This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. You've joined me on likable science. I'm your host, Ethan Allen, here on Think Tech Hawaii. Thanks for joining us today. And what is more likable than food? All of us love food, right? And today, joining me by Skype is Dr. Joseph DeFrank. Hi, Joe. Hi, Ethan. How's it going? It's always a pleasure to be back with you on likable science. Great. Great to have you on board again here. So Joe DeFrank is a plant scientist, tropical plant and soil science group at UH Manawa. He's got a doctorate from Michigan State a bit ago. And he works on all kinds of things related to weed control, but not in the traditional way that a lot of people now think of it as weed control with chemicals and pesticides. Joe is really very interested in sort of appropriate, non-pesticide, non-chemical, sort of low-tech ways that we can control weeds and keep the soil intact. We don't have to tilt it up and all that kind of stuff that takes energy, time. So why don't you tell us a little bit about, sort of, go back in the history of agriculture as it were, Joe, to give us a little context. Great, Ethan. Well, what we're going to talk about today is no-till farming for organic farmers as well as home gardeners. No-till farming came into prominence in the American agriculture sometime around 1973, about the time when we had what was called the Arab oil embargo, where farmers needed to reduce their energy consumption with gasoline. And one of the ways they did that was try to reduce the plowing of the fields in preparation for seeding. Yes, that's what you mean by no-till, right? No-till, yes. Not plowing. So we don't want to plow. So generally what you would do is you would have like a crop of winter wheat, for example, and instead of plowing down the remaining stubble of the wheat in the spring of the year, they would spray it to kill whatever weeds were there, and then they would use specialized planters to plant seeds directly into that stubble. So you would have a nice mulch to retain moisture, prevent soil erosion, and of course you save maybe four or five trips across the field by not plowing. So I was interested in that in the early 70s at Michigan State, and then all these years I've been trying to figure out a way we could adapt that system for organic farmers. Right, because for organic farmers, of course, they don't want to spray the chemicals on the previous cover crop, and they can't do that and call it organic anymore. So what was your assumption? Correct.  It's there to enrich the soil, increase aeration, and also serve as a break for certain pests. So once you have this vigorous cover crop on the soil surface, organic farmers were restricted to using the plow or disc to invert the soil, bury that organic matter, and then have a clean surface in which to plant in. Of course, that takes a lot of energy. It has a pretty big carbon footprint with the tractors moving and so forth. So what we were wanting to do is to develop a system where using something other than the plow and the tractor to terminate the cover crop, we're using light exclusion. Light exclusion through the use of these durable woven plastic fabrics is what we've been experimenting with. Right. Plants, as everyone knows, need light to grow, right? And if you really cover your plant over well and keep it dark, the green plants don't get the light, they don't manufacture their own food, they up and die. Right. So there's nothing new there. Plants need light. They don't get light, they die. So let me just go briefly through what we're talking about in terms of a technique for commercial farmers as well as home gardeners. I think it really shines for homeowners who may not be too crazy about taking a shovel to the ground and flipping it over. So the way this works is that you need to establish a cover crop for whatever reason. Like I said, organic matter, add nitrogen through legumes and allow that thing to grow vigorously to the point where you want to plant your cash crop. At that point, what conventional organic farmers are doing is doing what's called crimping or rolling. Right. So, hang on, there we go, all right, we got the pictures up now, all right. So this is your first picture here. Okay, so the first picture is actually our student gardens in the weed science class this fall at UH Manoa. And what you're looking at is a five species cover crop, meaning that there's five different seeds that were planted to give you this diverse, nice green, luscious cover crop. And the composition there that you're looking at is cowpeas, forage radish, black mustard, oats, and buckwheat. So we have a diverse group of cover crops so that we can address any sort of pests that may be adapted to one of them. We know we'll have something there that'll grow well. And the cowpea, of course, is a legume that's going to pull nitrogen from the air and add it to the soil. Excellent. That would be the first picture. Right. And the next, here we go, there's somebody rolling. Okay, so the next picture, you see a student there using a roller to crush down the cover crop. Farmers would be using a tractor-based roller and maybe not a smooth roller, but one with crimpers, you know, these raised edges that break the stem. So what organic farmers try to do is terminate the cover crop by, you know, crushing the stems and then they plant their crop in there. And the only problem is, is that you may not completely kill the cover crop. There may be weeds underneath that emerge once you mash it down. So I believe the next, after you do the rolling, the next picture would be illustrating the weed mats or the durable polypropylene fabrics that are available at most stores that sell commercial supplies to nursery men and so forth. Right. So would these down on their edges with some sort of little sandbags or water tubes or something? So what we're using for securing that plastic to the ground is what everybody who's familiar with tent fumigation in Hawaii, whenever they fumigate your house, they usually use water-filled hoses to secure the plastic to the ground so it doesn't come up. So that's what we're using. We get these used fire hoses, fill them with water, or we even have some hoses filled with sand that's shorter lengths. And that way we can cover the ground and then secure the fabric in windy areas with water-filled hoses. So it's a convenient way to hold it in place without poking holes and without having a bunch of rocks and stones to lug around and then take off when we want to remove it. Yeah, I know. It's beautiful and then it makes a nice solid, light-tight cover. And when you remove it then, it's the next photo I think we'll show. Yeah. Now when you remove it, what you're looking at there is a one week of coverage. So what we did is we rolled that cover crop and we covered it for one week and you might not think that one week of coverage is enough to disable that cover crop, but it is because it's hot, dark. And so now that the cover crop is killed, we haven't done any additional work, we haven't used any chemicals. Now we're ready to plant. So I believe in the next image, we'll see that the corn transplants have been planted, if that's up. Yep. And then you can see that the corn is growing normally. So I'd say, well, what's remarkable about all this? Well, what's remarkable is that number one, we haven't plowed the ground. That soil has been laying unplowed for well over a year. And so it's relatively firm. But what we do is we poke a hole in the ground. We put in corn transplants because we want to give the corn a big jump on any weeds that might grow.  And then nutrients are released from that dead and dying cover crop. And voila, we have no-till farming for organic farmers. Yeah, beautiful. And in that one week, of course, not only does the existing plants that were there, they're all starting to die and decay. But then any weeds seeds or anything probably start to sprout. But without light, they're not going to do anything, right? That's correct. So generally, whenever you plant a cover crop like that, not only are you getting the cover crop, you're going to get certain weeds that grow, and they may be suppressed by the biggest cover crop. But once that canopy is removed, those weeds will just sprout up. That's the advantage of combining rolling and crimping with covering so that we kill the cover crop and we kill whatever weeds may be in the understory of the cover crop. Exactly, yeah. That's beautiful. Nice, wonderful how you put these seemingly simple little bits and pieces, the idea of a roller to crush the cover crop down, the idea of a light tight cover over the ground, it's a relatively simple concept. Nothing really high tech, nothing that had to be mixed up in a chemical lab, nothing that involves some fancy machines, right? Right.  Makes a lot of sense. The challenge is how large a scale can we do that? You can imagine if you have a plastic that's 300 feet long and 12 feet wide, that could be pretty challenging laying it out in the field and then securing it. So the question is not every crop would be adapted to this. I see that the majority of crops that would be adapted would be things like nallow greens or microgreens where you can more or less seed it in a complete block and then harvest things aren't in rows. You're just growing as a complete block. And in that way, these organic farmers who are getting a premium for their products will have incentive to try to do this. Of course, there's expense to the plastic, but as opposed to plowing and tractors and if it rains, you can't get in the field. It gives, I think, farmers a lot more flexibility in timing when they pull off that fabric. They might want to wait until they may have a bunch of these fabrics out there. They pull one off, plant, let that get started, pull the next one off and plant and they don't have to worry about weeds growing while they're timing the plantings of their crops. So I just think it adds a lot of flexibility for commercial farmers and for the homeowner, it's great too because you may have a piece of ground that's a weedy mess and you go, yeah, I like to start gardening, Dr. D, how do I do it? I say, well, go out and get a sheet of plastic which you can get at various hardware stores. Now this is a plastic that's woven. It's not a film. So it allows irrigation water to go through it. So we just knock down the weeds, cover them, moisten the soil over the top with irrigation and then when you're ready to plant, pull it off, put a hole in the ground and plant some transplants and see what you get. Of course you gotta fertilize, but you're not plowing the ground so you're not gonna get a whole bunch of weeds. And if you mulch, if you add mulch in addition to your transplants, you might be able to get away with a prop without any weeding whatsoever. And then when you're done with the field, cover it back up and when you're ready to grow again, pull it off and plant again. Yeah, it seems like it's got a lot going for it and it makes a lot of sense. It would seem like it's economical to a good extent. The fabric I assume to be used at least several times, certainly, right? Oh yes, the fabric is very durable and I would expect that a farmer would get, I don't know, maybe five years of use from a piece of fabric and then I think they would get, if they worked it out where they had their crops on a regular basis, I think they could actually make money on it. And the reason why I throw this out for farmers to think about is because the farmers are gonna innovate on how are they gonna use it? How are they gonna time their plantings? And of course, picking it up and rolling it when it's a big sheet of plastic, that's gonna take a couple of people. So that's where you need to, but if you, more than one person, pulling it off, rolling it up and getting it ready for the next usage. So there's some innovation that the farmers will need to come up with to really make this an efficient practice. Sure, like almost any technology, you need to adapt a bit to it. You need to think of some new ways to sort of support it and apply it. But you've given people really a really nice set of tools to use, a really interesting approach that should be really applicable. And as you say, for sort of moderate scale organic farms for things like the mixed greens and salad mix kind of stuff that should be really a really sort of perfect thing. Yeah, I think a farmer can get two or three people out there. They could do a number of these patches at once. They can wait until they see the, there's rains on their way so they won't have to irrigate as much too. As the timing whole issue is really great. A lot of advantages to this, I can see. Yeah, and one of the bigger advantages is in Hawaii, we always think that it's always a great growing season year round, but we do have a rainy cycles. And one of the big problems is that for organic farmers is we control. You ask any organic farmer, one of the biggest challenges for production is we control. So let's say you get into a rainy spell, November, December, it's raining every other day. You can't go out in the field and control those weeds with mowing and plowing because it's too wet. You're just stuck there watching the weeds grow and watching them put out seeds. But the ground is covered with this fabric, there's no worries. The weeds aren't gonna grow. As a matter of fact, adding moisture once the fabric is there is causing weeds that are in the soil to germinate, thinking that they're gonna reach the surface, but they're underneath the plastic. So what you're actually doing is purging weed seeds from the production cycle.  And the farmer, it could be the wettest day of the year when he wants to peel off that plastic plant. So like I said, for moderate-sized farmers or for large home gardeners, I think it's a real simple innovation, makes sense to the average person. They're going, yeah, why did somebody think of that before? I said the same thing. I go, well, I wonder if anybody's gonna think that this is a realistic thing. And then I started doing my laboratories with the students and they just seem to accept it as, yeah, okay, that's okay, that's fine, that looks good. Great, we're gonna dig into this in more depth here when we come back, but right now we have to take a quick break here. We'll be right back. Joe DeFranc is with me here. I'm your host, Ethan Allen, here on Legible Science and we'll be back in a minute. I just walked by and I said, what's happening, guys? They told me they were making music. So I did. Aloha, my name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea comes on every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join us. I like to bring in guests that talk about all types of things that come across the sea to Hawaii. Not just law, love, people, ideas, history. Please join us for Law Across the Sea, Aloha. And you're back here on Legible Science. I'm your host, Ethan Allen, here on Think Tech Hawaii. With me today via Skype is Dr. Joseph DeFranc. Welcome again, Joe. Ethan, good to be back again. Yes, indeed. And we're talking about some innovations that Joe has developed, really a very interesting sort of low-tech but very effective ways to help gardeners, small-scale farmers, avoid the need to till their soil, to turn over their soil, to have the heavy equipment to run their tractors. His approach by essentially crushing a cover crop and then covering it for as little as a week really opens up some great opportunities. And one of the nice things I was thinking a little bit over the break field was, you can leave that cover then in place, right? Sort of as long as you want. You say a week, but it doesn't hurt if it stays on for two weeks, three weeks or whatever, right? Right, we've had it going as long as eight, nine months over the summer, just waiting for the class to start. We pull it off and we're ready to go. So a great way to store the soil, essentially store that soil in a ready condition for planting with little to no effort. It's just there, ready to go. Yeah, and it's not eroding. You're not getting new weed growth. It's not blowing away. It's not packing down. It's just, as you say, it's sort of sitting there waiting. Yeah, so it's a good way to store the soil in the go mode for planting. Yeah, so I mean, if you look in that soil, just this is really my curiosity. If you look in that soil, you find the same kinds of invertebrate populations, earthworms and various little bugs all, those sort of sitting there doing their little business, right? Right, and what we found is that, if we leave that cover on for, if we cover, if we put the plastic over the top of weeds or other cover crops, what happens is that we have a real explosion of soil insects that consume that organic matter because they're not being preyed on by birds. So you have an accelerated breakdown of the organic matter and a mineralization of those nutrients back to the soil. So all around it's a pretty interesting approach and it also gives us an opening for a pest management. There's a thing called nematodes in the soil. Nematodes are microscopic worms that will penetrate the roots and ruin them. And for organic farmers, it's very difficult to get rid of those microscopic worms, but we've developed a way to combine a cover crop with the plastic to accelerate the removal of these microscopic pests. And the way that works is a little counterintuitive. You know, you think that, well, if I got this soil-borne worm that's eating my roots, I gotta plant things that aren't susceptible to it. But the counterintuitive idea is to know, we're gonna plant something that's super sensitive because these nematodes respond to root exudates of susceptible plants and just like a seed, those nematodes germinate from eggs. So once they perceive the roots growing, they germinate and they try to attach to the plant. But if we know the life cycle of those nematodes, we can then roll that fabric before they start to reproduce, cover it up with plastic, the plants dies, the nematode dies. Now we have a non-chemical way to get rid of this very persistent and challenging soil pest, nematodes, and use the same technique only with a slight little variation where we plant a susceptible crop, makes the nematodes come to life, they try to attach to the roots and before they can reproduce, we kill off the plant with this covering, the nematodes die, we pull it off and then we plant our susceptible crop. It's also giving us a new approach to pest management that I don't think we've thought about it in that way.  Right, no, I didn't think that up. Years ago, we had a scientist from North Carolina State, Don Schmidt, and he was a guy who was always testing chemicals for nematocontrol and soybeans. He goes, you know, Joe, the best year that I had was when we had an early spring in North Carolina, we planted the soybeans, I put out all my treatments, but then we had an early frost and all the soybeans died. When we reestablished the experiments and we grew the soybeans again, we couldn't tell untreated fields from treated fields because of just what I said, the nematodes all came into the soybeans, the frost killed them, they died, and so it's the same concept, it's sort of like a bait and switch.  That's beautiful, that's beautiful. And it looks to me like this has a lot of interesting options to go new places, right? I mean, you're using right now one kind of fabric, but you could conceivably think about that fabric in different ways, right? Right, now I was thinking like, how can we make this better? You know, the fabric is kind of heavy, and when you get large sheets of it, you know, it gets to be kind of cumbersome to pick it up and put it away. And one of the things that happens when we use the fabric, of course, we can kill a living plant, but sometimes there's weed seeds that need light to germinate and grow. So what happens then is that we got to, we got to stimulate those weed seeds to grow, cover it, kill them off, and then uncover it.  So what would that be? That would be like a super light fabric that, you know, with a certain electrical potential, it's translucent and let's light into the soil. So that would allow the weed seeds to grow underneath of the blanket.  So then the weeds die. So this way we could start to purge weed seeds that are light sensitive to grow without pulling the fabric one and off. And then once the fabric is, all the weeds are dead, boom, you pull it off and move it to another field. So I think that there's probably, you know, engineers out there that maybe have this ready to go. Maybe it's ready for a, you know, they're using it as a blanket for a space shuttle to block light or to turn it on and off. But I don't think I've never heard of an agricultural use for such a thing, but I'm sure there might be some scientists out there that maybe they can let us know if they got something like that and we can work together on it. Yeah, sounds great. I mean, it actually reminds me of another one of my favorite technological advances, which is the thing called Matty Drops, which was a ceramic chemist, Jim Smith from the University of Virginia, had been working for years on pushing water through porous ceramics to help filter it and clean it up and adding silver into that to help kill off the microbes as it went through. And finally realized that he didn't actually need to push the water through it. He essentially put sawdust in with the clay and the silver nitrate baked it into kiln and then got a very porous ceramic. So water flowed by itself in through there and literally pulled off the silver and distributed the silver around the water, killing off all the microbes. Sort of again, it's a nice little low tech twist on a high tech idea. And I like what you're thinking about there. I think it has a lot of that potential. Great. Yeah, so that's kind of what I wanted to share with everybody today. And like I said, everybody thinks that we need to plow to get a soft soil for roots to grow. But really I like to say, let the worms do the plowing. We had enough organic matter and the plant roots when they die make channels and the worms come up and need the organic matter. So I say, let the worms do the plowing and we'll do the planting and the eating. Yeah, yeah. People don't appreciate how much work worms do. What is it they say over the course of a year, the worms in an acre of ground will turn over something like a ton of soil or something? There's some incredible figure I heard. I don't know. I'm sure it's incredible. And like I said, and see when you start plowing, then you're breaking up that earthworm habitat.  So a no-till farming was something that was, like I said, in the early 70s, it became popularized.  But I think with this technique, we can start to get them thinking about it and probably be developing some grants to expand it. And I've already presented this to some farmers in Hawaii and my understanding that they went out and got some fabrics and are gonna try it. So starting to break out of the idea phase and into the reality phase, so I'm pretty happy about it. Yeah, well, you should be very proud of it. And I could see great applicability of this technique too down in Micronesia, where people just really started and try to do some of this more push toward self-sustainability, developing vegetable crops and things like they can support a tourist industry, they can have more varieties of fresh food for themselves. And none of it's huge. A lot of it is this sort of farm, farm, small scale. Right, and tractors, equipment, fuel, it takes a lot of effort to take a field that's all weedy and maybe cover with grass and make it acceptable for crop production. But I think now we can just flatten it out to the point where we can cover it and it doesn't blow away. After a while, like I said, plants don't do too good when they're covering and once they die off, they break down pretty quick. And I'm pretty excited that it can really be something, things that it's something new that plants need light to grow. But I think the idea of the fabric, and if anybody can develop a new super light fabric, we could have some real exciting things happen. Yeah, exactly. This could go anywhere though, because again, you can ship that fabric out, rolls of it. That's not really the hard thing to do. It's not like shipping out a very complex piece of machinery. Hey, well, this is great, Joe. I've enjoyed talking with you here and I've learned a lot. I learned a lot the first time you were on and even more this time, pleased to see that you're continuing this and developing it in new directions. It's great. Thank you so much for sharing it with you and I hope all of our viewers will share this with their organic farmer friends. Ethan, it's always great talking to you and to the audience for likable science. All right, thank you, Joe. You take care. Thank you very much and have a good weekend. Yes, indeed. So that's about it for another episode of likable science here on Think Tech Hawaii. We'll see you next week.


Transparent conducting oxides, TCOs, are electrically conductive materials with low absorption of light within the visible spectrum. These materials are typically prepared using thin film technologies and are used in optoelectronic devices such as solar cells, displays, optoelectric interfaces, and circuits. In this paper, we provide an overview of recent developments in the field of TCOs, focusing on N-type TCOs which are important for thin film solar cell production. We discuss Indium Tin Oxide, ITO, and Aluminum Dope Sync Oxides, ZNO, AL, two commonly used materials, and their properties, preparations, and applications. Additionally, we also cover P-type Delafaside TCOs, which have been gaining popularity recently. Finally, we provide a list of references for further reading. This article was authored by Andreas Stabler.


Good morning and welcome to the weekly market update with me David Madden. Today's date is Monday the 18th of January 2021 and the time has just gone 1117 GMT and it's been a fairly muted and quiet start to the European trading session Not too dissimilar to what we saw at the back end of last week At the back of the last week, we heard from President-elect Joe Biden who announced the 1.9 trillion dollar coronavirus relief package To kind of reinvigorate the US economy now that was that was basically the talk of the town for the past couple of weeks About a week and a half ago. We saw multi-month highs or even old-time highs racked up on global stock markets in anticipation of the announcement from Richard Biden, which was delivered Back at the very back in the last week. And now that that's out of the way traders are kind of a bit more are a bit more Downbeat not overly aggressive it's just a bit more downbeat because Everyone was looking forward to the big announcement the big announcement has come and gone and now people are looking around going what's next on the horizon and For the time being there's nothing really overtly sticking out as oh, this is the next big positive thing That's going to kind of push markets along Pitchfairs are looking around to go on with a health crisis many countries around the world many European nations and others are dealing with a Kind of worsening health crisis. There are concerns that we're going that we're going to have an extension or an addition to tougher Lockdowns in very different countries around the world top of that. There are you know supply Constraint issues in relation to the bony out of the vaccine In terms of the speed of which that's going to be delivered. But that being said If you're in Europe are mixed the word a bit lower this morning than I was small bit higher it's almost like Traders know full well the health crisis an issue the vaccination process is going to be slow Governments at the same standard banks have a long history of Troy money at the problem So that's the rest we're not seeing aggressive sell-offs or to see this kind of sort of some subdued subdued mood So and on top of that to volatility for the rest of today's session all across Europe and Modernities and currencies is likely to be quite low because the US is on holidays today The US was celebrating Dr. Martin Dr. Martin Luther King junior day today So volatility is probably going to be quite low across the board. Now what I'll do is as always I'll run through the major the week ahead the major economic and corporate stories of the week and then take a look at the big Indices currency pairs and quantities So the weekend article can be found on our website see them soon markets calm under insights under Under insights in the from their latest news and analysis First of all that we had well announced overnight We had some mixed figures out of China the Q4 growth numbers Were better than expected and they showed an improvement on the previous update But the retail sales are not only the only that emits economist forecast It also the client also declare on the previous update So it seems to me that a lot of the growth been driven out of China is driven by the fact that Huge a large number of the kind of Commercial sector in China is controlled or influenced by the Beijing authorities So we have seen trial manufacturing or industrial numbers out of China It's likely that that has been driven by the state control businesses or state influence businesses whereas retail sales is all about private individual and There hasn't still hasn't yet returned to the levels we saw this time last year or so That's something to watch out for which could trickle true Back back which could trickle down to the sales of European brands which were to touch on in a bit Tomorrow we continue with the US reporting season Goldman Sachs and Bank of America will afford corporate numbers out With a couple of in a few big US bank supporting at the back end the last week JV Morgan was wasn't was a was it was the Probably get the biggest biggest of the group what to watch out for in relation to US banks the the Reserves in relation to bad debts provision for bad debts. They seem to be rolling back on that So it does give There was impression that the money is set aside for the provision of bad debts because of the pandemic It now seems that things aren't is going to aren't is going to be as bad as initially projected So with see what's happening in relation to the release of reserves connected to potential credit losses Looking ahead fourth quarter numbers often Netflix been a very popular stock with full stock or particularly during lockdown especially now that further parts of the world are So essentially people are being essentially being Some you know advise to stay at home keep on I afford the rate at which it's Attracting new paid subscribers in both the US but also around the world So the international component will be quite important also keep them out for any production updates in relation to Netflix because some of them some of the lockdowns are likely to get an impact their programming schedule turns up turning out new content Burberry the Third important numbers coming out the UK based fashion house They have done quite well out of Asia in recent months prickly mainland China And this is what I mean about if he put a mainland China are going on spending a whole lot That's likely to have a trickle down impact on well-known Western luxury brands including Burberry Dixon's car phone they left you cute three numbers coming out on Wednesday. This will be this will be important because Let's face it items for home offices or even Christmas presents like an electronic goods I'd like it to be in high demand So keep them out for how that performed over the all of you know that time frame would include the all important Christmas period is a very popular shopping period as we know UK and Eurozone CPI numbers are going to be out on Wednesday That's going to give us a gauge for demand to be honest demand is relatively low But at the time being it's likely to remain low given the kind of lockdowns experienced all over Europe President-elect Joe Biden will be inaugurated as the US president on Wednesday keep an eye for any kind of Political rumblings or any kind of potential protest or potentially civil disturbances like you saw at the Capitol building Not too long ago, but I imagine that the US And Police forces and national guards and what have you are going to be out in full force Thursday We have this the European Peen European Central Bank interest rate decisions meeting highly unlikely. We're going to see any big changes because at the last meeting We had an update To the kind of bond buying scheme that was increased by five thousand trees by five hundred billion euros So the edit we had a change in policy last month. It's unlikely. We're going to see a change of policy this month Looking ahead to Friday, we're going to have the flash PMI updates out of Germany and France Covering you know manufacturing and services given it gives an indicator of how things how things fared out In the month of January in line of the lockdowns And we have an update from UK public public finances covering December I'm obviously related to national debt. How is that fared in light of what's going on with the extension? Referral and the very different schemes who support the economy during the during the lockdown and then lastly Keep an eye for UK retail sales covering the month of December. As I mentioned, it's a very important shopping month So tears will be looking at what was the man actually like in the month of December So turning our attention to the footsie 100 starting off as per usual I'll run to the big indices the big currency pairs and the big commodities. So the footsie 100 over a week ago Racked up a 10 month high but ever since then it has been drifting a bit lower But let's not forget the broader upper trend is still very much in intact And if you continue to kind of press on higher from here, the wider upper trend continues We could then be looking heading up towards the kind of the 7,000 mark because we're currently in around 6,731 and he pressed on higher from here And if we retake the highs of early March in at 6,891 Because then you can then be looking heading up towards 7,000 big psychological number for the footsie 100 If you do manage to drift a bit lower from here, you could see support coming into play in this blue line here They fit to the moving average in a 6,490 only if you notice how we saw that metric acted as both, you know Both support and resistance not that long ago and if a metric has been of importance in the past It makes it more likely it'll be of importance in the future, but there are no guarantees now One thing I do want to talk about on this particular chart is the long wick that was it that was On the candle from Thursday the 7th of January now I want to talk about it is a long week generally denotes in decision And we can see here that on Wednesday the 6th of January market at a very bullish candle pushed up very aggressively on the 7th It managed to push higher yet again But if you notice how there's a very long wick in the candle And if you notice that the the opening level of the candles quite similar to the closing level of the candle So it's not a massive surprise that We've a long week in this kind of here notes in decision We'll come to that's quite a bullish trend or both a recent bullish run that we drift a bit lower from here so sometimes This sort of this sort of candle that this sort of candle formation can appear On a chart and it is worth taking notice. So the logic of behind that is America is very bullish run It goes out to kind of eat out another in this case multi-month high that high is achieved But that the bi-elementum quickly fades not say that the market completely turns around But I'm the same that after seeing a long week like that some party surprise. We didn't see a drift to the downside So something to keep an eye out for when you're looking at charting in general Take a look at what's going on over in Germany on the backs So that acts in a similar situation Just over a week ago an all-time high so it's really very much in a bullish trend You can see there's been aggressive in moving higher since since late not since late October to move moving higher similar to what we saw in the footsie after the new Multi-month high was achieved in the footsie after the new all-time high was achieved on the decks we're drifting a bit lower But the upward trend still remains intact if you do press on higher from here We can be looking at retesting 14,000 big psychological number if you go beyond that We can then be looking at retesting the all-time high of in around 14,134 and if you go beyond that you then be in Uncharted territory and in Uncharted waters and traders will be looking out for levels like 13,000. I'm sorry 14,200 300 so on as the fourth any way to the downside on the decks could find support in this area here the lows of late January Over the set the side the lows and early January matter in around 13,565 And if you do go below that support to be found in this blue line here the fifth that it will be average in a 13,419 and similar scenario notice how that metric acts as both Resistance and support in the last few months and similar scenario if that area the metric has been has been Significant in the past it makes it more likely it'll be of importance in the future But once again, there are no guarantees The Dow Jones nothing on a go back down a threat racked off the fresh all-time high. So it's been pretty much a strong upward trend Index futures are trading today, but cash equities are not trading today, but ultimately the upper trend continues Professor fire from here. We could be looking at retesting 31,000 a movie on that could take us back up towards the all-time highs In around 31,254 and then if you go beyond that we could be looking towards 30 of the world's 31,300 up toward 31,500 to one and so forth Any callbacks in the in the in the Dow Jones could find support from this blue line here Fifthly moving average in a 30,095 and even if you go below that because they were like a heading back down for this this line here in around 29,460 won because notice how on a few occasions in late November and also in late December That zone access support. So keep an eye for that area. Should you have a 30 size of pullback in the Dow Jones? sticking with the US team taking a look at this girl the S&P 500 similar scenario an all-time high was racked up a Couple of Fridays ago about a week and a half ago The market has cool ever thought slightly since then, but the wider upper trend is very much in place you know we're currently S&P 500 is currently trading around 3768 move higher from here could take us back up towards 3800 and if you go beyond that we could then be looking at retesting the all-time highs in a 3832 any kind of pullbacks might find support from this blue line here the 50 moving average in a 3677 move below that could take us back down toward this zone here Which is in around 3600 and it's similar to what we saw in the Dow Jones the lows of late November and the lows of late December as well So keep an eye for 3600 should we see a fairly sizable Pullback on the S&P 500 Keep turning attention out what's going on currency markets First things first, I'll talk about the kind of the rebound in the in the US dollar One of some of the parts that we trade here seems to markets are forex indices. So the best ever simmer my simmers structure to stock market indices, but actually it is currencies that were That we're looking into so take a look at the CMC GBP CMC USD USD index. We can see here The broad trend in the US dollar has been at the downside, but we have seen a rebound Recently and we're not the point where traders are wondering is this just to pull back in the wider downward trend I will return over on ourselves yet again Or is it going to be is this going to be the turnaround? Which is the kind of first step in a broader recovery in the US dollar So remember all I talked about we saw that long Relatively long wick on the FTSE 100 when they hit a 10-month high notice how we saw here a long relatively long wick a longish wick on the US on the CMC US dollar index here So we've had it's moved to a new you know two and a half year long, you know new loads were achieved Then what do we see? We see a rebound. We have a pullback here. It seems to find support here We're moving higher yet again. So if we do move higher in the CMC USD index We could be looking at retesting the highs of late December and if you move beyond that We could then be looking at heading it towards the highs of early December Now so the theme I want to talk about here is that we've had dollar weakness We've had a dollar rebound how's that going to impact pound dollar and your dollars So for all these statements in a correction in the in the in the US dollar recently So conversely we've seen weakness in GBP USD Weakness in euro dollar as well. So I'll take a look at your dollar now On the flip side of the divide We have you know, we're at levels overseen about two and a half years ago in the in early January We've been moving lower since because of the rebound and in the dollar Let's not forget the broader uptrend is still in place But we're coming up to a very significant level because we're currently in at one spot 2072 We're not too far away from the fifth day moving averages blue line here Which is actually support back in November if you can hold above the fifth day moving average It's likely we could see the broader upward trend continue I should repeat the case we can head back towards one spot 22 And then we could be looking retesting the highs of early January in around one spot 2349 But if you do move below the fifth day moving average, which comes into play in at one spot 2072 We could then be head back down towards 120 one spot 20 next in a big psychological number And a move below that could take us back down toward this zone here the lows late November and early December in at one spot 1923 of general area Now turning our attention to pound dollar So pound dollar has been in a very strong upward trend the last few weeks and months In fact, it was only very recently that it hit Excuse me. It was only very recently it hit a fresh two and a half year high So the market's in a pretty strong upward trend And we're currently in at one spot training around one spot 35 53 if we continue to move on higher from here We could be looking at heading towards this general zone in around the highs of all of late August 2018 are in at one spot 37 1992 but also keep them. I afford the kind of the lows of February 2018 in around one spot 3712. So There hasn't you know, we saw a lot of volatility in this time frame here So there isn't a huge amount of kind of areas that really stand out So we could be looking at could be looking at the zone of one spot 3712 the lows of February 2018 We could also be looking up towards the highs of April 2018 in around one spot Sorry, the highs of late April 2018 in at one spot 3792, but ultimately These levels that zone is just potentially going to be a Possible stop-off point as the market moves in the direction of one spot 40 should be kind of broader upward trying to continue If we do see a pullback in pound dollar, you could see support to interplay from this blue line here Excuse me. The fifth and moving average in at one spot 34 17 and notice on a couple occasions only in December it acted nicely as support So keep an eye for that area and even if you go below that we couldn't find support The other line here the 100 movie average Just north of one spot 32 Coming up on two commodities starting off with gold we talked about the rebound in the US dollar and Gold like other commodities is traded in US dollars But the inverse relationship between gold and the dollar it has been particularly strong recently So we talked about the move lower India in the move higher the reason you can rebound in the US dollar. Well, it's not with surprise. We're seeing weakness in The gold market on the back of that so gold has been moving lower very recently This candle here is a potential along with the notes and decision the way things are shaping up given Given the shape of the body of us particularly if it closes near the high of the day Could be a sign of a hammer formation Which couldn't mean we could be in for a turn around in gold because it got close to 1800 It didn't quite get there. So the couple looking at rebounding back up towards the water They moved me average. It's the underlying year in a 1887 a movie on that particular towards 1900 and if you take a 1900 we could have potentially looked to kind of retest the highs of early January If you do that around managed to turn over on itself if you take out 1800 you could look at heading back down towards the lows of late November in around 1764 and if you go beyond that We could then be looking heading further back further down further losses could be on the agenda So if you take out Take out the lows of late November. We can then be like a heading back down towards the lows of late June in that 1747 Now last day coming up to Brent oil with the oil market Brent crude oil the cash market overall kind of bullish creating in the markets supply concerns has all connected in the factor in pushing up oil To basically an 11 month high levels last seen in February 2020 you have seen a bit of a drift lower in the overall market China concerns about certain Coming under lockdown Prolonged fears about the rate at which the lockdowns go last concerns as the COVID-19 vaccine isn't going to get rolled out quick enough That's going to chip the way up to man But also if you've come off a 11 month high better profit taking it's hardly a bit of a price So the broad end to the last few months has been at the upside We're currently trading just north of $55 a barrel But if the uptrend continues to will be keep an eye on the kind of the next big psychological number at 60 bucks a barrel If we do drip lower from here support could could go into play from the kind of general 52 zone $52 own no the sound just you will north of it up around 50-52 spot 43 Active as a resistance on the way up so a bit of consolidation in a certain price action take place in around 52 There they're about to make December and if you go below 52 You could find support in the blue line here 50 movie average. I could nicely support in mid November and also as resistance in October and if you go below that again We could be heading back down towards 46.81 the lows of early December That's all from this video. Thank you for listening. Have a good training week and good luck


Two, well, that is if you were gone, House of Poo Corner, part two of an interview with John Root on independence. And one of our points is that independence ain't worth a hill of beans if it is not financial and monetary independence. So that is what the Bank of England since 1694 has been trying to crush and has been very successful at that, including the independent colonies who created their own currencies during the period of the continent of the colonial script. And then, oh, I know what I wanted to mention last time. The continental dollar became in later years, 200 years later, it's a joke. Oh, it ain't worth a continental. That's because it was counterfeited and counterfeited and counterfeited by the Brits in order to devalue it on purpose. So there was so much continental currency that flooded the market. So for those of you who've been paying attention and thinking about the last interview and those of you who said, aha, got them there, well, you don't because the continental currency was working perfectly until the massive counterfeiting that went on in order to destroy it. So welcome back, everybody. And again, the websites to pay attention to here are the MassachusettsRepublic.org, the USARepublic.info, and they spell it with a CK. And I will add one, VermontIndependent.net, where for many, many years we have written articles about banking, the history of banking, the history of the Vermont Republic. And I will mention that I have a very long article there from a couple of years ago about the Vermont State Bank that was in existence since 1806 for a few years. Until the banking powers managed to shut it down. The out-of-state banking powers managed to shut it down. And one of the devices they used to shut it down is still tried and true. You can read it in the papers every day that this idea of paper money is really silly and it doesn't work. And they use that in order to stop people from creating an independent currency. But John Root is going to go forward now and explain the wonderful benefits and how we can bring that about and why it is socially responsible to do so and how it gets us out of the web of debt. So off we go. Okay, so the first thing that I want to describe is how insidious the existing banking system is. So at the end of the revolution, Hamilton organized his cronies to fan out through the colonies and buy up Continentals for a nickel on the dollar. It wasn't always a nickel, sometimes it was two cents, sometimes it was ten cents. But basically they bought up Continentals. John Hamilton persuaded President George Washington, this is much later, to redeem the Continentals at face value, to demonstrate that this new United States with its new constitution was a honorable, significant new member of the nations of the world that are all controlled by a central bank. So you had the currency idea in the Constitution then subverted coin, never mind I can't remember the exact phrase, Congress has the power to coin money, regulate the value thereof and establish the weights and measures. So the point that I'm making is that the banking system without our being able to understand it has managed things. So the Eastern establishment was the wealth of the Eastern establishment, including the Boston Brahmins and that whole thing, it all came about out of that original fortune that was made with the Continentals being redeemed at face value. The difficulty that we're in is that this idea that you have to borrow the money in order for there to be money in circulation, which the banks don't represent, I mean they never tell you that, is what's creating the conditions. So everybody has to do whatever they have to do in order to be able to make the payments in order to have a house, in order to have a car, in order to get an education. You have to do what the banking system is requiring in order to be able to live the way you expect it. In the idea of organic law, everything is based on what you could say, what you could call is genuine common sense. And our common sense is always based on our sense of justice. So if any of us sit together and we have a conversation about what would be just and all kinds of things come up, it doesn't take very long to get to that point where, yes, we do understand what justice is. So in common law, going way, way back to the Magna Carta, the idea of justice is that you need to be judged if you've been accused of a crime. You need to be judged by people who know you. You need to be judged by a jury of your peers. And back in the day, before the most of American history actually, but after the Constitution, juries always knew that they were not only judging what the facts were and applying the law or justice to the facts, but they were also determining the justice of the law. This is a very important thing because it's been lost. It's not been lost because people didn't know about it. It's because the banking cartel is absolutely dead set against anybody ever recognizing that juries can determine the justice of the law. Slavery ended simply because juries in the north were unwilling to convict the members, the people who operated the Underground Railroad, and they just wouldn't. So I don't care what the facts are, not guilty. Prohibition ended because juries refused to convict the operators of the speakeasies, they just refused to convict them.  This is not just. This is what we need to get back to. So there are two things that come to us from common law. One is the grand jury, which we're all familiar with. But the point about the grand jury is that just like the regular jury, what we call the petite jury, had the power to judge the justice of the law. So the grand jury, in its tradition, also was responsible for issuing presentments. A presentment is an accusation against some aspect of the government, a government agency or what have you, that would then have to be investigated. Once the grand jury had come up with the presentment, then it would need to be investigated by the police or the sheriff or what have you and handed over to the prosecution. Well, presentments are gone. Grand juries have a tendency to be specially selected, seated for a long time and do exactly what the prosecutor wants. There's very little recollection or understanding that if we, the people, are to be sovereign, not only will we have to issue the money to create the conditions in which we want to live, but we will also need to be a real serious check on whatever the government around us is. Now, we know from our experience, and both Jim and I have been involved in protests of one kind or another, most of our lives, it doesn't do anything. We have this idea that we can petition Congress for redress of grievances is totally useless. Nothing never happens. And there we were, a million people in Washington, D.C., protesting the war in Vietnam and what do we get? Well, okay, sort of. Well, we also got beaten by the Vietnamese. That was a big help to ending the war. Yeah, exactly. I mean, the extinction rebellion right now, all these people willing to throw their bodies on the line to get a real commitment to genuine reduction in carbon dioxide, the extinction rebellion is doomed to failure.  Now, what we need to do is recreate that experience of individual sovereignty. We can make agreements with each other. We can sit together in what we're calling a Jural Assembly. In our township, in our ward, where we know each other. And if we understand that money is always an agreement to use something as the means of exchange, we do not have to use the dollar as the means of exchange. We can use the dollar as the unit of value, right? Because we all know what a dollar is worth. We can make up for the inflation in the dollar, but we do not have to use the dollar as the means of exchange. So there are a number of national organizations that are working on this. One is Liberty Dollar, libertydollar.net. And the other is Common Good, CommonGood.Earth. There's also time banking. There are also numerous local currencies like Berkshires and the Berkshires. And there are lots of people who are working on this issue of how can we actually assume the sovereignty that's necessary in order for us to create the conditions in which we want to live? Well, we can do that by joining the Common Good payment system, where we use the dollar as the unit of value. But we issue Common Good as the means of exchange. So transfer from your bank account dollars, from your bank account, no challenge to the existing, into the community's account. And the community will issue Common Good, which you then spend at all the participating businesses. We have some 400 people in the Greenfield, Western Massachusetts, Northern Western Massachusetts, Greenfield area, beginning in Northampton and Amherst, as well as in Greenfield, Massachusetts. And we have over 40 businesses, including grocery stores and what have you, no gas stations yet, but biodiesel. And we begin to have the experience of sovereignty. So to the extent that people don't need to cash out their Common Good back to dollars and put them back in their bank account, we can also allocate the dollars in the community's account. So we now have federal reserve dollars in the community account that we can allocate to the extent that they're not needed to cash out. And we can issue Common Good to the extent that we judge it will be safe and won't lead to too much cashing out. We have a sovereign monetary system. Do you have any examples of having issued Common Good currency for a project or anything like that? So in the first year that we were able to, we funded 10 different organizations with 10,000. And then the second year, last year, we funded almost 20 with 20,000. It wasn't 20, it was another 10 or so. I can't remember. I mean, it was a lot of fun. We have a very good online democracy system. So we use what we call liquid democracy. Everybody's voice counts. Everybody's vote counts.  It's always a ranking of the choices. So this is my first choice. This is my second. This is my third. Then you can use a system called Condersant Pairs to figure out what the really preferred option is. If a significant number of people say 5% veto something, no, no, that's not good. That's unjust or there's a problem with that. Then we have to totally reconsider it. So we've also created a democracy system that makes us sovereign. And we conduct all of our meetings sociocratically. Sociocracy is another way of creating a juror assembly so that in sociocracy, every voice matters. It's really important that everybody has a chance to come to expression. So if there's a proposal on the table for something that we should issue money for and there's an objection, we want to go into the objection. It's not, okay, consensus is stymied. No, no, no. You need to use a rational argument to explain what your objection is. We need to pursue that objection because when we get to the bottom of it, to the heart of the matter, it will make the proposal that much stronger. It will create. So we're now in an entirely different relationship, not competitive. Let's not ever elect somebody, right? Let's not ever have a sealed ballot, anonymous vote, right? Let's always select the best person for the role, for the job. We had a very interesting experience at the end of August. The group of us in Massachusetts who've been working on the Republic on this re-establishment of common law, natural law, God's law, maxims of law, treaty law, not corporate, not uniform commercial code, right? We got together and we went through a process of deciding who would be the best person to be commissioner. The idea of the commissioner is, and this is all just very beginning, right? But the idea of the commissioner is he needs to decide how to distribute the money. He needs to be the one where the buck stops. We need a sheriff. Who would be the best person to be the sheriff? We need a community builder because we actually have to build this whole thing from the ground up. We need a notary. We need somebody to watch, to be responsible for the process. So the notary is not just signing that what has been presented is being presented by this person, but can really create an affidavit to help somebody to create an affidavit that they swear to, that is the basis for truth in common law. And who can oversee the process? Both the judges, hopefully we will never have any lawyers. It's another wonderful thing that we don't know from our history. The Constitution actually banned lawyers, the lawyers have taken over. Anyway, that disappeared after the Civil War, just wasn't there anymore. Anyway, oversee the court and the grand jury and the petite jury. And then we need the historian or the scribe. We need somebody who will take the notes and make sure that everybody stays on task. And we went around the group and we talked about why we thought so-and-so should be the commissioner or the sheriff. And it was remarkable. The person that, just as an example, the person that we selected, just on the basis of listening to what everybody, the person that we selected for the sheriff is the most non-confrontational person in that group. The one that you would least suspect would be, why? Because that's what the sheriff needs to do. The sheriff needs to diffuse the situation rather than impose or compel. And we started talking about Andy of Mayberry and Barney who had the bullet in his pocket, not in the gun, and always was able to diffuse. That's the sheriff that we need. We need to totally rethink the entire way in which we go about governing ourselves. And if we do it in local jury assemblies, the jury assembly is the idea that when you step in, everybody belongs to the jury assembly in a neighborhood or a township or a village or a ward or whatever the district is that we're using. Everybody belongs to the jury assembly. How do you spell that? Jural? Jural. J-U-R-A-L. Jural assembly. Jural assembly. It's the jury. It's the jury pool, basically. So we all belong to the jury pool and you get the notice, show up for juries. The point about the jury assembly, which we don't have now, it's supposed to be the city council or the county or the state legislature or the national congress, but when you step into the jury assembly, you are assuming the responsibility to be a sovereign citizen. So you will be guided by your healthy sense of justice and the common good. Now, because the world, the entire world, but also particularly our own experience, there is this huge distortion of human nature that's brought about by the unconscious way in which we have to relate to the money. Money is always scarce. Everybody is waiting for money in order to be able to do the really great, wonderful thing that they know that they could do. You can only get money for things that will be profitable to banks. There is no justice in, just to give you a little example, the reason that the business goes out of business is because the bank created a bubble now with expansion of credit. Now there's contracting the credit and they won't renew your line of credit. That's why you go out of business. Well, guess what? Because you weren't one of these mega corporations, you were personally liable for that loan. Your entire life is determined by what you can get money for from a bank. What a bank will lend you money for. And it's true for all of us. I have to earn my living. Now, I am not in the least bit interested in earning my living. What I am interested in doing is realizing the spirit that animates me. I want to discover and serve the transcendent purpose that I feel called to serve. Now, if we're sitting together in a rural assembly and we're asking each other what would be just and somebody were to suggest, like my good self were to suggest, well the only thing that would really create justice is if everybody had the money that they need as a matter of right so that they can pursue the transcendent purpose they feel called to serve. Now, human nature has been represented entirely as, you know, vile, venal. We're all greedy. We're all, you know, willing to compromise. There's no morals, et cetera. That's all a result of the monetary system. Once we recognize that everybody would like to be in a position to do what they feel called to do with the possibility of educating themselves, of developing their capacity to do it increasingly well, autonomously, the way that they want to do it, and the money, if I got the check at the beginning of the month, there was an equitable distribution of the overall productivity of the economy so that I could do what I want to do. Everything would change. And if I experienced myself as a sovereign individual responsible for my community, I am responsible for the common good of this community, as are you, as are what sort of agreements would we make? We would make the agreement to make sure that everybody has what they need. As soon as everybody has what they need, all of this greed and hoarding and avarice and keeping up with the Joneses and all the rest of it goes away. Everybody would only ever do what they're inspired to do voluntarily. So now you're in a position to think about the ideal of the American Revolution all over again. Governments are instituted among men in order to secure their rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If I want to secure life, I have to make sure that everybody has the money they need to provide all the things that they need to sustain their life. If we want to secure our life, it's not about abortion. It's about making sure that everybody has what they need so that they can live. Once you have what it is that you need to live, you are at liberty to pursue happiness. What is the only thing that reliably creates happiness that is only one thing? And that is being able to pursue the transcendent purpose that you feel called to serve with the opportunity to develop your capacities autonomously. Plato. That is what creates the only genuine experience of happiness. That is what the Republic is aiming to create the opportunity for us as a people to realize the ideal of the American Revolution and to secure our life so that we are at liberty to pursue happiness as sovereign individuals in sovereign states in a sovereign nation. At some other point, we'll talk about the Replic, which is the name of the currency that the Republic is issuing. We'll talk about how Liberty Dollar works. We'll talk about how common good works. We'll talk about time banks. We'll talk about some of those other things. If you want to join us, if you want to join the Republic idea, you can let them know at usarepublic.info, that's with a CK, republic.info. Those of you who know me can just look it up in the phone book and call me and let me know that you're interested because the positions that you mentioned are all positions that need to be filled, sheriff, commissioner, all that sort of thing. Scribe, notary, community builder. That sort of thing will make it work. And then we can attract more and more people to this concept. So we only have about 10 seconds. So thank you very much for joining part two of this discussion with John Root on independent currencies, independence in general, and the new republic that some of us are trying to create. See you next time.