Premier Smith's problem

Alberta’s new Premier Danielle Smith used to be a radio phone-in show host before becoming Premier and I used to listen to her program frequently.

She was very connected to her audience and had a hard time during the pandemic with folks that disagreed with her views, which included her employer as well on some issues.

Prior to working as a radio host Smith had been the leader of the Wildrose Party in Alberta and a sitting member of the legislative assembly. At that time she crossed the floor with a group of her MLAs to join the sitting Progressive Conservative Party government under Jim Prentice prior to an election in which she lost her seat.

Listening to her reflect on what happened, I got the distinct impression that Danielle Smith sees herself as some kind of “Knight in Shining Armour” coming to Alberta’s rescue with some ready baked solutions of her own choosing.

And therein lies her problem: Running with her instincts and preconceived ideas, without consulting the greater population.

Jim Prentice had the same problem, and he was a bad loser.

Hunting season

This morning I got to experience what it feels like to be a deer in the hunting season here in Alberta.

Walking between my two cabins this morning I heard a very sharp loud crack and saw a small spruce branch fall to the ground just beside me as I made for the cabin door and parked inside.

I didn’t take time to look around as this was obviously a rifle shot aimed at me. I phoned 911 and the RCMP were dispatched from Sundre shortly afterwards. I was told over the phone that they are investigating but have not heard back yet (afternoon).

Around noon I went out into the snow to investigate, looking for tracks. And I found them: Fresh large 4x4 wheel tracks on the subdivision road some 100 meters from my cabin, which is barely visible from that road at low light.

There were no human footprints next to the tracks, but there were a lot of deer tracks in the snow all around the subdivision road.

Back at my cabin I discovered where the broken branch had come from, just 2 feet above where my head was at the time of the shot.

So I surmised that some trigger happy good-for-nothing ‘hunter’ was sitting at the wheel of his rig looking for something to shoot at.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of stories like mine in Alberta, sometimes with fatal outcomes.

Ukraine war direction

The Russians have now settled on a strategy to bring the Ukrainian political establishment down: Keep pounding energy infrastructure to the point where the country becomes dysfunctional, in a modern sense.

And do it without losing a lot of Russian military personnel. The strategy adopted by the Russian army in Kherson makes perfect sense, moving across the river and posing a constant direct threat to the city’s population.

Looking at the map, Russian forces can be re-supplied from Russian controlled territory to the south, with the Dnipro River as an easily defendable barrier to the north.

This war will not be over for a long time because it is really a conflict between two empires, not as depicted in the Western media as a regional war between a small innocent nation and a big bully.

The Ukrainian people have become the meat in the sandwich and men between 18 and 60 years old are forced to serve under martial law enacted by the Kyiv government.

Is time circular

For periods in human history our world, the Earth, was believed to be flat, beginning somewhere and ending somewhere else. No one could believe that by going west, for example, for long enough, would have you back to where you started from if you kept going for a finite amount of time in the same direction.

Is our perception of Time similarly flawed? Is Time circular rather than linear? Are the incredible stone monuments we see, in Egypt, for example, our own constructs from sometime in the future created as a warning message to us here, now, using the technology currently at our command?

Or, were they created by an ancient advanced civilization that disappeared without any other traces way back in antiquity on the linear timeline inside our heads?

Just askin’ : )

Arctic warming fallout

Where I live in the high north weather events these last couple of years have seemed to be dragged out and amplified, both on the hot and cold end of the spectrum: Multi week hot spells in the summer and similar cold events in the winter.

An explanation for this is now being offered by scientific reports pointing to slower jet streams at the 10 kilometre altitude level around 60 degrees north of the equator.

The driver is accelerated air warming of the arctic in comparison to air at lower latitudes. As the earth spins, the strength of the jet stream that moves from west to east is determined by the temperature difference as the air masses meet and mingle.

Low and high pressure systems are captives of the jet stream and are moved along by it as it wiggles around the globe.

As the arctic keeps warming at an accelerating rate, the behaviour of these jet streams becomes increasingly unpredictable, as does the weather we are subjected to.

Precision and power

There is an ongoing debate over what happened in prehistoric times.
Was there an advanced earth spanning civilization in existence prior to some kind of calamity that allegedly happened 12-13,000 years ago?

That got wiped off the face of the earth, leaving only very sophisticated megalithic stone works as evidence of its existence.

Or, as mainstream historians claim, the sudden change in climatic conditions that took place some 12-13,000 years ago spurred humanity on to develop agriculture, rather than hunting and gathering because of a drastic reduction in available game?

If you closely examine the megalithic stone work in walls erected in the distant past, you are struck by the incredible precision used in fitting these stones together so as to make walls very resistant to major earthquakes.

That in contrast to more recent stone constructs using the old walls as a stable base.

The sheer size of the stones also dwarf more recently placed ones.
There seems to be an order of magnitude difference in both the precision and power used to create ancient, as compared to more contemporary stoneworks.

Looking at contemporary society, we can place a rover on Mars and observe what happens on the surface on that red planet on a daily basis because of the precision and power of our technology.

But the stoneworks we would leave behind if some kind of calamity was to happen would likely be mostly rubble in the form of decomposed concrete and major highway earthworks here and there.

So, I think we can say that if there was an ancient advanced civilization, it was very different from our present one.

Maybe they were giants? (Look at the size of the rooms in the ancient city of Petra : )

Time machines

Some 50 years ago Carl Sagan and Frank Drake already had some experience with sending messages out into space. They had created two gold-anodized aluminum plaques that were affixed to the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft. Linda Salzman Sagan, an artist and Carl’s wife, etched an illustration onto them of a nude man and woman with an indication of the time and location of our civilization.

An interesting venture to say the least, sending a signal of human existence onto deep space and, potentially, time as well.

Here on earth we have human constructs, sent into deep time in the form of stone works, like pyramids and other stone structures that send messages of the incredible prowess of ancient civilizations, available for all to see.

These structures make us question what contemporary mainstream historians try to tell us about the past.

Taking this one step further, Moses was said to have been presented with two inscribed stone tablets by God, quite possibly on the semi precious blue lapis lazuli stone with the 10 commandments inscribed. Ensuring that the original message could be preserved for a very long time, in contrast to what could happen to messages on parchment, for example.

Now the question arises, how could someone like you or I send a lot of information into deep time with a good probability of it surviving intact for centuries, or even millennia?

The answer is very simple: By inscribing text and images on smaller pieces of window glass, using an engraving tool and packaging them in well protected bundles that are subsequently buried in places unlikely to be disturbed in the foreseeable future.

Copout

The annual UN sponsored Conference Of the Parties on climate is currently underway in Egypt. This is #27 in a line that started in 1995 with targets and promises being made – with no tangible result to date.

Meanwhile the show goes on as a way for world political hubas to show themselves off in front of world media cameras and the hosting country to present a positive face to the world, rather than its back yard.

From my perspective, there is no point in arguing with the observed data indicating that weather patterns are changing towards prolonged extreme weather events of both heat and cold and less average precipitation where I live in the North West part of Turtle Island.

Whatever you believe the primary cause to be, there is a marked change from what used to happen, especially here in the far north.

So, the question becomes: How do we adapt, in my situation, to more heat and less moisture?

The answer is pretty straight forward: Get smart about how to use fresh water. It is a no-brainer really. Here in Alberta we waste water as if the supply was unlimited with no thoughts for the future, waiting for the next dump of rain.

Trouble is, long term observed trends are that we are getting less all the time.

One of the main pillars of our economy, agriculture, is particularly sensitive to this, as most of our products come from dry land farming.

At the end of our last major drought here in Alberta, in 2002, I travelled in Central/East Alberta and didn’t see farmland. I saw a desert, which revived memories of what I saw in the desert of Syria and Iraq through which I passed in 1961.

Adapt or else...

Food as medicine

Not a new idea at all. Food is part of Traditional Chinese Medicine as a means to bringing the body and spirit into balance. As are herbs, acupuncture and other practices.

Herbal remedies are generally prepared by cooking herbs in water and then administering the ‘tea’ to the person being treated.

So I got to thinking: Here in the West we generally cook our vegetables, like potatoes, carrots and beets in water and then discard the liquid before serving up the now, soft vegetables.

In Chinese cooking the wok is generally used to stir fry vegetables quickly at high heat with spices added, which kills off harmful bacteria, but does not deprive the veggies of essential nutrients that are leached into the cooking fluid here in the West.

Accordingly, as someone who likes to preserve vegetables in jars for the winter, I use a small amount of vinegar added to the water and do not discard this liquid when I use the veggies. Instead I mix it with other juices, like orange juice and consume it as a cold drink.

Trying to adapt Western practices to Eastern smarts.

Being tribal

Family, clan, tribe – these are all clusters of individuals that form for the benefit of individual members. These groups take many forms: Bloodlines, religious/political beliefs, economic relationships and a mixture of those and many others.

One great motivator for being part of groups/networks is the human need to create a senses of security around oneself, belief wise and materially. The need to “belong” is the underlying glue of social groups.

We humans also prefer to have simple straight forward beliefs to hold on to, rather than complex ones, and therein lies a great weakness because Nature is extremely complex.

So, in order to feel comfortable we try to fit Nature (God, if you like) into simple belief systems that turns out to be very different from each other across the globe.

And there you are, a great recipe for war when the attendant economic benefits of domination after victory are made part of the equation.

One powerful form of modern tribalism is nationalism where a large group called a “nation” controlled by a state apparatus is presumed to have ultimate authority over the individual.

Today this idea is being increasingly challenged by people of multiple philosophical persuasions, from globalists to libertarians and a sense of foreboding is hardening beliefs on all sides.

As the vulnerabilities of the global economic/political/social organism that has been created during the last few centuries are being exposed by war and exploitation of natural resources, etc., would we be well advised to form smaller tribal groups for mutual protection?

Financial fly trap

The prevailing world financial system is essentially a giant fly trap, designed to entice people to enter and get trapped by cyclical booms and recession/depressions.

The money supply is controlled by central bankers who turn the monetary spigots on and off causing the value of money to fluctuate.

The private banking system also creates money by giving their customers credit in the form of loans. Availability of credit entices people into ventures to make money for themselves with attendant risks.

As the economy heats up with more money circulating central bankers increase interest rates to cool it down. People go broke and suffer economic hardships.

Over time the bigger fish survive at the expense of the smaller ones that are summarily gobbled up.

So we end up with a few mega billionaires and a whole bunch of paupers. The billionaires dream about a “Great Reset” in which the ‘unusable’ paupers perish and the billionaires prosper.

Sadly, (for the billionaires) History tells the opposite story: The peasants are the long term survivors. The fall of the Maya civilization is a good example of this.

UCP cracks?

Alberta’s new Premier, Danielle Smith is on record stating that she will dismiss/replace Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, Deena Hinshaw along with her board. That was part of her vote getting strategy in getting elected as UCP leader and become the new Premier of Alberta.

Problem is, members of her new cabinet were involved in giving Hinshaw a substantial monetary bonus for her performance during the Covid pandemic. This turned out to be very controversial at the time with calls for her removal as Chief Medical Officer of Health.

My take on the situation is that Hinshaw has been made into a punching bag by politicians on all sides of Covid/vaccination issues and hung out to dry in public.

And now Smith will have to deal with a potential rift in her carefully crafted cabinet without losing face with the public.

Good luck Danielle, as medical professionals continue to leave Alberta.

Water retention

I’m not talking about what happens when old farts like me have problems discharging their personal water. No, this is about enabling Mother Earth to retain the fresh water that comes down in the form of rain.

The key is intact vegetation with root systems that penetrate deep into the earth and provide a universe for microbial life.

Regrettably, most human practices on the land, achieve exactly the opposite result as land is cleared and used for innumerable reasons.

Overgrazing with livestock does the same thing, as humans sacrifice their future for short term gain.

Here in Canada, we have a great land engineer at our service that can help restore damaged ecosystems: Bertie Beaver, a much maligned rodent that builds dams on water courses, slowing down runoff after storms and so making water available to underground life forms of all kinds.

And that results in above ground life flourishing as well, including ourselves. All Bertie needs are some nice trees to feed on and build his dams from. Something that can readily be provided by us planting trees in desired dam areas over time.

We are finally beginning to learn the lessons from Nature on how to live in harmony with her, by now beginning to construct artificial beaver dams across smaller water courses, both here and in Australia, for example.

As usual, the Asians are way ahead of us with their terraced gardens along steep hillsides. For them, it was “do or die” way back in antiquity due to population pressures. It is all about capturing water before it has an opportunity to form streams that gouge out the hillsides and use it slowly to feed gardens and rice paddies.

We are now at that point here in the West.

Political trends

Political trends
Here in Alberta, and elsewhere, there is a marked trend towards the conservative side of the political spectrum. This Monday, Alberta’s new Premier, Danielle Smith will see her new ministers sworn into office by Alberta’s Lieutenant Governor, Salma Lakhani, after having won the UCP leadership race based on reaction to Federal Government overreach into provincial affairs.

Canada’s left leaning establishment and media failed to understand the political significance of the Freedom Convoy earlier in the year and dismissed the protesters as fringe radicals.

The same trend is also playing out in Europe and most recently in Italy where popular sentiments are swinging back towards the Mussolini era. The idea of having a ‘strong man’ in charge is resurfacing all over the place, with all its attendant problems, as can be seen in Russia under Putin.

Meanwhile, the power brokers in this world are busily readjusting their support strategies to keep up with political trends with the view to maintain their privileges.

Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is already under their umbrella and it will be interesting to see where Danielle Smith is heading.

It is all about getting into, and staying in power, after all. And you need powerful rich ‘friends’ for that to happen.

Too little, too late

Wanna live on Mars? Not me. It is the most God forsaken place I have ever seen images of. Endless expanses of mountains, rocks and dust and the sound of a lonely wind, moaning into the microphone of a Mars rover.

In 1961, as an 18 year old, I travelled with my dad across the desert between Damascus, Syria and Baghdad, Iraq in a little Opel car totally unsuited to the task. Luckily we managed to team up with a convoy of trucks making the same trip over a roadless landscape.

Travelling side by side with some 50 meters between each vehicle across the gravelly surface, we slowly made our way across another God forsaken land, sometimes traveling across hard baked old lake bed clay pans at much higher speeds.

Yes, there were lakes there a long time ago when the region supported a population of some 35 million people and an agricultural economy.

Historians consider it to be the birthplace of civilization, with empires coming and going over a period of several thousand years.

And look at it now, a Mars like landscape with a few hares jumping around in wetter spots, eking out a life there.

Is that where we are heading, wasting fresh water and energy as if there is no end to their availability at our fingertips? Here in Alberta, using some 60 million litres of fresh water to create one producing oil/gas well?

Does stupidity know no limits?

Weather woes

As I write this, on October 14, 2022, the Rocky Mountains to the west of me are bare of any snowcover whatsoever. The weather is just beautiful with 20 degree Celsius days behind us and stretching ahead.

Normally, at the beginning of September when school starts here in Alberta, the mountains have already received their first winter coat, gleaming in the morning sunshine.

A flood is a dramatic event causing havoc and chaos within few hours of happening. Then the cleanup begins and things slowly return to normal.

A drought is different. At first, everything seems to be the same as usual with deceptively benign weather, day in and day out: The last recorded rainfall in my rain gauge was 10 millimeters on August 28 and before that a total for the year of 284 mm, well below normal.

The bushland around me is tinder dry and a windy day and a spark is all it would take to create a local disaster. But more troubling are the long term implications if this weather pattern persists: Thousands of shallow water wells, including mine, along the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains can potentially dry up as groundwater levels go down.

Intermittent rainfall amounts so far this year have not exceeded 45 mm (under two inches), which is insufficient to recharge groundwater aquifers and only keeps the topsoil damp for a limited amount of time.

People to the east of the Rocky Mountains, both here in Alberta and on the prairies generally, rely on a melting snowpack in the mountains to recharge multiple dams and man made lakes to provide water for the upcoming summer season crops and for domestic/industrial use as well.

When will this weather pattern change to give us some wet manna from heaven?

Russia's war strategy

As the war in Europe escalates, Russia’s strategy is emerging. As a major energy, food and raw materials exporter to the rest of the world a prolonged war is in Russia’s interest, compared to its opponents who are, as we know, dependent on Russian exports.

During WWII Germany was chronically short of energy, food and raw materials, playing a part in the loss of that war to allied powers. Germany’s war strategy was also fundamentally flawed as it pursued war on many fronts simultaneously.

In that war the Russians wore down the Germans and beat them on the battle front with greater human and material resources to back them.

This time around, Russia has Europe, including Germany, in a position of energy dependency and is currently restricting exports to put the squeeze on the will of Europeans to support their own governments in what is an imperial war benefiting kleptocrats on all sides of the conflict.

So, it is reasonable to assume that this policy will be pursued with increased vehemence as time goes on, including the destruction of vulnerable energy infrastructure, as can already be seen in Ukraine itself.

Western propaganda depicting Russia as a crumbling state is just wishful thinking. When really threatened, as seen in WWII, Russians stood shoulder to shoulder even if they didn’t like their government of the day.

War intensification

Some 20 years ago I was involved in organizing Canada Day festivities in our local Village of Caroline and the question of fireworks at the end of the day was discussed.

I distinctly remember the reaction of Pat, a local elderly English lady. She objected vehemently to the idea and when I asked her why, the answer came straight from her heart: As a little girl she had lived through the London Blitz where German bombers pounded London and other British cities every night in an attempt to break the morale of the civilian population.

Under the guidance of a new commander of the Russian ‘special operation’ in Ukraine, Herman Goerings’ (German Air Force Commander in WWII) tactic is now being used against civilians in Ukraine with the added aim of destroying energy infrastructure.

This is part of a predicted escalation in the war, similar to what happened in WWII.

The people that are inflicting this suffering on the world are self appointed kleptocrats and their political cohorts like Putin and Zelenski.

New Premier

Alberta will have a new Premier next week, following the thanks giving weekend. After 4 months of campaigning, Danielle Smith won the race to become the new leader of the United conservative Party mostly based on rhetoric against the federal government masterfully mismanaged by Justin Trudeau.

I used to listen to Danielle Smith when she was a radio host for the Chorus radio network here in Alberta, a post she held for many years after bungling her leadership of the Wildrose Party and subsequently losing her seat in the legislature a number of years ago.

She also walked out on her job at the radio station during Covid, when she did not get her way in terms of what people to interview, etc. Nasty social media feedback also discouraged her from continuing in the job.

Premier Smith will now be faced with the task of uniting two fundamentally opposed factions within the UCP: The previous Progressive Conservatives and the former Wild Rose crew. She also has ideas about building railway lines to tidewater ports under the nose of the federal government.

From radio host to Premier, building railways and reforming a fundamentally flawed health care system?

I am waiting for another crash.

Increasing tensions

Just heard on the Norwegian news this morning that Norwegian Army reservists are being deployed to guard Norwegian oil and gas production facilities on, and offshore.

That in response to the explosions in the Baltic that ruptured the Nordstream 1 and 2 gas lines from Russia to Germany some time ago.

The fear is that Russia’s war strategy involves cutting off energy supplies to Europe as winter closes in, potentially igniting civil unrest in European countries.

Expect much more to come as the war ramps up along the same pattern that happened in the early stages of WWII.

Gardening challenges

I have been gardening every year for most of my adult life, in Australia and Canada, and water has always been at the center of action. From filling buckets in Deadman’s Creek on my homestead in North Queensland, Australia, irrigating from rivers for cash crops nearby, and using well and rainwater here in the bush in Central Alberta, Canada.

I have used overhead sprinklers and trickle irrigation, progressing towards less water use without diminishing crop yield.

With drier and hotter weather in my neck of the wood at this time, I am currently moving into the use of wicking grow bags for my garden. That means supplying water to the bottom of plant roots, rather than from the top

The availability of modern, durable and cheap plastics has made this a practical proposition, in my case re-using 25 Kg chicken layer feed bags that soak up water when filled with soil and placed in a shallow bath.

Thus, the amount of water used to grow a tomato, for example, is reduced by an order of magnitude in comparison to trickle irrigation where water is wicked away from the row of vegetables by the adjacent dry soil.

Wherever there is a challenge, there is a solution. That is why we are able to snoop around on the planet Mars without even setting foot on the place.

Conscription in Canada?

As the war in Europe moves into a more serious phase with the announced conscription of 300,000 Russians into the armed forces in that country, one may ask, could that happen here in Canada?

That in light of the fact that the Canadian armed forces are only getting half the number of people required enlisting at this time. And that is without direct engagement in a war.

History shows that Canada implemented conscription in both WWI and WWII, causing major divisions within the country by activating the “War Measures Act”.

Our Prince Justin already used its descendant, the “Emergencies Act”, against his political opponents following the Freedom Convoy this year, freezing the bank accounts of “troublemakers” and could be expected to try the same stunt again.

My guess is that he would have to flee the country if he did. (Just too much ammo out there for comfort.)

Besides, under the present ‘leadership’ and following Covid, Canada would likely break up if a conscription drive was implemented. 

Defending democracy?

The Canadian mainstream, legacy, woke, whatever you want to call them, media are now complaining about the inability of the Canadian armed forces to recruit people to serve as soldiers in the ranks. Reportedly, only half the numbers required are signing up at this time.

Those same reporters seem to forget that they have been instrumental in criticizing and taking down prominent members of the armed forces for misconduct in the sometimes distant past, bringing the culture of the whole enterprise into question.

Add onto that an imperial war in Europe where recruits could easily end up as Putin’s cannon fodder as things escalate out of hand.

As icing on the cake, we have a dysfunctional government in Ottawa busy breaking up Canada, as we know it, while patting themselves on the back as to how good they are.

No wonder people prefer to stay home.

Vulnerable power grid

Our society has many shortcomings, one of which is the power grid where electric power is generated in centralized locations and distributed over vast areas.

For example, I am told that the power station at the Bennett Dam in British Columbia generates some 30+% of power consumed in BC feeding thousands of power nodes and lines to individual consumers.

A large storm like Fiona now hitting eastern Canada brings home the vulnerability of this system as thousands of consumers will be waiting to get power back to run their freezers and charge their vehicles. (Didn’t think of that one, did ya?)

In fact, in our society, “becoming civilized” means getting increasingly vulnerable to external events that you cannot control, be they natural or man made. Time to get back to basics, meaning preserving food like our ancestors did, among other things.

Weather speculation

Here in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Alberta, where I live, two hot and dry summers are now behind us. They stand out from anything I have experienced here in the last 31 years.

I recorded 10 millimeters of rain on August 28 and a few sprinkles over the month of July. We had some good rains in June, giving local farmers reasonable crop yields at this time

Last year, July temperatures held pretty steady around 30 degrees Celsius with a similar pattern in August this year.

Hot and dry. That’s what we in the inland of Turtle Island are experiencing right now. Down stateside they are now in a drought that started some 20 years ago, with no end in sight.

Meanwhile, unprecedented deluges are happening elsewhere in the world, alongside droughts, even in the south of my native Norway where hydropower is getting scarce and expensive for consumers.

What’s next? I think we should expect more of the same and adapt to this new world, as we have done many times in the past and learn to live with less.

Quiet revolution

A kitchen table, the table in a community center or in a cafe may be the place where a new revolution begins. A place where you can interact with another person on many levels without the risk of being demonized by some self appointed ‘experts’ online.

Many meetings over time can create new friendships and cement ideas about where to go next in a struggle against a centralized dictatorial power perpetrated by some very self centered individuals, living in their respective fantasy worlds.

That’s essentially what happened in France, leading up to the French Revolution and the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789. We the People have demonstrated time and again, that when push comes to shove, nothing can stop us.

Political wheel

Last night Pierre Poilievre was elected as the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada with a solid majority of 68% of the vote. He also managed to attract a lot of new members to the party, based on his pre-election rhetoric and previous performance on the floor of Canada’s parliament.

He appealed to the sentiments of ordinary Canadians that are sick and tired of Prince Justin’s antics on the world stage and his failure to live up to promises made as Prime Minister of Canada. Add to that a number of scandals involving conflict of interest, meaning that the establishment and the general public have had enough of this man’s poor performance in office.

Poilievre told people what they wanted to hear and received their votes in return. He next task is now to distract them from some of his more ‘extreme’ promises, like firing the Governor of the Bank of Canada who has been accused of gross incompetence by printing money and causing excessive inflation.

But wait a minute, is this new? Or is it a standard approach used by party political hacks, like Poilievre, forever?

My guess is that Poilievre has been picked by the establishment to replace Prince Justin and that he has been groomed to carry out their agenda a long time ago.

Royal passing

I’m writing this piece to record the passing of Queen Elizabeth II of Britain and Canada, Australia and many other nations yesterday, September 8, 2022.

This article will be engraved onto a glass plate by myself shortly and placed in my own private time-vault, along with a lot of other material.
So, a record that could arguably be preserved for several thousand years is thereby created, as part of my “deep time project”.

The institution of “Royalty” is as old as humankind itself and it unites people under an umbrella of common beliefs. Its success of failure depends on the person that carries the crown and Elizabeth was a master of that art/craft resulting in great esteem for her across the world, as evidenced by all the attention paid to her passing.

The future of monarchies in Britain and other places in the world is uncertain at this time, with Elizabeth’s son Charles now being King Charles III. He is 73 years old and has seen his share of controversies as Prince Charles, including a failed marriage and the tragic death of his ex, Diana, Princess of Wales who was very popular on the world stage.

Do we need Royals to look up to and unite us? To me, that depends on the qualities of the individuals that want to wear a crown, not their ancestry.

Comparing pandemics

According to reports, the Covid pandemic has claimed somewhere between 5 and 10 million lives world wide in a population of some 7.9 billion. Estimates for the 1918 flu range between 50 and 100 million deaths in a population of 1.8 billion.

The progression of the 1918 flu was also faster, driven by unrestricted movement of troops on and between continents. The conduct of the Great War was a priority, giving the mutating bugs unrestricted access to the civilian population as well.

Only when things got really bad did authorities react with restrictive measures, by which time the brutal spread and death toll had created a considerable degree of herd immunity.

In contrast, public health measures were taken early on in the Covid pandemic across the world slowing down the progress of the virus and its mutants, giving it more time to change its strategy and become more infective and less lethal, serving its own ends for survival and multiplication, to the point where it is still alive and well in September 2022, but causing little concern in the general population.

In that sense, Covid has been more successful than its 1918 brother by ensuring its place in the human population, as long as hosts are available.

We humans should learn from Covid that destroying our own host, Gaia, our living Earth Mother, does not serve OUR interest. 

Early election in Alberta?

United Conservative Party leadership contender Danielle Smith says that she will introduce an “Alberta Sovereignty Act” in the legislature as soon as she takes over as Premier of Alberta, if she becomes the new leader of the party.

Meanwhile the establishment is sounding all manner of alarm bells in response to her assertions, including present Premier Jason Kenney and many others within the UCP.

Add to that the fact that Danielle Smith does not have a seat in the legislature at this time. So, a sitting MLA will have to step down to trigger a by-election which Danielle Smith would have to win to claim her seat.

Smith is also promising a free vote in the legislature on the proposed legislation, which she could easily lose, based on sentiments expressed by many to date.

Where would that leave her government? Would she call an early election, or try to govern with an unruly party behind her? Like present Premier Kenney did, and paid the price?

The next legislative election in Alberta has to happen before May 29, 2023. My guess is that it will come long before that deadline.