australian law professor who writes interesting articles for Spectator Australia. I enjoyed his article this week titled: Trump’s Appeal, and I have reproduced part of the article below. It’s a fresh look at the positive aspects of Trump’s presidency and is important at a time when a Democratic Party candidate who has no record of accomplishment apart from promoting intersectionality, is being hailed as a saviour for the US.
“I come to praise Donald Trump, not to disparage him. So be it if I burn a few bridges of the very few I seem to have left. Nor will this defence of former president Trump be directed at those who would vote for an embalmed mummy (or worse, Joe Biden, or worse again, Kamala Harris) before they voted for Donald Trump. Such voters see a world very different to the one I see and nothing I or anyone else says will make a whit of difference to how they vote………
So, yes, I do think Donald Trump is pretty much exactly what today’s political landscape calls for in a conservative political leader. Sure, he’s crass and boorish and likes ketchup. But he fights and doesn’t capitulate. He tries to keep his electoral promises, all of them. He is brave (where Boris was flat out cowardly). His crude combativeness, his brushing aside of nuance, his joy in the battle are precisely what are needed in today’s fight against a radical, open-borders, weaponising-the-justice-system, left-wing establishment. On Covid, Trump was a lot less thuggish than Boris or Morrison or most all of the right-of-centre cabinet ministers in the UK and here. Here’s the test. Would you prefer a ‘decent’ Rishi Sunak who capitulated in full to the Tony Blair worldview or a ‘flawed’ Trump? No sane person should expect to agree with a candidate on everything. I don’t agree with Trump on everything. But I agree with loads of his positions. And most of all, I like his character. Let me repeat – he fights and is brave. He stands up to the bureaucracy – and will do so a lot more should he win in 2024.
The holier-than-thou and (let’s keep being blunt) snobby conservative commentariat and ex-politicians’ fraternity might like to look in the mirror, and at their own records in office, and then let shame and humility temper their ‘Oh, but Trump doesn’t really have the right character for office’ bleatings that have more to do with being acceptable in polite society than with what is known in the philosophy of science as ‘the facts’.”
Professor Allan makes some important points about Trump. Many people take exception to his style (or tweets), but he has a strong record of accomplishment as president, which needs to be taken into account when his opponent’s only achievement over the first three weeks of ascension is to avoid the press completely.
COVID and Flu Vaccines Don’t Reduce Hospitalization
Steve Kirsch has been a relentless investigator of the COVID-19 vaccines and has highlighted the excess deaths associated with the mRNA vaccines in his substack site.
In the last few days, he has highlighted a scientific paper (of which he was an author) that was recently published in Pre-Prints. In his substack post, he writes:
“Two breakthroughs:
My paper showing the COVID and flu vaccines do not work was published in PrePrints today. The paper shows that the COVID and flu vaccines don’t reduce hospitalization at all. Zero. Zip. Nada. It uses VA data published in JAMA by a top epidemiologist to expose the truth. No hospitalization benefit implies no death benefit because there is no precedent in medicine for no hospitalization benefit yielding a death benefit. So they lied to us about the benefits. It was ALL downside risk with the shots.
I was able to confirm that the Medicare data shows that the mortality rate of the shots depends on brand. Statistically significant. Yet, nobody in the world is looking at this. Not at the local level, not the state level, not the national level. They all look the other way. I guess it’s time for another paper?”
The scientific paper is titled: “A Novel Practical Approach for Directly Assessing COVID-19 Vaccine Efficacy against Hospitalization”. In the abstract, the authors conclude:
“These findings call into question any efficacy claims associated with either the COVID-19 or influenza vaccines. Furthermore, the lack of efficacy of the influenza vaccines in reducing hospitalization is consistent with an earlier detailed study that found the same lack of efficacy, further validating the current result. This suggests that comparing vaccination rates between those hospitalized for different vaccine-preventable diseases can serve as a practical method for validating the vaccine efficacy claims of different vaccines.”
Negative Effectiveness of COVID-19 Vaccines (i.e. vaccines make COVID worse!)
Dr Raphael Lataster writes a substack where he has highlighted the dangers of COVID vaccination, and this week, he published an interesting article titled: COVID jab negative effectiveness increasingly obvious. He writes:
“We’ve covered the apparent negative effectiveness of the COVID-19 jabs (the notion that the jabs *increase* your chance of COVID infection/hospitalisation/death) quite a bit, with a certain pre-print study (Shrestha et al.) being particularly compelling due to its identification of a dose-dependant relationship (the more jabs, the more COVID). That article has now been accepted, by Oxford University Press. Source.
As more time has elapsed, the study has been improved, with more references and data bolstering the earlier version’s implications that, yes, the bivalent boosters are effectively useless, and the more jabs you have the more likely you’ll be infected”
Undoubtedly, the various COVID-19 vaccines alter immune function because the VAERS reports demonstrate a range of immune-mediated adverse conditions. Dr Geert Vanden Bossche has highlighted how those vaccinated with the mRNA vaccines can suffer an acute immune reaction on re-exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Each week, fortunately, more information is available about the damaging impact of the COVID-19 vaccines but the mainstream media studiously ignore the information.
Tim Walz – Minnesota Governor and now “running mate” for Kamala Harris
There has been much speculation about who Kamala Harris would appoint as her running mate, and most commentators agreed it needed to be a white man (it is the obvious consequence of intersectionality). Most had settled on Governor Josh Shapiro, the Governor of Pennsylvania (an important swing state). However, he was Jewish, which disadvantages the Democrats, and so he was likely to upset the pro-Hamas wing of the Democrats (it’s a substantial part of the Party).
Earlier this week, Tim Walz was announced as the running mate. He will please the extreme Left-wing of the Democratic Party and he has recently said on a White Dudes for Kamala Zoom call “Don't ever shy away from our progressive values. One person's socialism is another person's neighborliness". He needs to relocate to Beijing (he has long-term links there), but unfortunately, he could end up as the next US vice president.
Michael Shellenberger has just written about Walz’s record in his Public substack:
“According to the media, Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris made an excellent choice in selecting Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her vice presidential running mate. Walz bridges the gap between the Democratic Party’s progressive base and the moderates that Harris and Walz need to win over to maintain control over the White House, they say. And Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, the other front-runner, was too divisive on Israel, they add, and risked overshadowing Harris.
But three major controversies threaten Walz’s image as a moderate. Walz waited three days before asking for the deployment of the National Guard after Black Lives Matter protests turned into fiery riots that destroyed hundreds of businesses. Walz created a “snitch line” through which thousands of Minnesotans reported their neighbors, co-workers, and police officers to the government for things like not wearing masks while outdoors. And Walz doubled down last year on letting doctors and surgeons give drugs to and operate on children and adolescents confused about their gender at a time when Britain and much of Europe are banning them.”
If Donald Trump and JD Vance can focus on the extreme positions of the Harris-Walz presidential ticket, it is difficult to see that most Americans would vote for them. However, Harris-Walz has the entire media machine behind them, and it will be difficult for Trump and Vance to gain traction on the danger to the US from these two radicals. The New American has a helpful one-hour video titled Tim Walz, More Extreme Than He Appears that is worthwhile watching and provides further information about the danger to the US (and the world) from a Harris-Walz presidency.
The UN Pact for the Future
Dr Jacob Nordangård has been featured regularly in the Sons of Issachar Newsletter. I advise my readers to subscribe to his newsletter, titled The Pharos Chronicles. This week, he alerted his readers to the dangers associated with the United Nations Pact for the Future. Here are a few extracts from his post:
“In January, the first draft of the pact was published, followed by negotiations with member states and other stakeholders. The latest revision was published on 17 July.
The pact's message is that we are in a "global transformation" where a growing number of global catastrophic risks threaten to completely break the world apart (Breakdown).
But progress in science, technology and innovations can instead mean a breakthrough to a "better" and more sustainable world (Breakthrough).
However, this requires that the crises are handled collectively by a multilateral system with the UN at the center. For this purpose, the UN needs to be upgraded.
The intention is for this new multilateral world system to "protect future generations" and to implement the United Nations' utopian Agenda 2030 with its seventeen sustainability goals. According to the pact, this can only be realised if carbon dioxide emissions are drastically reduced to keep the temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius. The climate has long been the linchpin of the agenda.
The Pact for the Future contains 58 actions (divided into five chapters) and two annexes (Global Digital Compact and Declaration on Future Generations) to implement the shift to a system that "effectively respond to current and future challenges, in partnership with all stakeholders."
The first chapter deals with the fulfilment of the sustainability goals.
The second chapter deals with promoting the international peace agenda.
The third chapter is about making use of science, technology and digital collaboration.
The fourth is about meeting the interests of young people and future generations.
The fifth and final chapter is about reshaping global governance to be able to handle the challenges of the future.
The pact is sold with the promise that poverty and hunger will be eradicated, that equality will be promoted, that all marginalised groups will be given a voice, that human rights will be respected, that peace will be maintained and that the planet will be saved from destruction. All we have to do is hand over the keys to Spaceship Earth to the planetary stewards!
……………
The Climate Governance Commission has called on the United Nations to declare a planetary emergency in connection with the Summit of the Future. This would lead to the convening of an emergency platform and the implementation of a planetary emergency plan.5 In the background, all the necessary preparations have already been arranged. One example is Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisor's project Global Commons Alliance, where Rockström once again appears in a leading role.
Towards a Technocratic Dictatorship?
These crises are in my opinion meant to be the trigger (Breakdown) that will lead us into the new system (Breakthrough) where a global governing body takes its seat in the Trusteeship Council to oversee the life support systems (the ecology) and a "global apex body" oversees the world economy.
As the futurist John Platt wrote in 1975 in connection with the World Future Society's conference "The Next 25 Years: Crises and Opportunities":
These crises, fearful as they are, also offer the possibility of being stepping stones to improved methods of global organization and management for the prosperity of everybody.6
Everything will be made possible with the help of massive data collection and digital monitoring. This is the society that TriCom co-founder Zbigniew Brzezinski envisioned back in 1968:
“Power will gravitate into those who control information and can correlate it most rapidly. Our existing postcrisis management institutions will probably be supplemented by precrisis management institutions, the task of which will be to identify in advance likely social crisis and to develop programs to cope with them. This could encourage tendencies during the next several decades toward a technocratic dictatorship, leaving less and less room for political procedures as we now know them.”
It is essential to understand that thousands of organisations are at work to shepherd us into this technocratic future and control every aspect of our lives. Various bodies are attempting to declare a “planetary emergency” about climate change, and such a declaration would result in us handing more power to the globalists. The COVID-19 pandemic was so successful in gaining control of populations that we must be only moments away from another “pandemic”. The only missing ingredients are Digital IDs and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), which are waiting in the wings right now with governments preparing relevant legislation.”
The Strategic Importance of Turkey
In previous newsletters, I quoted from the BESA Center (The Begin-Sadat Strategic Center) in Israel. The Center publishes interesting analyses of the situation in the Middle East. This week, there was an article about the threat from Turkey, titled Erdoğan, You Can’t Sail a Ship with Words.
President Erdoğan is a long-established Turkish politician who has served as Prime Minister (2003-13) and President (2014-today). He has changed Turkey from a secular society to one dominated by Islam and is, in essence, a dictator. He has a love-hate relationship with Israel (mostly hate) and plays an important international role because Turkey is a long-established member of NATO.
President Erdoğan has a chequered political history and, in 1998, served time in jail for inciting religious hatred. After an attempted coup in 2016 when he was president, Brittanica reported that Erdoğan “carried out a massive purge, removing tens of thousands of soldiers, police officers, teachers, and civil servants from their jobs and imprisoning others for their alleged sympathies with the coup.”
This consolidated his position, and he has since ruled Turkey with an iron fist.
Professor Efrat Aviv, from the BESA Center, wrote on 4th August about Erdoğan’s pivotal role in the Middle East:
“Unlike other countries, antisemitism and anti-Zionism in Turkey are often dictated from above.
I was reminded of this after Erdoğan’s recent threat to Israel, in which he asserted that Turkey would enter Israel as it had entered Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh and that nothing could be done to prevent it. “We must be strong so that Israel does not continue its ridiculous actions against Palestine,” he said.
…….
Erdoğan has become obsessed with Netanyahu, portraying him in Turkish media as a new Hitler. This rhetoric is exemplified by a street ad with a graphic of Netanyahu’s face gradually transforming into Hitler’s. The image is captioned, “Hitler is not dead, he is only changing shape.”
……
The Turkish threat to Israel and the Turkish-Israeli conflicts over the past decade and a half have repeatedly provided the Justice and Development Party and its leader with opportunities to position themselves as champions of Islam, an image they strive to project to fortify their electoral base. This base is under threat due to the erosion of political authority and the ongoing economic crisis, making it crucial for Erdoğan to act prominently against Israel.”
Erdoğan is trying to perform a highwire act, seeking to be the voice for Islam against Israel, as well as an important member of NATO. Turkey has a large arms industry, has played a role in supplying arms to Russia and is strengthening its ties with Russia.
One month before the Hamas massacre in Israeli settlements adjacent to Gaza, a plot was uncovered where Turkey attempted to smuggle 16 tons of rocket material into the Gaza Strip.
Turkey plays a complicated role in the Middle East, notably concerning Syria. Professor Aviv writes:
“Erdoğan spent much of the last decade trying to topple Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, following a close personal relationship with Assad between 2007 and 2010 as part of Ankara’s “zero problems” policy with its neighbors. At one point, Erdoğan even attempted to mediate peace talks between Syria and Israel. The current Turkish rapprochement with Assad, whom Erdoğan has called a terrorist multiple times, is mainly related to anti-Syrian riots in several Turkish cities. In Ankara, opposition parties are calling for the mass deportation of Syrian refugees, and the government is turning to the Syrian regime it once sought to topple to help solve this problem. The riots exposed longstanding tensions between Syrians and Turks that are being exacerbated by economic pressures from Turkey’s high inflation.”
Turkey is a crucial country to watch in relation to the Middle East conflict. The government has a complex web of connections, but current economic problems threaten President Erdoğan’s control. The annual rate of inflation is more than 70% and there may be increasing unrest by the Turkish people. The next presidential election is not until 2028, and it would be a brave person willing to forecast the Middle East scenario at that time. Iran's current instability will change the Middle East equation substantially. Still, it is essential to watch the situation in Turkey as a guide to shifting power structures.
I have written since my earliest newsletters about the strategic importance of Israel, which is continually under threat from enemies on every side. Now its enemies include the UK government and the US Democrats, as well as the United Nations. As Iran plans its destruction of Israel, it also is important in the coming months to watch what is happening in Turkey.