The first 8 months of WWII has been labelled “The phoney war” by historians and have some parallels with the war in Ukraine at this time. Limited actions took place on the battle front and included the German invasions of Norway and Poland. After that the scale of operations increased steadily.
Will that happen in Ukraine? I don’t think so. It is just too convenient for both parties to keep the show rolling along with interest groups on both sides raking in enormous profits as the military hardware gets consumed and replacement hardware produced.
I find it rather interesting that Russian communities along the Ukraine/Russia border seem to be immune to attacks from Ukraine, as if some kind of deal had been struck between the Kyiv and Kremlin regimes.
On the other side, Ukrainians can now emigrate to virtually any country in the Western world, of their choosing, in contrast to other people. The Kyiv regime is also receiving billions of dollars with no strings attached from us taxpayers in the West.
Life in Ukraine seems to be going along pretty well as normal in spite of mainstream media reports to the contrary.
Do you smell a rat??
Tuesday, November 29, 2022
Phoney war?
Monday, November 28, 2022
Pandemic lesson
Looking back at the Covid pandemic and government response to same, a lesson can be learned: Just listening to one voice, that of a spokesperson for the medical system, at the expense of other people in society was a big mistake.
Government response became limited to actions designed to protect the sick-treatment system from being overloaded and infringed on peoples’ basic liberties to go about their business.
The fallout has been considerable, across the world, deepening existing political divisions and causing great harm to the societal fabric.
Next time, the governments of the world need to consult with a much broader range of people before making major decisions on restricting individual freedoms.
The communist government in China is now finding that out the hard way: The normally compliant Chinese population has had enough of government interference.
Wastefulness
The hallmark of our ‘civilization’. Based on cheap abundant energy that, in turn, gives rise to gazilions of goods and services consumed by an ever increasing population with a seemingly insatiable appetite for more.
And then a bunch of people get together every year to complain and ruminate about what is going on, the latest being COP(out)27 in Egypt
where participants perpetuate the pattern of wasting energy by their very presence in luxury hotels and burning copious quantities of jet fuel, complaining about cows farting in distant fields.
A war starts in Europe and the world returns to two camps throwing bombs at one another and ramping up the armaments industry for the financial benefit of the few and suffering of many, consuming more and more fossil energy in the process.
The question is not if this shit show will end. The question is: “When?”
My advice: Get ready for sooner, rather than later.
Sunday, November 27, 2022
Migration
Movement of people across the globe. As well as all kinds of other critters, including plants, animals and associated micro organisms.
As the artificially created and natural world around us changes, we are an integral part of that change and move along with it, in order to survive as a species.
That was true when glaciers encircled the world and continually changed and moved. We moved along with them and the plants and animals that kept us alive.
Also, when human populations increased due to fortuitous circumstances, we pushed each other around, competing for the best ‘pastures’.
Right now, Nature is doing a number on us, as the air masses that continually circulate around the globe are changing their behaviour.
And mass migrations will likely follow with all the attendant trauma experienced in the past.
On the plus side, the challenge to deal with that is built into our DNA from the endless migrations that have taken place in the past.
Saturday, November 26, 2022
Gun bans
This is coming from someone who was recently shot at by a rogue trigger happy ‘hunter’: Canada’s government is continuing its ‘putsch’
to remove guns from the hands of Canadians by trying to implement sneaky administrative moves to avoid debating legislation in Parliament.
This is a hallmark of the present government and is continuing to alienate them from a large and growing segment of the population.
The attitude is grounded in a history of dictatorship in Canada by British appointed governors in the early days of colonization.
The idea of the gun bans is to effectively subjugate Canadians to the whims of a self appointed ‘elite’ that can then use its armed henchmen with impunity to impose the will of the few onto the many, as is done in totalitarian regimes, like China, Russia and other places.
Meanwhile the same people are flooding the world market with military weapons by providing Ukraine with an unlimited supply of same.
Ain’t gonna work, Prince Justin. Thanks for creating record sales of handguns and munitions in Canada with your antics.
Saturday, November 19, 2022
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.
Friday, November 18, 2022
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.
Thursday, November 17, 2022
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.
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
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.
Saturday, November 12, 2022
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 : )
Wednesday, November 9, 2022
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.
Monday, November 7, 2022
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...
Sunday, November 6, 2022
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.
Saturday, November 5, 2022
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?