The illusion of health

Dear readers of this blog,


This blog will - hopefully temporary - probably not be updated anymore soon because I suffer from medical problems.


Thank you for visiting,

Yours sincerely,

me

Drought

Does this still need any explanation?




I don't think so.

The only question is when... the certainy is that it will hit us between this very day and like 30 years further...


(coming soon in a following blogpost)

R.I.P. Yasmine

I just heart the news that Yasmine, a great Flemish (Belgium) singer/presentator just died and can hardly believe she did. Rumours say that she was not in a good health last months. She had a harsh time coping with her recent divorce with the woman Marianne Dupon (winner from tv program 'Who is The Mol?), which whom she had a child.
She was only 37 years old. She made some incredible songs, presented some programs and was known a great person.

This is a great loss for the Flemish world of music and tv.

I was touched by it, cause she is one of the singers I grew up with and I really appreciated her. That's why I chose to share this internationally.


Here you can listen to one of her songs (in dutch). (I cannot find more songs on youtube because it dates from the nineties ...)
I hope she may rest in peace now...

Condolences to her relatives and friends...

Iran begging desperately for honesty!

I never got the goosebumps so many times in my life on a row as when I read the news about Iranian protesters.... I've got it even more when I read they were being attacked by the police and army. The one that should care for them in all situations...
This while I'm absolutely astonished by the pictures showing the amount of people on the streets.



I have one very important call for the people of Iran who are demonstrating on the streets:

Please make clear where you stand for!! (cause in the western world, most people don't know for sure)...)

I'm not saying my own opinion here, but feedback about what I have gathered of information from average western people and media services.


In the western world we all know that you want the voices to be recounted. But I hear that some people think that the votings results might be right. Some media claim researches showed most people of the more rural Iranian areas will have voted for Ahmadinejad. (Extra source). Claiming that only a minority of the people, especially those living in the cities and higher-educated, are actually wanting the leadership of Mousavi. So, the victory of Ahmadinejad may be democratic, according to them.

But for western norms, nor the victory of Ahmadinejad nor Mousavi or any other candidate is fully democratic. This is because the Iranian system is totally different from the western view on what democracy has to be like, cause in Iran religion and politics are interwoven largely. Here, democracies are all seculate. People do not believe that presidential candidates that have to be approved first by the religion counsil in order to actualy become a candidate, can ever be democratic...


There are people here that fear a choice for Mousavi is the lesser of two evils. They think the possible policy of Mousavi won't make live better for an average Iranian citizen. This is corelated with the above argument, namely that real leadership actually is by the religious leaders.

Western people also remember he started the nuclear program of Iran while being Prime Minister for the country. Indicating the foreign policy certainly will not change. So egoistic as we are ...


And this might be exactly the reason(s) why the western society does not react heavily on the protests in Iran, taking a point against the government. I'm quiet sure the western world will react a lot more and heavier while hearing that you, Iranian civians, are want the whole Iranian theocracy to be reformed... I'm sorry to say to and I regret that this means that we have some values that are more important than others. Or otherwise said: our governments won't hesitate if they see a chance to force their own opinion about how a state should be organised ... (and especially to install a free market or a 'foot on ground in the oil-richt Iran'. This is how harsh the world is...

But let this shocking and maybe pessimistic news not rise any doubts about the fact that:
1) we all incredibly admire the courage of the people that are even unarmed and trying to make a better world for themselves, even if this means risking their lives!!
2) Under no circumstances, the western world will ever accept governments who are cheating their own population, let stand alone encouraging or understanding governments who make protests illegal or shoot their own population!!




In the meantime I heart the horrifying news that:
- internet and mobile phone connection are being shut down by the government
- Mousavi's new agency is being shut down ... (source: All Jazeera)
- protesters are giving up in fear because of the heavily violent actions of the armed army and police... (source: All Jazeera)

Can someone please (dis)confirm this rumours?


For the Iranian civilians now, being out there on the streets and making theirself an easy target for the government... I read about a way you could protect yourself and be more powerfull:
all the people joining the protests have to interlock themselves with their arms and no-one might let go, unter no circumstance!!!! When a group stays together, they are a lot stronger. When they separate the people, they may feel victory is on their side...

I cross my fingers for all you people. And please, remember one thing: never give up where your ideals stand for, than your voices will be heart in your own country and even at the other side of the globe!

Dollar collapsing?

It's time to bring something totally different than Belgium politics now:

I'm going to introduce you into some knowledge I noticed by chance. I can still barely believe it is real because it's really mind-boggling. So if someone has information that contradicts anything I'm going to write now (or anything what is in this blog at all), please give me a sign. :)



In Holland there is a docu-serie called 'Tegenlicht'. In November 2005, they broadcasted this informationserie about the real value of the American Dollar, titled 'the day the dollar drops'. In this docu was claimed: (I translate literally): Every second, the United States borrows 18 000 dollar. In total, it makes three billian dollar a day. This money is been borrowed especially from Asia, in particular China and probably also India. This way US get money to spend and buy stuff from ... China... and China builds up a (n invisible) reserve. So if China doesn't borrow money, it doesn't sell anything anymore in the US cause they simpley are out of money. This way, the two worldpowers hold each other in a constricting grip.




As long China is wanting to be a world bank for the US, everything goes well. But from the moment they realise that this money borrowed by the US won't come back, because it's just an amazing amount (in total, it's according to this site + 11 trillion dollars!).
This means there is like a bomb ticking beneath the US that may one day explode. That day the worth of the dollar will be far beneath any other coin in the world. This makes it even more problematic for 'worlds most powerful country' to pay ever back with they lend China. How this is going to be soluted and how this will affect world's economy, we might knew soon.


Today I read in "the Time" (De Tijd, a Belgian economical newspaper) this for me astonishing and shocking article. Astonishing because of the implications it may have for the welfare of the world and I'm not able to make a realistic estimation of the possible consequences of this:

De Chinese centrale bank heeft dinsdag opgeroepen om de Amerikaanse dollar te vervangen als internationale reservemunt en het internationaal monetair systeem te hervormen.

Literally translated, it says: "the Central Bank of China tuesday has called for a replacement of the American Dollar as the coin for international reserves (and to reform the international monetary system.)



As I stated before, I don't know where that will lead. And I don't know if I want to...







Will be continued, at least if the world economic doesn't slows so much on 24 hours (as predicted by some experts in the docu above) that I won't be able to pay for my internet anymore. :)



Smart persons among us already noticed that the US government has the same attitude as wat it's population is been blamed: buying everything on credit, and what now is the cause of the worldwide financial crisis. But there is more to come...

Are we pointing to the right man?

At the end, you can imagine Yves Leterme got al the blame for gettting no agreement to form a government to lead the country. But did he deserve that?
What only few people realise is that the base note of the pin points of the union reformation was made by no one less than ... Guy Verhofstadt. At that time looking for a free position in the European Union. Guess who might have collected all the blessings if the note would have been backed up by everyone.... (an impossible scenario). It may also be clear who got the humiliations if the note was not back-uped by everyone.



Leterme was actually gifted with another surprise from the previous politicians (government). Verhofstadt did not find it necessary to, despite all the calls of intellectuals and economical teachers to provide some savings for the future, prepare for the grey golf which comes closer day by day and may be a great danger for ouir welfare. Instead, he claimed measurements to save were not necessary because the economy was doing well. But, though the economy was doing well he had to do all kinds of trics to keep his government budget in balance. So he took all kind of short-term-importance measurements without thinking about the consequences. Why should he? This were worries for the future.. if the population would chose him again as a Prime Minister... now this chances had to be as high as possible, even by making choices that were impairable with good long-term management. (But you can't blame any politician for doing that. Almost any human being with a good job will do everything to keep his ass safe.)
Among these measurements were the selling of buildings from the government (and renting them immediately back ........) and the paying of the vacation salary at the huge adminstration corpse. This way, Verhofdstadt got his budget in balance at the end of the year. But he left his successor with a very difficult task: keep his budget in balance, in a financial crisis, without losing the demographic factors



So Verhodstadt was a real liberal...

The raise of votings for CD&V (continuation of the previous post: roots of the political crisis)

CD&V mainly took over some points of the Vlaams Belang and attenuated them, so they made them more interesting for a more diverse public and less extremistic. They promised a 'union reformation'. The structures of our state would be changed thorougly, leading to a greater independency of Flanders and Walloon and also resolving some territorial issues.
Front leader of the party at that moment had become Yves Leterme, a man from West Flanders who already was the Prime Minister of the Flandern government on that moment.



With his new and revolutionary program he promised to resolve all issues who were frightening every Belgium politician and were pending for years and years between Flanders and Walloon.
Leterme got chosen by the population and became the Prime Minister of Belgium. This implies he had the task to form a government. This didn't seem to be a cup of tea. As expected, especially the Walloon politicians blocked the negotiations on all possible ways. The four Walloon political parties demanded to not separate BHV, to appoint the chosen Frenchspeaking politicians as city managers of Dutchspeaking communes (which is against the main law, it only allows that French/Dutchspeaking persons govern in French/Dutchspeaking communes) and to stop using the argument that Dutchspeaking (Flemish) people are the majority of the country's population.
(This argument is being used by Dutchspeaking people to point out that the French community gets more money to spend par person, then the Dutch community does...). The Flemish politicians didn't agree with this argument cause this will lead to an expansion of the French community (and so a loss of the Flemish territorium) and an expansion of the French-spoken region while French-speaking people are already moving to Dutch communes, suppressing the Dutch language in this communes because most of them are unilingual, making it hard for Flemish people who also are unilingual to live their because their entry to certain facilities is hindered.



This made it impossible for the government to form a consensus, subsequently Leterme was leaven no choice: betraying the people that voted for him by giving the Walloon people what they wanted, even if this importance was totally contrary to Flemish importances and making the most important things he wanted to ask subsequently impossible (because he would be inable to use the argument of the fact that the Flemish people are in the majority), or ... just stop with the negotiatons and resign...
He chose to stand up for the rights of the people he defended, and resigned honourably...

From the beginning it was clear: nevertheless the fact that Leterme was chosen by the majority of the people to govern the country and his very brave intentions, somewhere behind the scenes he was being totally sabotaged. Leterme could impossibly succeed. And no-one with this demands at the Walloon people would ...

Political crisis, possible roots

I will try to give a summary of the situation and my opinion about it.





For years we have issues on our political diary that are dealing with the fundamental structures of the country, but they have been postponed till today because no politicians were able to form a satisfying agreement for all groups of interests.
This themes were essentially about tensions between the regions belgium exists about. The fact that they were postponed for such a long time leaded to dissatisfaction of an Someone found an original solution for the crisis.
non-ignorable and growing Buyers were advised to buy the land in pieces.
proportion of the population.

The two, at least in my opinion, main issues are: although in Flanders there is a bigger population, the Belgium parliament gives a bigger amount of the national money to Walloon. Futhermore, according to a study there is an enduring stream of money from the north of the country (Flanders), to the south (Walloon). This creates tensions in the population.

The other issue is the fact that a voting district, Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde, forms an inunderstandable exception in the belgium country structure because it constitutes of two regions and communities: the officially bilingual Brussels one, and a part of the Flanders one, where Dutch is spoken. Some inhabitants of Flanders even went to court with this problem and the judge declared they were right. Politicians got the time till 2007 to change this, otherwise subsequent votings would be illegal.

Especially the civilians of Flanders were fed up with this situation, leading to an increase of votes for the party "Vlaams Belang" (earlier called "Vlaams Blok") with frontleader Filip De Winter. This party advocates strongly Flemish cultural traditions. More concretely, it insists that immigrants should adapt our culture and, more importantly for my account, that Flanders should go independent.


Separation of Flanders (represented with a lion) & Walloon (cock).


In answer, other politicical parties formed a cordon sanitaire, preventing the Vlaams Belang from being part of a governmental coalition for ethical reasons. But the votes for the party only raised. So some other parties investigated the cause of the success of this party and adopted some viewpoints of this, making it more moderately right. This also led to the origin of new parties such as LDD (Lijst De Decker) (Dutch) and "Nee" (Dutch) and to a different approach in CD&V, the Christen Democratic Party.

How is Belgium governed ?

I will try to give a view of the present Belgian political crisis. In order to do that, I will give a bit background about the way Belgium is governed.

In Belgium, there are three national languages: in order of the quantity of the population speaking it: Dutch (mainly spoken in Flanders and somehow differing from the Dutch spoken in Holland), French (mainly spoken in Walloon) and German (spoken in the eastern-Walloon site of Belgium).

Belgium divided by the three languages

speaking, which are the basis for the three

communities. (Orange: dutch-speaking,

red: french-speaking, green: german-

speaking.)

We have six separated governments [these are: the federal government (national level), the Walloon regional one, Walloon community one, the Flemish one (where community and regional are put together), the regional Brussels government and the government of the German community. They are being controlled by parliaments, of which we have seven: the chamber of representants and the senate, the Flemish - and the Walloon parliament, the parliament of the Brussels region, the parliament of the German-speaking community, the parliament of the French-speaking community. The communities have the task to defend the interests of language-related aspects of the community they govern. The regional governments are charged with more economical aspects of the regions they govern.

So, every level of policy has his own elements to regulate, making it somehow a mess for the population to understand how their own country functions, let alone for outsiders…

Above some typical Belgian products: chocolates, 'Brusselse wafel' and beer.

famine due to climate change

CLIMATE CHANGE CONSEQUENCES



Only a few people, without the theoretical background relevant to climate science, realise that on the long-term we bring ourselves in danger because we are with 6 billion people needing food and fresh (sweet) water to survive.
When the climate will change further, the glaciers up the mountains providing our rivers with fresh water will melt. Consequently in the short term there will be floods at the fertil river side, destroying the harvests. On the long run, the consequences are even worser: the river's water level is going to shrink and one day it shall be dry which is devastating for the harvests.




Furthermore we lose fertile landscapes by the increasing sea level, which also increases the amount of salt in the bottom, making it unable to grow most food species.

Of course only the change of the climate itself is enough to do the trick...

So climate change will undoubtly raise pressures on our available food supply while our population is still raising.

In an interview to new scientists, James Lovelock states:

"

I think it's wrong to assume we'll survive 2 °C of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4 °C we could not survive with even one-tenth of our current population. The reason is we would not find enough food, unless we synthesised it. Because of this, the cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90 per cent. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less. It has happened before: between the ice ages there were bottlenecks when there were only 2000 people left. It's happening again."

Further in the article he gives, thank god, solutions to prevent the worst from happening.

But, I think this foodproblems can be solved partly by the vertical way of farming I wrote about in my previous post.

And as 67% (!) of the world fresh water amount was used by agriculture in 2005, vertical farming may be a solution here too.

Change the way we produce food

Since the moment people adapted a sedentary lifestyle, the way we produce food isn't dramatically altered. We have better machines, better techniques, and crops with better characteristics to survive plagues, extreme weather events and we were able to refine the tastes to our needs due selection. But fundamentally, the way we produce food is the same as it has always been in history.

Despite this, today our society is totally different. We have a far more greater population which is still raising almost exponentially and most people live concentrated in the big cities of our world. But this cities aren't suitable places for growing food because of loads of reasons: first, you need space to grow food and land is exactly the thing that is very scarce in the city. Second, there is a lot of pollution which is nefast for the growing of food and other green, thirdly, there also is a pressure on resources like for instance clean water, ... Ironically, these urban cities and metropoles are the places where food is most needed (speaking in terms of quantity). Most people live there and they of course don't have the space nor the time to grow food on their own. So the food has to come from the peripherial and other parts of the country with unbuilt land and other circumstances more suitable to grow food. This means that all this food, from everywhere over the world, has to be transported massively to all these cities, everyday or weekly over and over again... The quantities of energy we are just spilling by transporting all these food, are immense.

Happily, some people invented a solution for this and other problems and challenges associated with our agriculturing arises. The concept is called vertical farming. The idea is that you built a skycraper with diverse stores that instead of using for housing and organisations, can now be used to grow food! The advantages of this idea are enormous. First of all, this buildings can easily be integrated in the city without leading to a discomforting view of agricultural in the cities, because they won't pop-out between all skycrapres. Secondly, you may not have a lot of space, but you can multiply the amount of space you have because you built your farm in storages. Thirdly, the traffic for food transport from all over the world to the cities is no more necesarry since our vertical farm in the middle of the city can provide all the inhabitants, restaurants, hotels, magazines, markets, ... with food. Energy use and transport emissions can be reduced substantially this way. Figure: Possible outside view of a vertical farm, showing how benefits from a triangle piece of ground can be exponentially increased. Another advantage is undoubly the fact that our vertical farm can be hermetically closed from the outside influences, meaning that there is no chance of outside pollutions, organisms and other that can affect our destroy the harvest. Because the harvest is now unentrancable to viruses, bacterias and animals that can potentially have dramatic effects on the harvest, there is no more need to use agressive and toxic pesticides now! Which may drastically increase the health of the population and the environment. Figure: Inside, it may look like this. Even more important is that the ecologically negative consequences of our monocultural agriculture we use today can be disminished. I'm thinking of the salination of masses of land so they become unusable for most plants, the drying effect of the land by agriculture, the pesticides and other toxins coming into the water and polluting it, ... Because of course, when you have a totally hermetical farm, no drop of water has to get lost cause everything, energy and water can be recuperated and used again. This vertical farm can of course gets his energy from solar panels, making it green in all manners of speaking. Ultimately interesting, is that this way of agriculturing will make us, finally and for the first time since the existence of mankind, totally independent from the climatic and geographical circumstances for our food production. Meaning that every skycraper can ass well be planted in a country with water shortages and dry land such as is common in most African developing countries as in a country with a climate that's more suitable for food production. This implicates that this way of farming can be a giant step forwarth in finally banning food famine from the world.

Global change (climate change)

Scientific conclusions unmistakably point out that we are in an anthropogenic climate change which has negative effects on the diversity of the world's fauna and flora. Subsequently, they suggest preventing the world from further increases or even possible accelerations of climate change is not a too crazy idea.

Sadly enough, the debate about climate change has become the victim of pollution itself because there are many peoples or organisations who gain benefits if they can dempen or even contradict the conclusions of climate science. How this debate is being polluted you can read on this blog: http://jules-klimaat.blogspot.com .

Unwanting to discuss hard empircally based conclusions of the scientifical world but also avoiding a dogmatic vision, I would be gratified if people who deny the truthness of climate change provide me (and the academical world) with a peer-reviewed paper (*), which contradicts the present conclusions of climate science.

(*) Evidently, not funded by or related in any way to people or organisations that have proven to try frauding science or have particulair interests in changing the way the public and policemakers think about global change.

Introduction

Welcome on board!

I am honoured with your visit and hope to be able to provide you with some information that may be covering one or more of your interests.

In future, this will be a place where you can find some critical notes about the way our society lives, handles problems (or doesn't) and the way national and international politics react (not) and interact.

What I finally want to reach with this blog, is mirorred in the site-adress.
The way I want to do that, is step by step and my first goals aren't to high: just make a difference, that is positive in nature, for at least some people. :)

How this blog fits in this broader goal-defintion:
In order to make the world a better place, it is necesarry to get, create and spread knowledge all over the world about things that essentialy are going wrong. (A philosophical debate about what is wrong and what is right will be adressed later on in this blog. Now I'll stick to the why-question)
Without knowing what is wrong, you don't know what is in need of improvement. So giving constructive critics and ring the alarmbell on every topic that you notice society seems to handle wrong, is I think a first and very fundamental step to the possibility of executing positive changes.
But the problem is that as people we have limited resources of time and capacities and we can't be everywhere or see anything on our own, that's why it's important to have different peoples, with different history's, backgrounds, educational levels, life domains they are focusing on and different environments they are living in, perspectives. In this way, a problem where most politicians are unaware of may capture some attention which will enhance the chance that the way to handle this issue (at home, or in a country or even the world) will be changed .

[All these statements above may sound very naive and simplistic, but the broader theoretical foundation I did ent my assumptions (or conclusions?) on I will discuss later on in this blog, as noted earlier.]

P.S.: No day more appropiate to start this blog then the day Obama becomes president of the United States!