Author: Alicia

American statesman Lyndon LaRouche and his wife Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche, today forcefully denounced a Nazi-led campaign being carried out by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) to defame and threaten the prominent Ukrainian economist and former Member of Parliament Dr. Natalia Vitrenko, a heroine and leading intellectual leader of that country.

“There has to be a high suspicion that this is being orchestrated by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland,” said Lyndon LaRouche today, “or by someone else with an affinity for Nazis in the Bandera tradition, such as Nuland is notorious for.”

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who in February 1997 co-initiated with Vitrenko the “Appeal to Convoke a New Bretton Woods Conference,” as a pro-development reorganization of the world economic system, responded to news of the escalated attacks on the Ukrainian economist and politician: “These slanders are all the more despicable, in that they occur one month before the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Nazism in Europe, in May 1945. The nations said after the end of that war, ‘Never again!’, but the Western governments have forgotten about that pledge. Natalia Vitrenko has had the integrity to expose the neo-Nazi revival, and to give evidence of Banderite atrocities, both historically and in our day, while Victoria Nuland’s chosen Prime Minister Arseni ‘Yats’ Yatsenyuk, on the contrary, had the nerve to say on German television that the Nazi invasion never occurred—that it was only the Soviet Union that ‘occupied’ Ukraine.”

Dr. Vitrenko has twice been interrogated by the SBU for supposedly receiving Russian funds for the purpose of engaging in what some media have maliciously depicted as “propaganda work to discredit the Ukrainian government authorities, to provoke armed conflict between different layers of the population of Ukraine, to incite ethnic hatred, and to provide information support for conducting ‘referenda’ in Ukraine’s eastern regions.” A statement issued yesterday by Vitrenko’s Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (PSPU) pointed to stories published this week by the Glavcom news agency (glavcom.ua) and other media, which cited SBU “suspicions” about Vitrenko’s receiving money from the Russian Foreign Ministry-run Fund for the Support and Defense of the Rights of Compatriots Residing Abroad.

The allegations date to May 2014, when the accounts of Dar Zhizni (Gift of Life), a women’s NGO headed by Vitrenko, were frozen. According to Ukrainian media, this was done “in the framework of an SBU investigation of funds transfers through Ukrinbank, intended for persons suspected of infringement of the territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine.” Headlines in the current flood of media coverage name Vitrenko as “a major sponsor of separatists and terrorists,” which are broad categories being used by the current Ukrainian authorities against their political opponents. Alexander Bondarchuk, head of the small Ukrainian Labor Party, and a colleague of Vitrenko both in the Parliament and as a co-signer on her statements against the violent, neo-Nazi-spearheaded February 2014 coup d’etat in Kiev and its aftermath, was arrested March 18 on charges of “infringing the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”

Translations of the PSPU statement on the renewed threat to Vitrenko, as well as one on the Bondarchuk case, are provided below.

SBU head Valentyn Nalyvaychenko announced in an April 1 interview that the model for his agency is Stepan Bandera’s Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Ukrainian Insurgent Army (OUN-UPA), which collaborated with the Nazis during their invasion of the Soviet Union. In view of Vitrenko’s biography and her courage in continuing to speak out on the economic and political devastation of Ukraine since last year’s coup, the attacks have the pro-Nazi stench, typical of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s projects in Ukraine. Nalyvaychenko, long associated with the Bandera Trident (Tryzub) organization, a core component of the coup’s Right Sector shock troops, boasted in a May 2014 Atlantic Council conference call of his “intensive” intelligence-sharing and other cooperation with “U.S. colleagues.”

Zepp-LaRouche noted that Vitrenko has spoken frequently in Europe, on both the harm done to Ukraine’s economy by IMF and free-trade policies, and the threat of the revival of fascist ideology in Ukraine, encouraged from the West. “Dr. Vitrenko is well-known and highly respected in Europe,” said Zepp-LaRouche, “and she has had high-level meetings both there and, in earlier years, in the United States. It is important for political figures worldwide to condemn these ludicrous attacks on Natalia Vitrenko, and identify where they are coming from.”

LaRouche and Zepp-LaRouche were Vitrenko’s guests in Kiev in 1995, when she was an MP. An economist specializing on Ukraine’s social services sector and the impact of International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditionalities, she ran a strong campaign for the Presidency of Ukraine in 1999, polling 11% even after her campaign was disrupted by an assassination attempt, in which she and 40 others were injured by grenades thrown at a rally. In recent years, Dr. Vitrenko spoke at conferences of the Schiller Institute in Frankfurt, Germany, in April 2013 and October 2014.

In a speech video-recorded for the March 28-29, 2015 conference of the Citizens Electoral Council of Australia, Vitrenko herself recalled that, “From February 23 to March 5, 2014, our delegation of leading representatives of some Ukrainian leftist parties was able to tour Europe, visiting France, German, and Italy,” where they held “dozens of meetings, press conferences, and interviews. Thanks to Members of the European Parliament… I was able on 26 February 2014 to hold a press conference at the European Parliament. … Already then, we warned about the threat of civil war and the disintegration of the country, which could lead to World War Three. And at that time, I called on Berlin, Moscow, and Paris to unite efforts: specifically these three centers—Berlin, Moscow, Paris—to unite their efforts and prevent the Nazis from taking over in Ukraine, and to help institute a ban on all neo-Nazi parties and movements in Ukraine.”

Natalia Vitrenko’s latest video address, posted on her website vitrenko.org, is titled “A Military Junta instead of European Values.” She analyzes the law introduced into Parliament April 3 by President Petro Poroshenko, which provides for declaring martial law in Ukraine either in the face of an armed invasion, or “the threat of attack.” The latter formulation, Vitrenko alleges, provides for acting on the basis of “fabricated threats”—just like the SBU’s “bluff, that Vitrenko is threatening the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”

American statesman Lyndon LaRouche and his wife Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche, today forcefully denounced a Nazi-led campaign being carried out by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) to defame and threaten the prominent Ukrainian economist and former Member of Parliament Dr. Natalia Vitrenko, a heroine and leading intellectual leader of that country.

“There has to be a high suspicion that this is being orchestrated by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland,” said Lyndon LaRouche today, “or by someone else with an affinity for Nazis in the Bandera tradition, such as Nuland is notorious for.”

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who in February 1997 co-initiated with Vitrenko the “Appeal to Convoke a New Bretton Woods Conference,” as a pro-development reorganization of the world economic system, responded to news of the escalated attacks on the Ukrainian economist and politician: “These slanders are all the more despicable, in that they occur one month before the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Nazism in Europe, in May 1945. The nations said after the end of that war, ‘Never again!’, but the Western governments have forgotten about that pledge. Natalia Vitrenko has had the integrity to expose the neo-Nazi revival, and to give evidence of Banderite atrocities, both historically and in our day, while Victoria Nuland’s chosen Prime Minister Arseni ‘Yats’ Yatsenyuk, on the contrary, had the nerve to say on German television that the Nazi invasion never occurred—that it was only the Soviet Union that ‘occupied’ Ukraine.”

Dr. Vitrenko has twice been interrogated by the SBU for supposedly receiving Russian funds for the purpose of engaging in what some media have maliciously depicted as “propaganda work to discredit the Ukrainian government authorities, to provoke armed conflict between different layers of the population of Ukraine, to incite ethnic hatred, and to provide information support for conducting ‘referenda’ in Ukraine’s eastern regions.” A statement issued yesterday by Vitrenko’s Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (PSPU) pointed to stories published this week by the Glavcom news agency (glavcom.ua) and other media, which cited SBU “suspicions” about Vitrenko’s receiving money from the Russian Foreign Ministry-run Fund for the Support and Defense of the Rights of Compatriots Residing Abroad.

The allegations date to May 2014, when the accounts of Dar Zhizni (Gift of Life), a women’s NGO headed by Vitrenko, were frozen. According to Ukrainian media, this was done “in the framework of an SBU investigation of funds transfers through Ukrinbank, intended for persons suspected of infringement of the territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine.” Headlines in the current flood of media coverage name Vitrenko as “a major sponsor of separatists and terrorists,” which are broad categories being used by the current Ukrainian authorities against their political opponents. Alexander Bondarchuk, head of the small Ukrainian Labor Party, and a colleague of Vitrenko both in the Parliament and as a co-signer on her statements against the violent, neo-Nazi-spearheaded February 2014 coup d’etat in Kiev and its aftermath, was arrested March 18 on charges of “infringing the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”

Translations of the PSPU statement on the renewed threat to Vitrenko, as well as one on the Bondarchuk case, are provided below.

SBU head Valentyn Nalyvaychenko announced in an April 1 interview that the model for his agency is Stepan Bandera’s Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Ukrainian Insurgent Army (OUN-UPA), which collaborated with the Nazis during their invasion of the Soviet Union. In view of Vitrenko’s biography and her courage in continuing to speak out on the economic and political devastation of Ukraine since last year’s coup, the attacks have the pro-Nazi stench, typical of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s projects in Ukraine. Nalyvaychenko, long associated with the Bandera Trident (Tryzub) organization, a core component of the coup’s Right Sector shock troops, boasted in a May 2014 Atlantic Council conference call of his “intensive” intelligence-sharing and other cooperation with “U.S. colleagues.”

Zepp-LaRouche noted that Vitrenko has spoken frequently in Europe, on both the harm done to Ukraine’s economy by IMF and free-trade policies, and the threat of the revival of fascist ideology in Ukraine, encouraged from the West. “Dr. Vitrenko is well-known and highly respected in Europe,” said Zepp-LaRouche, “and she has had high-level meetings both there and, in earlier years, in the United States. It is important for political figures worldwide to condemn these ludicrous attacks on Natalia Vitrenko, and identify where they are coming from.”

LaRouche and Zepp-LaRouche were Vitrenko’s guests in Kiev in 1995, when she was an MP. An economist specializing on Ukraine’s social services sector and the impact of International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditionalities, she ran a strong campaign for the Presidency of Ukraine in 1999, polling 11% even after her campaign was disrupted by an assassination attempt, in which she and 40 others were injured by grenades thrown at a rally. In recent years, Dr. Vitrenko spoke at conferences of the Schiller Institute in Frankfurt, Germany, in April 2013 and October 2014.

In a speech video-recorded for the March 28-29, 2015 conference of the Citizens Electoral Council of Australia, Vitrenko herself recalled that, “From February 23 to March 5, 2014, our delegation of leading representatives of some Ukrainian leftist parties was able to tour Europe, visiting France, German, and Italy,” where they held “dozens of meetings, press conferences, and interviews. Thanks to Members of the European Parliament… I was able on 26 February 2014 to hold a press conference at the European Parliament. … Already then, we warned about the threat of civil war and the disintegration of the country, which could lead to World War Three. And at that time, I called on Berlin, Moscow, and Paris to unite efforts: specifically these three centers—Berlin, Moscow, Paris—to unite their efforts and prevent the Nazis from taking over in Ukraine, and to help institute a ban on all neo-Nazi parties and movements in Ukraine.”

Natalia Vitrenko’s latest video address, posted on her website vitrenko.org, is titled “A Military Junta instead of European Values.” She analyzes the law introduced into Parliament April 3 by President Petro Poroshenko, which provides for declaring martial law in Ukraine either in the face of an armed invasion, or “the threat of attack.” The latter formulation, Vitrenko alleges, provides for acting on the basis of “fabricated threats”—just like the SBU’s “bluff, that Vitrenko is threatening the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”

In an inspiring discussion with associates yesterday, Lyndon LaRouche noted that his entire operation, “as you all know well by now,” is based on this water question, and the implications of the water question—not only that, but as combined with the matter of the Presidency of the United States—of creating the new Presidency of the United States, which must be formulated, hopefully, very soon; and we will be devoting ourselves to doing the things that we may be able to do, which would build up the potential for this.

I happen to be about one of the oldest of the still-functioning members of that organization. And, I’ve had, a very important—especially at times, the most important function, and therefore I’m probably one of the most significant persons from the standpoint of age and experience, as to what the Presidency actually means, and in large degree what most of the world means. Because I’ve been at the hot spots of these kinds issues for quite a long time. Actually, since I left military service in World War II—immediately after military service, when, after coming out of an illness, I became a successful executive in the matter of economy.

So, that’s the way we should look at it. We have people of different ages and experiences, coming together to be a catalytic agency of creating an organization which we’ve indicated is needed for what we’ve indicated as the most probable candidate seen right now: O’Malley. As I’ve emphasized, that means not so much O’Malley as such, as a single person. It means O’Malley is the most qualified right now, to become the President of the United States. He would not be a single person, but as President, the leader of a government formed on the basis of his leadership.

And I think that’s the only available solution for us in the United States, to now contribute what we have to contribute, for the reform of civilization generally. By that I mean that fact that the forms of government, or the nominal forms of government which have existed heretofore, including the British Empire, are not really what we want. The BRICS, for example, and China, are more typical of what we want. We do want a system of sovereignty of nations, with certain qualifications. We want their independence; we also want their coordination on common issues.

See & Share the BRICS digital pamphlet: “Why the U.S. Must Join the BRICS”

And that’s what we have to do, after our government has suffered many times in its experience, so far. We’ve had many Presidents who were no damn good; and we’ve had Presidents who were good, but the governments that they had were no damn good, because they were outnumbered on their assigned roles, or outswindled in that process. So we’re now going into a new kind of thing, a new kind of Presidency for this time. In one sense, it’s the normal American Presidency, shall we say, Alexander Hamilton being a model of that kind of thing, as well as John Quincy Adams, and so forth. BUT, we’ve now entered a period where it’s a new kind of world. And the new kind of world is a global world, where there’s no longer emphasis on governments and nations as being what they have been considered before. Now we have independent governing agencies, but they have a certain sense which the BRICS manifest and exhibit.

I’m very much an international person, with international devotions—but at the same time, a specific loyalty to the idea of our United States. But I believe that our United States must coordinate itself, with nations which are fit, and disposed by fitness to share a cooperation. So, it’s a new form for us. What’s happening in Argentina, in other places in South America, what’s happening in some parts of Asia. The re-creation of Russia as a nation. You know, Russia went through a number of things after the breakup of the Soviet Union, and it’s only relatively recently that Putin has become the figure, who brought together the elements, probably with about 80-90% support, to create an actual Russian government. And the Russian government has a very important connection to China; it’s one of the most important features: the Russia-China relationship. Because that is what’s going to pull the world as a whole together. We already have cooperation in some parts of South America. We should be able to clean up the mess and “burn out the Bushes,” which have polluted our own nation, that sort of thing. So, we’re in that kind of situation. And we have various experiences, by virtue of age and so forth.

This is where we’re going, and this is what we want to go to. We do not want to go to independent subject-matters. We want to go to the point, first of all, of creating a United States, again, which fits the actual requirements of the United States—but fits that into the kind of development in which, we know, the planetary system as a whole, must bring itself into a new form of general cooperation—and some parts of the world are doing that. The United States has not done that. And I would think that what I’ve been talking about and proposing, would be for the United States to enter, in its own role, in its own name, with its own original Constitution—to become joined into the BRICS group of nations.

It’s time for the U.S. to function again,
Sign & Circulate the Petition: “The U.S. Must Join the BRICS”

In an inspiring discussion with associates yesterday, Lyndon LaRouche noted that his entire operation, “as you all know well by now,” is based on this water question, and the implications of the water question—not only that, but as combined with the matter of the Presidency of the United States—of creating the new Presidency of the United States, which must be formulated, hopefully, very soon; and we will be devoting ourselves to doing the things that we may be able to do, which would build up the potential for this.

I happen to be about one of the oldest of the still-functioning members of that organization. And, I’ve had, a very important—especially at times, the most important function, and therefore I’m probably one of the most significant persons from the standpoint of age and experience, as to what the Presidency actually means, and in large degree what most of the world means. Because I’ve been at the hot spots of these kinds issues for quite a long time. Actually, since I left military service in World War II—immediately after military service, when, after coming out of an illness, I became a successful executive in the matter of economy.

So, that’s the way we should look at it. We have people of different ages and experiences, coming together to be a catalytic agency of creating an organization which we’ve indicated is needed for what we’ve indicated as the most probable candidate seen right now: O’Malley. As I’ve emphasized, that means not so much O’Malley as such, as a single person. It means O’Malley is the most qualified right now, to become the President of the United States. He would not be a single person, but as President, the leader of a government formed on the basis of his leadership.

And I think that’s the only available solution for us in the United States, to now contribute what we have to contribute, for the reform of civilization generally. By that I mean that fact that the forms of government, or the nominal forms of government which have existed heretofore, including the British Empire, are not really what we want. The BRICS, for example, and China, are more typical of what we want. We do want a system of sovereignty of nations, with certain qualifications. We want their independence; we also want their coordination on common issues.

See & Share the BRICS digital pamphlet: “Why the U.S. Must Join the BRICS”

And that’s what we have to do, after our government has suffered many times in its experience, so far. We’ve had many Presidents who were no damn good; and we’ve had Presidents who were good, but the governments that they had were no damn good, because they were outnumbered on their assigned roles, or outswindled in that process. So we’re now going into a new kind of thing, a new kind of Presidency for this time. In one sense, it’s the normal American Presidency, shall we say, Alexander Hamilton being a model of that kind of thing, as well as John Quincy Adams, and so forth. BUT, we’ve now entered a period where it’s a new kind of world. And the new kind of world is a global world, where there’s no longer emphasis on governments and nations as being what they have been considered before. Now we have independent governing agencies, but they have a certain sense which the BRICS manifest and exhibit.

I’m very much an international person, with international devotions—but at the same time, a specific loyalty to the idea of our United States. But I believe that our United States must coordinate itself, with nations which are fit, and disposed by fitness to share a cooperation. So, it’s a new form for us. What’s happening in Argentina, in other places in South America, what’s happening in some parts of Asia. The re-creation of Russia as a nation. You know, Russia went through a number of things after the breakup of the Soviet Union, and it’s only relatively recently that Putin has become the figure, who brought together the elements, probably with about 80-90% support, to create an actual Russian government. And the Russian government has a very important connection to China; it’s one of the most important features: the Russia-China relationship. Because that is what’s going to pull the world as a whole together. We already have cooperation in some parts of South America. We should be able to clean up the mess and “burn out the Bushes,” which have polluted our own nation, that sort of thing. So, we’re in that kind of situation. And we have various experiences, by virtue of age and so forth.

This is where we’re going, and this is what we want to go to. We do not want to go to independent subject-matters. We want to go to the point, first of all, of creating a United States, again, which fits the actual requirements of the United States—but fits that into the kind of development in which, we know, the planetary system as a whole, must bring itself into a new form of general cooperation—and some parts of the world are doing that. The United States has not done that. And I would think that what I’ve been talking about and proposing, would be for the United States to enter, in its own role, in its own name, with its own original Constitution—to become joined into the BRICS group of nations.

It’s time for the U.S. to function again,
Sign & Circulate the Petition: “The U.S. Must Join the BRICS”

Tune in live at 12:30 this afternoon for live coverage of our Wall Street rally. Why are we facing a historic drought in our western territories? Why is our foreign policy gearing up for war? WALL STREET. The ultimate test of the next President of the United States will be how they reign in Wall Street, and if they can put the United States on par with the BRICS nations.

Tune in live at 12:30 this afternoon for live coverage of our Wall Street rally. Why are we facing a historic drought in our western territories? Why is our foreign policy gearing up for war? WALL STREET. The ultimate test of the next President of the United States will be how they reign in Wall Street, and if they can put the United States on par with the BRICS nations.

Tune in live at 12:30 this afternoon for live coverage of our Wall Street rally. Why are we facing a historic drought in our western territories? Why is our foreign policy gearing up for war? WALL STREET. The ultimate test of the next President of the United States will be how they reign in Wall Street, and if they can put the United States on par with the BRICS nations.

Tune in live at 12:30 this afternoon for live coverage of our Wall Street rally. Why are we facing a historic drought in our western territories? Why is our foreign policy gearing up for war? WALL STREET. The ultimate test of the next President of the United States will be how they reign in Wall Street, and if they can put the United States on par with the BRICS nations.

Tune in live at 12:30 this afternoon for live coverage of our Wall Street rally. Why are we facing a historic drought in our western territories? Why is our foreign policy gearing up for war? WALL STREET. The ultimate test of the next President of the United States will be how they rein in Wall Street, and if they can put the United States on par with the BRICS nations.

Tune in live at 12:30 this afternoon for live coverage of our Wall Street rally. Why are we facing a historic drought in our western territories? Why is our foreign policy gearing up for war? WALL STREET. The ultimate test of the next President of the United States will be how they rein in Wall Street, and if they can put the United States on par with the BRICS nations.

Russian-Ukrainian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945) would certainly weigh in on the severe drought affecting California in particular, as well as the Western United States, and other parts of the world. In fact, Vernadsky’s study of both what he called the “biosphere,” the sphere of the natural world, and the “noösphere,” that sphere as shaped by the reason of man and for man, is reflected in some of his thoughts on water.

Vernadsky wrote a whole tome devoted to water, only snippets of which have been translated into English, but they are quite telling. Vernadsky’s work on water focused on what he saw as the need to classify water as a mineral, based on its “history.” This domain of study would allow water to be classified based on the natural processes it had interacted with.

In this same vein, Vernadsky saw the need to classify waters which had been managed by the human mind, a new class of waters he called “cultural waters,” which had intersected, as he put it, both the mind and will of man. In his own words:

“Modern land water (all surface water and part of perched groundwater and soil water) is a geologically new phenomenon in the history of the planet, nonexistent in past geologic epochs. The eternal influence of living matter on waters was changed by the appearance of Homo Sapiens Faber gifted with mind and will. All land waters are being increasingly changed under its purposeful conscious and unconscious influence. This leads to numerous changes in the whole mechanism of the biosphere. A change of natural waters by culture is the lever which humankind uses, willingly or unwillingly, to perform it.”

In California and elsewhere, mankind is obligated to create new cultural waters in taking control of the water cycles. We are not a species whose actions should be determined by natural cycles, we should determine and create new ones:

“The whole Pleistocene nature, the whole biosphere has been changed by the activity of civilized humankind, and this process extends to depths, and changes the regime of formation waters of the biosphere and stratisphere. Changes in perched groundwaters have occurred already over thousands of years, changes in formation pressure waters by drilling and mining activity began later. Now these changes extend in places to depths of more than 2 km below the surface. In the whole of the biosphere, old types of surface and formation waters as well as waters of soils and springs disappear and change, while new cultural waters are formed.”

—Vladimir Vernadsky, “History of Natural Waters”

Russian-Ukrainian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945) would certainly weigh in on the severe drought affecting California in particular, as well as the Western United States, and other parts of the world. In fact, Vernadsky’s study of both what he called the “biosphere,” the sphere of the natural world, and the “noösphere,” that sphere as shaped by the reason of man and for man, is reflected in some of his thoughts on water.

Vernadsky wrote a whole tome devoted to water, only snippets of which have been translated into English, but they are quite telling. Vernadsky’s work on water focused on what he saw as the need to classify water as a mineral, based on its “history.” This domain of study would allow water to be classified based on the natural processes it had interacted with.

In this same vein, Vernadsky saw the need to classify waters which had been managed by the human mind, a new class of waters he called “cultural waters,” which had intersected, as he put it, both the mind and will of man. In his own words:

“Modern land water (all surface water and part of perched groundwater and soil water) is a geologically new phenomenon in the history of the planet, nonexistent in past geologic epochs. The eternal influence of living matter on waters was changed by the appearance of Homo Sapiens Faber gifted with mind and will. All land waters are being increasingly changed under its purposeful conscious and unconscious influence. This leads to numerous changes in the whole mechanism of the biosphere. A change of natural waters by culture is the lever which humankind uses, willingly or unwillingly, to perform it.”

In California and elsewhere, mankind is obligated to create new cultural waters in taking control of the water cycles. We are not a species whose actions should be determined by natural cycles, we should determine and create new ones:

“The whole Pleistocene nature, the whole biosphere has been changed by the activity of civilized humankind, and this process extends to depths, and changes the regime of formation waters of the biosphere and stratisphere. Changes in perched groundwaters have occurred already over thousands of years, changes in formation pressure waters by drilling and mining activity began later. Now these changes extend in places to depths of more than 2 km below the surface. In the whole of the biosphere, old types of surface and formation waters as well as waters of soils and springs disappear and change, while new cultural waters are formed.”

—Vladimir Vernadsky, “History of Natural Waters”

Russian-Ukrainian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945) would certainly weigh in on the severe drought affecting California in particular, as well as the Western United States, and other parts of the world. In fact, Vernadsky’s study of both what he called the “biosphere,” the sphere of the natural world, and the “noösphere,” that sphere as shaped by the reason of man and for man, is reflected in some of his thoughts on water.

Vernadsky wrote a whole tome devoted to water, only snippets of which have been translated into English, but they are quite telling. Vernadsky’s work on water focused on what he saw as the need to classify water as a mineral, based on its “history.” This domain of study would allow water to be classified based on the natural processes it had interacted with.

In this same vein, Vernadsky saw the need to classify waters which had been managed by the human mind, a new class of waters he called “cultural waters,” which had intersected, as he put it, both the mind and will of man. In his own words:

“Modern land water (all surface water and part of perched groundwater and soil water) is a geologically new phenomenon in the history of the planet, nonexistent in past geologic epochs. The eternal influence of living matter on waters was changed by the appearance of Homo Sapiens Faber gifted with mind and will. All land waters are being increasingly changed under its purposeful conscious and unconscious influence. This leads to numerous changes in the whole mechanism of the biosphere. A change of natural waters by culture is the lever which humankind uses, willingly or unwillingly, to perform it.”

In California and elsewhere, mankind is obligated to create new cultural waters in taking control of the water cycles. We are not a species whose actions should be determined by natural cycles, we should determine and create new ones:

“The whole Pleistocene nature, the whole biosphere has been changed by the activity of civilized humankind, and this process extends to depths, and changes the regime of formation waters of the biosphere and stratisphere. Changes in perched groundwaters have occurred already over thousands of years, changes in formation pressure waters by drilling and mining activity began later. Now these changes extend in places to depths of more than 2 km below the surface. In the whole of the biosphere, old types of surface and formation waters as well as waters of soils and springs disappear and change, while new cultural waters are formed.”

—Vladimir Vernadsky, “History of Natural Waters”