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.

Land and water

Looking back on human history, the competition for land is unceasing, just like it is among all predatory animals, in relation to their own kin.

That results in conflict; wars in the case of us humans because we are socially organized into groups, greatly enhancing our ability to inflict destruction on others and grab more land for ourselves.

In order for a group to remain cohesive, individuals need to share common values and beliefs, so cultures arise to meet that need.

Problem is, other cultures arise, and the values of groups clash. Mix in competition for land and you get a war, as is happening in Ukraine at this time.

Each party rationalizes its position and justifies the war based on its own beliefs and values. Ultimately the stronger and more enduring party prevails, or the conflict may end up in mutual exhaustion/destruction.

Control of land is essential for any individual/group that wants to survive, but so is fresh water. And it is now crystal clear (pun intended) that fresh water resources across the world are disappearing at an alarming rate, as they are not being replenished by violent storms that are also on the increase.

The consequences of this are daunting because it lays the groundwork for more human conflict between “haves“ and “have nots”.

Most people here in North America are taking the availability of fresh water for granted and are only now beginning to understand that they have been living a myth.

There is only one long term solution: Drastically changed living habits.
The alternative is Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).

Representative democracy

The problem with this system is that the wrong people tend to percolate to the top and make a lot of bad decisions on behalf of us all.

Would you like the pilot of the Boeing 747 that you are about to board to be selected based on his/her hairstyle or ability to make you laugh or cry?

I don’t think so. Yet we do it all the time in regards to the politicians that are entrusted with the reigns of our nations.

“Der Fuhrer”, Adolf Hitler is a very good case in point. He used to be a bum in Vienna in his young days, but showed great courage as a message runner on the Western Front during WWI.

Due to his oratorical skills and political cunning he ended up in charge of the mighty German armed forces and we all know about the disaster for all of us that followed: A corporal fancying himself to be a general.

The list goes on and on with our own Prince Justin here in Canada who used to be an arts teacher before entering politics, helped by the money and power of his late father, Pierre Trudeau’s supporters.

He has bungled the job ever since and created major divisions in Canadian society, mostly due to an inflated ego.

Real leaders have to emerge and prove themselves as they move up into positions of responsibility, rather than being picked at random based on the work of propaganda machines.

That way we don’t get disc jockeys flying airplanes.

Ukraine, now Taiwan

In the lead up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Western leaders simply ignored all manner of warnings from Russia in regards to Ukraine’s application for membership in NATO. A predictable outcome followed.

A similar play is now underway between the Western Empire (US and its allies, including Canada) and China where China is being provoked to respond with force to what is perceived by them to be an incursion into their territory.

It is being done deliberately by powerbrokers within the Western Empire, using geriatric politicians like Joe Biden/Nancy Pelosi as tools with no regard for the rest of us, or our kids and grandkids, who will become the victims of this megalomaniacal madness.

Next step: Russia and China will form an alliance to deal with Western Empire politics, not unlike the axis formed by Germany, Italy and Japan during WWII.

Also bear in mind that China has a lot of internal problems with its Covid response and a collapsing real estate market. An external war could be very convenient for the leadership of that totalitarian state.

Our system is broken, just as was predicted by George Orwell (Eric Blair) in his novel “1984”.

Re-tribalizing

We live in an unstable and dangerous world. The institutions created to serve our needs are becoming increasingly self serving, not unlike the medieval churches, preying on people and amassing property and wealth.

Our latest predators occupy cyber space and carefully monitor our physical and mental habits with a view to exploiting them for their own benefit.

They also try to create communities centred around themselves in cyberspace so that we may further serve their interests, while leaving us friendless and lonely.

It seems that the universe is geared towards predation, at all levels, from the microbial and up.

We have now arrived at a place where real action is needed to defend ourselves and the answer is as old as our species is: Re-establish tested and true ways of surviving by supporting each other physically and mentally for the good of all. In other words: Tribalizing.

The power of this way of living has been amply demonstrated in Afghanistan by the locals that have beaten back three invasions over the last couple of centuries: By the British, the Soviet and the Western Empires in that order.

The corrupt and self serving nature of these institutions make them vulnerable to counter attacks at strategic times and locations, as has been demonstrated time and time again in Afghanistan. The fight may be long and bloody but those with real life values will ultimately prevail.

My Facebook timeline

I’m happy to say that readership is increasing steadily and that feedback is generally positive. That was not the case earlier, especially during the ‘official pandemic’.

The idea of the timeline is to share information that I am interested in with you folks that read and watch what I publish. Because of automation, this does not feel like ‘work’ to me at all.

Facebook has its shortcomings, including the Zuckerberg appointed ‘police’, in whose bad books I currently occupy a spot, but it is also a very convenient medium for sharing information and ideas.

Before retiring in 2011, I used to be a Caroline area reporter for Mountaineer Publishing in Rocky Mountain House for 11 years and was responsible for one page in “The Mountaineer” weekly newspaper with a circulation of about 10 000. That included local news and an opinion column I called “Pen Meets Paper”. I am happy to say that this is one family owned paper that has survived the online publishing revolution.

Now in my 80th year I am essentially doing the same thing online, from a little cabin in my 20 acre wood, except that the whole world is my oyster and I stay tuned to European news every morning by listening to the Norwegian mainstream news for a “heads up” on breaking stories. (Norway is about 8 hours ahead of us here in the western part of Turtle Island)

I don’t pretend to be unbiased. None of us are. But I like to cast my information gathering net as wide as possible in order to get a handle on what is going on.

I have been invited by Facebook to make some money for my efforts, but have not picked up on that idea.

Conflict in Alberta

I happen to live in a place in Canada where conflict is likely to take centre stage in the near future: Alberta, that was the launchpad for the Freedom Convoy that shut down Ottawa for some 3 weeks in February.

Prince Justin and his crew in Ottawa are in the process of launching an environmental armed police force based in Calgary, that is now advertising for applicants for positions.

The leading contender for the Alberta United Conservative Party leadership position, Danielle Smith who will be the next Premier of Alberta if she wins, is on record saying that she will not cooperate with this new agency.

At the same time, the federal government is attempting to greatly expand an environmental protection area in north-west Alberta and likely plans to use its new police force to enforce regulations at the expense of the oil and gas industry.

Many Albertans see this as the thin wedge of a sword to shut down Alberta’s oil and gas industry and generate internal conflict within the province. They see it as a part of a globalist agenda carried out in Canada by Claus Schwab’s mentees; Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland, the latter having connections to the Azov Battalion in Ukraine with its murky past.

Expect a lot more to come.

Hosting a virus

Covid has settled down among us. A stranger on the block some three years ago, it is now a familiar visitor to most. It has also learnt “to behave” for its own long term good. So it no longer kills a bunch of us hosts, like it did in the early stages.

Most people, like myself, experience something like a cold during the period Covid breeds up inside our bodies. Being a host is no longer an extremely traumatic experience for most, so our fear of the virus has subsided.

That’s exactly what Covid needs and wants from us, because that gives it free reign to invade and occupy our bodies. In other words, it has adapted to ensure its own long term survival in the human population. It is a smart virus.

Can that be said of us, in regards to how we treat Gaia, our Earth Mother? Billions of us are crawling all over her, satisfying our own desires at her expense, with little or no regard for the well being of our host.

Are we going to be a smart virus?

Germany vs France

I’m risking my writer’s neck with this piece comparing Germany and France. So be it.

Germany is the economic power house of Europe, no questions asked. Frenchmen tend to be more laid back, enjoy a drink of wine and beat up on their own government when they get pissed off about something (yellow vests come to mind).

The Germans got badly beaten up in wars twice last century, with France on the winning side in both cases. But they pull themselves up by their bootstraps, rebuild industries and commerce, and away they go again.

So what is their problem? They seem to get the thin end of the stick no matter what? Like now when they might be shivering in their homes this winter as Putin threatens to turn off the taps on pipelines to Germany from Russian oil and gas fields.

The German idea was to use Russian gas as an interim measure while they created wind and solar farms and decommissioned their nuclear plants.

The French? They wisely held on to their nuclear power generating plants and even sell electricity to Germany when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind declines to blow in Germany.

So why do these industrious smart people we call “Germans” invariably end up in a puddle, somehow?

I think it is a combination of two things: Tribalism and an attraction to simplistic ideology, like what happened in the 1930ies.

Please don’t shoot the messenger!

Waterloo?

In modern history this word is associated with Napoleon’s final defeat at a village of that name in Walloon Brabant, Belgium in 1815. “Waterloo” means “water” and “sacred forest”.

From my studies online it is becoming obvious that water is the very underpinning of life and that our fresh water is being used at an unprecedented rate as heatwaves are enveloping the globe at this time. Fresh groundwater and surface water levels are constantly sinking both in North America and Europe.

So I decided on a little experiment here in my own back yard: Collecting rainwater from the roofs of my cabins. Thanks to fortuitous timing I collected well in excess of 2000 litres in June during drought breaking rain events and stored the water in numerous drums and other containers. (I also have a good shallow water well but it showed signs of stress during the 2000- 2002 drought with fine sand coming out of the tap).

This year I have also been growing green beans in my garden and tried growing them in containers as well, watering them by hand with collected rainwater.

With future possible water shortages, container gardening is the obvious way to go where I live where each bean plant consumes about one litre of water per day during hot weather while producing delicious green beans.

We all know that fresh water is at the very essence of life, but somehow, here in Alberta, Canada, we have adopted the attitude that oil and gas are more important and use, on average, some 60,000 cubic meters (60 million litres) of fresh water to hydraulically frack ONE oil/gas well. That water is gone forever from the water cycle.

Napoleon, you are in good company!

Second hot summer

During July in 2021 we had tropical heat on the prairies in Western Canada, where I live. +30 degrees Celsius day in and day out for some 5 weeks. And very little rain resulting in bone dry conditions and low crop yields.

This year farmers had better luck with some good rains in June, before things started to dry out. Then along came August with another tropical heat wave that we are in right now. +31 yesterday and the same expected today.

When I first arrived in Canada I was struck with how cool the summers used to feel, after some 21 years spent in Australia. Not any more.

In 1961 I spent 6 months with my family in Baghdad, Iraq where the temperature during summer fluctuated anywhere between +40 and +45 degrees C, making +35 feel ‘cool’ when it happened from time to time.

The locals in the Middle East are well adapted to these conditions in terms of personal habits and clothes worn, for example. They also take a break from about 10am till 4pm every day to get away from the searing heat. Their day starts around 4am.

I am fortunate to live in a little “green paradise” consisting of 20 acres of bushland cooling down air moving through the vegetation. In contrast to what happens in the parking lot of a shopping mall, for example.

I also have an eight foot by 30 inch swimming pool installed in my garden, in which to cool down in the late afternoon.

Problem is, what happens in the years ahead? That methane gas pouring out of the melting permafrost in the arctic around the globe has got me really worried. Once unleashed, as has happened, this process feeds on itself...