“Po-ta-toes! Boil ‘em. Mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew,” Sam said to Smeagel in the film The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. But now, the much loved potato may be getting a genetically modified twist. Australia’s food regulator has called for submissions in its review of a new genetically-modified potato which produces less of a cancer-causing chemical called acrylamide: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-22/gm-potatoes-for-healthier-french-fries/7772252.

There are apparently no new proteins introduced and the DNA introduced is from the potato itself or from a closely-related potatoes species. So, there is the issue: is this justified on health grounds or are there more general concerns about GM issues which over-ride that? Food Standards Australia New Zealand has given us until the end of September to make a submission. Do it before the chips go down.

Three days before St. Valentine’s Day, February 11, 2017, we may have the same sex marriage plebiscite: “Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?” The vote will be compulsory and determined by an overall national majority. Well, the plebiscite will go ahead if Labor supports it, but they are still making up their little minds on that one. They wouldn’t want the “No” side to win.

There is no guarantee of free speech for the “No” case and supporters may violate oppressive state-based anti-discrimination laws. The federal government confirmed to Family First that it will not override state suppression laws.
Of course not; such laws are in place just for moments like this, to be used as a political weapon if necessary.
What we really need is a referendum putting a robust right to free speech into the constitution so that all of these laws can be knocked down in one swoop.

An ABC “Curious Canberra” article, “Who Owns My DNA When I Send it Off for Analysis?” September 12, 2016, has again drawn attention to an area where there is a great gap in the law, and where the science is way ahead of policy.

In the United States there have been a number of cases where this issue has been examined, most notably Moore v Regents of California (1990), heard by the Supreme Court of California. There, it was held that cells taken from a patient are not their property and therefore individuals have no rights to profits made by Big Med in use of the cells. The problem with the case is that the decision should have examined the information about the cells rather than the physical cells themselves, so the issue was not resolved. Other US cases have also upheld the rights of Big Med, seeing the social interest of medical research and corporate profits overriding personal privacy.

The native, white European people are ceasing to have babies, thanks to a potent potion of feminism and global consumer society. In Spain, there is an average of 1.27 children born for every woman of childbearing age. There are provinces in Spain where for every baby born, over two people die. Then there is Spain’s economic crisis which has led to a mass emigration of Spaniards fleeing Spain.

Its neighbour Portugal, is just as bad, with its population projected to drop from 10.5 million to 6.3 million by 2060. And Germany has the lowest birth-rate in the world, of 8.2 per 1,000 of population between 2008 and 2013. Any ideas about why this may be so?

Apart from race issues, the elites continue to press on with an assault upon men, and primarily white men. This is seen across the West and in many areas some clearly important, others of lesser importance.

In the EU Commission, the Commission’s budget and human resources chief, Kristalina Georgieva, said that if job targets for women were not met, then she would freeze job offers for men. If targets are not reached then sanctions will be imposed; “Sanctions are Coming’ European Union Bureaucrat Threatens to Freeze Job Offers for Men”.

Just before the news cycle about her collapse, and the first mainstream concern about her health, Hillary Clinton said that half of Donald Trump’s supporters belonged in a “basket of deplorables.” This was said to a crowd at a “LGBT for Hillary” gala. These people are “irredeemable but thankfully they are not America.” These millions of supporters were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it.” That just about sums up the plight of the West in a nut shell.

Later Hillary said that she was “grossly generalistic and should not have said “half.”
How many then: a quarter?

The latest in the Safe Schools program saga is that a Year 4 primary school student is “transitioning,” that is undergoing a gender transition, all with the help of the Safe Schools coalition. (The Australian, September 9, 2016, p. 7) A workshop will be held at the pupil’s class, and then the pupil plans to change to their new gender. It reminds me of some sort of frantic religious revivalist movement, or of the metaphorosis of insects. And it makes as much sense, since a child in Year 4, is in no position to be making such decisions.

This ideology, as has been noted in these pages, has been criticised by the American College of Pediatricians, claiming that the “Gender Ideology Harms Children”. We can add in the present context an important quote that was not noted previously, and which supports my remarks made above:
“A person’s belief that he or she is something they are not is, at best, a sign of confused thinking. When an otherwise healthy biological boy believes he is a girl, or an otherwise healthy biological girl believes she is a boy, an objective psychological problem exists that lies in the mind not the body, and it should be treated as such. These children suffer from gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria (GD), formerly listed as Gender Identity Disorder (GID), is a recognized mental disorder in the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-V). The psychodynamic and social learning theories of GD/GID have never been disproved.”

A Melbourne school for children with intellectual disabilities is under investigation after it dealt with one child by leaving him outside on a beanbag for an entire term, and that was a winter term! The boy’s mother was unaware of her son’s treatment.

Other children at other day care centres have been put inside lockable boxes! Some children had been left in their urine or had medications shoved down their throats. Whistle blowers have been sacked for lodging formal complaints.

According to the MSRI website: Children’s Medical Safety Research Institute, August 30, 2016, the shingles vaccine, Zostamax, has two FDA-approved changes to its warning label: “The first was in August 2014, when, in addition to potentially causing chickenpox, another side effect was added: shingles! …
The vaccine that had been – and continues to be – aggressively marketed to prevent seniors from contracting this excruciating condition was found to actually cause shingles in some individuals.”

In February 2016 the FDA approved another label change to warn of another potential side effect: the eye disorder of necrotizing retinitis, which inflames and scars eye tissue and unless promptly treated can lead to permanent vision loss.

Following on from my previous article celebrating negative thinking and why it may have survival value, I note another Natural.News.com article (September 1, 2016) “‘Optimism Bias’ Explains Why People Remain in Denial about Coming Collapse.”

This article refers to T. Sharot (et al.), “Neural Mechanisms Mediating Optimism Bias,” Nature vol. 150, November 2007. The article looks at the neural mechanisms behind “pervasive optimism bias,” such as people consistently expecting positive events in the future when there is no evidence for them.

An increasing amount of the food – including vegetables – at the supermarket, now comes from China. This shows the madness of globalisation, where Australian-grown produce must compete with the always cheaper Chinese imports.
Who dares ask: why should there be this competition in the first place? If an answer is given by the Dark Lords of Commerce, it usually goes along the happy capitalist lines of promoting individual choice. It is truly amazing how when socially harmful doctrines are critiqued, the elite always go back to “individualism” or “diversity.”

Peter Navarro and Greg Autry, Death by China (Pearson Education, New Jersey, 2011), present a full-scale assault on this free trade mythology. The book covers a lot of ground, but for the purposes of this note, is a good source on the dangers of imported Chinese food “infused with all manner of banned antibiotics, putrefying bacteria, heavy metals, or illegal pesticides.” (p.1)

The medical establishment in both the United States and Australia are big on gun control. But, as observed by a News article, August 23, 2016 ( http://www.newstarget.com/2016-08-23-doctors-are-killing-2450-more-americans-than-all-gun-related-deaths-combined.html), doctors are killing an incredible 2,450 percent more Americans than all gun-related deaths combined! An American is 64 times more likely to be killed by a doctor through mistakes and mishaps than by gunmen.

In 2011 there were 31,940 gun deaths and 19,766 of them were suicides.  That makes the homicide figure 12,174. By the way, doctors usually chirp in and say that without guns we would not have gun deaths by suicide. True enough – we will have suicides still by other means that could harm others such as jumping off buildings.

There is considerable scientific evidence which indicates that the more time spent seated, the greater the risk of death from all causes. Sitting can literally kill us. This is obviously not good news for most of us, who even if we don’t watch TV or play computer games, still must spend a large part of the day seated.

However, a recent study in The Lancet, by U. Ekelund (et al.), “Does physical activity attenuate, or even eliminate, the detrimental association of sitting time with mortality? A harmonised meta-analysis of data from more than 1 million men and women,” (2016), offers us hope. It was found, contrary to some previous research, that 60-75 minutes of moderate physical activity, such as walking the dog, is enough to counteract the ill-effects of a desk job, even with 8 hours seated. Even 25 minutes’ exercise is of some help.

University research teams, in their “wisdom” have recommended that the “Safe” Schools Program, which is really about teaching gender diversity, be expanded into primary schools. (The Australian, August 16, 2016, p.1) Then, children as young as five will be discussing cross-dressing and gender reassignment surgery. Children have already been involved in a “sex-change stories trial.” They appear to have been confused.

Most five-year-olds have not yet come to understand even the basic biology of sex. To be subjecting them to what is now a “politically divisive issue” is not merely unfair – it is a form of child abuse,  contrary to international human rights, and parents will need to seek, as a class action a legal solution against all involved.

https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/gender-ideology-leads-child-abuse-pediatricians/
 
NEW YORK, August 19 (C-Fam) “Facts – not ideology – determine reality,” the American College of Pediatricians (ACP) said in a warning http://www.acpeds.org/the-college-speaks/position-statements/gender-ideology-harms-children  to legislators and educators about the dangers of surgical and medical sex change operations to children.

“Conditioning children into believing that a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse,” the physicians said, “Rates of suicide are twenty times greater among adults who use cross-sex hormones and undergo sex reassignment surgery, even in Sweden which is among the most LGBTQ – affirming countries.”

The group, which aims at getting parents involved in their children’s health and education about health, said, “Gender (an awareness and sense of oneself as male or female) is a sociological and psychological concept; not an objective biological one,” and that, “A person’s belief that he or she is something they are not is, at best, a sign of confused thinking.”

To the contrary, the group maintained that human sexuality is a “binary trait” and said the XY and XX chromosomes that determine female or male sex are “genetic markers of health” not “genetic markers of a disorder.”

“No one is born with a gender. Everyone is born with a biological sex,” the statement said.

To which Wallace Klinck of Canada responded:
In my opinion “gender ideology” IS child abuse.  If the courts put up with this sort of societally disintegrative nonsense and "Marxist” dialectical mischief then I would conclude that they are in collaboration with the revolutionary agenda—a particularly vicious variant of the insane ideological “equality” virus.  What is inducing this “gender confusion” in pre-puberty or puberty youth anyway?  They must be being subject to some very abnormal developmental psychological influences—or are being denied normal identity relationships. I certainly never had any doubts about my “sexuality”—such doubts or thoughts never even entered my mind.  I am beginning to think that some people, mentors especially and victims alike, have too much idle time on their hands—and I am an uncompromising advocate of leisure.

Towards a Christian Æsthetic

p.41  The manufacturer of this type of entertainment (amusement-art-ed) is not by any means interpreting and revealing his own experience to himself and us — he is either indulging his own day-dreams, or still more falsely and venially he is saying: “What is it the audience think they would like to have experienced? Let us show them that, so that they can wallow in emotion by pretending to have experienced it.” This kind of pseudo-art is “wish-fulfilment” or “escape” literature in the worst sense — it is an escape, not from the “impact of external events” into the citadel of experienced reality, but an escape from reality and experience into a world of merely external events — the progressive externalisation of consciousness. For occasional relaxation this is all right; but it can be carried to the point where, not merely art, but the whole universe of phenomena becomes a screen on which we see the magnified projection of our unreal selves, as the object of equally unreal emotions.

I was opposed to the same sex marriage plebiscite until reading Michael Kirby’s article “Parliament is the Proper Place for Enacting Laws,” The Australian, August 9, 2016, p. 12.
Kirby, the great dissenter on the High Court of Australia has no problem with unelected judges making law, and in fact he proudly proclaims: “The High Court of Australia in 2013 unanimously made it clear that the entire power to enact same-sex marriage in Australia rested with the federal parliament.”

Kirby doesn’t like plebiscites, saying that a “plebiscite, as a precondition to legislation, is a totally exceptional procedure with no foothold in the Constitution.”

How “objective” is the so-called scientific evidence used to support vaccines? Mike Adams at NaturalNews.com, August 9, 2016, pretty much sums up our world today when he says: “Are you surprised by blatant scientific fraud anyone? Every informed person in the world today knows that everything is rigged: the money system, government grants, news media, polls and elections, medicine and even science. In fact, over the last two decades, most “science” has become nothing more than a corrupt system of quackery, fraud, and corporate infiltration of the scientific establishment, where “scientists” are turned into corporate prostitutes to fake whatever results produce the most profits.”

Profound words indeed! Adam goes on to report on the work of the Alliance for Natural Health USA/Brian Hooker, which examined the work of many studies “proving” that vaccines do not cause autism. A statistically significant number of these studies were either (1) directly funded by vaccine manufacturers or (2) the scientists had been paid expert witnesses for Big Pharma in law suits. In other words, there scientists had a massive conflict of interest, that almost certainly biased their work. The ANH USA site has the full review: http://www.anh-usa.org/vaccine-studies-debunked/. 

There is good news, and there is bad news. The bad news first. In a study of studies (known as a “meta-study”) Jennie Connor, “Alcohol Consumption as a Cause of Cancer,” Addiction, July 21, 2016, presented a summary of the data about alcohol consumption and cancer. It was found that alcohol causes oropharynx, larynx, oesophagus, liver, colon, rectum and breast cancer. There is evidence for some reduction in risk, when alcohol consumption ceases, of laryngeal, pharyngeal and liver cancers, but it is bad news for the rest.

It is estimated that alcohol-attributed cancers make up 5.8 percent of all cancer deaths worldwide – and growing. Even moderate to light drinking is a cancer risk, especially in women. There is a significant increased risk of breast cancer from even one drink a day.

A recent delightful story of childhood resourcefulness and intelligence was published in The Australian (August 22, 2016, p. 15), “Saved by Dr Google.” A 13-year-old contracted a serious illness that devastated her, putting her in a hospital bed. Doctors did numerous tests, and concluded that she had a severe cause of chronic fatigue syndrome. However, she spent her time researching on the internet and eventually discovered a research paper describing a girl with the same condition as her: pandysautonomia.

While this is all incredible, if one goes to Google and researches pandysautonomia one will find that it is a rare auto-immune autonomic neuropathy, and has occurred in cases of girls receiving the HPV (cervical cancer) vaccine. Although the probability of this effect may be low, this little girl could not have anticipated that her body would have responded in this way. Hence, given the probability of such catastrophic health effects, even if low in probability, people should have the right of choice regarding vaccines, and not be beaten by the Centrelink whip.