It is hard to believe, but the modern Australian university could actually be indirectly helping the Communist Party of China, as incredible as that sounds, since very few Leftoids have been known to exist on Australian campuses:
  https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/australian-strategic-policy-institute-warns-of-doing-research-with-people-with-links-to-the-communist-party-of-china/news-story/6141a8e31827725208f5342a105b78d8?type=curated&position=4&overallPos=4&utm_source=AdelaideNow&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial

“Dozens of partnerships between South Australian universities and Chinese institutions pose the threat that research could be used to undermine key defence projects, a report warns. There are ongoing top-level concerns about the Communist Party of China’s attempts to spy on the state’s warship and submarine programs. But the report, by The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, warns that at the same time, researchers might also be inadvertently helping the Chinese develop its military capabilities. It highlights the University of Adelaide and a 2016 project with the Aero Engine Corporation of China working on “superior rubber-based materials” for use in planes, cars and ships. The ASPI has created a website to track Chinese universities and their affiliations with the military, and is calling on universities and the Federal Government to protect themselves. The report’s author, Alex Joske, an analyst with ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre, says universities and governments must prevent any exploitation by rival militaries. The University of SA has 35 joint projects with China listed on its website, not all of which are active, while Flinders University lists 17, of which six are no longer active, and the University of Adelaide has 57, most of which are about educating Chinese students or in agriculture, medicine and engineering. A spokesman said no concerns had been raised about their researchers’ work. But Mr Joske argues funding pressures make universities more likely to enter partnerships that could compromise them, as the CCP pours billions into defence research. Universities have an obligation to “avoid recklessly harming human rights or national security”.

     There is a Renault car advertisement that tells a “moving” story of lesbian love; well, the cars are doing a lot of moving anyway. Read on:
  https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10421428/new-renault-clio-advert-lesbian-love/

“RENAULT'S heartwarming new Clio advert has left viewers in tears at the featured lesbian couple's love story, which spans over three decades. The two-minute video follows the romance of two woman that meet as children before falling in love and later reuniting as adults. The heartwarming advert features an acoustic cover of Wonderwall by Rahel Debebe-Dessalegne. Many social media users have been blown away by the storyline, suggesting it's a rival for the traditional John Lewis sobfest that seems to send fans into a frenzy each year.

     Last night my son got me to watch and episode of the 2019 remake (actually the third remake) of the Rod Sterling 1960s The Twilight Zone TV series. The episode I watched, “Replay,” and I missed the beginning, going to the toilet, has this summary from Wiki, so I want to be accurate before hammering it:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twilight_Zone_(2019_TV_series)

     Nope I can’t quote it as the box summary goes over the page. But what happens is that Nina Harrison, mixed race, has a much darker son. She has her father’s old cam recorder, that allows her to wind back time. She had a falling out with the father, so this is all deeply symbolic stuff. The pair are off to take the son to a Black university, but they are prevented by a white racist cop, who wants to kill the son, for being Black; you know, whites prevent Blacks from going to university.  We go through a number of these events, with Nina truing back time. Then she goes back to the old family home, sees her brother who know how to deal with white racists, they take a secret passage to the school, but while there are confronted by racist police who want to kill them, but all the other Black folk take a stand, get out their phones and record, and the demonic whites retreat, to  go back to “hell.”

     This is interesting, and from a mainstream publication, to boot:
  https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/copenhagen-speech-violence

“Several weeks ago, New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff conducted the following interview with Flemming Rose, the foreign editor of Jyllands-Posten, the Danish daily newspaper known for having published twelve cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005. Rose, who was then the culture editor, made the decision to publish the cartoons, which sparked attacks and violent protests across the Muslim world, and multiple terrorist plots against Jyllands-Posten, Rose, and other staff members. Rose’s book, “The Tyranny of Silence,” was published late last year in the U.S. Rose and Mankoff spoke about the book and Rose’s views on free speech in person, and continued their conversation via e-mail. Researching my book, I looked into what actually happened in the Weimar Republic. I found that, contrary to what most people think, Weimar Germany did have hate-speech laws, and they were applied quite frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played a significant role in mobilizing anti-Jewish sentiment is, of course, irrefutable. But to claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only anti-Semitic speech and Nazi propaganda had been banned has little basis in reality. Leading Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech. Streicher served two prison sentences.

     I know that for most of us, a walk around the block with the old dog towing us, is about all we can manage. Yet, there is evidence that high intensive exercise for us older folk, can boost memory, so long as (1) we can do it without a heart attack, and (2) we can remember to do it, to kick start the whole process:
  https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriaforster/2019/11/03/high-intensity-exercise-boosts-memory-in-seniors/#2e412b3259ca

“High-intensity treadmill workouts may not immediately spring to mind when considering a suitable exercise regimen for seniors. But, according to a new study, these workouts can significantly boost memory function by up to 30%. Researchers from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada recruited 64 seniors between the ages of 60 and 88 for the twelve-week study. Other than having a low activity level before the study, the seniors were otherwise healthy. The participants were split up into three experimental groups, one group did moderate treadmill exercise that pushed their heart rates up to 70-75% of their maximum for their age, another did more intense workouts which pushed heart rates up to 90-95%, but for shorter bursts of time and the third group did gentle stretching exercises. Seniors in the high intensity exercise group experienced significant improvement on memory tests of up to 30% after the three month program. Interestingly, participants in the moderate exercise or stretching group showed no average improvement in memory. “The test looks at the ability to remember the details of new memories without mixing things up,” said Jennifer Heisz, an associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University and lead author of the study. “For example, if you meet two new people today, it is important to not mix up their names or personal information, or to remember that you took your medicine yesterday rather than today,” she added.”

     Below are some articles on the London Bridge attacker, a convicted terrorist who was recently released from prison.  Apart from the first two by Breitbart, one struggles to find out the ethnicity of the attacker, and even that he is a terrorist. Interested readers can wander through these articles to see the generally selective coverage of most of them, at least as far as I am concerned. After that, definitely go to the last article here, to see my witty comments:
  https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/11/29/report-suspected-london-attacker-was-convicted-terrorist-recently-released-from-prison/
  https://www.foxnews.com/world/london-bridge-closed-by-british-police-amid-reports-of-gunshots
  https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/uk-police-clear-london-bridge-after-reports-of-gunshots
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7739057/Gun-shots-heard-London-Bridge-police-confirm-incident-area.html?ico=pushly-notifcation-small
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7739057/Gun-shots-heard-London-Bridge-police-confirm-incident-area.html?ico=pushly-notifcation-small
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7739939/Several-people-wounded-stabbing-shopping-street-Hague.html?ico=pushly-notifcation-small
  https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/man-wielding-5-narwhal-tusk-helped-subdue-london-bridge-terrorist

     This is all I could find about how the knife attacker was stopped, namely by a bystander using a 5-foot narwhal tusk to subdue the knife man. I did not know that this was, so I researched it.
  https://oceanconservancy.org/blog/2019/03/08/exactly-narwhal-tusk/

Dear Editor

Paul Starick (Advertiser Dec 6) correctly warns that South Australia is at extreme risk of domination from eastern States, regarding the Murray Darling Basin.  He explains our lack of MP’s on the federal scene will provide minimal resistance to any attack.
The real problem which has generated so much feeling among irrigators has been caused by over-allocation, combined with minimal inflow due to drought conditions.
The irony is the over-allocation has not meant over-use.  Much of the water entitlement is held by speculative investors.  Until they sell the water (at a high price) to an irrigator, the speculator’s water will flow past those who are keen to use it  -  if only it was affordable.
Emotion is running high and much finger pointing has failed to focus on the real problem.
Plans to decommission the barrages and build a lock at Wellington lacks a vision for the whole Murray Darling Basin.  River infrastructure from source-to-sea has provided a wonderful asset which must be retained.
Changes are needed but they must deliver unity  -  even if it requires recognition of less water being available.

Yours etc

  Ken Grundy
  Naracoorte  SA

     It is all happening, like a Christmas present for me, just as most of us journalists here struggle to get through the day now, counting the nanoseconds until the holidays, to allow time for our back and neck injuries to heal before killing ourselves writing next year. Anyway, Climate-Princess Greta has come out embracing total Marxism and anti-capitalism, which shows that the colour of the Greens, is always red:
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/11/29/greta-thunberg-goes-full-marxist/

“Greta Thunberg the teenage Climate Puppet has gone full Marxist. In her latest public statement, she says that the ‘climate crisis is not just about the environment’: It is a crisis of human rights, of justice, and of political will. Colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fuelled it. We need to dismantle them all.”

     This relates to the US, but it seems that in that context, the Rhodes Scholarship,  is now dominated by Leftist students, surprise, surprise:
  https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/11/29/60-of-2020-rhodes-scholarships-awarded-to-leftist-activists/

“The next slate of Rhodes Scholars is overwhelmingly involved with various forms of progressive activism in the United States. Almost 60 percent specifically mention their leftist activism in their biographies. According to a report by The College Fix, the majority of Rhodes Scholars for 2020 are progressives. The report revealed that only 13 of the 32 Rhodes Scholars have biographies that do not mention progressive activism. That means that almost 60 percent of recipients are expressly involved with progressive activism. Elliot F. Gerson, American Secretary of the Rhodes Trust, said that the 2020 Rhodes Scholars represent the “extraordinary diversity that characterizes and strengthens the United States. “This year’s American Rhodes Scholars — independently elected by 16 committees around the country meeting simultaneously — once again reflect the extraordinary diversity that characterizes and strengthens the United States,” Gerson said. “They will go to Oxford in September 2020 to study in fields broadly across the social, biological and physical sciences, and in the humanities. They are leaders already, and we expect their impact to expand exponentially over the course of their public-spirited careers.” Take, for example, University of Oklahoma student Leanne K.M Ho, whose biography notes that she is a passionate activist for LGBT rights. The biography also notes that Ho is a “non-binary” person. Leanne’s academic research focuses on the impact of storytelling on social distancing from LGBTQ people. They are a campus leader in incorporating transgender, intersex, and non-binary people into conversations about reproductive health and have advocated for increased resources and opportunities for transgender and gender non-conforming students. Leanne led a successful effort to address gendered campus awards at the University of Oklahoma, and was recently named the first-ever Big Non-Binary Person on Campus.”

     This is good, home spun advice, relevant at this reflective time of the year, when many of us are feeling the loneliness of the season:
  https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2019/11/28/taylor-swift-problems-should-remind-every-american-to-be-thankful/

“In so many of us there’s a deep-seated need to matter — for our lives to matter, for our existence to have purpose. This need used to be fulfilled by the hard living that defined 99 percent of the history of humanity.
What I mean is, if you truly want to live a life that matters and filled with purpose, go back a hundred or so years, go back to when your next meal depended on your aim with a rifle, when your family’s ability to survive the winter depended on the crops and livestock not being wiped out by disease or weather, to a time when cutting firewood was an act of survival, not a quaint pastime at your summer cottage. Hell, until the rise of the middle class in the previous century, unless you were well off, you knew hunger, you knew what it was like to run out of the coal that heats your home, to live in a literal shack without central heat, without refrigeration, and only a sheet of tar paper between you and the rain.

The medical journal The Lancet, has a name which I have found a bit scary, since it refers to a surgical cutting instrument with a double-edged blade. Could that be symbolic? Well, the journal of that name is certainly well into the climate apocalypse stuff. Here is some material on this, which I do not necessarily endorse in full, because I am new to this area.
  https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/11/12/woke-lancet-asks-if-its-acceptable-have-children-14395/%20

“What should we make of a scientific journal that has decided that being culturally "woke" is more important than presenting evidence-based reports and opinions? Alas, this is what has become of The Lancet. For decades, The Lancet was seen as one of the world's preeminent biomedical journals, along with publications such as the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). But something has changed, and the journal now regularly publishes bad research and bizarre opinions. The latest example is The Lancet's decision to publish a review of a theatrical performance called Lungs, which is about climate change. (Why a biomedical journal is publishing theatrical reviews at all is a legitimate question in itself.) The very first paragraph is already full of misinformation:

     The way things are played now, is that controversial views, nay, anything that is politically incorrect, and the net gets bigger by the day, used to get protested against, maybe the authors bashed by Leftoid savages, but today, it is shut down before anyone much gets to hear of it, then they get bashed.  Oh, there are still the death threats:
  https://americanmind.org/essays/welcome-to-culture-war-2-0/
  https://www.chronicle.com/article/Last-Fall-This-Scholar/242880
  https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/publisher-withdraws-essay-defending-colonialism-citing-threat-to-journal-editor/120511

“A controversial essay that offered a defense of colonialism and led to a revolt at Third World Quarterly has been withdrawn due to “serious and credible threats of personal violence” to the journal’s editor, according to a notice posted by the journal’s publisher, Taylor & Francis. The essay, “The Case for Colonialism,” was withdrawn at the request of the journal’s editor, Shahid Qadir, and in agreement with the essay’s author, Bruce Gilley, an associate professor of political science at Portland State University, the notice said. The publisher said that it had conducted a thorough investigation after receiving complaints about the essay and found that it had undergone double-blind peer review, in line with the journal’s editorial policy. However, the publisher’s notice continued, the journal’s editor received “serious and credible threats of personal violence” linked to the publication of the essay. “As the publisher, we must take this seriously,” the withdrawal notice reads. “Taylor & Francis has a strong and supportive duty of care to all our academic editorial teams, and this is why we are withdrawing this essay.” Backlash against Third World Quarterly was swift after it published the colonialism essay last month. Fifteen people on the journal’s 34-member board resigned, and a petition seeking a retraction drew more than 10,000 signatures. In the wake of the controversy, the author, Mr. Gilley, had asked that his essay be withdrawn. “I regret the pain and anger that it has caused for many people,” Mr. Gilley wrote last month on his website.”

     You have got to hand it to London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, he keeps to the narrative no matter what happens. The latest London killings … well that’s just life in a modern big city:
  https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/12/01/sadiq-khan-after-terror-attack-our-strength-is-our-diversity/

“London mayor Sadiq Khan told reporters that diversity is one of the British capital’s strengths in the wake of the London Bridge attack, and that all great cities are targets for terrorists. “Look, I’m mayor of the greatest city in the world, and one of our strengths is our diversity,” he told reporters shortly the attack by Usman Khan, a convicted radical Islamic terrorist who had been freed from prison on a tag after serving less than half of a 16-year term, which left two dead and three injured.

     Some good news, and hopeful news, for a change. Regardless of country or culture, family matters most, to most people:
  https://www.studyfinds.org/family-matters-regardless-of-country-or-culture-people-prioritize-loved-ones-over-all-else/

“From Seoul to Seattle, what matters most to people at the end of the day is their family and loved ones. That’s the uplifting finding of a new, extensive international study encompassing over 7,000 people from 27 different countries. The study, led by a team of social and evolutionary psychologists at Arizona State University, is especially interesting because family- and kin-based motivations are a topic that has been largely ignored by evolutionary psychologists for the past few decades. Instead, researchers have focused on how mate attraction and selection drives people’s behaviors. “People consistently rated kin care and mate retention as the most important motivations in their lives, and we found this over and over, in all 27 countries that participated,” comments first author Ahra Ko, an ASU psychology graduate student, in a media release. “The findings replicated in regions with collectivistic cultures, such as Korea and China, and in regions with individualistic cultures like Europe and the U.S.” All continents, except Antartica, were represented in the research. Just a few examples of participating countries include Australia, Bulgaria, Thailand, and Uganda. The research team at ASU sent out surveys to scientists in each country, intended to measure fundamental behavioral motivations. Then, once each local research team got their hands on the survey, they translated it into the native language, and made any necessary edits to ensure the questions were culturally appropriate for that specific country.

From Deb Newell 12 October 2019

  Dear Greta,

     You should feel very proud of yourself.  Your crusade against Climate Warming has taken you into the homes and schools of the world and to the United Nations.  At sixteen years of age this is a huge achievement.  I know that you are very, very worried about the current dynamics of what is a dynamic system.  Climate by definition is variable from one day to the next, one month/one season/one year/one decade/one millennia/one geological time frame…to the next. We now stand upon the shoulders of instruments that measure the temperature of the atmosphere, the oceans, the soils and deep into Earth’s crust to assess tiny changes in heat in a multitude of sites across this planet.  This capacity is very new, about 200 years of instrument design and ongoing adaptations allow us to  do this on a regular basis so when we read about the ‘hottest ever’ we must understand that ‘ever’ refers to about 200 years of readings from instruments of varying specificity and accuracy.  To collate this data we use techniques like homogenisation before feeding such modified data into the analytic phenomenon of the twentieth century – computer software.  This is new knowledge that can be mishandled.

     At your age I loved science.  Most of my family are in one field or another of science, so I was always encouraged to never accept what I was being told was ‘the truth’ as this is a dynamic (just like the climate) coloured by perspective.  Back then there was an American scientist who reached pop-star fame, travelling the world to talk  Science to theatres full of students.  His name was Professor Sumner Miller, and his message of intellectual enquiry was to constantly ask the question ‘Why is this so?’  For your own integrity now and into the future, please start asking ‘why is it so?’ to understand the complex systems that run the climate.  This capacity for critical analysis is what defines humans.  Many, overwhelmed by information, accept what they are told as it is easier.  Religions don’t take kindly to questioning, nor do fairy tales or prejudices, but science depends upon the power of scepticism, the power of proof by enquiry.  Don’t follow the easier path of acceptance.  Ask hard questions of the science and scientists that have captured the attention of the world, many scientific institutions and many scientific publications to confirm your own intellectual dignity.

     In general, I do not like the Affirmative Right site much, mainly beginning with the name, which immediately links to “affirmative action” in my mind, rightly or wrongly. Then there are articles that to my troubled brain are just plain wrong. But, then there are real gems of articles, sheer magic. Like this one, thrashing the very idea of anthropogenic global warming (AGW):
  https://affirmativeright.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-zombie-theory-of-anthropogenic.html

“Belief in the dangers of AGW has led to the emergence of “climate change science,” an interdisciplinary field that is very different from the natural sciences. Whole regular scientists rely on objective, empirical methods to test hypotheses, climate change scientists, on the other hand, manipulate data to fit preconceived beliefs; they are trained to ignore hypotheses challenging the AGW status quo, no matter how plausible. In the natural sciences, governments fund different avenues of research; in climate change science, only AGW receives funding because it is “politically correct.” Climate change scientists are expected to uncover positive correlations between anthropogenic CO2 and temperature; if they cannot find one, it will have to be manufactured out of thin air. Not only is there no research money for those seeking alternative explanations of climate change, but any attempt at falsifying the AGW hypothesis is considered a kind of heresy.

     I can just feel it in my bones; with all the problems, the globalists will decide that we are the problem, then release some zombie apocalypse virus, genetically engineered, to polish us off, as Mike Adams sometimes speculates about in his darker moments:
  http://www.alt-market.com/index.php/articles/3998-the-globalists-are-openly-admitting-to-their-population-control-agenda-and-thats-a-bad-sign

“In the late 1960's into the 1970's there was a resurgence of population control rhetoric coming out of globalist circles. Under the supervision of the UN and some related scientific groups, the Club of Rome was formed. A prominent part of the Club of Rome's agenda was population reduction. In 1972 the group of “scientists” under the UN's direction published a paper called 'The Limits Of Growth', which called for greatly reduced human population in the name of “saving the environment”. This effort was directly linked to another agenda – the institution of a global government that could handle and enforce population controls on a wide scale.
The elites had found a new scientific front for their eugenics obsession: Climate science. In the early 1990's the Club of Rome published a book called 'The First Global Revolution'. In it they state:

     I surmise why the experts deny Stone Island's beautiful fringing coral reefs in my latest blog post, and comment on The Guardian newspapers unfair review of my first film, you can read it here:
  https://jennifermarohasy.com/2019/11/why-deny-the-beautiful-coral-reefs-fringing-stone-island/

**************
And following is the text:

We live in an era when it is politically incorrect to say the Great Barrier Reef is doing fine, except if it’s in a tourist brochure. The issue has nothing to do with the actual state of corals, but something else altogether.

     Remember that cartoon Mr Magoo?
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Magoo 
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8GTHXTEvIc

     The Pope is increasingly reminding me of Mr Magoo, “Oh Pope, you’ve done it again!” All with his crazy attempt to climb to the highest moral ground of political correctness:
  https://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/pope-is-accused-of-sacrilege-during-synod-on-the-amazon-38687621.html

     I flipped through a book left on the desk of the university library here in Melbourne, David Benatar, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (Oxford University Press, 2008). It is argued that human life (animals, plants??) always involves some harm of coming into being, and hence, it is better never to have been. We can call this position anti-natalism, and it is not just a thesis restricted to those publishing posh books with a leading university publisher:
  https://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265
  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/14/anti-natalists-childfree-population-climate-change

“In February, a 27-year-old Indian man named Raphael Samuel announced plans for an unusual lawsuit. He was going to sue his parents for begetting him. “It was not our decision to be born,” he told the BBC. “Human existence is totally pointless.” Samuel recently told me over Skype from Mumbai that his is a good life, and he is actually close to his parents. His complaint is more fundamental: he believes it is wrong to bring new people into the world without their consent. He wanted to sue his parents for a symbolic amount of money, such as a single rupee, “to instill that fear among parents in general. Because now parents don’t think before having a child,” he told me. Samuel subscribes to a philosophy called anti-natalism. The basic tenet of anti-natalism is simple but, for most of us, profoundly counterintuitive: that life, even under the best of circumstances, is not a gift or a miracle, but rather a harm and an imposition. According to this logic, the question of whether to have a child is not just a personal choice but an ethical one – and the correct answer is always no. In 2006, the South African philosopher David Benatar published a book which is widely credited with introducing the term anti-natalism. In Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence, Benatar quotes the Greek tragedian Sophocles (“Never to have been born is best / But if we must see the light, the next best / Is quickly returning whence we came”) and the text of Ecclesiastes (“So I have praised the dead that are already dead more than the living that are yet alive; but better than both of them is he who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil work that is done under the sun”). These quotes suggest that the sentiments at the heart of anti-natalism have been around for a very long time.