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.

     Like many conservative critics of feminism, I have used material from academic feminist critic of feminism, Camille Paglia. But each time I quoted her, I always wondered, would this be a double-edged sword? Of course, how could it not eventually be?
  https://www.eurocanadian.ca/2019/09/camille-paglias-approval-child-pornography-sexual-contact-with-children.html#more

“Camille Paglia is a self-described libertarian feminist and is a professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. For a number of years now, Paglia has been promoted by conservative pundits and media outlets as a sane voice of reason in the midst of an increasingly absurd and malevolent political climate. She is touted as being a renegade feminist, and as an unlikely ally who daringly opposes the most egregious excesses of modern feminist philosophy. YouTube abounds with videos dating all the way back to the early 90s of Paglia playing the foil to mainstream feminist currents. Paglia has gone on Fox News to speak with Tucker Carlson, who recommended her most recent book, calling her "one of the more interesting people out there". Breitbart recently published an article in support of Paglia, praising her as a renowned scholar, and applauded her criticism of "social justice culture on campus". Paglia is frequently promoted by Ben Shapiro's online news publication, The Daily Wire, often to showcase her most recent takes on the subjects of transgenderism, feminism, and campus politics.

     Can exercise aid in cancer treatment? Here is one opinion, with the usual disclaimer that this is not medical advice, only information for debating purposes:
  https://fitness.mercola.com/sites/fitness/archive/2019/11/01/exercise-prescription-for-tumor.aspx?utm_source=dnl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=art1ReadMore&utm_campaign=20191101Z1&et_cid=DM378590&et_rid=741085039

“Cancer is at epidemic proportions around the world. An estimated 1,762,450 Americans are expected to be diagnosed with cancer in 2019,1 and approximately 1,663 die from it every day. Based on what we now know about the origins of cancer, it's clear that this avalanche is largely the result of inappropriate diets and unhealthy living. Lack of exercise is part of this. Evidence shows exercise not only is a key component of effective cancer prevention, but also cancer treatment and prevention of recurrence, so it's really a triple-win. I first heard of this about 30 years ago and was delighted but surprised and did not understand how this could occur, but now the physiology is well understood as I discuss further below. Not surprisingly, few oncologists ever tell their patients to engage in exercise beyond their simple daily, normal activities, and many cancer patients are reluctant to exercise, or even discuss it with their oncologist. This may soon change.

     “Whether ancient Rome or the Soviet Union, collapse begins when productive citizens silently withdraw allegiance and decouple where they can. Further rot is expected and doesn’t disappoint. Freed from account, the regime collapses from its unsupported weight. In this sense, classic collapse is a secondary effect.” – Ol’ Remus, in his Yer Ol’ Woodpile Report blog.

     This is where deracination, political correctness, mass immigration and the undermining of traditional Australia leads; a stronger, homogeneous power simply wipes us up like split milk. How can anyone be surprised? It was the game plan of the Left from the beginning, and notice how quiet they are about this; not a pip on the university campuses here in Vic. about the China takeover; oh, that would be “racist.” Why, the Greens, enough to put one off even green vegetables for life, are falling over themselves everyday praising China, while China is the world’s largest carbon polluter:
  https://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/sarah-hansonyoung-praises-china-as-it-ramps-up-coal/news-story/6dc9310fb243d7c1994d9c98081f3d91
  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2007/jun/19/china.usnews

     Quite rightly so, too. Fancy letting those pro-lifers have a voice, in a Christian college, too! Whatever is the world coming to?
  https://www.thecollegefix.com/christian-college-bans-pro-life-display-because-people-might-think-its-pro-life/

“A Christian college refused to allow a display of Christian crosses to honor “abortion victims,” saying it would be “divisive,” according to email correspondence obtained by conservative and civil liberties groups. “I didn’t think it was really going to be a problem at all,” Emily Kokot, treasurer and secretary for Young Americans for Freedom at Rocky Mountain College, told The College Fix in a phone interview. That’s because “for the last couple of years,” the administration has allowed the campus affiliate of the Young America’s Foundation to install “a 9/11 memorial where we put flags up on the ground on the campus outside” (below), she said. Instead, Dean of Student Life Brad Nason told Kokot that “we draw the line at public displays of divisive topics,” in an email referenced by Young America’s Foundation and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. (Kokot works part-time in Nason’s office.) Pressed as to why public displays are not allowed, Nason responded that “we have effectively eliminated every student’s ability to choose to engage or not engage with that issue” if the college allows public displays. They could also imply the endorsement of the college, he wrote.”

     This is how things are going in the US, as a testing ground for the chaos and misery that will spread across the West. The latest are roaming gangs of shop lifters, stealing everything not nailed down, and sometimes even that, and the nails too:
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-11-13-shoplifting-mobs-becoming-thing-left-destroy-civil-society.html
  https://cwbchicago.com/2019/11/kids-some-only-10-years-old-join-weekend-shoplifting-mobs.html

“Organized shoplifting teams, some taking advantage of children who appeared to be no more than 10-years-old, struck retailers repeatedly this weekend in the Loop, Magnificent Mile, and Lincoln Park, according to police reports. One crew pepper-sprayed a retail worker. Last Wednesday, another theft team slammed a store employee’s head into a glass merchandise case. Retailers are dealing with a wave of organized shoplifting teams that frequently use juveniles to do their dirty work. North Side locations of Forever 21, H&M, Ulta Beauty, DSW, Patagonia, and Burlington have been struck repeatedly — sometimes twice within hours. On Sunday, a team of six teenage shoplifters was spotted at the Michigan Avenue Victoria’s Secret store minutes after they struck the nearby H&M location, 840 North Michigan. Police arrested two members of the crew after an H&M manager identified them. About five minutes later, around 5:10 p.m., a two-person shoplifting team stole bags of winter coats from Patagonia, 1800 North Clybourn. The offenders stuffed the high-end gear into duffle bags, pushed employees, and fled. No arrests were made. The same Patagonia store was struck by a group of kids at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday. Photographer Bret Miller captured video of cops detaining the youths while officers pulled piles of coats out of duffle bags on a nearby side street. Police detained five juveniles.”

     Few people nowadays are as pro-family as me, but I have to take the sided of the pregnant lady fire fighter who is going out to do her duty when the country side is in crisis. Leave to one side the question of how this towering inferno happened; it did, and fire fighters now have to deal with it.
  https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/13/firefighter-trolled-helping-australia-bushfires-pregnant-11090588/

“A pregnant firefighter has hit back at critics who said she should not be helping fight the devastating Australia bushfires. Kat Robinson-Williams is 14 weeks pregnant and has written a powerful post saying she would not ‘just stay behind.’ Kat, 23, has been given the all-clear by her doctor and said she will continue to help the crisis, which has already claimed three lives. She wrote on Instagram: ‘Yes I am a firefighter. No, I’m not a man. Yes, I am pregnant. No, I don’t care if you don’t like it.’ Kat is the third generation of her family to volunteer with the New South Wales (NSW) Rural Fire Service. She has volunteered with them for 11 years, following in the footsteps of her mother who also fought blazes while expecting. Kat is one of thousands of firefighters battling more than 150 fires that have been raging for a week across a 100,000 hectare area. The expectant mum took to social media after several of her friends told her ‘you shouldn’t be doing this.’ As well as a rebuke, she also posted several pictures of herself in firefighting gear on the way to an incident. Kat told the BBC: ‘I’m not the first pregnant firefighter and I’m not going to be the last one. ‘I’m still in a position where I’m able to help so I will. ‘I wanted to tell them I’m okay and that I’m not just going to stop. ‘I’ll stop when my body tells me to stop.’”

     The once beautiful city of Baltimore is now a drug/crime-infested cesspool. Everyone knows it, and the present Black mayor says, well, don’t blame me, I did not shoot them, or take their drugs. Right he is:
  https://www.foxnews.com/us/baltimore-mayor-homicide-rate-committing-murders

“The mayor of Baltimore says local leadership isn't to blame for the city's increasing homicide rate, telling reporters on Wednesday he's "not committing the murders" himself. Bernard "Jack" Young, who took office in May, said during his weekly press conference that "there's not any lack of leadership of my part." "That’s what people need to understand. I’m not committing the murders. The police commissioner is not committing it. The council is not committing it. So how can you fault leadership?" he questioned. "You know this has been five years of 300-plus murders, and I don’t see it as a lack of leadership.”

     I don’t have time to read books, and worse, now have no spare money to buy anything, struggling to pay the power bill, let alone get vital medicines to keep me alive. Every day I wait for a cheque to arrive in the post, but nothing comes. Which brings us to the new book on nationalism, since it is much like me, struggling to survive against globalism, while ageing and decaying all at once:
  https://www.amazon.com/Case-Nationalism-Rich-Lowry/dp/0062839640/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

The book is Rich Lowry, The Case for Nationalism: How it Made Us Powerful, United and Free (2019). By way of summary: “Nationalism, of course, is not without its severe critics, and Lowry is at pains to debunk the widespread notion that nationalism is a “dirty word.” He thus seeks to answer various “anti-nationalists” who regard nationalism as nothing more than tribalism or equate it with white supremacy. To all such voices, Lowry says, essentially, relax, calm down, nationalism is a healthy force, synonymous with nothing other than patriotism. After answering critics, Lowry also offers a positive case that revolves around the proposition that American nationalism “in particular is not to be feared.” Whatever ills have in the past infected Europe, America is inoculated by its heritage, the Anglo-American tradition and the Scottish Enlightenment, which brought us “profound respect for the individual and the rule of law and is woven into the fabric of our country.” Far from shunning nationalism, Republicans and Democrats alike would do well to embrace it. Promoting nationalism, for Lowry, entails advancing a number of specific policies. Important among them is limiting immigration: “it is in the nation’s interest to have fewer and better-skilled immigrants coming here. Such a change would promote the economic prospects of Americans and the assimilation of immigrants, both important goals for national health.” Lowry would also step in to the educational arena to combat what he sees as the fissiparous ideology of identity politics, which not only divides Americans instead of uniting us, but also embraces “a hostility to the American nation as such, to its cultural supports, its traditions, and its history.” Above all, Lowry would advance what he calls “cultural nationalism,” which entails promoting all of the things that bring us together as one people, from the English language to our national holidays to our reverence for our Constitution and flag to our civic rites and common traditions and history.”

To The Age         The gist of veteran educationist Ian Hansen's important article ("Self-satisfied private schools have widened the gap", 18/11) is that the gap, in terms of wealth and resources, between independent and government schools has become too wide and is seriously unjust. If this is so, then our political leadership needs to redress the situation. Those of us who taught in independent schools in the 70s, 80s and 90s noticed the change of atmosphere in our workplaces. It is worth asking why it happened. One reason may be that in society as a whole the nature of our ruling elites became significantly less Christian. Another could be the extraordinary change in communication modes made possible by the "information revolution". A third may be the increasing hedonism that seems to have corrupted society. And a fourth may be the obvious subjugation of even the most prestigious schools to acquiescence in "politically correct" campaigns. Moral discernment suffers from all of these.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave