Life is a (dangerous) game.

 

 Life is a (dangerous) game.

There is a war going on. Actually, there are many wars but only one is on the news. Others don’t even catch the attention of the many folks who report and also make up news on social media. The regular media has some rules, yet often reflects the views of their owners, advertisers, and, in many places like Russia, the governments that have power over them. Social media may be a superb source for exposing some truths but often is hijacked by people who make up stories that somehow benefit them. The public has the freedom to choose who they want to believe.

The war I am talking about is not the horrible war going on now in Ukraine and covered by all the sources of news, but a war that has been going on much longer and affecting all of us, not just one or two nations. It’s a war that was talked about in biblical times. In the old days, it was between free people and others they wanted to enslave. Now it’s not so obvious but amounts to the same thing. The Russian government wants to take over Ukraine and make its people subjects. The Ukrainians wish to follow leaders they democratically choose.

When people work together, they produce wealth and have some degree of power. Some of the wealth and power go to the group or country and those who made it use some. Alberta and later Newfoundland produce oil and object to a federal government, making them share some of the revenue with those who don’t. That is why some Albertans always hate the Federal leaders. Yet at the same time, we love investors who organize and pay for projects that will make money even if they will take much of it for themselves, often hiding it from taxes. Governments also invest, but are expected to make money from taxing others.

The smartest humans are not interested in being political leaders. In today’s reality, it is better to take the money and use it to make more money. It is acceptable until we have oligarchs rule the country, as Putin and his cabal do. One leads and others keep him in power.

 

In Russia today, oligarchs are unjustly living lavishly as long as they keep Putin in power and make the country in the image he wishes it to be. The media are harshly regulated and the people follow it. Putin is very popular. In the west, we have by far more oligarchs but they compete with each other dividing media and the people. You can summarise the division as competition between the political left and right. Both, if carried to extremes, are equally damaging to society.

The war I am concerned about is between the many people whose work produces wealth and the relatively few who take the benefits for their private pleasure. They take so much that they have to subject many people to what is close to slavery. The people fight for democracy and freedom which are also corrupted. People in the Russian Federation, for example, don’t have better or worst living conditions or health care than their equals in America.

We had a long period of relative peace on earth since nuclear weapons deterred the strongest countries from having wars with each other. Now the war in central Europe changed the situation.

 Big Pharma just finished making a killing on vaccines that governments invested billions to develop. Now old stacks of weapons got used and there is a lot more money made available for new weapons. Weapon manufacturers will take a lot of countries’ budgets while health care education and so on will have to save it out of what they need.

The oligarchs will not pay for the weapons or the armies that keep them and their investments safe. It will be the working people. We will pay for the mismanagement of the supply chains, the new armies and weapons, and the restructuring of energy distribution infrastructure. Any hope that we may have had for social reforms will be dashed in the name of defending freedom and a fresh surge in patriotism.

The living conditions of the common people on both sides of the conflict will probably worsen. One blessing is that people will try harder to get off carbon fuels.

A few years ago, there was a summit in Europe that Trump and Putin both attended. They became friends, and the media reported that they had a meeting alone for about two hours. Yes, Putin speaks English. I wish I could know what they said, but no one will ever know. Could they have agreed that the US will take Canada and Russia take Ukraine? We could make a nice rich territory even better than Puerto Rico. Just a bad dream. But what if those two did talk about it and Trump returns?

I better not think about it. Yet a month ago Ukrainians didn’t believe that Russia would come to conquer their country. If anyone will try to take Canada, we have the “freedom fighters” with their trucks, bouncy castles, and placards to defend us.

I would be happier if we quit the silly noise about removing weapons from all good citizens and if municipalities would support gun clubs instead of hiking their rents. A few old sports shooters could train a lot of people fast.

Now we are hurrying up to reopen, remove medically based restrictions, and risk more troubles. You can tell that some premiers are facing elections. We are not trying to improve ordinary lives since we will need more money for defense. I don’t like it. However, we must play the game with the cards handed to us. If we fold, we lose freedom.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

The bubble.

 

The bubble.

When my kids were small, someone gave them a goldfish in a glass bowl. There was sand on the bottom and a fake rock supporting a plastic bush. The fish spent his life swimming from one side to the other, hitting the glass sides and going back. He never realized that if he comes out, he will die, and the world of water as he knew it is not the entire world, only his bubble.

It occurred to me we all live in our bubbles. I was born into mine, lived a long time and all I know and believe that I know is what penetrated my bubble. There isn’t much that I chose since my choices are dictated by what’s available to me. I grew from a seed, got old and now I have a short time to communicate what I’ve learned to future generations if there will be future generations. There are no guarantees in life.

I was talking to a friend who has opinions about all major events. He wants anything that is the opposite of what the eastern Canadians do. His focal point is, he hates Trudeau. Why? Because the eastern provinces elected him. He painted his face for Halloween, bankrupted the country by paying people not to work, (and keep people like me alive) and I will not ask him again. After a while, I asked where he gets his news from and got another earful. Not wishing to be depressed, he doesn’t listen to news but to a few “You Tubers.” He is violently against masks, vaccines, and all that bull. He is still at the stage of nanobots with poison injected into his body. My friend lives in his bubble.

All people are living in their bubbles happily, while making decisions that affect society. Mr. Putin is no exception. He had some time in COVID isolation, so he rewrote the history of Russia upside down and justified his latest invasion. It is causing thousands of deaths, destruction of infrastructure that cost billions and years of work to build, and a huge new wave of migrants all over the west. That is his bubble. The only one that can effectively stop him is the president of the USA.

President Biden is in his own bubble. He leads the mighty US Empire that is challenged by the speedily rising China and, to a lesser degree, Russia. Reporters asked him if Putin was a war criminal. Knowing fully well that the US has done the same, he hesitates. The US right at this moment is selling weapons to Saudi Arabia and helping them operate the new technology. The Saudis are doing something similar in Yemen. We did not yet forget Iraq and Afghanistan in the fog of history. The American leader wouldn’t like to be judged for his country’s actions. The fish looks at the glass wall of his bowl and sees a reflection of himself.

The bubble we live in is our reality. All that we know and all that we believe is a part of it. It could be our politics, our religion, and our emotional commitment. It is very hard to change what is in my bubble and there is another major problem. Some of my reality is switching many times a minute with my thoughts, which hardly ever stay in one place. I don’t have full control. The other thing to consider is that reality is a gambler’s game with no limits. There is always a strong chance that the unexpected will happen. It could be good, or not.

To complicate things, all other people live in their private bubbles. Within it, they cheat, lie, and change on a dime. The mind we have can’t keep up. We assume we can change our beliefs, which often came from outside of ourselves, but when we do, there is a doubt. We can’t know and consider everything. To combat that, we develop values. There are things we believe that we don’t consider are possible to change. I know I can’t fly without wings and if someone does, I check for cheating.

Beliefs have the power to change reality in our bubbles, but there is not much proof of it. That is our fault. We learn from early in life to say and think that we believe things that, deep inside, we don’t. On my wall, I got a note saying, “The only one I need to convince is myself.” If I can convince myself, check it, and believe something, it turns from belief to reality. I no longer believe it, I know it. Doesn’t matter if I say with utmost conviction that I believe what I don’t know, I don’t. Humans always lied.

If Ukraine doesn’t seed grains in a short while, there will be mass starvation. In my bubble, there is panic setting in. As a male, I want to fight. Fighting may lead to annihilation. If the bully wins, freedom will be lost. He will not stop. The only saving grace is a quick shift in our beliefs, but we are far from being able to do it. Each for himself will not work now. We can say “give us our daily bread and deliver us from evil” but evil doesn’t just give up by itself. We need all humans to work together.

People here go on with daily life as the Ukrainians did a month ago, believing that nothing can happen to us. If half of the world will not have their daily bread, something will happen. My bubble shakes. I want to be like those who don’t listen to the news, believing that not knowing danger is excellent protection, but I can’t. That belief doesn’t pass the test to become reality. A million and a half stateless and homeless people in Europe are living witnesses and a billion other humans are test subjects in other places. Most are casualties of early signs of global warming. A worldwide epidemic threatens them if they survive the rest. In my bubble, there is a sense of urgency.

Freedom of the Press, Prophesy, and Apocalypse.

 

Freedom of the Press, Prophesy, and Apocalypse.

It was the week before Christmas 2019, and I was hosting a drumming circle at home when the phone rang. My father just passed away. I will not bore you with details since we all have those moments in life when things change, but it was a critical moment in history. Now when we talk, everyone wants to go back to that time, but the world as we knew it is gone forever. There is no going back.

We can block traffic here and there, wave signs and make noise, sit in a hot tub on the steps of parliament demanding that the Prime Minister will come to talk to us, and write ridiculous reasons why we hate Trudeau, but the past is not coming back. In the last two weeks, it became clear that all the things we enjoy, including “freedom,” can be taken away in a blink of an eye. There is something bigger than us that controls our destiny. God doesn’t hurt us, but he can let us hurt ourselves.

As the prophets in the bible predicted, if we sin against God, who is “the least of our brothers”, and the world itself, there will be a price to pay. Even the Cry babies Caravan now knows that real “freedom” has a price and that “dictators” have tanks and planes. Giving in to temptation and abusing the gifts bestowed upon us from creation onwards may and will destroy all that we enjoy very fast. The rest of the details you can read in your own bible. Brother against brother, fires and floods, “women don’t cry for me, cry for yourselves and your own children” and so on.

On that day, two weeks before Christmas 2019, there was a short report on the news about a suspected contagious Coronavirus discovered in faraway China. No one took it seriously. People booked cruises and holidays, planned parties, and shopped for presents. Fires and floods in Australia didn’t seem real and even those fake news people who mascarade as reporters were not yet alarmed. They would enter the fray later when humans discover a vaccine that could spoil the devil’s fun.

Most advanced nations employ experts to warn them of looming disasters. For years, those responsible for the environment have been warning us that our greedy, wasteful ways were going to hurt us. Using the atmosphere and the oceans as a universal trash can and over-mining all energy sources would not be good for future humans. We didn’t stop and warning signs showed up.

The world population increased, and there was a need for sharing and caring for each other. We did the opposite. Increased the wealth of a few and made the many suffer. It’s not our problem, we said, but it was. A pandemic, just a mild one, hit us. As governments followed the science, hoards of “we don’t care” people showed up claiming “freedom” as the reason. Governments in democratic countries caved in and many people died needlessly. We didn’t take the hint.

Nature increased its pressure. In Canada, we dealt an attempt to destabilize the democratic government, with kid’s gloves, so a more noticeable crisis occurred and is still going on. The autocratic leader of Russia went to war against a major European country, scaring us with nuclear weapons. This time, many innocent people perished and cities are levelled.

While maternity and children’s hospitals are bombed, million-plus mothers and children are homeless refugees, in the US the fight about abortions is heating up.

The environmental conflict is being dubbed as “job-killing”. The vaccine against the pandemic is making billions for drug companies, and the coffers of the weapon manufacturers are overflowing while the blood of the suffering cries all the way to the heavens. If there is a God, something that many now deny, what will be His next step?

In our little towns, I am fulfilling the part of the official opposition. This tiny little local paper you are reading is still following the old rules of freedom of the press. The old reporter who set it up believed that “controversy is good for the paper” and I chose to fulfill that unthankful role, providing the opposition.

People who only want to read “positive” writings don’t like me, while others want to hear “the other side.” I am OK with that. I am old enough to know that life is not only the icing on the cake. If I seed some ideas which may ease suffering, I will do it. I am sick, old, and tired. If I can convince some young people that life is not only for accumulating junk, avoiding hard work by using artificial energy, partying, and travelling, I will try my best.

The God of the old testament told people what to do and punished them when they didn’t. The son of God in the New Testament taught us to share, help, forgive, and welcome. He waited 2000 years to see what we will do. He warned us to pray not to be led by temptation. We tried and failed. Some of us are good, but most are not. He said to harvest the wheat and separate it from the weeds.

We can avoid being harvested by following the instructions or simply by listening to our hearts. Only weird or mentally sick people feel good about hurting others. The body we have is made of millions of tiny living parts that work together and keep it going. Humankind is created also from billions of individuals who can only succeed by working together, but they all have free will. We must volunteer in order to win. That is why convincing people, some through “free Press” is important. Tyrants don’t allow free press and only publish lies.  

Humans have the instructions, had time to learn, and now can see what happens if we don’t listen. We have the “freedom” to use our free will and we will enjoy or suffer the consequences. Those who have eyes will see.

What “The Pass” and Ukraine have in common?

 

What “The Pass” and Ukraine have in common?

I considered not writing this week. I watch the news from Europe on French, German and British channels that have reporters on the ground in Ukraine. The Canadian Margaret Evans is also there reporting for the CBC. I don’t see the “Schlemiel” from the Real News there. Maybe he is chasing people who wear masks. He and his buddies are convincing Canadians that health measures mandated by the tyrannical democratically elected government abuse them.

We do not make health regulations to restrict freedom. Look at what our society did regarding secondhand smoke, noise, impaired driving, and so many other health and wellness issues.

 What do we in the Pass and Ukraine have in common? The answer is, we are situated over the water source of other people. You want to talk about “freedom?” Freedom is not the right to not take your medicine and trust that our socialized health care will take care of you at everyone’s expense. It’s not making laws that deny a compromised individual the ability to remain alive when there is a health threat based on science, but the right to life-giving water. Without water, a human is dead in less than a week. Water also is necessary for growing food, sanitation, and much more. I have a tee-shirt made by a first nations artist saying “water is life.” Nothing is more true than that. Water is “freedom.”

I have a friend close to Lethbridge who used to get water from the river. Now he must use a cistern that often runs dry.

Crimea was Russian territory off and on for a very long time. When Ukraine rid itself of a pro-Russian government, the Russians took over the strategic peninsula in the usual way. They supported a group of locals who were not happy with the existing government, had a quick predetermined referendum, and used their military might to take over. Ukraine had one more card to play.

Crimea is fed by water from the Dniepr river that comes through Ukraine’s territory. And global warming is now reducing the amount of water and snow in the region. First using sandbags and later building a proper concrete dam, the Ukrainians diverted the water source. Consequently, the Eastern provinces of Ukraine sided with Russia and rebelled against Kyiv. “Volunteer” Russian fighters appeared and we have the troubles that we see today. A million and a half Ukrainian women and children are refugees in the West.

If you follow world affairs on the news, you may see similar situations around the world. Israel, for example, depends on the Jordan river for a fresh water supply and the sources for the river originate in Lebanon and Syria. There are wars where water is scarce. Following the news is hard also since many people are masquerading as “news” and the Russians are masters at that.

Freshwater is so important that nations will risk it all and have wars over controlling their water supply. We, the people of the Pass, find ourselves sitting on the water source of southern Alberta. We are sure that we wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize the flow of water, but the people below refuse to take a chance. Russia has been trying to desalinate water in Crimea for years and it’s not working. People don’t trust promises when their lives depend on it. Here we want a third of the province, mostly agricultural folks, to believe us that strip-mining the slopes will not damage their aquifer.

I see on the news that Sonya Savage, our United Conservative Minister of Energy, is heading a one-woman campaign trying to keep the peace and please all sides. She openly consulted the Canadians affected by the coal and water debate, excluded the international investors, and made a decision. The mines already being worked on can meet all the regulations and go ahead while new mines wait for more studies.

I am not blindly a supporter of the provincial government that I frankly don’t trust, but I am impressed. The mine that may give the Pass some benefits will go ahead and give us a chance to see if the benefits are worth the risk. That was my position from the start. The people who attacked me in the paper for being against coal were wrong. Whatever is good for where I live is what I am for. I want this place to do well for the rest of my days and well after. I also will not spend one ounce of effort to make someone rich using our people to fight for their agenda.

Even just being viewed as threatening people’s water supplies, in a time when the ugly face of global warming is showing up, is enough to start a fight. Interfering with the headwaters can cause severe conflicts. I think the potential for a few jobs is not worth it. We got our coal, and now let’s get serious about taking real action to secure a future for the Pass.

We should get off the romantic notion of making a living off something that was a good business a hundred years ago and consider how it’s done in this day and age. Did anyone investigate becoming a university town? Alberta will need to retrain many people towards living in a world without depending on carbon. Can you think of a better place to do it than here? We can have research and training facilities in a most healthy and attractive environment. Of course, it would take some initiative but it can pay off.

For now, I think we can get on the news by asking the Feds to bring in Ukrainian refugees and offering to house them for the duration of the war. I can take some. We will have the empty York Creek Lodge building available soon, and we can speed things up. Provincial money could help.

God helps those who help themselves.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.