Reflections of an Old Man

That question has likely been asked since the beginning human of civilization, and then some. The answer is, "virtually anything". Why? Because as long as there is a general agreement about the value of something, it can be used as money in exchanging goods and services. For example, dried tomatoes could be used if a lot of people were prepared to accept them in return for something else. The state issued fiat (force) money we use in our societies is no different and has value in the minds of people because we can use this money to pay our taxes (rather than taking cartons of eggs to the tax office) and we get put in jail if we refuse to accept payment in state issued cash. The latest is digital money issued by the central bank of a state which is in effect controlled by the political junta of the day, as demonstrated by our own Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland when she picked which bank accounts of political opponents to close recently. Thanks for the heads up, Chrys...

Based on history, it is merely a matter of time. In WWI and WWII, Canada, as part of the British empire, entered right away in 1914 and 1939. The US followed suit in 1917 and 1941 and is likely going to be reluctantly dragged into this war as well by vested interests wanting to reshape the world into some kind of monstrosity of their own making. And behind the whole thing are old men with reduced testosterone levels and elevated illusions of grandeur pulling strings and pulling the wool over young people's eyes for their own perverse entertainment. Suggested fix: Give them massive injections of testosterone and turn them loose amongst sexy ladies of the night. Come dawn they will all be laying around, dead from heart attacks, and the world can get on with life.

During the nineteen thirties, Europe became deeply divided between people that subscribed to socialism, the class struggle and communism on one side and nationalists who supported more traditional points of view on the other. As tensions grew National Socialism emerged as a counter to Bolshevism in Russia and Communism in general. This happened in most countries in Europe and resulted in civil war in Spain in 1936. We now have a war in Ukraine that is causing the world to divide into two camps, one supporting Ukraine and another supporting Russia. This war is reinforcing existing divisions within countries, including Canada, resulting in volunteers making their way to Ukraine to support both sides of the conflict.

As the war escalates, some trends are emerging: Heavy armour is no longer what it used to be and does not intimidate the general population like it did before. The reason is the emergence of precision guided personal missiles that can be launched from the shoulder of a foot soldier and take out a tank or armoured personnel carrier in short order. And Ukraine has thousands of American made Javelin missiles with likely more streaming in from outside sources every day. So, all of a sudden Putin's tanks are becoming more of a liability than assets on the ground, and he knows that, as his army is reluctant to advance forwards very quickly in the face of deadly missile attacks. So Putin's priority becomes to choke off enemy supply lines at all costs to stop the bleeding within his own army. That's where it gets tricky as a lot of those supplies come from Poland. If Putin does not make headway, at what point does he decide to go all out?

Prince Justin's latest stunt, under cover of the Emergencies Act, of preventing access to our money and potentially stealing it, gave us a heads up about what is coming down the pipeline. So, what is a good alternative to money in the bank? Money in the hand, obviously. But even cash can be made worthless by a flick of Prince Justin's finger, at his convenience. This has already been tried in India but didn't work because of the outcry that followed. The point is, they tried, and will do it again, based on some kind of excuse of the day. Silver has a multi thousand year record of use as a means of exchange and represents a viable alternative to fiat money issued by the state. And there is a lot of it around with more coming on stream all the time. It is readily accepted by most people as having an established value, irrespective the whims of governments and their cronies. Silver comes in many forms, as coins, bullion or silver ware which are convenient to use. So, if you o...

Just under two years ago, after hearing reports of Covid spread on cruise ships and at airports, I realized that the bug was primarily spread by way of aerosol droplets from breath, exhaled by one person and subsequently inhaled by another person. To that end, I commissioned a video and posted it online during the spring of 2020 (please see link below) Since then the pandemic followed a very similar trajectory to the one in 1918-20, and finished the same way with more infective and less deadly variants of the bug predominating over time. As it turns out, Nature is very logical, multiplication is the name of the game, and killing the host does not fit into that game plan. So, once the Omicron variant came along, the end was in sight and we will just learn to live with the bug, as has happened thousands of times in the past. Vaccines saved an awful lot of lives, in contrast to what happened in 1918-20. I'm inclined to think that the original Covid 19 was an engineered product that es...

Before invading Ukraine Putin knew that he had Europe by the b...ls as Russia is the source of better than 50% of Europe's natural gas consumption. Being excluded from the world's financial system likely doesn't lose him any sleep either because he can chose to pay down Russian debt with greatly devalued roubles, or not at all. While there is a hue and cry in the media and amongst western politicians, little is actually done for fear of the Russian Bear turning off the gas supply. Putin knew that would happen before going into Ukraine and also knows that he can take his time and grind that country into submission by turning its infrastructure into rubble. All the while keeping the wolves at bay with his hand on the nuclear trigger.