Reflections of an Old Man

That is, and has been, the foundation of civilization. Without this precious resource we humans are shackled to the daily routine of securing food and shelter for ourselves. Since the advent of the industrial revolution, when coal became the foundation for development, we have been sailing along with a powerhouse in the hold, getting us where we wanted to go at our whim. But great civilizations have existed in the past. How did they do it? Sadly, to a great extent, this was accomplished on the back of slaves, captured in war and/or raised in captivity. That goes for the Greeks, Romans, and many others across the world. And it includes North America before the American Civil war. Slaves provided that cheap abundant energy and were considered tradable assets by their owners. Like it or not, in practice, we still do, and are, where debt is used instead of chains.

Communism failed and so will wokism, for the same reasons. Communism grew into a populist movement based on a sense of injustice in societies where a rich minority exploited a poor majority. With public support, activists managed to to take control of the movement with the help of background financial manipulators with their own agendas and the outcome was one oppressive ruling class being replaced by another. Now the process is just repeating itself, under a new label. Time to take action and put these parasites back in their holes!

Or should I say “The Banking con game”? Either way, it amounts to the same thing: The belief that money you deposit with a bank will be available to you on demand. As if money was a physical entity deposited in a box in the bank, to be reclaimed at will. But it doesn’t work that way. The money you deposit in a bank is simply a number entered into the bank’s ledger as a liability for the bank to you. A promise to pay you upon demand. On the other side of the ledger the bank will create loans to approved applicants and in the process create money numbers in the accounts of said applicants to the value of the approved loan. These repayable-with-interest loans are then classified as assets for the bank. This way of operating by a bank is enacted in law in the country in which the bank is situated and there is a snag: Neither the money deposited by savers, nor the money lent out to borrowers, belong to the bank. In order to be allowed to operate, a bank needs to have legal ownership of a su

Conflicts between nations and alliances seem to begin when one party lays claim to territory said to “belong” to it. On 1 September 1939 the Germans attacked the Westerplatte peninsula in the port of Gdańsk. This assault marks the beginning of the Second World War. The Germans had long laid claim to “Danzig”, as they called it, and it had a 98% German population in 1939. (410,000) The Russian position in regards to parts of Ukraine is now well known and it is asserting ownership by way of cannon fire at this time. Xi Jinping just got installed for his third term as President in China and claims Chinese ownership of Taiwan, so far having failed to deliver on that promise. Meanwhile, the Biden administration in the US asserts that Ukraine and Taiwan are both ‘independent’ nations (with a LOT of help from their friends, i.e. principally the backers of the Biden administration.) Historically, a well known recipe for war. And WE are asked to pay the price.

... the poppies grow. That poem was written in 1915 by John McCrae as a result of the carnage suffered in the Great War where blood and guts fertilized the fields of war along with nitrogen deposits from the explosives used. It is a call to keep fighting, on and on, to beat the foe. For what? Apart from bringing down one empire in order to temporarily bolster another one, what was achieved? A generation of young men was lost and mangled on both sides of the conflict. The conflict degenerated into a slogging match using artillery shells and whosoever was able to keep up the barrage the longest won the day. Fast forward 100+ years and we are back in the same hole in Ukraine where two empires are dishing it out using cannon shells and young bodies to fertilize the fields of that country again. Nothing new in the last 1000 or so years.

Watching a video of Imperial Rome reminded me of an experience I had visiting Singapore in 1971. Staying overnight in a modern hotel on the outskirts of the downtown, I ventured into the heart of the old city where narrow cobblestone streets had an open sewer running down the middle. In fact, if you approached the downtown from downwind, you could smell it a mile away. Eventually you get used to it but the initial impact is quite powerful. And so it was in Imperial Rome, a city with some 1 million people, many of whom lived in poverty and squalor. A hive of activity and breeding ground for all manner of infectious diseases. On the other side of the ledger, I lived in the City of Baghdad in 1961 where dry heat day temperatures in the summer ranged between 40 and 50 degrees Celsius. It did not have open sewers (the water would likely have evaporated) but the smell was so different, and not unpleasant, that I experienced it in my dreams long after having returned to Norway.