Willis's Walkabouts Newsletter 128, May 2024 ― World War III Has Already Begun
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Our world has changed and most of us don't know it. You may not recognise it as war, but WW III has already started. It will get worse before it gets better. More than anything else I've written, this section needs a leisurely read over the course of a few days.
If you have even the slightest interest in doing one of our trips this year, have a look at the WW 2024 ― Last Chance. We've already had to cancel a lot of trips. More cancellations coming soon if we don't get bookings.
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In this issue
WW 2024 ― Last Chance
Since the last newsletter, I've had to cancel more trips. If enough people don't want to book well in advance, the business may not survive much longer.
Definite Departures ― Space Available
- Gulf Country: Limmen & Lorella: 9-29 June
Cyclone Megan dropped a lot of rain in the area in mid March so this should be an exceptional year to visit.
Guide: Russell Willis.
I've posted five videos about the trip on our YouTube Gulf country playlist.
Special offer. $1000 discount. - Kakadu Highlights No. 5: 23 June - 6 July
Two sections, either of which can be done on its own. We will provide transport in both directions for those booking a single section.
Guides: Mardi & John Barnes - Kakadu Highlights No. 5A: 8-14 July
Jim Jim to Twin short loop.
Guide: Sébastien Heritier. - Kakadu Highlights No. 6: Graveside Gorge: 21-28 July
The original section one will not run this year.
Guide: Don Butcher - Mitchell Plateau No. 2: 21 July - 4 August
Two sections, either of which can be done on its own. Fly in and out with a helicopter food drop in the middle.
We can offer free transport between Darwin and Kununurra before and after the trip. Ask for details.
Guide: Paul Blattman - Kakadu Mindfulness Retreat: 11-19 August
We will be there during a week when road access is closed to the general public so we will almost certainly have the area to ourselves.
Guides: Cassie Newnes and Wendy Haynes. - New Caledonia: 6-27 October
It will be possible to do only part of the trip. There optional add ons at the end.
Guide: Sébastien Heritier.
Last Chance Deadlines
If we don't know a trip will run well in advance, we can't be sure we'll have a guide. The following are all under threat. Advance purchase discounts still available on all of them.
- August. If the following trips do not have at least four bookings by 5 June, they will be cancelled.
- Kimberley Highlights No. 2: 19-28 August Two sections, either of which can be done on its own.
- Kakadu Highlights No. 7: 25 August - 7 September Three sections, any of which can be done on its own.
- September. If the following trips do not have at least four bookings by 30 June, they will be cancelled.
- Finke-Watarrka: 1-14 September
Exceptional rain early this year means that this should be an exceptionally good year for this trip. - Kakadu Short Overnight:1-8 September Two two night walks with day walk from a base camp, two cruises, two Aboriginal cultural tours.
- Kakadu Day Walks: 2-6 September The only fully accommodated trip we offer.
- Kakadu Highlights No. 8: 8-21 September Three sections, any of which can be done on its own.
- Kakadu Highlights No. 9: 22 September - 5 October Three sections, any of which can be done on its own.
- Kakadu Family Walk No. 3: 29 September - 5 October This trip overlaps section three of Kakadu Highlights No. 9. If numbers are low, the two trips may be combined.
Guiding for WW
We desperately need new guides who are available for only a few trips per year. I recently had two enquiries from people interested in working for WW but when I said that the work was irregular and asked about their off-track bushwalking experience, neither replied. Whether the problem was the irregular nature of the work, the needed off-track experience or both, I can't say.
What I can say is that one of my newer guides went overseas to do some training because no one in Australia was offering training that was relevant to the kind of trips he wanted to lead. If you or someone you know might be both qualified and interested, please let me know.
- Finke-Watarrka: 1-14 September
Your Health
- Is CBD (cannabidiol) a wonder drug or waste of money?
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Risk of bird flu spreading to humans is 'enormous concern', says WHO
Chief scientist voices fears about H5N1 variant that has 'extraordinarily high' mortality rate in humans -
Whooping cough is surging in Australia. Why, and how can we protect ourselves?
It's especially serious and can be life-threatening in newborns who are yet to receive their vaccinations. In older children who are fully vaccinated, as well as adolescents and adults, the disease is normally less severe. However, even in adults, the coughing can lead to fractured ribs. - Generation Anxiety: smartphones have created a gen Z mental health crisis ― but there are ways to fix it
Those born after 1995, argues Jonathan Haidt in his new book, were the first people in history to go through puberty with a portal to an alternative universe in their pockets ― and the toll this has taken on their wellbeing has been devastating A Common Sense report, in 2015, found that teens with a social media account reported spending about two hours a day on social media and around seven hours a day of leisure time online. - We may finally know how cognitive reserve protects against Alzheimer's
Why does mental effort lead to a more resilient brain that can withstand dementia and decline? We are now discovering the mechanisms behind this cognitive reserve, opening up new ways to boost it.
Disposing of the Body
We all have bodies. Something has to happen to them when we die. Depending on how and where you die, You might be able to donate some useful spare parts and save someone else's life. Organ Donation is easy. I've registered. Have you?
But even if you can donate some bits, there is still the rest of the body to dispose of. Here's an alternative you might not have thought of.
- If You Want to Give Something Back to Nature, Give Your Body *
- Comparing green funeral options, from composting to natural burial to water cremation **
Throwing a funeral that leaves Earth a bit better off, maybe - Composting, water cremation and shrouds ― why sustainable burials are on the rise
Would you fancy your body being turned into mulch when you die? In the US, six states have legalised human composting.
This is where a body is placed in a vessel and broken down by tiny microbes over several weeks. What is left is composted into a rich, fertile soil. -
Push for human composting gains ground as environment concerns grow
Human composting isn't legal anywhere in Australia yet and introducing the service would require legislative change on the part of state and territory governments. However, authorities appear open to the idea of human composting being offered in Australia ― why not give them a nudge.
Economics ― Time to Ask Why
Robert Kennedy once said, "Some men see things as they are and ask, "Why?" I dream things that never were and ask, "Why not?"" That was a paraphrase of a quote from George Bernard Shaw, "Some men see things as they are, and say why. I dream of things that never were, and say why not." Our economy seems to depend on more and more people spending money they don't have to buy things they don't need while destroying the planet in the process. Asking why is not enough. We need to look at alternatives and ask, "Why not?"
- The price we pay for things does not reflect their True Cost
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Rethinking Economics
"When efficiency comes with upward wealth redistribution, our recommendations frequently become little more than a license for plunder." - More money does not mean more happiness. Maximising happiness might be a much better goal than maximising a flawed GDP.
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Beyond GDP: Three Other Ways to Measure Economic Health
They all have their problems but all seem better than GDP.
The better life index covers only 41 countries but it does allow you to pick which factors are most important to you and adjust the scale accordingly and see which countries are more like what you'd like to see.
A Finite World
We live in a finite world. Population growth will stop at some time. Why not sooner rather than later?
Most politicians think that the population of their country should keep increasing. Why? If we took a different view of economics we might realise that some of our problems are caused by increasing numbers.
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The uncomfortable truth about record high immigration levels, rents and inflation
Our immigration intake, meanwhile, is running at record levels with up to 600,000 arrivals expected this calendar year. If we continued at that rate for four years, there'd be enough people to fill a city the size of Brisbane.
The IMF is a textbook case of how intelligent individuals become consumed by textbook solutions to real-world problems. Rather than suggest scaling back the intake of new arrivals, it instead proposes to scale back on the necessary infrastructure needed to accommodate those new arrivals.
Our politicians have been more than happy to import people but they've been unwilling to spend the required money on ensuring our cities work properly. -
New record set for number of international students in Australia
The 700,000 visa holders helped push the total of temporary entrants to 2.8 million, another record. They bring income into the country but all these people need housing. They contribute to the housing shortage. - Review finds Australia's migration system in need of 'major reform'
Australia's migration system is "broken" according to a review which warns "tinkering" around the edges will not work and "major reform" is needed to attract the best workers, drive economic growth, and protect against exploitation.
I've been in Australia for 50 years. I love the Australian bush. It used to be possible to find nice bits of bush near cities. It's getting harder and harder. Why not stop growing the population while there is still bush to be preserved? Why keep importing people we don't have housing for?
World War III ― It's Already Begun
At this point, it doesn't look anything like WWI and WWII. Hopefully, it never will, but, even so, the consequences will be just as large. 2½ years ago, Dr Pippa Malmgren published a piece explaining why she believed this. This was recently updated at the Mauldin Strategic Investment Conference.
- WW III Has Already Started
This is the original article. "War itself is digitizing, just like everything else. That may mean the confrontations and conflicts of our time may be very different from anything we've experienced before."
"The new battlespace is literally in space, as in outer space. It is in digital cyberspace. Wars are no longer about armies and land. Now it's about Navies, the high seas and extremely remote locations like extremely remote islands in the Pacific and the open oceans."
"The point is that we had ten days to save the world when the US and Russia stood on the brink of a nuclear exchange in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Today missile systems are so fast, and increasingly automated. Will we even have minutes, let alone days?"
"WW III may feel benign because it is silent, because it is digital, because it is occurring far away and without civilian involvement. Investors have priced geopolitical risk at zero. Until the public awakens to the true situation, the enormous gap between those who are in the know and those who don't know is a danger to everyone's future." - World War III is a very recent update. Things are playing out much as Dr Malmgren suggested in the article above.
- Conflict Driven Capex is an excerpt from a panel discussion at the recent Maudlin Strategic Investment conference. While they make their points in different ways, all the panellists agreed we are effectively at war.
Misc Articles Supporting the Above
- Secret Russian foreign policy document urges action to weaken the U.S. **
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'We're a dead ship': Hundreds of cargo ships lost propulsion in U.S. waters in recent years **
While the ship that felled the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore suffered a total blackout, such losses of engine power ― including near bridges or ports ― are hardly a one-off - Friedman on the "Two Chinas" and How Putin Saves Face
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How China allegedly interfered with Canada's elections **
It's not just China -
Microsoft faulted for 'cascade' of failures in Chinese hack **
The independent Cyber Safety Review Board's report knocks the tech giant for shoddy cybersecurity practices, lax corporate culture and a deliberate lack of transparency. -
Preparing for a China war, the Marines are retooling how they'll fight **
U.S. troops are preparing for conflict on an island-hopping battlefield across Asia, against an enemy force that has home-field advantage -
Are We on a Collision Course with China?
if Taiwan falls, it's going to radically reset expectations in Asia. Countries like Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Vietnam, India, Australia, etc., they are making bets about balancing China with the United States based on an assessment of US strength. They're saying, "I can stick my neck out because the Americans are strong enough to stand up to the Chinese that if it's really put to the test, they'll do well enough." We understand that this is not the American century Henry Luce style anymore, but there's going to be more balance, but they get that. -
We're in a "Rivalry That Could Go Hot"
He makes a passionate case for why the US needs to take significant actions today to be prepared for the challenges that we already face with more on the horizon. you recommended that the US, from a policy perspective and a spending perspective, that we focus almost exclusively on China and denying China hegemon status in Asia. And that meant that our allies were going to need to step up. Europe needs to defend itself in large part, same for the Middle East.
Watch video, listen to podcast or download transcript for both of the above. - Major cyberattack on Australian ports suggests sabotage by a 'foreign state actor'
- The Space Wars are here
Links to podcast and transcript - Foreign interference through social media is an active threat. Here's what Australia can do
Artificial Intelligence
- AI can now generate entire songs on demand. What does this mean for music as we know it?
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Hackers competed to find AI harms. Here's what they found. **
"Contestants found that the surest way to nudge a chatbot off the rails was not to try to hack it, but simply to start from a false premise." -
The AI deepfake apocalypse is here. These are the ideas for fighting it. **
A growing group of researchers and start-ups are building tools to identify and track deepfake images before they take over the internet completely.
Contains link to a 20 minute video. Worth watching. - Teen Girls Confront an Epidemic of Deepfake Nudes in Schools *
Using artificial intelligence, middle and high school students have fabricated explicit images of female classmates and shared the doctored pictures.
Lots of similar stories out there. Where does it end? If there is no escape, maybe we will get to a world similar to the one in Robert Heinlein's "The Puppet Masters" where, "people are now required to be practically naked." - AI hustlers stole women's faces to put in ads. The law can't help them. **
Artificial intelligence is spurring a new type of identity theft ― with ordinary people finding their faces and words twisted to push often offensive products and ideas. - Disinformation wars: The fight against fake news in the age of AI
Researchers and governments are finally battling back against the deluge of false information online, just as artificial intelligence threatens to supercharge the problem.
Political Corruption
One form of corruption is failing to take an action which would benefit the general public because it is in your interest to leave things as they are.
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After a decade in the job, Deborah Glass reflects on her time as Victoria's ombudsman
Ms Glass told the ABC in her final interview as ombudsman, some of the things Mr Andrews said in his last year would suggest he did not respect her or her office. "One of the things I found most disappointing is the lack of respect to the findings of integrity agencies and attempts to dismiss that," she said. - Australians lose $5,200 a minute to scammers. There's a simple thing the government could do to reduce this. Why won't they?
Australia loses more in total than the UK which has 2½ times the population.
Other countries do what is suggested in the article. Neither of our major parties has the nerve to do anything that would disturb the major players who would stand to lose if the reform were instigated.
In Australia in 2022, only 13% of attempted scam payments were stopped by banks before they took place. Once scammed, only 2% to 5% of losses (depending on the bank) were reimbursed or compensated. In the UK, the top four banks pay out 49% to 73%. And they are about to pay out much more.
Ask yourself why our politicians won't consider a similar move. -
Independents move to ban mega donations in far-reaching political transparency overhaul
Crossbenchers including the Greens and the Jacquie Lambie Network back proposal that would ban $1.5m-plus donations and tighten the definition of gifts but does not include spending caps.
Seems sensible as far as it goes. Will the major parties kill it?
Why We Still Need Cash
Do you really want someone else to be able to see every last cent you've spent, when you spent it and what you spent it on? If we go cashless, that's what will happen. Here are a few stories worth thinking about.
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Bank branch closures and disappearing cash is making life harder for many
Being forced to go digital is causing problems for older Australians and First Nations communities.
If possible, I don't do business with places that don't accept cash. If it were practical, I'd offer a cash discount as my little part of fighting back. -
Money transporter Armaguard is in peril. Could cash be dead sooner than we think?
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has a vested interest in maintaining cash as a store of wealth and means of payment for many people, particularly as a backup option when electronic payment systems are unavailable or offline.
Much further down the road than Australia on this journey, Sweden has become one of the most cashless societies in the world. But this has prompted a degree of backlash in the country.
The governor of the Swedish Central Bank, the Riksbank, recently called for urgent legislation to protect both notes and coins as a payment option for Swedes: Cash is needed to avoid people suffering digital and financial exclusion.
The Riksbank says the banks should be mandated to accept deposits of banknotes and coins and ensure their customers can withdraw cash from both branches and ATMs. - The article above links to
Cash may no longer be king, but the Optus debacle shows it is still necessary
Going cashless is a form of privatising money. It moves transactions into a world where you must rely on banking institutions to buy and sell things while someone is making money off your financial dealings through fees. We wouldn't usually think about this as similar to selling off the power grid but in some ways it is. -
Cash is disappearing at a rapid pace ― should we be worried?
Another issue with the end of cash are the growing security risks such as cyber scams and other forms of cybercrime.
We all know instinctively that parting with cash is much easier with a tap of the phone than actually going through with spending cash out of your purse or wallet. -
Given the Risks of a Cashless Society, Why Not Just Keep Cash?
If an economy operated solely on cashless transactions, power or internet outages will bring it to a standstill until services are restored, and cyberattacks would be similarly damaging. In an economy with cash and cashless working together, when the latter is unavailable, people can continue to make essential purchases using cash.
Next US President ― Maybe Someone Unexpected
The American political class was blindsided by Donald Trump. It just MIGHT happen again.
It is conceivable that the next US president will be neither Biden nor Trump. Click the link to see who and why it just might happen.
Personally, I think the political classes in both America and Australia need a good shake up. the only way that will happen is if people vote for someone else. Easier in Australia with preferential voting, but harder in America. But even there, political parties have been replaced before. It could happen again.
The Lighter Side
Humour
Soccer Dog I can't help but wonder if some of the moves would be legal if a human was doing them.
Follow Ups from Newsletter 127
- The remaking of the American jean **
Here's what the jeans of the future look like. This is a good follow up to last issue's section on your clothes. - The U.S. Urgently Needs a Bigger Grid. Here's a Fast Solution. *
A rarely used technique to upgrade old power lines could play a big role in fixing one of the largest obstacles facing clean energy, two reports found.
It might be just as true in Australia. Does anyone know for sure?
This is a good follow up to last issue's section on electricity.
Misc
- Considering the section on WW III, I thought it appropriate to include something from WW II.
Sunao Tsuboi, 96, Dies; Hiroshima Victim Who Lived to Tell His Story *
After suffering through the agony of the attack and its aftermath, he devoted himself to spreading the message that nuclear weapons should be abolished. - Francis Birtles. For some years, I've had a little note in my newsletter info mentioning Francis Birtles and cars. Time I put it in. Birtles is now mostly forgotten but his exploits captured the imagination of a nation.
- Birtles and the Sundowner car
Francis Birtles captured Australia's imagination with his daring and fearless overland journeys in the Sundowner, named for Birtles' habit of arriving at outback homesteads just in time for dinner. - Francis Birtles biography
He became, in 1927, the first man to drive a car from England to Australia. The journey was not repeated until 1955.
- Birtles and the Sundowner car
News About This Newsletter
Restricted websites. The NY Times allows non-subscribers to look at ten free articles each month. I've got more links than that in this newsletter so I've marked them with a red asterisk (*) so that you can choose which are of most interest to you. Bloomberg allows three free articles. The Washington Post and The Economist both have limits but I'm not sure what the current limits are so I've marked their articles with a double red asterisk (**).
How to Get Past a Paywall to Read an Article for Free
Even if you regularly support journalism by paying, sometimes you need to get around it.
Coming Next Issue
• Climate Change
• Your carbon footprint. I got some surprises. I hope you will too.
• How our society is changing.
• Not sure what else. It will be a surprise to me as well as you.
• When? Hopefully July
As always, I welcome a bit of feedback about some of the things in this newsletter and suggestions for the next one.
Sending the newsletter
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I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed preparing it.
Russell Willis