Number 79

In this issue:

1. A world without mothers?
2. The Voice of the System
3. Maasai warriors defend their land
4. The wild spirit of freedom
5. Herbert Read: an organic radical inspiration
6. Acorninfo

1. A world without mothers?

Would any of us want to live in a world without mothers?

The question may sound absurd, but the eugenicists behind test-tube babies and surrogate motherhood now have their sights on genetic engineering and artificial wombs which would cut women out of the reproductive process.

This is the warning sounded in a powerful special edition of the French journal Ecologie & Politique, which has sparked some controversy (see below).

In their introductory article, entitled ‘The obsolesence of birth’, Mathias Lefèvre and Jacques Luzi write: “The creation of an artificial womb would confirm the disassociation, initiated by in vitro fertilisation, between the female body and human reproduction.

“It would no longer be a case of ‘giving birth to the other’ or ‘bringing them into the world’, but of ‘producing a child’ – if possible, without defects”.

They trace the origins of the current threat to a “reductionist, mechanical and utilitarian representation of nature” which incited an “essentially totalitarian global programme”.

This involved the construction of “a new, artificial world, judged to be better than the previous one, in the pursuit of order, enrichment and power. We call this programme ‘industrialism’.”

An important contribution to the journal comes from Silvia Guerini of the Italian group Resistenze al nanomondo, who is one of the founders of FINAARGIT, the international feminist network against all artificial reproduction, gender ideology and transhumanism.

In her article entitled ‘A world without mothers?’, she argues that while the current justification for the technology is on medical grounds, helping people who cannot have babies naturally, the long-term goal for the industry is no doubt to make artificial reproduction the norm.

As Luzi explains, the various branches of biotechnology “are the means by which techno-capitalism can push back the limits of its development by turning life itself into an infinitely-exploitable raw material.

“The biomedical grip on human reproduction is part of the general process of the commodification of life”.

Industrialist greed-monsters cannot stand the thought that there are things we can do ourselves, for free, without them being able to extract any profit.

It would be in their financial self-interest if everyone was obliged to shop at their baby supermarkets, either because for some reason we were sterile or because it was simply no longer the done thing to indulge in dangerously unscientific and unhygienic natural reproduction.

Guerini suggests: “The use of your own body would be considered a sign of social inferiority and poverty. A natural mother would be considered potentially irresponsible, like mothers who currently opt for home birth, refusing the hospitalisation and medicalisation of the process… Natural childbirth would first be treated as irresponsible, then criminal”.

Eugenics, so dear to 20th century totalitarians, is central to the artificial reproduction programme.

Guerini writes: “Remember that there can be no Medically Assisted Procreation (MAP) without the selection of spermatozoa and of embryos… When technoscientists get involved in the process of procreation they want to set the characteristics of each of these elements, choose them, modify them and determine the end result.

“The laboratory environment transforms the birth process into a technical operation: the embryo becomes a product to be selected, improved, rejected or transformed”.

The grotesque direction in which this could take us is indicated by recent American-Chinese-Spanish experiments involving the fusion of genes to create half-human half-monkey embryos, she says.

Every phase of techno-industrial “progress” needs its cheerleaders and today these often seem associated with the “woke” left.

Guerini explains that there have long been some feminists, notably Shulasmith Firestone, who acclaim artificial reproduction as “liberating” women from “biological tyranny”.

And she predicts that artificial wombs will be demanded, like MAP, as a “right” for everyone, including “transgender” people.

These are “false rights”, says Guerini, and need to be exposed as such.

“Having a child cannot be claimed as a right, neither for a heterosexual couple nor for a homosexual couple, nor for a single woman or man. There cannot be a right to have a child. The capacity to generate life cannot be claimed as a new right by men who identify as women. Procreation can never belong to them”.

Guerini notes that “the interests and the demands of the LGBTQ+ movement and of transfeminism on the subject of reproduction converge with those of the techno-scientific and transhumanist system”.

Here, incidentally, she is echoed by Renaud Garcia, whose own contribuution to the journal describes such “woke” pseudo-radicals as “agents of social acceptability” for a techno-system “directed by the caste of possession, power and knowledge”.

Guerini warns: “MAP, selecting embryos, experimenting on embryos, genetic modification and artificial wombs are all deeply-connected aspects of the same transhumanist project.

“Techno-scientific progress is constantly accelerating and ethical barriers are tumbling one after the other, bringing us closer to a new neutral and infinitely-modifiable species in a post-human and post-natural world.

“A world without mothers, which has definitively and totally expropriated women’s bodies and their reproductive dimension, which has definitively and totally taken control of the life-creating process, which engineers the living and which dominates the evolution of the human species itself”.

Garcia, for his part, argues that authentic environmentalists need to “denounce with all their strength the forces of artificial human reproduction and criticise its agents of social acceptability”.

Otherwise, if they swallow all the manipulative propaganda, they will be unable to do anything to halt the advance of the ruthless techno-industrial system – “in other words, the crushing of human nature by the power of the machine”.

Back to top

2. The Voice of the System

by Paul Cudenec

Just before Christmas I travelled 100 miles or so from my home to Aix-en-Provence for a significant political event.

This was the launch of a special edition of the review Ecologie & Politique, entitled ‘Les enfants de la machine’, Children of the machine (see above).

This focuses on the threat posed to humankind today by biotechnology, eugenics and transhumanism, with a particular focus on artificial reproduction.

The contributors who spoke at the event included Silvia Guerini of the Italian network Resistenze al nanomondo; philosopher Renaud Garcia; writer Bertrand Louart (whose latest book was reviewed in Acorn 78), Jacques Luzi of Bretagne-Sud University and representatives of Pièces et Main d’oeuvre, the technocritical outfit that published Alexis Escudero’s 2014 book La reproduction artificielle de l’humain.

I found the talks, and indeed the articles on which they were based, extremely pertinent.

They amount to a multi-faceted condemnation of what the authors variously describe as “biocapitalism”, “the technocratic order”, and the “abandonment of the body”.

Like Jennifer Bilek in the USA, they also see a link between Big Bio’s transhumanist agenda and the “transgender” phenomenon.

This, of course, is currently one of the system’s holiest of holy cows and Garcia asks how it can be that the issue has taken on such visibility, and thus such apparent importance, in contemporary society.

He writes of the media messaging, the propaganda coming from international partnerships, the psychological state of activists, industrial interests and a cultural mutation and says he finds it “impossible for the moment to establish an order of priority”.

I would venture that the industrial and financial interests clearly lie behind all the media and institutional propaganda which has artificially manufactured a cultural mutation and fanatical authoritarian mindset.

Garcia tells the story of the late academic and psychiatrist Colette Chiland who worked with “transgender” individuals and wrote about the “illusion” rather than the reality of changing sex.

As a result she was “the victim of an intimidation operation that started at 7 o’clock each morning” and  she was dragged through the mud by national left-liberal newspaper Libération.

Garcia remarks that to call somebody a “transphobe” is essentially to scream “shut up!” and wonders where “the real fascists of our times” are to be found.

Having personally witnessed both Garcia and Escudero being (separately) hate-mobbed for daring to challenge techno-capitalist orthodoxy in a left libertarian venue, I was half expecting to encounter a picket outside the event in Aix.

But it turned out that the inevitable attack had already taken place the day before, via an allegedly “environmentalist” website.

Four members of Ecologie & Politique’s editorial committee were given a slot on the Terrestres site to condemn the excellent special issue of their own publication.

As I read their nasty smear piece, I was overcome by a strange feeling of recognition.

I knew this tone, this technique – I was listening to the familiar Voice of the System.

This voice never argues with those who challenge its so-called truths, nor does it present its objection in terms of a disagreement.

Instead, it invariably condemns the objects of its hatred as morally bad and connected to everything else that it has already declared to be beyond the political pale.

So it is that these thought-police authors slap the label “reactionary” on the rebel writers.

They don’t at all appreciate the contributions of Guerini and Luzi, but particularly single out Garcia, saying that his article comes at the same time as “the rise of the extreme right” across Europe – thus insidiously trying to imply that he is part of this rise!

They go on to talk about attacks and even murders of minorities, as if to suggest that this is somehow the fault of people who dare challenge the system’s woke propaganda and its role in promoting the transhumanist agenda.

And the inquisitors don’t stop there, dropping in references to “nostalgists for fascism” taking power in Italy and 89 “extreme right MPs” winning places in the French Parliament, all for the purpose of saying that Garcia and the other dissident voices have a moral duty to shut up and toe the authorised “left-wing” line.

“The alliance between feminist movements, LGBTQI movements and environmental movements can only be made by getting rid of a retrograde vision of nature, including human nature”, they declare.

There’s the vitaphobic ideological agenda laid bare in one sentence!

Because the dissident position does not correspond to their official Central Committee version of left-wing thought, the authors invoke the oft-cited threat of “convergences” and “confusion” between “left” and “right” critics of the system they defend, giving two gratuitous namechecks to French New Right thinker Alain De Benoist without feeling the need to demonstrate the slightest relevance to the question in hand.

By littering their article with names and labels that frighten their target readership, without any factual justification, the witch-finders seek to discredit and marginalise their opponents by foul means.

They even condemn the cover of the journal, a drawing of a mother and child, as reflecting “an iconography instrumentalised by conservative currents” and find their opponents guilty of the serious thoughtcrimes of “giving credit to conservative arguments surrounding gender and promoting a fatalistic vision of technical and scientific evolution”.

On a lighter note, their repeated use (five times!) of the term “problématique”, to describe views with which they do not agree, made me laugh out loud, reminding me of Francis Aaron’s excellent music video ‘Problematic‘.

Having marvelled at the utter dishonesty of this attack on dissident views, I thought I would have a quick look at the identities of the four smear-mongering authors.

The first, Renaud Bécot, is an “expert” from the Fondation Jean Jaurès, a “progressive think tank” funded by the French state and considered to be close to the Macron regime.

The second, Fabrice Flipo, is a senior researcher at Telecom EM, which “trains innovative managers and entrepreneurs who are open to the world and who will guide organizations through the digital, energy and ecological, economic and industrial transitions that will be at the heart of tomorrow’s society” and is the business school of the Institut Mines-Telecom, a public-private body which boasts a “dual governance structure” in which the French State’s supervision is “complemented by the participation of large companies”.

The third author, Laurent Garrouste, is a state-employed inspector who is also a member of the Fondation Copernic, a purportedly radical organisation that regards Covid “vaccines” as a “great success” and demanded that they be rolled out universally.

And the fourth voice of the system is Benoît Monange, director of the Fondation de l’écologie politique, French partner of the Green European Foundation, which is funded by the European Parliament and is very interested in smart cities.

Say no more!

Back to top

3. Maasai warriors defend their land

This article is taken from the No Deal for Nature campaign’s latest newsletter.

After months of repression faced by the Maasai in Loliondo, on June 7 the Tanzanian government sent in the military to evict thousands from their ancestral lands for elite tourism backed by the UAE Royal Family.

Many Maasai did their utmost to fight back with what arms they had at their disposal.

As a result of the military operation, thousands of Maasai together with their livestock were dispossessed and displaced, with many forced to flee over the border in Kenya to seek medical attention refused to them by Samia Suluhu’s anti-Maasai regime.

For detailed insight into the Maasai struggle against colonial conservation in Tanzania, we highly recommend the blog of Susanna Nordlund who has been following events in Loliondo for many years.

Following international outcry over the evictions, the Tanzanian government released a propaganda video entitled ‘Ngorongoro and Serengeti Shall Never Die, The Truth About It’, inspired by the 1959 Oscar-winning German documentary film ‘Serengeti Shall Not Die’ written and directed by Bernhard Grzimek.

We recently had the honour of speaking with Paul Ole Leitura, a Maasai from Loliondo whose friends and family have been directly impacted by the state-sanctioned violence. He recounted the many hardships faced by the Maasai in the wake of June’s evictions and ongoing livestock seizures. He requested that we share the following message.

“As we talked about, the weather has caused a very dry season and the livestock has died some of the remaining livestock have been caught by conservationists and sold at the beginning of this month, more than 1700 cows were caught and sold, causing more than 20 poverty.

“The situation of poverty is increasing due to herders taking away their land. The result is the avoidance of hunger and children not being able to go to school due to a lack of basic needs. The best way to help herdsmen at the moment is to enable them to get food and other basic needs for children to be able to attend school, especially considering that Maasai families depend 100% on livestock to earn income and run their daily lives”.

Here are some ways of showing support and solidarity.

Provide direct support to those displaced. Get in touch via email at nodealfornature@protonmail.com if you are able to help.

Donate to this crowdfunder.

Protest at Tanzanian embassies, consulates, etc.

Support a tourism boycott of “wild Tanzania”.

Sign Paul’s petition addressed to the Tanzanian President.

Back to top

4. The wild spirit of freedom

As the term “social distancing” so clearly reveals, the Covid crisis was meant to separate us from each other, to replace organic horizontality with a pathological vertical dependence on medical, technocratic and political authority.

Fortunately, it didn’t really work and in many cases had the opposite effect, pushing people out of their isolation to seek links, both local and virtual, with like-minded others.

It has also seen the emergence of what can only be described as a new oppositional consensus, a recognisable cluster of values and opinions which does not correspond to previous “political” classifications.

There are, we were interested to see, definite parallels between the Winter Oak worldview and that of Nowick Gray, a writer in British Columbia, Canada, as expressed in his book Metapolitical: Practicing Our Human Future.

For instance, writing about the outlawing of dissent, he observes that this has been shunted “into the hell-realm of ‘hate speech’, ‘dangerous extremism’ and ‘domestic terrorism'”.

He adds: “The opponent, if one deigns to call it ‘the deep state’, is by nature hidden. Propaganda works not only by repetition but also deceit.

“The web of self-reinforcing lies, each covering for another, extends to infect an entire, trauma-based civilizational paradigm, whole classes of media and bureaucratic and academic functionaries, even whole populations fed steady diets of controlled narrative and distraction, from birth.

“This ‘mind virus’ serves to conjure one kind of cloak of invisibility, serving as cover for the geostrategic conspiracies at play behind the headlines.

“And so a chief weapon against it is to expose the lies, the contradictions, the conflicts of interest: to strip the emperor of his false-flag clothes”.

It is interesting how a characteristic of the emerging resistance is to combine hard-headed analysis of real-life conspiracies such as the Gladio false-flag terrorist network with a sense of spirituality, as is the case with Gray.

In one fine passage he says: “Attuned to the wild spirit of freedom within, we embark on a journey of self-discovery, revealing doors of creation and transformation—of ourselves, and of the world we once called home. The wild is calling us back now… back to all we might be”.

And, of course, in the face of a system which has declared war on life itself, he sources hope from the living organism to which we all belong.

“What the technocrats forget is that nature, wounded and shunned, will never lose its primary place as the ultimate arbiter of our human reality.

“The natural Earth is the final judge and jury of all these crimes against her and her humanity”.