Following the Creation of Money, Alex Krainer (Do look at the other good parts. I just stole the end) It’s always about the collateral The relationship is deliberately obscured, so we must resort to dot-connecting, but consider this "dot": in 2016, the Chilcot Inquiry into the British role in the Iraq war revealed, among other things, that six months after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a consortium of Western banks led by
' In national elections, it’s the managerial experience of the candidates that counts, and so-called populists usually don’t have these skills'
This may be how the media like to spin things, but do any even cursory due diligence and you'll find that, in the era of 'professional politicians' that this is absolute bunkum and balderdash (to quote the late Bernard Ingham, one of Margaret Thatchers more vociferous and combative media lieutenants).
I did a check on 41 year old Wes Streeting, purportedly going to the Secretary of State for Health if Keir Starmer wins a majority on July 4th. He has never had a proper job in his life: he was a Student Union President, then a Labour activist for 5 years, then he has been an Opposition MP for a decade. He has never worked in a lab, in a hospital, he has never been in management of a healthcare institution, he has never worked in the young company/intellectual property development space, he has never worked in big pharma, medical devices, nor in the bioinformation sphere. So how he has the first capability to understand anything about the health service, which employs north of 1 million people, is beyond me.
My guess is that companies like McKinsey and Co, skilled lobbyists for private sector clients, will have been writing position papers for Labour, most of which will go straight over their heads. Back room deals will have been done contingent on a Labour win and absolutely no details of any of it will have been in the Labour Party Manifesto, 127 pages or so of 'Keir Starmer for President' propaganda.
For Streeting to be saying that Farage, leader of Reform UK (and now second in the polls three weeks after starting from scratch) has no operational experience (at least the man worked in the City of London for several years before becoming an MEP) is the most scandalous hypocrisy of the most pathetic kind.
Streeting is just a skilled media operator who won't be able to get down to the nitty gritty because all he's ever done is climb the political greasy pole.
This isn't to say that Reform UK, the Workers' Party (two new radical insurgents from the right and left respectively) will be brilliant adminstrative managers, it's just saying that assuming that Labour and Conservative have any competence whatsoever is a form of delusional optimism more likely to be found in 11 year olds than those aged over 35......
The Eisenhower non story is fascinating. Do you suppose it was actually sunk? No pics, no contact, no denial? The longer it goes the weirder it becomes. On the active duty story circulating now, what happened to equality? Shouldn't it read all humans between 18 and 26? Of course I don't agree with it but hey in the name of continuity! Ahh the last flickering flames of a dying empire.
The no pics has me wondering somewhat. You'd think that somewhere in the unfriendly world there would be some pictorial evidence that would be gloated over. Yes I know sinking is hard to believe but how do you hide such a thing as an entire carrier in what has become ...umm less then friendly waters? If indeed it was sent to Davy Jones' locker by what is commonly described as backward goat herders, then admitting it would be a bigger blow to .gov than the mess in Ukraine. It would also show the only viable navy would be in subs, not a good look for continued funding of surface craft and the supply network. The face of conflict has been shown to have changed dramatically over the course of the last two and a half years and the west is still working from a WW2 playbook. Changing course over a few years has been shown to be impossible as the west can't keep enough supplies moving to Ukraine to even hold the line. The leaders of the west are delusional and suffer zero consequences for their delusions.
There were a few pictures and videos taken by ragheads in dinghies, and broadly decried as fake by the "fact checkers". Now, in the northern Red Sea, there may be satellite images, grainy for us hoi-polloi, but the Saudis and Israelis control the coastlines up there.
I'm not surprised they can cut off images and communications from crew.
Somebody could fly a drone, but it may not be important to them. They have a real war to fight.
He's a very handsome young lad, Dr. John. And far too young to be gender-confused!
I'm not sure how interested you are in climate at the moment. I've been a student of it ever since I was a schoolboy, along with astronomy and what used to be called natural history. Although I've totally given up arguing about climate with people who don't want to get it. But just in case you might be interested, I am sharing a link to a recent article that seeks to explain the role of clouds as the Earth's main thermostat. It looks at another Dr. John—Dr. John Clauser—who recently gave a presentation entitled "Challenging Climate Claims." I found it fascinating as a partial explanation of how the climate works and why it's so relatively stable over the short term, as I hope you'll remember next time your part of the world gets baked, flooded, frozen, or otherwise battered by the elements.
Thank you too, John. I hadn't seen this article yet, although I know Ugo Bardi well, of course. It looks like a clear and easy-to-understand explanation.
One big example of a region that heated up quite a bit and turned into a semi-desert when it lost its forests is Baluchistan. It would be a huge task to reverse that now.
If you are in the mood for in some dystopian sci-fi with plenty of satire thrown in, and you haven't seen it before, I can recommend "Beyond the Reset"—24 minutes of unforgettable imagery and fun. And Klaus Schwarz makes a cameo appearance. But only after you finished today's farm work.
I take it you've heard about 'The great Green Wall' project - the UN is trying to create a green corridor from West to East across Africa to ease back the extent of desert? I actually think they've got the right idea - engage the local people from the beginning and get them to own their own part of the project.
The other, much smaller project I know of, namely 'Greening the Desert', a UN project run by Permaculture guru Geoff Lawton (from UK originally and for many years settled in Australia), which shows that you can start from almost bare rock, 50C in summer and only 200mm of a rain a year to a sustainable homestead in Jordan (and locals who attended his courses are now expanding it by setting up their own permaculture gardens in the neighbourhood): https://www.greeningthedesertproject.org/about-us/
I think it's now very well established that deserts can be returned to sustainable green areas using well-tested tools and design strategies.
Whether political will exists to apply such knowledge across much larger areas of the globe, only time will tell.
I read that the southern edge of the Sahara has greened since the droughts there of the 1970s and 80s. But possibly the northern edge is extending into parts of southern Europe ... if so, less welcome.
Being in the UK, all I can claim to know quite a lot about is the climate/weather here for the past seven decades. Despite the scare stories, it continues to be temperate and well-watered, although a little more summer and autumn sunshine would never go amiss.
Like 15% of England and Wales, my garden benefits from 'freely-draining, slightly acid loamy soils'. In other words it'll grow anything (except bananas, avocados, coffee, etc). I think any UK household of 3-4 with a large suburban garden, say 1,000 to 1,500 m2 would be incompetent if they couldn't grow enough food and with really good soil like mine they could do it on less land.
The MSM went berserk in my view in characterising the 2022 'dry spell' and the summer 2022 'heatwave' as extreme. Warm and dry yes. *Not* unprecedented. I've seen similar if not more 'extreme' in my lifetime. Met. Office past records suggest that
a) 1975-76 had a longer dry spell (number of successive months with below-average rainfall) than 2022
b) on many sites, but not all, summer 1976 (the average for 1 June to 31 August) was warmer than summer 2022.
Conclusion b) is for the sites where I've so far looked at Met. Office records. I'm still looking at other sites where the Met. Office measured temperatures in 1976 and still did so in 2022.
I worry that the industrial farming lobby will suppress the spread of regenerative farming as demonstrated by Joel Salatin, Gabe Brown, Richard Perkins and many more. It seems to make no-one bar the farmers any real money. Once they've changed over, they admittedly seem potentially more profitable than if they had to buy NPK fertiliser and herbicide and were $100,000 in debt to the banks.
But do small farmers count in any country except perhaps India? Sheer numbers perhaps give its small farmers more power than in the UK.
John - like you, I'm based in the UK and, like you, I grow my own vegetables. My experience is that you can grow enough potatoes for a winter in 10-15sqm and the key to productivity is producing high quality compost. Last summer I grew an astonishing crop of 96lb-worth of winter squash ( a few 10lb+ monsters) on 15sqm and around 30lb of parsnip in 1sqm (they really can be amazingly productive as long as you can get the seeds to germinate efficiently in the spring). The key to feeding yourself actually is having storage space which is cool, dark and dry - if that's the case you can easily grow enough winter vegetables to feed yourself healthily all the way through, if you can also freeze/blanche a few summer vegetables like broad beans, celery etc to put in a deep freeze.
My experience is that if you have 100sqm of growing space which is really, really productive, you get enough vegetables for most of the year, add in a polytunnel/greenhouse and you can add plenty more, notably huge amounts of tomatoes.
Fruit trees can obviously also add plenty more healthy stuff but they will take up more room if you want a good variety (150sqm may only give you 9 trees which will be 4m high (and similar wingspan).
Small scale horticulture can be unbelievably productive if done well and organically/regeneratively. It can certainly provide all necessities for small rural communities, but obviously you need much more organised production to cater to big cities like London. The key is multiple crops per year (mostly two, but three is perfectly possible if you add in radish, salad onions and dwarf beans as one of the three: I have managed four once if the last is winter lettuce, but that's a real rush and everything needs to go perfectly for it to give a great yield)
As for desertification of southern Spain, I think that could be reversed but it requires better water management, use of trees to create cover and productive growth in more shady environs). Those who are skilled at creating on-contour swales have skills to add, but there are also other schemes for optimising water distribution and retention within soil on sloping areas.
Ultimately, I think you may end up with communities of small growers serving smaller rural villages and parts of urban towns, but I'd be surprised if we totally eliminated mass production.
What we don't want is any nonsense of using food as 'supplies of mRNA vaccines'. That really is beyond the pale....
I've long enjoyed Geoff Lawton's work. The Great Green Wall" sounds like a much better way to spend resources than WW-3. I don't know how many trees the planners have planted and nurtured for a few years. That's a LOT of resources and work that have to come from places and people and other living systems. I wish them all well.
' In national elections, it’s the managerial experience of the candidates that counts, and so-called populists usually don’t have these skills'
This may be how the media like to spin things, but do any even cursory due diligence and you'll find that, in the era of 'professional politicians' that this is absolute bunkum and balderdash (to quote the late Bernard Ingham, one of Margaret Thatchers more vociferous and combative media lieutenants).
I did a check on 41 year old Wes Streeting, purportedly going to the Secretary of State for Health if Keir Starmer wins a majority on July 4th. He has never had a proper job in his life: he was a Student Union President, then a Labour activist for 5 years, then he has been an Opposition MP for a decade. He has never worked in a lab, in a hospital, he has never been in management of a healthcare institution, he has never worked in the young company/intellectual property development space, he has never worked in big pharma, medical devices, nor in the bioinformation sphere. So how he has the first capability to understand anything about the health service, which employs north of 1 million people, is beyond me.
My guess is that companies like McKinsey and Co, skilled lobbyists for private sector clients, will have been writing position papers for Labour, most of which will go straight over their heads. Back room deals will have been done contingent on a Labour win and absolutely no details of any of it will have been in the Labour Party Manifesto, 127 pages or so of 'Keir Starmer for President' propaganda.
For Streeting to be saying that Farage, leader of Reform UK (and now second in the polls three weeks after starting from scratch) has no operational experience (at least the man worked in the City of London for several years before becoming an MEP) is the most scandalous hypocrisy of the most pathetic kind.
Streeting is just a skilled media operator who won't be able to get down to the nitty gritty because all he's ever done is climb the political greasy pole.
This isn't to say that Reform UK, the Workers' Party (two new radical insurgents from the right and left respectively) will be brilliant adminstrative managers, it's just saying that assuming that Labour and Conservative have any competence whatsoever is a form of delusional optimism more likely to be found in 11 year olds than those aged over 35......
The kid!!!!!
The Eisenhower non story is fascinating. Do you suppose it was actually sunk? No pics, no contact, no denial? The longer it goes the weirder it becomes. On the active duty story circulating now, what happened to equality? Shouldn't it read all humans between 18 and 26? Of course I don't agree with it but hey in the name of continuity! Ahh the last flickering flames of a dying empire.
I doubt that is was sunk, but badly shot-up above the waterline seems very likely. They will need to make that look normal.
;-(
The no pics has me wondering somewhat. You'd think that somewhere in the unfriendly world there would be some pictorial evidence that would be gloated over. Yes I know sinking is hard to believe but how do you hide such a thing as an entire carrier in what has become ...umm less then friendly waters? If indeed it was sent to Davy Jones' locker by what is commonly described as backward goat herders, then admitting it would be a bigger blow to .gov than the mess in Ukraine. It would also show the only viable navy would be in subs, not a good look for continued funding of surface craft and the supply network. The face of conflict has been shown to have changed dramatically over the course of the last two and a half years and the west is still working from a WW2 playbook. Changing course over a few years has been shown to be impossible as the west can't keep enough supplies moving to Ukraine to even hold the line. The leaders of the west are delusional and suffer zero consequences for their delusions.
There were a few pictures and videos taken by ragheads in dinghies, and broadly decried as fake by the "fact checkers". Now, in the northern Red Sea, there may be satellite images, grainy for us hoi-polloi, but the Saudis and Israelis control the coastlines up there.
I'm not surprised they can cut off images and communications from crew.
Somebody could fly a drone, but it may not be important to them. They have a real war to fight.
JP Morgan made a killing in WWI. Americas 60 Families (Ferdinand Lundberg 1937)
Maybe your grandson is watching the CNN video of the G7 sky diving exhibit. If that video isn't a spoof . . .
No, he was looking at engaging grown-ups.
;-)
He's a very handsome young lad, Dr. John. And far too young to be gender-confused!
I'm not sure how interested you are in climate at the moment. I've been a student of it ever since I was a schoolboy, along with astronomy and what used to be called natural history. Although I've totally given up arguing about climate with people who don't want to get it. But just in case you might be interested, I am sharing a link to a recent article that seeks to explain the role of clouds as the Earth's main thermostat. It looks at another Dr. John—Dr. John Clauser—who recently gave a presentation entitled "Challenging Climate Claims." I found it fascinating as a partial explanation of how the climate works and why it's so relatively stable over the short term, as I hope you'll remember next time your part of the world gets baked, flooded, frozen, or otherwise battered by the elements.
https://rclutz.com/2024/06/11/clausers-case-ghg-science-wrong-clouds-the-climate-thermostat/
Thank You, Tim. Something I posted in April:
The Biotic Pump model: How Can Forests Cool the Planet? They Work As Heat Pumps! Understanding the biophysical mechanism that forests use to cool the Earth https://theproudholobionts.substack.com/p/how-can-forests-cool-the-planet-they
Thank you too, John. I hadn't seen this article yet, although I know Ugo Bardi well, of course. It looks like a clear and easy-to-understand explanation.
One big example of a region that heated up quite a bit and turned into a semi-desert when it lost its forests is Baluchistan. It would be a huge task to reverse that now.
If you are in the mood for in some dystopian sci-fi with plenty of satire thrown in, and you haven't seen it before, I can recommend "Beyond the Reset"—24 minutes of unforgettable imagery and fun. And Klaus Schwarz makes a cameo appearance. But only after you finished today's farm work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWkepoLUZfs
I take it you've heard about 'The great Green Wall' project - the UN is trying to create a green corridor from West to East across Africa to ease back the extent of desert? I actually think they've got the right idea - engage the local people from the beginning and get them to own their own part of the project.
The other, much smaller project I know of, namely 'Greening the Desert', a UN project run by Permaculture guru Geoff Lawton (from UK originally and for many years settled in Australia), which shows that you can start from almost bare rock, 50C in summer and only 200mm of a rain a year to a sustainable homestead in Jordan (and locals who attended his courses are now expanding it by setting up their own permaculture gardens in the neighbourhood): https://www.greeningthedesertproject.org/about-us/
I think it's now very well established that deserts can be returned to sustainable green areas using well-tested tools and design strategies.
Whether political will exists to apply such knowledge across much larger areas of the globe, only time will tell.
Rhys
I read that the southern edge of the Sahara has greened since the droughts there of the 1970s and 80s. But possibly the northern edge is extending into parts of southern Europe ... if so, less welcome.
Being in the UK, all I can claim to know quite a lot about is the climate/weather here for the past seven decades. Despite the scare stories, it continues to be temperate and well-watered, although a little more summer and autumn sunshine would never go amiss.
Like 15% of England and Wales, my garden benefits from 'freely-draining, slightly acid loamy soils'. In other words it'll grow anything (except bananas, avocados, coffee, etc). I think any UK household of 3-4 with a large suburban garden, say 1,000 to 1,500 m2 would be incompetent if they couldn't grow enough food and with really good soil like mine they could do it on less land.
The MSM went berserk in my view in characterising the 2022 'dry spell' and the summer 2022 'heatwave' as extreme. Warm and dry yes. *Not* unprecedented. I've seen similar if not more 'extreme' in my lifetime. Met. Office past records suggest that
a) 1975-76 had a longer dry spell (number of successive months with below-average rainfall) than 2022
b) on many sites, but not all, summer 1976 (the average for 1 June to 31 August) was warmer than summer 2022.
Conclusion b) is for the sites where I've so far looked at Met. Office records. I'm still looking at other sites where the Met. Office measured temperatures in 1976 and still did so in 2022.
I worry that the industrial farming lobby will suppress the spread of regenerative farming as demonstrated by Joel Salatin, Gabe Brown, Richard Perkins and many more. It seems to make no-one bar the farmers any real money. Once they've changed over, they admittedly seem potentially more profitable than if they had to buy NPK fertiliser and herbicide and were $100,000 in debt to the banks.
But do small farmers count in any country except perhaps India? Sheer numbers perhaps give its small farmers more power than in the UK.
Thanks for the blog, John.
John - like you, I'm based in the UK and, like you, I grow my own vegetables. My experience is that you can grow enough potatoes for a winter in 10-15sqm and the key to productivity is producing high quality compost. Last summer I grew an astonishing crop of 96lb-worth of winter squash ( a few 10lb+ monsters) on 15sqm and around 30lb of parsnip in 1sqm (they really can be amazingly productive as long as you can get the seeds to germinate efficiently in the spring). The key to feeding yourself actually is having storage space which is cool, dark and dry - if that's the case you can easily grow enough winter vegetables to feed yourself healthily all the way through, if you can also freeze/blanche a few summer vegetables like broad beans, celery etc to put in a deep freeze.
My experience is that if you have 100sqm of growing space which is really, really productive, you get enough vegetables for most of the year, add in a polytunnel/greenhouse and you can add plenty more, notably huge amounts of tomatoes.
Fruit trees can obviously also add plenty more healthy stuff but they will take up more room if you want a good variety (150sqm may only give you 9 trees which will be 4m high (and similar wingspan).
Small scale horticulture can be unbelievably productive if done well and organically/regeneratively. It can certainly provide all necessities for small rural communities, but obviously you need much more organised production to cater to big cities like London. The key is multiple crops per year (mostly two, but three is perfectly possible if you add in radish, salad onions and dwarf beans as one of the three: I have managed four once if the last is winter lettuce, but that's a real rush and everything needs to go perfectly for it to give a great yield)
As for desertification of southern Spain, I think that could be reversed but it requires better water management, use of trees to create cover and productive growth in more shady environs). Those who are skilled at creating on-contour swales have skills to add, but there are also other schemes for optimising water distribution and retention within soil on sloping areas.
Ultimately, I think you may end up with communities of small growers serving smaller rural villages and parts of urban towns, but I'd be surprised if we totally eliminated mass production.
What we don't want is any nonsense of using food as 'supplies of mRNA vaccines'. That really is beyond the pale....
This is my garden how-to write up from July 4 2016, after 3 years of working the protocol of my succession-rotation year-round gardening plans in 3-bed and 5 bed arrangements. https://www.johndayblog.com/2016/07/liberty-garden-central-texas-climate.html
I mostly use the 3 bed arrangement in multiples, like 6 or 9 now, though I do some variations in the smaller Austin garden.
You are welcome, John.
[I am flashing back to the various alien "Johns" in Buckaroo Banzai.]
This is my gardening succession-rotation scheme, as I describe to Rhys below: https://www.johndayblog.com/2016/07/liberty-garden-central-texas-climate.html
I've long enjoyed Geoff Lawton's work. The Great Green Wall" sounds like a much better way to spend resources than WW-3. I don't know how many trees the planners have planted and nurtured for a few years. That's a LOT of resources and work that have to come from places and people and other living systems. I wish them all well.
Thanks Tim.
We are about to drive up to Dallas to help my son move this weekend.
Here is something donated in the previous comments by Paul Black:
https://ehden.substack.com/p/the-anglo-saxon-mission