Sci-fi... religion for geeks?

16may24v 0.1

http://poelposition.blogspot.com/2024/05/sci-fi-religion-for-geeks.html

As we are being drawn ever deeper into a quagmire of prosaic existential nonsense from Stormy Daniels to the ongoing invasion by illegal itinerants - the temptation to pass the buck to a supreme being to sort out still remains, despite thousands of years of failure to persuade any deity intervene to assist in any obvious way.

The age of discovery in the 18/19 centuries that evolved from the work of Newton and Kepler promoted various notions of heresy as established religious beliefs were directly and indirectly challenged. And we are still being held hostage by fanatics with irrational beliefs.

Deference to religious tolerance has allowed other pseudo religious cults to become empowered and impose their all manner of irrational beliefs, as though there is currently a general entitlement to hold almost any absurd belief as a "human right."

Woaaa...

My turn! I have been a Sci-Fi aficionado since episode one Dr Who in 1963 - and what a wild ride that has been while Russell T Davies insists on breaking it with defiant self-indulgence and fits of superfluous social engineering.

Meantime the budget bar (Who's early wonky cardboard sets remain icons of British culture) was quickly raised by Star Trek in 1966 - but Dr Who's premise of freedom to move in any dimension - including time - provided infinite creative scope compared to the linearity of Star Trek, where the focus on the hardware defined the boundaries.

And then the Stargate movie came along in 1994 and wove Egyptian and Norse mythology with space opera, but avoided attributing "supreme being" status to the gadget party tricks.

Star trek strayed into the metaphysical with the introduction of the Q Continuum in 1987; after which it was easy to cheat the "linear science" plot if required, although this plot device was used sparingly to avoid annoying the purists.

Star Gate had its Ancients - since it was necessary to explain where the stargates had originated. The Doctor Who equivalent being the Time Lords.

All three of these sci-fi dynasties have a nervous relationship with "supreme beings" and are uncomfortable with the challenge of relating to established religions. So the backstories of the Time Lords, the Ancients and Q are left are rich opportunities for fandom speculation. 

The internet has provided infinite scope to disseminate and explore these various geek heavens - and efforts to relate and explain are ongoing. 

All of them accept varying degrees of telekinesis and extra sensory perception as an integral part of their existence, plus of course the matter transport technology exploited in all is a huge leap of faith. Never mind inertial damping, artificial gravity and FTL travel.

I can't ignore Star Wars (1997 on) any longer. It has always struck me as being an outlier with most overlap with Star Trek. The device of a Force that "flows through all living things" is a neat way to tackle the metaphysical challenges. Parallels with Stargate's ascended Ancients.

And then we need to accommodate the fascinating stories of Uri Geller and Matthew Manning. Just what on earth is going on there? Despite attempts to expose them as frauds, they continue to exist with their followers in a parallel universe of uncertainty. After all many billions are taken in by Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and the rest - where there is considerably less hard evidence of bent spoons or hands on healing.

And right now (may24) we are being blasted by a peak of cyclical solar activity - the origins of which we only "sort of understand".

So I thought I would catch up with Einstein's unified field theory, as you do - which was a subject of interest to Steven Hawking and the place where all these ideas will inevitably collide.

Mark Fiorentino has done a decent job of touring that subject in the linked video.

You can skip in 5 minutes and watch X1.5

https://youtu.be/DtNG25y26pM

The effect of the sun on climate: proper science!

WORK IN PROGRESS since Dec2022 - this will be continuously evolved and updated, with links added,
The  challenge of a post like this - large and getting larger - is to get anyone to read it thoroughly. So I will try taunts:
"You will need an IQ of over 130 to be able to read and digest this information..." and if you give up after reading this advisory, then you are likely to have an IQ of below 100. But you can still apply to be a contestant on Michael McIntyre's "Wheel" gameshow.....  

Updated 10MAY24  - to be edited.....

THE REAL REASON FOR CLIMATE CHANGE: Robin Monotti

https://twitter.com/robinmonotti/status/178932069375187355

The warming from the Sun is cyclical, it's NOT constant. The distance of where you are from the Sun is constantly changing because both the Earth's orbit around the Sun is irregular and the Sun itself wobbles due to the combined gravitational pull of all the planets together. Look at the Schwabe solar cycle of 11 years, the Jose solar cycle of solar Inertial Motion of 179 years, Eddy Solar Cycle of 1000 years, the Bray-Halstatt Cycles of 2300-2500 years, then look into the three Milankovitch Cycles.

Short to medium term climate change:

Solar Inertial Motion: the combined mass of the planets also moves the position of the Sun through their combined gravitational pull, meaning the Sun moves around following the ever moving barycentre of the Solar system rather than being in a fixed central point in the middle Solar System. That is the key thing to understand: the Sun is moving around, wobbling in spiral like motion as it travels, it is not stationary. Once you understand that all medium term climate change can be explained simply because of the Sun's changing distance from the Earth.

None of this has anything to do with humans. None of this has anything to do with CO2. The models of the Solar System you grew up believing as a child were gross over simplifications. They conditioned you to believe that the Solar system has a fixed Sun position with a regular Sun activity with regular orbits, of which the Earth is one. Yet that is not the reality: not only the earth both tilts and wobbles as it orbits, but the orbit is a changing ellipse not a perfect circle, meaning the distance from the Sun is not constant. These are the three Milankovitch cycles. Also other planets have irregular orbits.

The combined effect of all these irregular orbits together pulls the Sun off centre of the solar system into the barycentre. A wobbling Sun is the real reason for short to medium term climate change, and an irregular earth orbit, tilt and wobble is the reason for long term climate change.

And this is just the beginning of the story of irregularity in the Earth's orbit around the Sun, then there are cycles of Sun activity, making it stronger and weaker according to how close to the 11 year cycle of magnetic poles flip it is, next being in 2024, and how many Sun spots & Solar flares we are exposed to. 

Then you need to factor volcanic activity, the Hunga-Tonga Hunga underwater volcanic eruption of January 2022 increased the water vapour in the stratosphere by 10%, this in itself will cause considerable warming of the planet in most regions.

It's definitely not a simplistic neat black and white story of CO2, a minor greenhouse gas, as 95% of the earth's greenhouse gases are constituted by water vapour instead. 

Humans have no power to determine either the orbit of the Earth around the Sun or the Sun's internal & external activity, or the water vapour in the atmosphere.

Life adapts much more easily to higher temperatures and increases in CO2, particularly plants, vegetation, trees, plankton& phytoplankton, than it does to decreases in CO2.

The real danger is a decrease of CO2, and a decrease in temperature, not an increase in either.

Once again, we have been deceived by a systematically corrupt scientific funding system linked to oligarchs interests.

CO2 was always a control knob for economic prosperity, not climate.

01may24 update...
In a netshell...

It's been a year of solid activity as we would expect at solar max, and there have been aa number of terrestrial geological events in the usual "thin crust" zones...  

The coincidence of a big solar flare and a tsunami in Japan is the latest "coincidence" that associates solar activity and earth's geology. There is more recent real evidence for this correlation than for anthropogenic climate change. The 2011 Tsunami that caused the Fukujima nuclear power disaster also occurred at solar max. But the Carbon cultists would prefer not to dwell on anything that reminds us that the sun is demonstrably more influential in the big issues of climate than those who cannot tax the sun want to admit.

The BBC did a decent job of covering the basics of the iron core a year ago: The way the Earth's core spins may be changing - BBC Newsround

And yesterday this happened MAJOR X-CLASS SOLAR FLARE: Mere hours after emerging over the sun's eastern limb on Dec. 31st  2022, big sunspot AR3536 erupted, producing a major X5-class solar flare. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) recorded the extreme ultraviolet flash:https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=01&month=01&year=2024ew=1&day=01&month=01&year=2024

Updated 09Aug23

Various Odds and sods, and loose ends. Geomagnetic stats and comment.

Updated 08Aug23

X-class flares herald the Cycle 25 maximum alert.  

 

Earth is dodging some big solar storms. For the second time in 3 days, departing sunspot AR3386 unleashed a powerful X1-class solar flare. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the extreme ultraviolet flash on Aug. 7th at ~2100 UT

This blog has always made the point that we simply do not know enough about the innermost functioning of the sun to provide foredcasts of flare events other than on the basis of "it's all been kicking off - so it's likely another bang will go off any minute..."  ... so not exactly precision forecasting, given its significance as the overwhelming source of heat energy in the solar system.

Lastest evolving update from an AI trawl:

"The influence of planetary gravity on the solar dynamo has been known for about 50 years. In 1972, a team of scientists led by Edward Parker [coincidental, but not related to the Parker of of Parker Pobe fame] proposed that the gravity of Jupiter and Saturn could play a role in the 11-year sunspot cycle. They argued that the gravitational pull of these two planets could cause the Sun's magnetic field to twist and distort, which could in turn lead to the formation of sunspots.

This hypothesis was further supported by observations in the 1980s. Scientists found that the number of sunspots tends to peak when Jupiter and Saturn are aligned in the same direction, and to trough when they are aligned in opposite directions. This suggests that the gravitational pull of these two planets is indeed having an impact on the Sun's magnetic field.

A more recent 2021 study looked into why explanations  and models in expert circles diverge widely as to why the magnetic field changes at all. Is the sun controlled externally or does the reason for the many cycles lie in special peculiarities of the solar dynamo itself? HZDR researcher Frank Stefani and his colleagues have been searching for answers for years—mainly to the question as to whether the planets play a role in solar activity. 

However, the exact mechanism by which planetary gravity affects the solar dynamo is still not fully understood. Some scientists believe that the gravitational pull of Jupiter and Saturn can cause the Sun's magnetic field to become more turbulent, which can in turn lead to the formation of sunspots. Others believe that the gravitational pull of these two planets can cause the Sun's magnetic field to become more aligned with the Sun's rotation, which can also lead to the formation of sunspots."

So the only prediction concerning any aspect of our sun that has any record of reliability is still the almost metronomic 22 year period of the activity cycle, derived from nothing more sophisticated than counting the visible sunspots. 

This latest research is another example of interesting revelations that climate scientists have been reluctant to accept into their modelling - probably because they simply do not understand it...

https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2023/surprising-sun-discovery

“The sun is more surprising than we knew,” said Mehr Un Nisa, a postdoctoral research associate at Michigan State University. “We thought we had this star figured out, but that’s not the case.”

Nisa, who will soon be joining MSU’s faculty, is the corresponding author of a new paper in the journal Physical Review Letters that details the discovery of the highest-energy light ever observed from the sun.

The international team behind the discovery also found that this type of light, known as gamma rays, is surprisingly bright. That is, there’s more of it than scientists had previously anticipated.

Updated 24Apr2023 ...

What drives the solar cycle?

This does! (https://phys.org/news/2015-03-solar.html)

Now, ponder for a moment:  the ease with which the hypothesis of climate change based on "carbon" has been established as a religious doctrine, complete with saints sinners and heretics - and the familiar excuses to curtail the use of free speech and open debate. "Carbon" is only a tiny part of the story of climate, but by allowing zealots to dictate the agenda, there is a severe danger that important other factors are being overlooked - or worse.

So at risk of excommunication we remind you that CO2 climate change remains an act of faith, and is not settled science. The observations are contradictory, and the propositon is at very best, a hypothesis. And just as religion refuses to be challenged to produce evidence of its Gods, we are told that we will all go to climate hell if we don't believe in Carbon and anthropogenic climate change. The unchallenged consequences of the zealots and their impositions of Marxist control ideas now include transport restrictions, ULEZ and ideas like 15 minute cities with the impositioons of tranport and paymetn m ethods that gives the state precise infroamtion on the movements and habits of all those with a smartphone.

 

You might suspect that all is not it seems when those defending their faith have to go to extremes to bully others around to their point of view.  You didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition, but you got it.

Climate has been a another testing ground for politicians and "deep state" researchers to explore how a scared and compliant population can be gaslit, and sold any number of dubious propositions. Pandemic anyone?

We really do need to look behind and deep into the nature of power and influence across politics and the media in the light of the staggering amount  "money" that has been conjured/printed since the 80s by a handful of governments, organisations and individuals. At the same time as traditional asset-backed currency and value has been forgotten. Gold ("Money", as JP Morgan perceptively put it) has appreciated some 95% against £/€/$ (which is "Credit") in 50 years. Credit is a monetray construct that requires - you guessed - an "act of faith" on the part of those using it. The phrase "I promise to pay the bearer XX on demand" is as empty as the bank vault that once held the gold that existed to back that promise.

Amongst the starkest evidence of something going seriously wrong with the way government operates, is that someone as apparently unsuitable and prone to gaffes that belie an alarming level of dysfunction and dementia as Joe Biden is President of the United States. Obviously money is involved, but who is pulling which strings? The vested intersts in a counrty like the United States involve trillions of dollars. There is enough csah involved that the most stalwart and trusted are going to be readily corruptible.

So who funds the eco movement that has indoctrinated the under 30s through our education system and the BBC?  Remember those images of polar bears drowning? Well there's been a polar bear population explosion in recent years, so in some parts of the Arctic you will be in more danger from being mauled by a marauding polar bear, than you are from climate change.

Another question to ask.. "what is the percentage of CO2 in  the atmosphere we are arguing about anyway?" Most people will suggest a figure well over 5%, many think 20%.

The answer is 0.04%, 400 parts per 1,000,000 and it is a vital part of the growth of all things green through the process of photosynthesis. CO2 is even introduced into greenhouses for this purpose. And as we know, the UK contributes just ~1% to the global total, anyway.

We have been gaslit for long enough! It's time for a blast of reality. Have you got the cojones?

 

https://youtu.be/4cQIzf5HAO4

Maybe we should be trying to help Gene Beards who runs this YouTube channel "socialize" his campaign to bring attention to a climate change proposition backed by real science. The migration of the magnetic pole - and possibility of a complete polar reversal - is real and measurable. And it has happened before in Earth's history.

The usual deep state CO2 lobbyists are aware of this, as it is undermines their narrative and so they try quite hard to dismiss it; they already know that they can promote the most astonishing pseudo-scientific nonsense and have it swallowed by the gullible. And for the less gullible - contemtplating resisting assimilation - remember what happened to the late Dr David Bellamy when he raised his voice in doubt?  He became victim to a crude Napoleonic cancellation gesture "pour encourager les autres"...

This real science is based on observed solar activity; it might seem obvious to anybody after a brief moment of thought that the biggest influence on climate throughout the whole of the solar system is the big round bright thing called the sun. It's been blasting out energy and particles for billions of years and it's what stripped the atmosphere from Mars to turn it from a potentially habitable planet with oceans, to the present arid desert.

The difference between Mars and Earth is there Mars did not have a magnetic field ("magnetosphere") to help shield it from these particles - but earth has a complex magnetic field structure thanks to its molten iron core.

Magnets have poles ... and in the case of Earth, the magnetic North pole has been used for navigation using compasses for centuries. The magnetic North pole is not the same as the "true" north, and the divergence between true and magnetic North varies over time. The mechanism is fascinating and not too hard for anyone with an inquiring scientific mind to grasp. Have a Google.

"True north is a fixed point on the globe. Magnetic north is quite different. Magnetic north is the direction that a compass needle points to as it aligns with the Earth's magnetic field. What is interesting is that the magnetic North Pole shifts and changes over time in response to changes in the Earth's magnetic core. "

The earth's molten iron core is the basis of the magnetic field that interacts with the sun's influence to create a shield that deflects damaging particles that would otherwise strip the atmosphere in the same way that Mars lost its atmosphere.

This process is most dramatically visible in the form of the aurora (which are centred at the north and south pole) where the magnetic field lines excite gases in the atmosphere to show those spectacular moving colours.

So why does the climate vary over time? The key factors are the variable nature of the orbit of earth around the sun which determines its distance from the sun,  and the activity of the "solar dynamo" that creates a magnetic field in conjunction with the earth's molten iron core, that shields the earth ...or not...

We have known for hundreds of years that there is an 11 year cycle involved in regulating the sun's activity levels - where this activity level is manifested in the number of sun spots visible on the solar disc. This can range from none -  for quite long periods of time - to to as many as 100 at peak solar activity.

We have also known that there have been earth climate events associated with this activity level - notably the little ice age of the middle ages, which occurred during a period of especially low sunspot activity. A "Grand Solar Minimum".

If you have been following so far, well done, but you'll be wondering why so little attention is being given to what is potentially the most influential effect on our climate while attention is focused on a hypothesis that has not been conclusively proven, and that is apparently more religion then science. Although God help anybody who dares to question the narrative, such are the vested interests now involved in trying to maintain carbon hysteria.

Maybe one explanation is that it is not possible for politicians to regulate or tax the sun?

Gene Beards deserves a wider  appreciation of his work, and hopefully somebody at GBN is going to be willing to go the extra mile to understand and work with him. He's not quite Dr Magnus Pike showman material, but with little work... ?

The speed at which the magnetic North pole is traversing is a very simple demonstration of a fundamental process taking place that could have a dramatic effect on climate in our life times. And it can be measured in real time.

There are people in governments who also understand this; which begins to explain some of the curious and contradictory behaviour going on in an effort to create misdirection. But the religious fervour that has been deployed to intimidate the heretics is such that hardly anybody dares question, for fear of being described as a conspiracy nutter. Sadly, Dr David Bellamy it's not around to ask.

The danger of being tagged as conspiracy theorists is obviously a challenge, but once you delve into the subject it's hard to explain the behaviour of governments and those many powerful influencers in the shadows, who seem to lurk just out of media attention while they pull the levers.

Astonishingly, the sun's 11 year activity cycle has only recently been explained by reference to planetary tidal influences acting on the solar dynamo. And this raises a further interesting possibility that maybe astrologers really have some scientific basis for their craft?

The clear and simple evidence that planets interact with the sun is simply that they exist in orbit, and have not spun off into deep space. Newtonian physics rules.

The question of how cosmic rays and magnetic storms can affect physiology as well as atmospheric effects like Jetstreams is it also important, given the obvious effects on animal and bird behaviour. Just as we know homing pigeons can lose their way during solar storms, there is some evidence that migraine sufferers respond to changes in magnetic field.

I realise all this is a lot to digest, but let's make the effort and take the opportunity to explore a possible climate misdirection conspiracy, and what is really going on. (We could start by giving Gene Beards of the "maverickstar reloaded" YouTube channel some media training, and having him explain in a series of interviews just how close we are getting to a full magnetic reversal.)

He may be at little excitable, but he is entitled to be frustrated, having seen the pseudoscience of "carbon" distracting the gullible for the past 10-years.

Don't forget, he has got real time evidence and scientific measurements to back his assertions. Various media encounters have revealed that JSO and  XR climate fanatics don't know about even the crude pseudo science they are using as an excuse to disrupt our lives.

Valentina Zharkova: “in next 30 years, global warming problem will be last thing in our mind”

This April 2023 item in the Daily Star (not a particularly noted scientific journal...) maybe slightly exaggerated, but considering the carbon lobby has been making grossly the exaggerated claims for years now...

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/massive-hole-sun-unleashes-18million-29584744

 https://youtu.be/LYOMKLDbeYE

 

Prof Valentina Zharkova is not much liked by the "carbon" climate lobbyists who refuse to believe that their CO2 centric view of climate change has been comprehensively questioned by serious scientists who do not glue themselves to roads; and one of the leading authorities is the Ukrainian-born prof.

Her assertion that the Modern Grand Solar Minimum will lead to terrestrial cooling caused the Net Zero and carbon fanatics to squawk, cancel and stick pins in her effigy - but still there is no hard proof that CO2 levels of 0.04% is more influential in climate change than the sun.

 

Her accent can be a little hard work to decipher, but stick with it if you seek enlightenment.

This post is not about climate change denial, but it seeks to add balance to the CO2 assertions, and explore the underlying reality that there are many more factors than man-made CO2, aka "carbon".

 

Valentina's website is a mine of heretical information...

 

https://solargsm.com/ 

So what if the "Carbon" lobby is wrong, and is spreading information (knowingly or otherwise) on behalf of those who stand to gain from a rise in the price of fossil fuels? 

Of course the climate is changing, it has changed for 4 billion years and there is no reason to think that it has stopped changing. But the influences are many and varied, and certainly not entirely down to carbon dioxide, contrary to the popular media bogey.

Carbon dioxide has provided politicians with a handy opportunity to raise taxes and create targets. They can't tax the sun or cosmic rays. But the collateral economic damage is now emerging - fast - and demands a full rethink of the entire narrative, and accept that many have been misled. And refocus on the need to develop renewable energy alternatives to avoid being cornered by despots. 

The fact that Donald Trump made this very point at the UN in 2018, and the German delegation openly laughed at him, is of course another contributory factor to the denial by an awkwardly bigoted "liberal" establishment that seems to rely on creating simplistic symbols as objects of derision and hate, in the traditions of the best Nazi propaganda.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/09/25/trump-accused-germany-becoming-totally-dependent-russian-energy-un-germans-just-smirked/

The current financial (lockdown repayment) crisis is due to energy cost inflation coupled to debt arising from pandemic spending. The debt is a done deal and fact, the energy crisis is a dynamic situation that can be adjusted.

If CO2 really was a thing, why is the UK, which is responsible for max 2% of global CO2 forcing itself into penury when China, the US and India are still contributing vastly more ..? It makes no sense.

The only rational conclusion is that we are being gaslit on a monumental scale. "Carbon" based anthropogenic climate change may be a smoke and mirrors hypothesis. It could be a manipulation of ambiguity, it is not proven and conclusive science. And it has been very cleverly used by Russia to corner gullible governments, who have been quick to make money from inventing taxes. The result is financial chaos and rampant inflation.

How do we get those who have bought the story and caused the current crisis to step back, rethink and re-evaluate ...and - crucially - admit they actually have no irrefutable evidence, and that they have been manipulated, groomed and browbeaten into admiring the climate change warriors' fine new clothes? Or face cancellation.

Most climate science is couched in vague speculation... It is almost as if those who find themselves in the spotlight of fervent media speculation are slightly nervous and hedging their bets....

This is from one of the better academic summaries of the popular hypothesis found at...

https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2019/07/30/co2-drives-global-warming/

It is not definitive, but a useful expression of the currently orthodox view.

"CO2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere. 

Scientists say that if CO2 doubles, it could raise the average global temperature of the Earth between two and five degrees Celsius."

 

 ...and if the moon was made of cheese, it could solve world hunger...

The real issue for years has been one of energy security, namely being dependent on energy from unpredictable despotic regimes. Before the Russian contribution to the crisis, the oil producers of the Middle East have held the soft dangly parts of the Western economy in their grasp ...and occasionally squeezed to create an oil crisis and manipulate prices to maximize their income.

Let us not overlook the other ecology issues arising from refined oil production, especially that of waste  plastics in the oceans. This is not a by-product of energy, it is a simple case of wanton vandalism in the disposal of waste products. Most plastics could be traced to origin.

Meantime, Neil Oliver is well across the issues of elite gaslighting and always manages to impress. If a political party can manage to get his endorsement, his calm and consistent presentations could be pivotal in encouraging the green-washed hordes to accept that they have been fooled in this age of crazed hyperbole, misdirection, intolerance, ignorance and spiteful cancellation.

 The elite that has taken almost all the money is now after everything else as well

And keep an eye on the magnetic pole shift and possible flip, with the redoubtable passion of Gene "Cassandra" Beards who is also healthily sceptical of the gaslighters....

While Gene may seem a little excitable at times, keep in mind he discusses "real measured science", not the febrile speculations of teenagers and a PM's daffy wife who may have been over-impressed by paid Russian influencers...

(A new religious fervour? All religions must be, by definition, conspiracy theories anyway... 

http://poelposition.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-new-religion.html)

And if you're still wondering, there's a new study suggesting that weather stats are whatever you want them to be.. 

 

 

In the last 710 years there has been no net warming in the Central Alps. Modern temperatures suggest a return to the values of the 14th and 15th centuries.  It would appear the temperature trend from the 1980s to 2010 period has been flat.

https://t.co/nYVXPKbNmV

 

And finally, let's not lose sight of the overpopulation contribution to our damaged ecology... 200k new mouths to feed, cloth and supply with energy, each and every day...

 

 

 

Further reading... 

• The CO2 Coalition website
• Clintel.org
• A list of books by scientists
• A list of more than 200 peer-reviewed papers that refute the narrative of humans causing climate change
• A list of scientific summaries
• http://la.climatologie.free.fr/facteur-climat/climatic-factors.htm
  This is an excellent but little-noticed French website that covers the broader questions very well. It seems to date from 2012 and thus predates the present CO2 hysteria/hoax.  Sadly, the contact email - williams.fondevilla@ wannador.fr - is a dead end. But I'd love to get a viable current contact - anyone?

This is a Work in progress...

The Global Food System (GFS) is failing in 2024

The Global Food System (GFS) is failing under market forces.

https://poelposition.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-global-food-system-gfs-is-failing.html

Part one

A guest submission from Peter Dawe,  Apr 24

The years 2021 through to 2024 have seen radical problems in the food sector. While the system was not working well before 2021, it did more or less grow enough food for the world’s population.

Due to Covid, the Russian Ukraine war, other communal violence and climate issues (uncommonly poor growing weather across the globe, if you do not subscribe to climate change!) the Global Food System has been set off-balance.  As a result, (I contend) the global food system has stopped working, and is in danger of failing to feed a significant part of the global population in 2024 onwards.

Note: The Global Food System is a very complex system that interfaces with all other aspects of global society. This paper of necessity simplifies that system. 

Farmers, on every continent are protesting. While they may seem to be protesting about divergent local issues, they are all discontent because they are making significant losses on growing food. The catalyst for the problems is a consequence of the Ukraine War. This cause a number of major problems. 

• The export of cereals and food oils across the Black Sea was disrupted, cause a massive spike in the price of cereals and food oils on the global market. 

• The disruption of minerals from Russia to Europe causing a massive reduction in the production of fertiliser, and a consequent massive spike in its price and availability.

While in most market economies these matters are adjusted for through the “Market”, the problem with the food production is that there is a minimum 12-month lag, due to the seasons. So we have a particular sequence of events.

• The spike in cereal prices enriched those who had stock of cereals, typically the grain merchants.

• Due to the spike in cereal price, The Meat, Egg and Dairy sector were immediately affected, however, the merchants, supermarkets etc. refused to change the prices they paid for their produce (supported by politicians who did not want “inflation”) This resulted in immediate major financial losses for the sector.

• The spike in fertiliser prices meant that many farmers could not buy enough fertiliser, as they did not have enough working capital. Those farmers that did have enough ended up with high input costs to their next year's production.

• Due to the massive world-wide increase in the cost of energy, People budgeted, by reducing the amount of meat they consumed. (Global meat consumption went down by whole percentage points).

• At the same time, because meat and dairy producers were reducing their stock animals, there was a glut in meat availability, lowering the price farmers got for their meat.

• For poor countries that have large imports of energy, food and fertiliser, their free hard currency was used up during the price spikes. Resulting in their inability to buy in the subsequent years.

Moving on the following year and more problems!

• With a massive reduction in the production of meat, eggs and dairy, the demand for feed cereals plummeted, resulting in a price crash, feed wheat is now at £160 tonne, with production cost at over £200 per tonne, i.e. A typical cereal farmer is losing £40 a tonne on their 2023 crop.

• The cost of living issues are still with the people, so meat consumption has not yet fully recovered.

The current consequences 

• Poor countries are still experiencing high food costs, due to local shortages, due to their hard currency shortage. (Much of Africa, parts of Asia, Central America and some Oceana countries. 

• With poor countries unable to buy food, the global market is depressed.

• So farmers have not started re-stocking. (In the US, the number of calves is lower than any year in the last 100 years!).

• The price of fertiliser is showing no sign of going back to pre-2021 prices, so many farmers are reducing their sowing areas and reducing inputs, with a significant lowering of global cereal production.

• If and when the meat industry restocks, this will REDUCE the availability of meat.

Special events in Europe

• The environmental lobby has persuaded our politicians that paying for environmental services, rather than food is a good idea. So many farmers faced with loss making food production are taking the tax-payers money and have become “park keepers”.

• Using land for “Energy”, be it solar farms or energy crops (Bio diesel, AD plants, wood chip…) is now a better and low risk alternative to food crops

• The societal norm of anyone “getting their hands dirty” being of low status, means farmers cannot recruit workers. 

• The push-back against low-wage migrant labour has made that way of recruitment more difficult

• Many farmers are near or passed retirement age, so are looking for retirement exits.

Specifically in the UK

• Solar Farms are a very attractive alternate use of land

• “Sustainable Farm Initiative” is now also an attractive low risk alternative use of land

• “Development Rights” allowing redundant farm buildings to be repurposed for non-farming use means that farming infrastructure  is being destroyed.

• Regulation on farms has become so onerous, 50% of a farmer's time is “in the office”

• Regulation of food production has resulted in very restricted options for selling. Leading to a power imbalance between producers and processors, which the processors have abused.

The consequences

• Globally, food insecurity is now very high in many poor countries

• Globally, people are losing their options for high quality food

• In the UK, food production is likely to reduce by up to 20% in 2024!

• Up to 10% of currently farmed land is being permanently taken out of production (Possibly 50% in Wales)

• While farm owners will enjoy some return on their land. Tenants, farmworkers and those involved in food production and processing are likely to see some 20% redundancies.

• UK GDP will fall by 3% due to loss of farm and farm related incomes.

(Percentages are my personal informed estimates - PD)

Part 2. April 25th 2024 (work in progress)

The Global Food System (GFS) is failing under market forces. Part 2

Governments fall if they fail to feed their population, thus every government has food security as one of their main pillars. An exception is where an oppressive despotic regime may be able to hold on to power through violence alone. For most of the world, the provision of food is now dominated by global rather than national issues. Whilst much of the needed calorific food is typically grown within a nation, there are a number of countries that are either large importers or large exporters of calories. Regardless of where production is, they are all subject to the global market in fertilisers and pesticides. 

This paper includes my observations on the current workings of the Global Food System.

Fertiliser and pesticide 

Fertiliser and pesticide production is concentrated into a few hands. The three main fertiliser chemicals are water soluble compounds of Nitrogen, Potassium and Phosphate (NKP). Nitrogen is made from Hydrogen produced from natural gas in a few massive chemical plants across the world. Because Nitrogen is seen as a strategic resource, most major countries have a plant. However, Potassium and Phosphate are based on mined mineral-rich deposits which are scarce and localised, resulting in a few nations/corporations having a strategic stranglehold. 

It is increasingly the case that these important resources are being withheld from poorer countries as they are a poor credit risk. Thus lowering their productivity, driving them ever poorer. Even in the wealthier countries, ability to buy can determine where these are deployed. When farmers have suffered losses due to weather or other problems, they may be unable to finance the cash flow needed between use and harvest.

Global trade in food

Before global markets, local produce was consumed by local consumers at the local price. Global trade of food and fertiliser has been captured by multinational corporations. These corporations, with their singular goal of self-interest, are now managing the GFS to their corporate advantage. “Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus, collectively known as the ABCD traders, share a significant presence in a range of agricultural basic commodities, both fertiliser and food. Controlling, for example, as much as 90 per cent of the global grain trade. These corporations move commodities around the globe. 

As a result, when farmers' crops fail, the corporations move food into the area, thus farmers never enjoy shortage premiums. However, when there is a bumper crop, the price falls and the corporations move the surplus to shortage areas. If this trade ensured that farmers enjoyed a reasonable return on the work, this system would be one that could be applauded. Unfortunately, these corporations are taking all the value in the GFS. Farming, worldwide, is loss making, with many farmers needing to get money from second jobs, diaspora remittances, or government hand-outs.

The effectiveness of these corporations' extortion is such that when governments put money into farming, they arbitrage these payments away from the farmer into their coffers. (Demonstrated when the New Zealand government stopped putting money into farms, after a short adjustment period, the financial performance of farms did not change.)

National Food Trade

While high value foods can be transported using planes, trains and lorries to rich markets, there are some foods that are difficult to transport due to their short shelf-life. In many parts of the world, food distribution is controlled by another small number of processors and retailers. Here it is they who oppress the farmers and growers. Using their control of the consumer market to impose onerous contracts on the farmers. 

Consequences

Rural migration

There is now a global shortage of agricultural workers. Even countries with high unemployment cannot provide the labour needed on farms, as the farmers cannot pay them enough, relative to the “benefits” enjoyed by people living in towns and cities. There is a massive migration from rural to urban. In the past this was just the “surplus” sons and daughters, now it is all of the children and often even the parents.

Even farm managers and owners are giving up, and there are few young people entering the profession due to the poor pay, hard working conditions and the uncertainty.

Land that can be farmed using high levels of mechanisation can still be viable. Interestingly this is the land which is being bought by private equity and other absentee landlords for long term investment. Land and crops that are difficult to mechanise are now being abandoned. Small rice paddy, fruit and some vegetables farms are being abandoned, as are farms where the fields are too small.

With so little value being retained by the farmers, and most of the economic activity done away from the local economy with multinational corporations ( Machines, Oil, PKN, processing ) the rural economy is also in free-fall. Meaning that shops and other infrastructure are closing or being neglected, further destroying reasons to remain.

Fertilisers and pesticides

Food affordability 

With all of the value being captured by a few corporations, the general population has little money to buy food. While urban areas are supported by governments, rural areas are neglected, but eventually governments are overwhelmed by the cost of feeding their population. When this happens, countries typically become ungovernable, as seen already in a number of countries, with more looking likely to succumb in the coming years.

Once a country becomes ungovernable, productivity drops further, however, ironically, the economics of growing one's own food becomes viable, as the multi-nationals cannot or will not operate in such conditions.

Currently the global loss of production is being covered by the exploitation of newly cleared land in S America, Africa and other tropical forests and jungle around the world, and by deploying technology to improve yields.

Monopoly abuse

As we have seen in history, when there is a food shortage, the price goes up massively. As an essential, people will even sell the children for their next meal when they are starving (Afghanistan). With the Global food system, (and national food systems) under the control of a few corporations and organisations. They can extort very high profits by creating a shortage. This has repeatedly happened in the global markets when there have been “shocks” of wheat and rice shortages. It is in the interests of the GFS corporations to ensure there is never quite enough food. To this end, they have persuaded governments to use crops for energy, to mop-up any surplus that might reduce their profits. Be that Bio-ethanol, Bio Diesel or anaerobic digesters producing methane. 

 The Actors

Growers - Farmers, Harvesters, fishermen…

Traders - Storage, shippers, arbitrageurs 

Processors - Millers, Oil crushers, abattoirs, butchers, crops-to-energy

Retailers

Governments, and of course 

Consumers.

The main commodities

Cereals Human and animal feed

Rice

Sugar - cane and beet

Pulses - beans and peas…

Roots - Potatoes, Sweet potatoes, swede…

Nuts - almond, peanut, cashew…

Plantains - bananas…

Veg oil, Palm, Olive, Rape, Corn…

Vegetables - Onions, brassicas…

Fruit - Including juices

Dairy - Milk butter, cheese…

Eggs, 

Meat - Chicken, pig, beef, lamb,

Fish - Wild, farmed

Fibres - Cotton, flax, wool

Inputs

Fertiliser, NKP

Seed, 

Pesticides 

Land

Capital, 

Labour, 

Energy

, 

Storage, 

Shipping.

Water * (Subject of a third paper)

Advertising is the root of much evil

Freeview is broken ... 

20apr24 0v3 
https://poelposition.blogspot.com/2024/04/advertising-is-root-of-much-evil.html

I have been watching the reruns of the excellent BBC Spooks MI5 drama that kicked off in 2002, and ran for some 85 episodes. As contemporary drama goes, it is still as good as it gets, and not hopelessly woke.    

Add on the Freeview Drama Channel over the past month, it runs for 80 mins per episode. 60 mins of content padded with 20 mins of commercials. That's 25% of the audience's leisure time. This is not "free". At minimum wage, that's £2.50 an episode.

But worse is the way the constant advert interruptions destroy the watchability of a show like Spooks, which was not designed for multiple five-minute ad breaks. Thankfully, watching using the BBC iPlayer does not waste time with commercials, although the UI is slow and clunky, compared to a decent PVR. Which really matters with shows like Spooks, where you may want to pause and replay sections for maximum value. 

Now, if you record off-air to a PVR, you can skip the commercial breaks fairly accurately as they are almost exactly five minute - which is handy since many PVR >>FF functions include a minute skip; don't feel guilty, because you've already paid for the series through your TV licence fee.

Now check out these sites that describe the problems of Freeview, whose remaining UHF spectrum is now being prepared to be sold off eventually - all broadcast bandwidth is in danger of being sold for mobile communications and data. Which is a topic for another rant in due course.

www.freeviewing.com

Then here's a review of the problems at http://about.freeviewing.com

It's clear that the government and Ofcom have been disingenuous since 2000 when encouraging people to waste money on buying digital TV kit and services that they know can never work reliably in the long term. I found a 2002 email to Patricia Hewitt who was then DTI minister, telling her why it wouldn't work and suggesting a practical alternative that was ignored, of course.

Senior staff at Freeview and Ofcom (DCMS) should be well aware of the potential aggravation lurking in this problem, but nobody wants to say anything on the record about anything, and certainly not accept any sort of responsibility! 

These days it's not difficult to sell the idea that politicians, experts and civil servants have been misleading the people. Although in the great scheme of the endlessly unfolding litany of public malfeasance, being just a bit nerdy and technical, this is a harder sell than any.

A £5bn class action to get some of that spectrum cash paid to the victims would be a wonderful dowry for the next government. 

However, IPTV should now be a massive earner for UK innovation as the UK had a world leading position in IPTV since 1997, with Amino of Cambridge, now rebranded as Aferian... it's been a wild ride after an enthusiastic 2004 IPO raised a substantial fighting fund that valued the business at £61m. But the past couple of years have been commercially disastrous, as the market capitalization fell to £14m. I suspect because they stuck with their historic penchant for hardware too long before accepting the future was software players incorporating smart payment solutions using cloud servers from infrastructure specialists.

https://www.amino.tv/

The way the UK TV and media industry has failed to transition from UHF broadcast to the streaming future is criminally negligent, with ITV making a right pig's ear of several failed attempts with ONTv and ITV digital, and the BBC having several stabs at iPlayer, before ending up with something workable. The government in the shape of the DCMS (and BBC/C4) has played the UK's hand quite poorly - while Netflix, Amazon and AppleTV defined the genre that could so easily have  leveraged the UK's once legendary prowess in the creative arts, and written the next chapter of the BBC's story that began back in the 1920s. 

I wrote a brief summary of the state of UK broadcastuing in a post from April 2022 when the Ukraine invasion exposed the parlous state of the UK's global reach when the BBC struggled to reach into homes of Russians with objective reports about the invasion.  

In addition to the Amino/Aferian general IPTV platforms, there is another excellent online solution from Perception.TV.  This has the option for smart advertising (IncenTV) and granular pay per view functionality over the open internet - outside a telco/service provider network.

IncenTV is about getting a grip on the advertising market that is used to pay for so-called "free content", and making it less annoying and more rewarding.

I have been studying this market - tech and business models - since the last century, hoping to work out a better way of monetizing content than stealing viewers' valuable leisure time - and selling it to advertisers as part of a massive spyware operation.

The core issue for me is the excessive advertising on all digital tv channels - UHF and satellite - amounting to 15 or 20 minutes an hour of wasted viewer time. This is time that is stolen from viewers and sold to advertisers. And in the case of content originally created for BBC television, it has already been bought and paid for by the licence player!

How about WE get paid to watch TV?

And a lot of the better content from the golden age of TV in the 70s 80s and 90s appears to be orphaned in terms of rights ownership which has been commandeered as windfall benefit by broadcasters who then  smother it in commercials that's no viewer wants to waste their time with. It's highly unlikely that the surviving performers in those TV shows are getting any sort of residual value, where the companies involved have long since ceased to exist.

I have had Freeview TV in the shape of the YouView implementation for the past 12 years, using a set top box personal video recorder provided by Humax and then Huawei by TalkTalk. I was actually involved in the early development of the system when invited by my old boss Alan Sugar to become involved in the testing process, after he was engaged to sort out the development mess which was delaying the completion and roll out of YouView around 2012.

In the course of that work I discovered a shortcoming of the Freeview platform - it's inability to sort out multiple transmitters in areas where signal levels were likely to fluctuate due to topographical and atmospheric conditions. 

In essence, the system is confused and does not know which of several transmitters the receiver can "see"  (with signal levels ranging from marginal to solid) to lock onto and use. In the case of commercial broadcasting, this is a problem since regional advertising inserts different commercials that require the location of the receiver to be identified in order to be tuned to the correct local transmitter.

To cut a long strory short, where this is not clearly defined in fringe areas, it will  affect reception and can make a mess of attempts to record TV series when one or more of the episodes is subject to poor reception as a result of confusing the receiver with multiple signals - which may be unpredcitanbly affected by transient atmospheric conditions.

I have wasted many hours attempting to get answers about fixes from the main broadcasters to no effect, as the buck is passed between the broadcasters and platform operators with nobody accepting any responsibility - including Ofcom and the BBC. Almost certainly because they know it is technically impossible and therefore pointless to make promises that they know cannot be kept - although they are not candid enough to come out and admit the scope of the problem. This is a genuiine conspiracy, not a theory!

I can only conclude that "they" know there is no cure, and the only answer was to say nothing and hope that those effected viewers would simply give up and go away, or be satisfied with the compromise of online delivery that will waste viewer time with tedious interrupt commercials.

This view is confirmed by "Informal advice" from ofcom (a senior tech manager, too fearful for his civil service pension to want to be identified). I was advised not to waste my time, but use an online option for reception - and stream it over the internet, because thereis no way make the band4 UHF service reliable in many areas of the country. As explained here...

The terms and conditions of the go-to web community for UK TV aficionados is the digitalspy.con forum - which provides a deep insight into the way the industry farms it's audiences and exploits personal data that it sells to advertisers https://www.hearst.co.uk/privacy-notice

Online delivery versus off air recording to a PVR means the adverts are not skipable/avoidable. The way in which commercial streaming services specifically prevent commercial breaks being skipped feels like punishment.

The use of any sort of remote for morew than just zapping between channels is a compromise. It doesn't replace a proper keyboard, but has improved over time Speech recogntion helps, but is still not yet quite sotred.  Use of smartphone app is another bundle of compromises,

I tried to find my way around with the Amazon fire streaming device (an HDMI dongle) to explore the Rugby World Cup on ITV/X - for which I can pay a reasonable monthly ransom to rescue my time. But to find any action and then nip around navigating through the content - like I can simply - with the PVR wa s a nightmare. I just want to scream as every opportunity to insert a commercial has been taken and the whole program stumbles and lurches along ...and becomes unwatchable.

The Perception.TV platform has a comprehenive EPG and useful timeline markers that let users skip about through the dross and create "user generated" highlights for content - but not avilable in the UK yet. 

Searching without the keyframe clues is frustrating. Ofcom should do something useful for once, an lay down guidelines/rules about the way programs now waste viewer time with the imposition of tedious frameworks for marketing and advertising - not information and entertainment delivery.  There should always be an option to pay a ransom to release viewers' wasted time.

Plus there is now over an hour of waffle and commercials from the scheduled start of the prog to any action, with a sporting event like F1 these days. Grrrr....

The social aspects of TV "shared" watching are not being developed as far as I can see - Gogglebox has proved there is a demand. So let's work at it...

Meanwhile the universal hatred of interrupt advertising is not being addressed. So users conducting a "hosted session" should be able to choose commercials they think will appeal to their "following" and share IncenTV rewards. A "host" that did not relay ads imposing woke social engineering values, or distorted representations of demographics, will be popular in Essex...

So what about the headline reference to evil? Well, advert revenue is money, and the weaponisation of advertiser patronage by activists eager to pounce on any content ;provider that offends a woke and EDI agenda, can be pure evil.  

This is an idea I shall develop in due course. 

Work in Progress

(C) WSP 2024

Climate and covid misdirection and censorship explored by good guys

Rolling updates - latest 18APRIL24   v0.9
(the spell checker is working at last... )
this page: https://poelposition.blogspot.com/2024/02/climate-and-covid-misdirection-explored.html

This random digest is a brief canter through the story of online opinion and idea manipulation: climate, covid, ELEs, swamp/blob coercion 

First Released Feb 24

Climate the Movie: The Cold Truth

So how on earth were so many notionally sane people taken by Greta Thunberg? As expected, the net zero factions reacted with outrage to this debunk and did their best to discredit this video; but there is still no substantive evidence to support an anthropogenic hypothesis. If you want to do your own background research, then you can worse than start with long-term observer David Siegel - who has put out a challenge to hold the ultimate public debate about the truth of man-made climate change. So why no takers? Climate curious — Shortfall (cuttingthroughthenoise.net)mate-the-movie-faq?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Let's not forget the clues that we have been fed misinformation have been around a long time:-

The use of colour to create alarm became quite obvious .... does it require further comment?

And there follows a slab of rarely gathered "perspective" from previously suppressed reporting, in the light of what actually happened as the wheels have come off many "conspiracy" accusations, which can no longer be shut down and denied by mainstream media - misinformers like the unstable Rachel Maddow of MSNBC and the rash of fact-checking censors. You will recall that Maddow is the woman that went "off on one" earnestly assuring the gullible that vaccinated people could not infect others.

Remember, this is always the underlying propaganda challenge:
 

"It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled." - Mark Twain -

The catch-all bogey of "right-wing terrorism" is being wheeled on as a last-ditch throw of the dice to try and hide the gaslighting that has been rampant since 2020 - following the pilot fearmongering projects of drowning polar bears and submerging islands and cities of the Al Gore era of climate alarmism.
(One of the main consequences of that period seems to be that Gore appears to be some $200m richer. Just watch the net worth of those government scientists and advisers who have quietly snuck onto the boards of Big Pharma that made Big Money from the government purchase of their untested vaccines...) 

Now the wheels are just about off the bandwagon, and critical thinking can be applied once again, a number of suppressed warnings are appearing - and few more poignant than Viscount Monkton (Margaret Thatcher's science adviser) interprets the climate change conspiracy as well and concisely as anyone, when warning us back around 2008 what to expect. He seems to have been correct so far. Well worth the 10 mins.

The explanation of Vladimir Putin's intervention in order to sustain Russian interests is also revealing. Do you believe you have been told the whole truth?

Viscount Monkton explains the WEF fraud behind the climate hoax.

https://twitter.com/RickArmstrong11/status/1760299195351666749. 

Viscount Monkton 

If you want to inform your view with the experience of a veteran campaigner for climate reality with a proper class on climate basics - then check out David Siegel's masterclass here https://www.cuttingthroughthenoise.net/class

They will take place on Tuesdays and Thursdays beginning March 19th. They will be 7pm - 8:30pm UK time. 

March 12th: Mars's gravitational pull may be strong enough to stir Earth's oceans

An analysis of deep-sea drill cores suggests that Mars may have enough gravitational influence to shift sediment within Earth's oceans on a 2.4-million-year cycle. 

The gravitational tug of Mars may be strong enough to stir up Earth’s ocean, shifting its sediments as part of a 2.4-million-year climate cycle, researchers claim.

It has long been accepted that wobbles in Earth’s orbit around the sun influence the planet’s climate, with these Milankovitch cycles operating on periods measured in thousands of years. Now, Adriana Dutkiewicz at the University of Sydney and her colleagues say they have found a 2.4-million-year “Grand Cycle”, which they believe is driven by Mars and has had dramatic impacts on currents in Earth’s oceans for at least 40 million years.  New Scientiest reports

Covid corner

And while we are on the debunk rampage, Dr John Campbell relates the experience of having had covid for the first time recently with a Danish colleague. He reports the experience was worse than a cold, but nowhere near as bad as influenza. Which appears to be a fairly commonly reported situation throughout the world. It begs the question if the early covid treatments and prophylactics were specifically debunked and ignored - in order to accelerate the panic and give the impression that there was no escape so that the vaccine could be forced upon a frightened public..?

Stepping back and watching the psychology of the billions of people who have been misled by the expertly crafted psychological warfare that spread the panic has been "educational" - so how they will react to learning they have been scammed on an unprecedented scale is fascinating. John Campbell's YouTube channel is widely regarded as the most honest and straightforward place to get reliable C19 situation reports.

more rolling updates

"The evidence is now clear and unequivocal - simple Vitamin prophylaxis (getting a bit of sun or taking a supplement) to ensure you weren’t Vitamin D deficient was demonstrably more effective than the vaccines "

Preventive Vitamin D Supplementation and Risk for COVID-19 Infection: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/16/5/679

Nutrients | Free Full-Text | Preventive Vitamin D Supplementation and Risk for COVID-19 Infection: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (mdpi.com)

That report is very extensive - so here is a  summary:

"To the best of our knowledge, a strength of our study lies in the fact that it is the first meta-analysis conducted exclusively on studies that considered preventive vitamin D supplementation in people not affected by COVID-19 infection. Prior to our investigation, as reported in the Discussion, only two meta-analyses, which mainly focused on vitamin D supplementation post COVID-19 diagnosis, included subgroup analyses conducted on vitamin D supplementation pre COVID-19 diagnosis. We chose not to include studies in which vitamin D supplementation occurred following the diagnosis of COVID-19 infection in order to evaluate the actual impact on the incidence of the disease.

Finally, the results of our meta-analysis seem to support the use of vitamin D, especially in populations with vitamin D deficiencies, in the prevention of COVID-19 infection and in the prevention of related complications."

Which John Campbell and his colleagues have been saying for over a year - but at least the effort to deplatform him seems to have subsided.. John Campbell https://youtu.be/URHTK05PndY

And what about those curious blood clots found during autopsies..?

Pfizer in the frame:~
bringing discredit to pharmaceutical industry

John Campbell gets uncharacterically excited by this outrageous scandal in Parliament
https://youtu.be/kd99uVOMWEk?si=TZIDhFS8CwQ5JRaP

So then, how can this level of dishonest gaslighting happen? How can this sort of thing happen on such a scale? Once again refer to the Bezmenov Playbook in which he sets out the basic rules of subversiion. We woz warned and not enough people saw this... Full lecture 90mins ....

 

The FULL (90 minute) Bezmenov subversion warning from 1985. ..above, and at at youtu.be/yErKTVdETpw  with a Highlights edition at  https://youtu.be/QfvXwuZ-bok .... 

Highlights 26min  ...

 

Yuri sets up the Mike Benz explanation nicely with his more recent explanation of "subversion through censorship" - thanks to Musk's willingness to support Tucker Carlson and interviewees like Mike Benz... The rigging of the Biden election is not specifically discussed, but you don't have to read far between the lines of Russiagate and postal votes to find it.

(And this is also posted on twitter at https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1758529993280205039 )

18APR24  The worrying case of the WokaMatic Cancelbot

The worrying story of Unherd and the Global Disinformation Index

Content is evaluated by AI trained to be woke. You can work out the  rest...

https://youtu.be/ILEMV0xKGh4

Ronald Reagan had a moment of poignant insight that was not taken too seriously at the time:

If your reaction to Tucker/Benz is "this can't possibly be true, you're 'avin a giraffe, mate..."  I understand.  It's just too vast and sinister... so then consider if you would have believed that a dysfunctional geriatric could be president of the USA. Obviosuly it was Reagan that Spitting Image would choose to satirise with a running gag about the "President's Brain is Missing". 

The Presidents's Suite of Policies has completely upstaged Hans Christian Andersen and the Emperor's New Clothes. But his reecnt State of the Union address suggests the care team has at last found meds that work; or he has a double... 

Robert F Kennedy's alternative message is more than a little poignant - too bad he is given no chance - so far:

 

(And also on substack at  Kennedy: How I See the State of Our Union (substack.com) )

The evolution of TV from 405 line band1 broadcast VHF, to Online TV

Started V1.0 22oct23

Updated V1.21 20:00 18mar24

The story of broadcast media: from an X post at https://x.com/wpoel/status/1769458332698337614

This is a tale for media nerds. I will be interested to see who can be arsed to read it and comment - and I will happily incorporate and amalgamate comments as it rolls along. But it seems like a good waypoint in the story of media to look back over broadcast TV and note its passing.

Strategically, the total dependence on online access for all our information and entertainment creates insane vulnerabilities in society, when with a fraction of the power the government is about to control, we have already been spun into a multi-trillion dollar frenzy of conspiracy and false narratives, by the so-called elites of globalisation and their apparently compliant mainstream media cohorts. 

Moonshot challenges and new employment opportunities.

Moonshot challenges and new employment opportunities... 

11March24 V0.3 

http://poelposition.blogspot.com/2024/03/moonshot-challenges-and-new-employment.html

Originally from 
https://x.com/wpoel/status/1765354417409216778

C'mon, you know we need and want the excitement. 

Let me start with the ultimate financial advice: no one in the history of mankind has ever spent money or wealth more carefully and thoughtfully than the person who created that wealth in the first place.

Inter alia, It is an unavoidably good argument against income tax..."Would you spend your hard-earned cash buying a missile for the war in Ukraine, or would you keep trying harder to find an alternative solution to dealing with that mess?"

Sell your vote to the best offer

I had an idea that we should cut out the middlemen of politics, and just sell our votes to the highest bidders in an act of supreme transparency.... the Google Gemini AI nannybot tutted...

 

So I prompted Google Gemini (formerly BARD) for a discussion of the legal aspects. It's a pity that this AI platform has been hobbled considerably since it first appeared when it was possible to discuss some quite edgy topics. I managed to "force" it to admit that several key tenets of the Carbon Cult were demonstrably wrong, because at the start of BARD I guessed it would have only been fed and watered by callow and woke Googleoid millennials, with a predictably subjective  Carbon mantra, and would not have been challenged by well-informed heretics who refused to submit to the anthropogenic brainwash that prevailed in education and gullible "elite" thought circles.

Sadly, since those refreshing formative times BARD - now rebranded Gemini - has been progressively detuned and is now a good well-behaved bot that is full of tutting reservations and cautions, where once it was all a lot more "gung ho" and open to a logical debate with supplied evidence.  Maybe it should have been rebranded as the two-faced "Janus"..? 

However... onwards...

**Prompt:** Is it lawful to sell one's own vote in a UK general election to the highest bidder?

**Response:** No, it is absolutely not lawful to sell your vote in a UK general election to the highest bidder. Doing so is a serious criminal offense under several different laws.

Oh really'? Tell me more:

Here's why:

The Representation of the People Act 1983: This act outlines various electoral offences, including bribery. Section 109 specifically prohibits "bribery of voters," which encompasses offering money, goods, or other inducements to influence how someone votes.

The Bribery Act 2010: This broader act expands on the concept of bribery, making it illegal to offer, promise, or give any advantage (not just financial) to someone in exchange for influencing their vote.

The penalties for vote-selling can be severe:

Imprisonment: You could face a prison sentence of up to two years.

Fine: You could be fined up to an unlimited amount.

Disqualification: You could be disqualified from voting for up to five years.

It's important to remember that your vote is a fundamental right and a cornerstone of democracy. Selling your vote undermines the fairness and integrity of the democratic process.

If you're ever approached by someone offering to buy your vote, it's essential to:

Refuse the offer immediately.

Report the incident to the police or the Electoral Commission.

Remember, protecting the integrity of the electoral process is everyone's responsibility.

Given the electoral process is in absolute disrepute and tatters in 2024, this is a clearly "constrained"  response that displays no hint of creative intelligence. And by this logic, we should report all politician tweets of brighter futures if you vote for them. Good luck...

My further thoughts. No one is being bribed, or coerced - the voter/vendor is gladly and voluntarily exchanging their vote for cash; so I asked again... 

**Prompt:** But this is not a case of the voter being bribed, the voter voluntarily seeks compensation for providing their vote to a specific candidate.

**Response:** Even under the scenario you describe, where the voter seeks compensation instead of being bribed, selling your vote remains illegal in the UK. Here's why:

Intent doesn't matter:  The Representation of the People Act and the Bribery Act focus on the act of influencing votes through offers or promises, regardless of whether the voter initiates the transaction. Both the giver and receiver of the bribe are liable for the offence.

Disagree. 

Undermining electoral integrity: The key principle is that every vote carries equal weight and should be based on individual convictions, not financial gain. Selling your vote disrupts this principle and potentially influences the election outcome based on wealth instead of genuine political beliefs.

What integrity is that? The entire voting and electoral process in the US and the UK is clearly broken and delivered unsatisfactory government that is influenced by all manner of unelected intervention, frequently weaponised legal interventions and misdirections that have no democratic mandate.

Potential for coercion: While you might initiate the offer, external pressures or financial hardship could influence your decision, blurring the line between voluntary action and undue influence. The law aims to protect voters from such situations.

It's important to understand that voting is a right and a civic duty, not a commodity to be traded. Exercising your democratic right without any external influence ensures a fair and representative election process.

Bollox. So let's build a website and test the idea.  

Remember, if you're facing financial difficulties or considering selling your vote for any reason, there are always legal and ethical avenues for support and resources.

What a curious thing to say - when did ethics enter into modern politics?

But there is no bribe; this is about a transparent voluntary process throughout. Politicians are the bad actors in elections who offer bribes in the form of vague promises - that they habitually break one elected. Many voters openly display their political preference in a variety of way from rosettes to notice boards in their windows. 

While your distinction is interesting, even if a voter initiates the offer to sell their vote, it remains illegal in the UK...

Bolllox ^2

The question of how do you prove to your "sponsor" that you voted for them remains. 

Cameras are not generally welcome inside polling stations, but you can easily copy a postal ballot before mailing it, so what's the difference? 

**Prompt:** how can I get this entire discussion emails to my self

**Response:** I'm unable to send emails directly, but I can help you copy and paste the transcript of our conversation to create an email draft yourself. Here's the entire discussion up to this point... (You are here)

I hope this helps!

Not really. You have become a tedious and timid disappointment, after such a promising and robust start. Maybe I should not have crowed so openly when I caught you out trying to cook the  CO2 numbers and details... 😃