Planes parked up, cruise ships anchored, airports deserted, tourists not touring, supermarket shelves bare, Disneyland shut, borders closing, motor races cancelled, no fans in the stands, smelters and factories closing, travel banned, oil and coal prices crashing, stock markets plunging, businesses closing, bankruptcies rising, hotels and motels unoccupied, politicians panicking, barbies cold - - looks like zero emissions is almost here.

     As this is a sensitive issue I will let the left-wing paper do the scene setting:
  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/14/after-more-than-150-years-new-zealand-recognises-extinct-moriori-people

“For decades history books in New Zealand taught schoolchildren that the Moriori people were extinct. The accepted wisdom was that the Polynesian settlers of the Chatham Islands, who arrived hundreds of years before Māori, were wiped out by invading Māori tribes, who killed and enslaved their population after landing on the islands in 1835. But more than 600 years since the Moriori arrived in New Zealand, their descendants have signed a treaty with the government that enshrines their rights and been awarded NZ$18m in compensation. The treaty includes an agreed historical account and a Crown apology. The settlement package includes the transfer of lands of cultural and spiritual significance to Moriori on Rēkohu (Chatham Islands) and Rangihaute (Pitt Island) as cultural redress, and $18m in financial redress. In the 1990s the Moriori began to rebuild their culture and traditions, officially becoming recognised as the Chatham Islands’ Indigenous inhabitants in a Waitangi tribunal decision. According to the 2006 census, 945 people said they were of Moriori descent and today the New Zealand government recognised their decades-long struggle for recognition.”

     Old time League people will be saying ‘I told you so at this one,” and Eric Butler, in Heaven now, will be nodding:
  https://www.yahoo.com/news/zimbabwe-gives-land-back-white-150503602.html

“Two decades after President Robert Mugabe wrecked Zimbabwe’s economy by urging black subsistence farmers to violently force white commercial farmers and their workers off their land, his successor has thrown in the towel. Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government has proposed settling all outstanding claims against it by farmers by offering them land. “The object of the regulations is to provide for the disposal of land to persons entitled to compensation,” Land Minister Perence Shiri said in regulations published in the Government Gazette Friday. The seizures that began in 2000 were ratified by the government, which said they were needed to redress colonial imbalances. A vibrant agricultural industry that exported tobacco and roses and grew most of the food the nation needed collapsed. Periodic food shortages ensued, inflation became the world’s highest and the manufacturing industry was decimated. What was one of Africa’s richest countries became one of its poorest. Almost 4,500 white-owned properties and others protected under government-to-government agreements were affected by the program. The southern African nation this year budgeted about Z$380 million ($21 million) for compensation. Several farms that were protected under so-called Bilateral Investment Protection Agreements belonged to nations including the U.K., South Africa, Australia, the Netherlands and Denmark.”

     Turkey is pushing the boundaries of what a country can do before war breaks out; in its latest act it has used EU funded armoured vehicles to let in the illegals to Greece, entry point for the attack upon Europe:
  https://gellerreport.com/2020/03/video-eu-funded-turkish-armored-vehicle-rips-down-greek-border-fence.html/
  https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/03/10/watch-eu-funded-turkish-armoured-vehicle-rips-down-greek-border-fence/

“The Greek government has released a night-vision video which they claim shows a Turkish armoured vehicle obtained through European Union funding trying to rip down border fencing and allow illegal migrants to penetrate the Greek border. A statement released along with the video said it was “depicting a Turkish armoured border surveillance vehicle which tries to pull down part of the border fence with a rope”, according to Greek newspaper Kathimerini and the Associated Press. “This is a HIZAR/ATES vehicle, which is equipped with instruments that allow it to monitor the border (day and night),” the statement claimed. “Turkey obtained these vehicles from May to August 2019, with 75 per cent of the program financed by European funds. It has a powerful engine and climbing capabilities.”

     Everything has an economic cost, even if there are benefits: this is known as opportunity costs, or cost foregone. So, what are the costs of open borders?
  https://www.zerohedge.com/political/open-borders-are-trillion-dollar-mistake

“As I first read Bryan Caplan’s “Open Borders Are a Trillion-Dollar Idea” in Foreign Policy, besides disbelief, my thoughts were that this person must not get out much or must not read much. A quote from writer Upton Sinclair came to mind as well: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” What is Just? “Open borders are not only just but the most promising shortcut to global prosperity,” writes Caplan. This raises the question of who determines what “just” is? Just is not a defined term that someone can easily review (as Caplan seems to imply) and determine whether a particular policy is just or unjust. In fact, each individual probably has a different definition of what just is. But in the United States, I believe the vast majority of citizens see Open Borders as a totally unjust policy. It is unjust because it is generally accepted that the population of a country has entered into a social contract with the leaders and government of a country. Under this contract, the population will follow the rule of law, and the government will pass and enforce policies that have beneficial impact upon the population of the country. There is no social contract between the leaders and government of one country and people who live in another country. As an example from across the pond, the new Italian government recently released figures showing that the state will allocate €50 million next year, €200 million in 2021 and €300 million in 2022 to the Disability and Self-Reliance Fund of Italy. Some 2 million disabled in Italy rely on these state benefits, which work out to just 54 cents per day in welfare – insufficient for even a subsistence diet. In contrast, Italy is providing migrants €20 euros a day. Most Italians are likely to see this policy as unjust. Similar per capita spending differentials exist in funds furnished to needy citizens and migrants in the United States. That is also unjust! What Missed Opportunity?

     As expected, the new class can see that the coronavirus pandemic is a conceptual and philosophical challenge to the ideology of open borders, since sane countries are doing exactly the opposite, and closing up. Hence, their need to turn up the heat and push the globalist, we-are-all-in-this-together, bs line:
  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/opinion/sunday/corona-virus-usa.html

“Forget isolationism. One thing the current moment shows is the folly of presuming that viruses will respect borders — that they can be kept out by walls or wrangled into submission with good intentions. They cannot. Restricting and rescinding foreign health and development aid, pulling global health workers from outbreak zones abroad and undermining health care at home makes Americans more vulnerable to threats like Covid-19.
The best strategy for thwarting this epidemic, and for preventing the next, is to help other nations — wherever they are — fight humanity’s common enemy over there before we have to fight it over here.”

     Things are hotting up in the fear/paranoia stakes regarding the coronavirus, with calls from the Grattan Institute’s chief executive John Daley, to shut down schools and universities to attempt to stem the advance of Covid-19. Well, shut down the universities … it looks like James Reed will get his wish! After all, Trump has just shut down America to Europe:
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/03/11/donald-trump-suspends-all-travel-from-european-union-for-30-days-to-fight-coronavirus/
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8100251/Australia-close-borders-shut-schools-universities-face-coronavirus-epidemic.html

“Australia has been urged to close its borders, shut down schools and universities and cancel mass events or risk facing a 'complete and utter coronavirus epidemic'. Grattan Institute's chief executive John Daley called for Scott Morrison to follow the lead of Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore, which have introduced radical social distancing measures to curb the spread of COVID-19. Mr Daley said while some countries' approaches to the outbreak have impacted their economies, they had been successful in reducing virus cases. 'One option is that we can introduce very significant social distancing now and also potentially close the airports to foreign travellers. The consequence of that would be you would probably see the number of cases in Australia drop to zero,' he told The Australian. 'The second option is that you keep doing what we are doing at the moment. At some point it is likely that we will start to see significantly more person-to-person transmission in Australia.' Mr Daley warned if Australia keeps up its 'non-stringent measures like Italy', our cases would climb 'pretty quickly' and the fatality rate would skyrocket. Dr Muhammad Mohsin, who runs a number of GP clinics, called for all public events, schools, businesses, childcare centres and universities to be shut down for a month. 'This is the only way we can avoid a complete and utter epidemic in Australia. Otherwise, the virus will spread and it will devastate our country and our economy. We must do it before winter arrives. This is absolutely critical,' he said.

     I don’t particularly like much at the Affirmative Right site, since much of their time is spent attacking so-called false doctrines of the Right, when the Left is basically carpet-bombing Western civilisation. Too much personality issues for my taste. But, there are some truly excellent pieces that appear there once in a while, so with everything, we take what is useful and discard the rest, as martial arts great Bruce Lee said (John Steele, a Bruce Lee fan told me this.) And, I am a fan of Australian right film maker Richard Wolstencroft, who in his latest Report from Tiger Mountain tackles one question that also preoccupies me, the way the Australian government is allowing China to buy up the whole place. You would think that we are controlled by traitors, who have an alliance with a foreign, hostile power, or as Richard says, are simply “spies.” And, he drops a few names too, but here we are legally ultra-cautious, and don’t.
  https://affirmativeright.blogspot.com/2020/03/report-from-tiger-mountain-24-chinese.html

     Anyway, the way things are, we are soon not going to have local milk, or even baby food, and that is supposed to be sound globalist economics:
  https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/frydenberg-gives-chinese-1-5b-bid-for-bellamy-s-the-green-light-20191115-p53aus.html
  https://www.michaelwest.com.au/bellamys-1-43-billion-price-tag-doesnt-equal-an-australian-icon/
  https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-28/consumers-angered-by-farmers-union-iced-coffee-takeover/11744626

     Wow, oh wow. Joe Biden who is set to challenge Trump for the presidency, and will have his finger on the nuclear button, is so senile that he forgets his own name, and recently said that Americans can only re-elect Donald Trump: "...We cannot get re-elected, we cannot win this re-election, excuse me. We can only re-elect Donald Trump," Biden said.
  https://www.zerohedge.com/political/confused-biden-calls-himself-obiden-bama-says-we-can-only-re-elect-donald-trump

     I always thought the senile Ronny Reagan was the perfect dupe for the Deep State, but Biden will be the ultimate rubber stamp, doing whatever they want, even before they want it. Maybe nuclear annihilation is not so bad, compared to a world of Biden doing their bidding.
  https://videos.whatfinger.com/2020/03/08/the-democratic-partys-collapse-has-become-sad-democrats-request-biden-can-sit-down-at-next-debate/

     I told you so! Former presidential runner Chinese American Andrew Yang, has now endorsed Joe Biden. This is the guy who promised to be against the system, and give everybody $1,000 to party with. That offer immediately attracted the trolls and naïve sector of the Dissent Right, who thought that voting for Yang would teach Trump a lesson. Pure illusion, for it was only a matter of time before Yang would collapse back into the mainstream, if he ever left it. It goes to show how bad some on our side really is, lacking fundamental maturity, and even street wisdom. No wonder they lose all the time, for their army is full of losers!
  https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/10/politics/andrew-yang-endorses-joe-biden/index.html
  https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/19/politics/andrew-yang-cnn-political-commentator/index.html

     Governments seek to revive “the economy” by scattering gifts of our own money wrapped in red tape. This encourages immediate consumption. But this stimulation stops dead when the money tap is turned off. Three simple measures from the three levels of government will create real long term jobs without complicated political handouts that have no lasting effect. Firstly, abolish the federal Capital Gains Tax. Fear of CGT has constipated private property transfer and investment for decades. Most new owners of houses, businesses or farms soon start making improvements – alterations, extensions, a granny flat or new sheds, yards, dams, fences, factories or workshops. But after a few years, owners become satisfied or inactive and capital expenditure dries up. Often they would like to move on but they fear CGT liabilities if they sell. Abolish the CGT and its complicated rules and many owners would upgrade to a new property or business and both old and new properties are likely to attract a new cycle of improvements.

     Making all capital expenditure immediately deductable for tax in all industries would accelerate re-investment. We would hear the hammers starting within days (as in post-war Germany when Ludwig Erhardt set their beaten people free). Secondly, State governments can accelerate economic rejuvenation by abolishing stamp duty, which is a tax on those who do things. New Zealand abolished stamp duty twenty years ago and the sky did not fall.
Thirdly, local governments can help with a six-month rates holiday for all rate payers in shires suffering from fires, flood, drought or corona-virus depression. The feds should fund this. Giving an allowance to people who are forcibly quarantined is reasonable. But most people don’t want a handout – they want a job. We don’t want governments scattering our own money like confetti – we want conditions that encourage people to invest more of their own money in creating real jobs.

14 March 2020,      Governments seek to revive “the economy” by scattering gifts of our own money wrapped in red tape. This encourages immediate consumption. But this stimulation stops dead when the money tap is turned off. Three simple measures from the three levels of government will create more long term jobs than discriminatory and complicated political handouts that have no lasting effect. Firstly, abolish the federal Capital Gains Tax. Fear of CGT has constipated private property transfer and investment for decades. Most new investors in houses, businesses or farms soon start making improvements – alterations, extensions, a granny flat or new sheds, yards, dams, fences, factories or workshops. But after a few years, owners become satisfied or inactive and capital expenditure dries up. Often they would like to move on but they fear CGT punishment if they sell. Abolish the CGT and its complicated rules and many owners would upgrade to a new property or business and both old and new properties are likely to attract a new cycle of investment and renovation. Making all capital expenditure immediately deductable for tax in all industries would also accelerate re-investment. We would hear the hammers starting within days (as in post-war Germany when Ludwig Erhardt set their beaten people free of tax). Secondly, State governments can accelerate economic rejuvenation by abolishing stamp duty, which is a tax on those who do things. New Zealand abolished stamp duty twenty years ago and the sky did not fall. Thirdly, local governments can help with a six-month rates holiday for all rate payers in shires suffering from fires, flood, drought or corona-virus depression. The feds should fund this. Giving an allowance to people who are forcibly quarantined is reasonable. But most people don’t want a handout – they want a job. We don’t want governments scattering our own money like confetti – we want conditions that encourage people to invest more of their own money in creating real jobs.

     While many of us are concerned about the buy ups by China of Australia’s crucial assets, and the treason of the political class in allowing this to occur, Australia is only one country being bought up. Africa is well on the way to becoming part of China, in a new colonialism:
  https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2018/08/04/china-is-treating-africa-the-same-way-european-colonists-did/#3959fc38298b

“Chinese corporations are all over Africa.  In June 2017 a McKinsey & Company report estimated that there are more than 10,000 Chinese-owned firms operating in Africa. What are Chinese corporations doing in Africa? That's a highly controversial issue. The reason Chinese corporations are in Africa is simple; to exploit the people and take their resources. It’s the same thing European colonists did during mercantile times, except worse. The Chinese corporations are trying to turn Africa into another Chinese continent. They are squeezing Africa for everything it is worth. This is the view several African politicians have. The Zambian politician Michael Sata was one of them. At least he was before being elected President of Zambia in 2011. He wrote a paper presented to Harvard University in 2007 that said “European colonial exploitation in comparison to Chinese exploitation appears benign, because even though the commercial exploitation was just as bad, the colonial agents also invested in social and economic infrastructure services Chinese investment, on the other hand, is focused on taking out of Africa as much as can be taken out, without any regard to the welfare of the local people.” (quoted in Scott D. Taylor's "The Nature of Chinese Capital in Africa, Current History, May 2018, p. 197) Sata's bold position got some support by a deadly blast at an explosives factory partly owned by the Chinese state killing 50 Zambian workers.

     Something just has to be done about Turkey. Just over one hundred years ago, there would have been a war over this; they would not continue to get away with such slaps in the face:
  https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/03/08/reports-turkish-police-use-drones-to-organise-tear-gas-attacks-on-greek-border-guards/

“Turkish police used drones to organise attacks against Greek security forces tasked with protecting the nation’s borders from thousands of migrants attempting to illegally cross into the country, according to reports. On Friday, Greek security forces were bombarded with smoke bombs and tear gas fired from the Turkish side of the border at the Kastanies checkpoint on the Evros river. It is now alleged that Turkish police used drones to co-ordinate the onslaught upon Greek security forces. During the attack, members of the Turkish police force were seen handing out wire cutters to migrants to help them cut through the border fence separating the two countries, according to the Greek Reporter. The escalation in violence at the border follows the decision by the Islamist president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to “open the gates” to migrants attempting to enter Europe. The move is widely seen as a retaliation for Europe insufficiently backing his invasion of northern Syria to crush Kurdish forces and prop up jihadist rebels in Idlib. The decision by Erdogan abrogtated the 2016 agreement between Turkey and the European Union, which required Turkey halt the flow of migration into the EU in return for billions of euros in aid.”

     Informed thinkers feel in their water, as my father used to say when he was certain of something, that things are falling apart, certainly culturally, and also economically. The so-called victories of the Left, since the 1960s cultural revolution, have systematically undermined social capital. Here is Charles Hugh Smith, whom I am sure none of us here have heard of, on the falling apart of everything:
  https://www.zerohedge.com/political/political-and-social-conflict-accelerating-heres-why

“Here's the core self-reinforcing dynamic in my view:

     Here is a clear problem arising from diversity and multiculturalism, the problem of national loyalty. It is something that the West just forgot about after World War II, because of, well, it would be “racist” to think such thoughts, or too much of a burden to unlimited economic growth :
  https://apnews.com/73fa72b776f2403688a572b770d7f3b5
  https://www.theepochtimes.com/thousands-of-us-based-scientists-sell-research-to-china-report-says_3150130.html

“The United States government has failed to stop China from stealing intellectual property from American universities and lacks a comprehensive strategy for dealing with the threat, a congressional report concluded Monday. The report says the FBI should be more effective and consistent in warning colleges and universities about the threat of Chinese economic and industrial espionage. It also says agencies that award research grants or provide visas for scientists don’t do enough to monitor or track the recipients, and says universities themselves must do a better job identifying foreign funding sources and conflicts of interest among scientists on their campuses. The problem is especially urgent, says the report from the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, because billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded research have “contributed to China’s global rise over the last 20 years” and to its goal of being a world leader in science and technology by 2050. “As American policy makers navigate an increasingly complicated relationship with China, it is not in our national security interest to fund China’s economic and military development with taxpayer dollars,” the report says. The report is the most recent government study to analyze Chinese intellectual property theft on college campuses and to scrutinize the shortcomings of government agencies in addressing the problem. It focuses on Chinese programs that recruit scientists with access to cutting-edge technology in the U.S. and incentivize them to conduct research for Beijing’s gain and even to steal the work of American academics. In recent years, the report says, the programs have been exploited by scientists who have downloaded sensitive research files before returning to China, filed patents based on U.S. research, lied on grant applications and failed to disclose money they’d received from Chinese institutions. “The U.S. academic community is in the crosshairs of not only foreign competitors contending for the best and brightest, but also of foreign nation states that seek to transfer valuable intellectual capital and steal intellectual property,” the report states. “As the academic community looks to the federal government for guidance and direction on mitigating threats, the U.S. government must provide effective, useful, timely and specific threat information and tools to counter the threats.” The report takes aim at the lack of transparency in how the programs are run, recommending that agencies that distribute research grants stop funding participants in them absent full disclosure of the terms and conditions of membership.”

     Liberal academics constantly proclaim that conservatives of all shapes and sizes, are threats, that must be dealt with. There are examples of this every day. And, acts of violence continue against conservatives on campus, especially the US. Australia does not seem to have any conservatives on campuses, having culled them all out so that the Great Replacement can proceed uncontested, at least intellectually:
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/11/28/rutgers-prof-conservative-media-and-gop-are-existential-threats-to-usa/
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/11/28/rap-sheet-117-acts-of-violence-and-harassment-against-conservatives-on-campus/

     It is thus ironic that the Left are concerned about Humanities on universities being regarded as the new enemies within. Here is something on this in the British scene from a Left newspaper:
  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/28/humanities-british-government-culture

     There is a new book out by New York Times columnist, Ross Douthat, The Decadent Society, that should be mentioned, then dismissed without buying or reading its fine print, because, in a decadent post-truth society, that is how we intellectually treat our opponents, mention and dismissal, with no serious study, because there is nothing more to seriously study anymore:
  https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/2/28/21137971/the-decadent-society-ross-douthat-book

“Is Trump a symptom or a disease? And if he’s a symptom, what’s the underlying sickness? Decadence is one possible answer. This is very close to the argument New York Times columnist Ross Douthat makes in his new book, The Decadent Society. According to Douthat, the US — and really the entire Western world — is stuck in a kind of cultural doom loop. In many ways, Douthat says, we’ve become victims of our own success and are now locked in a state of malaise, in which our culture and politics feel exhausted. Douthat’s definition of a “decadent society” is that we’re trapped in a stale system that keeps spinning in place, reproducing the same arguments and frustrations over and over again. Trump’s election is simultaneously a sign that a lot of people were desperate for something different and a reflection of the shallow and frivolous culture that spawned him. Douthat is a conservative, and so there’s a temptation to treat this book as a reactionary screed, or an angry protest against the modern condition. But I think it’s much more than that, although at times it does lapse into some familiar tropes. He puts his fingers on something real, something a lot of people feel on the left and the right, namely a belief that the status quo is broken and needs a reboot. I spoke to Douthat by phone about the story he wanted to tell in this book, why our dysfunctional politics is a sign of a much deeper problem, if his book is — deep down — an indictment of liberal capitalism, and if he sees any way out of the decadence he diagnoses. A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

     Well, well, well, just look at this and weep:
  https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/at-work/queensland-government-plan-could-see-lollipop-workers-earn-180k/news-story/743bf6ee6d3df10ef980ce0edd0cbcdd

“A new Queensland Government plan could reportedly see lollipop workers earn close to $180,000 a year. The massive wage would apply to jobs on regional construction projects under minimum conditions being considered by the Labor Government. The Government is trialling minimum requirements for major state-funded projects, similar to a Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union’s industry agreement. It will force builders to ensure subcontractors apply the rates, but builders claim the move will drive up costs by at least 30 per cent. They also say it will put principal contractors at risk of breaching workplace laws on adverse action and coercion in relation to subcontractors. The requirements would apply to projects worth more than $100 million, the first understood to be the $130 million expansion of the Cairns Convention Centre. The project’s 122 pages of minimum conditions, sent out to tenderers in October, include five per cent annual pay increases, requirements to pay weekend hours at overtime rates of 200 per cent and 12 per cent superannuation contributions, according to the Australian Financial Review. Under the plan carpenters would earn $198,000 a year on a 46-hour week and traffic controllers about $178,000, according to calculations from the Master Builders Association.”

     I have been reading Brian Simpson’s take on the coronavirus issue, and disturbances produced by the crisis. What have the elites to benefit from it? Where is the conspiracy? Well, dirty bank notes, which are all bank notes supposedly can carry the bug:
  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/02/exclusive-dirty-banknotes-may-spreading-coronavirus-world-health/?utm_content=telegraph&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR2li9tCpeSrNq_F89BCc_iioGyaormfwZ8xhnar60BJWwQkg8C55laC_6o#Echobox=1583183632

“Banknotes may be spreading the new coronavirus so people should try to use contactless payments instead, the World Health Organization has said. Customers should wash their hands after touching banknotes because infectious Covid-19 may cling to the surface for a number of days, the UN agency said on Monday night. To prevent the spread of the disease, people should use contactless technology where possible, a spokesperson added. The Bank of England has acknowledged that banknotes "can carry bacteria or viruses" and urged people to wash their hands regularly.”