Longer term readers will know that I am an ex-Catholic, one that has fallen away because of the political correctness of the present Pope. A few Catholic readers have kindly sent letters, saying that I should not despair, that this will all pass, and things will eventually get back to normal, like any trial in life. Thank you for this, I sincerely hope it is true, and that this Pope does not do irreparable damage to the Church. I am not the only person experiencing this “dark night of the soul”:
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/01/16/analyst-popes-sagging-popularity-signals-fading-trust-in-globalism/

“The approval rating of Pope Francis declined all over Europe during the course of 2018, a new analysis observed Wednesday, in large part because of his ever-less popular pro-immigration stance and other globalist positions. Among German Catholics, the pope’s popularity plummeted by a staggering 20 percentage points in one year, notes analyst Francesco Galietti, who runs the political risk consultancy Policy Sonar, and with Francis at its helm, the Catholic Church as a whole also suffered a drop of 9 percent in its approval rating among the same constituency. In Italy, as well, support for the Argentine pontiff waned in 2018, Galietti observes, with surveys indicating that the pope’s approval rating fell by five percentage points over the course of the year, from 77 to 72 percent. Francis’ decreasing popularity in Italy has been offset by growing popularity for the reigning populist, Eurosceptic government, and in particular its most charismatic member, interior minister Matteo Salvini.

     The big guy from Amazon, Bezo, is facing divorce which will clean him out of his hyper-wealth, meaning that he will only be stinking rich. He apparently did not have pre-nup, but when the stakes are in the multi-billions, anything can be got over. There is another woman involved, with hair like a raven. I hope she is worth it.
  https://www.marketwatch.com/story/mackenzie-bezos-could-be-soon-worth-more-than-oprah-and-the-queen-of-england-2019-01-10
  https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/01/10/national-enquirer-publishes-alleged-texts-between-jeff-bezos-and-mistress/  
  https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-10/national-enquirer-exposes-steamy-trysts-involving-bezos-and-his-raven-haired

     Perhaps it is somewhat ironic that Amazon Prime is putting out a film about the John and Lorena Bobbitt penis cutting incident, because a more relevant story would be about the future of Amazon.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgczWr9Vqm8

     Hi, my return after a long absence due to a car crash I was in. Fully recovered now, apart from some severe head injuries, some brain damage/ moderate brain damage, and burns to about 110 percent of my body.  Otherwise doing fine. Thanks for all your cards and letters. Now, to business, or what remains of it.
  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/11/church-england-offer-baptism-style-services-transgender-people/

“The Church of England has encouraged its clergy to create baptism-style ceremonies for transgender people to welcome them into the Anglican faith. New pastoral guidance, published on Tuesday, advises clergy to refer to transgender people by their new name, though it stops short of being a baptism. The guidance, which was approved by the House of Bishops on Monday night, also details how elements including water and oil can be incorporated into the service. It also advises that as part of a special service, they can be presented with gifts such as a Bible inscribed in their chosen name, or a certificate. The guidance notes: “For a trans person to be addressed liturgically by the minister for the first time by their chosen name may be a powerful moment in the service.”

     Thanks to Mrs West for letting me now about this one. Let’s do it as a riddle; why does a purely administrative entity, which is not law enforcement, have an army of weapons?
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-01-18-fda-goes-paramilitary-390-pistols-122-shotguns-and-200000-rounds-of-ammo.html

“A recent report led by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has revealed that government groups like the IRS and the FDA are armed to teeth. All told, 20 federal agencies managed to spend at least $1.5 billion on munitions in just seven years. Now, many are wondering what the federal government plans on using all this artillery for — or perhaps more correctly, who they plan on using their weapons against. Despite claims that these organizations exist to serve the people of the United States, the excessive armament of federal agencies is further proof that the administrative arm of the central government is growing too big for its britches. There are plenty of other red flags surrounding the continuously expanding power of federal agencies.

     This is an example of how the elites act to frustrate nationalists who manage to get power, and pervert the rule of law. Society is unworkable now because people so divided simply cannot live together. It is time for the great divorce, where nations split up, and the more they split, and the sooner the better:
  https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/trump-census-citizenship-question_us_5c1c1a19e4b05c88b6f68c25?guccounter=1&guce_referrer_us=aHR0cHM6Ly9kYWlseXN0b3JtZXIubmFtZS9raWtlLWZlZGVyYWwtanVkZ2UtY29ja2Jsb2Nrcy10cnVtcC1mcm9tLWFza2luZy1h

“A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census, a win for critics who say the question is unnecessary and would cause fewer immigrants and minorities to respond to the decennial survey. The Trump administration is expected to swiftly appeal the Tuesday ruling from U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman of the Southern District of New York. Several states and activists said immigrants, fearful of volunteering their immigration status to the Trump administration, would refuse to respond. The plaintiffs in the suit ? 18 states, the District of Columbia, several cities and a handful of immigrant rights groups ? argued the Trump administration intended to drive down the response rate among those groups when it added the question and ran afoul of a federal statute requiring them to rationally consider evidence and input before making a policy decision.

     The US elites have moved to destroy Steve King, no doubt to make an example of him, for merely asking why Western civilisation was considered offensive. Although he mentioned white nationalism and white supremacy, he did not ask about them:
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/mccarthys-challenge-to-steve-king-after-years-of-gop-inaction-stands-as-first-test-for-minority-leader/2019/01/17/fb21e32a-1a7a-11e9-9ebf-c5fed1b7a081_story.html

    It is an utterly pathetic way for Western civilisation to end; as a politically correct fizzle. I really would have preferred something more dramatic, like global nuclear extermination or maybe a runaway grey goo nano tech catastrophe. It is just like dying in one’s sleep while waiting to die in battle and go to a special warrior’s heaven, but instead finding that that purgatory is an afterlife of endlessly writing journal articles which are torn up as soon as they are finished.

     One of the few good things about the rise of Donald Trump, and the deplorable Trumpsters, is that it has forced the globalist open borders crowd to come out in the open and proclaim the truth of the bs they push for the profits of the capitalist superclass. The New York Times has come clean on this. Here is Farhad Manjoo on open borders for America:
  https://www.breitbart.com/immigration/2019/01/17/new-york-times-op-ed-urges-open-borders-let-them-in/ 
  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/16/opinion/open-borders-immigration.html

“The internet expands the bounds of acceptable discourse, so ideas considered out of bounds not long ago now rocket toward widespread acceptability. See: cannabis legalization, government-run health care, white nationalism and, of course, the flat-earthers. Yet there’s one political shore that remains stubbornly beyond the horizon. It’s an idea almost nobody in mainstream politics will address, other than to hurl the label as a bloody cudgel. I’m talking about opening up America’s borders to everyone who wants to move here. Imagine not just opposing President Trump’s wall but also opposing the nation’s cruel and expensive immigration and border-security apparatus in its entirety. Imagine radically shifting our stance toward outsiders from one of suspicion to one of warm embrace. Imagine that if you passed a minimal background check, you’d be free to live, work, pay taxes and die in the United States. Imagine moving from Nigeria to Nebraska as freely as one might move from Massachusetts to Maine.

     I really liked this article which argued that universities are drowning in bully manure:
  https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/01/18/notre-dame-prof-offers-21-reasons-why-higher-ed-is-bullsht/
  https://www.chronicle.com/article/Higher-Education-Is-Drowning/242195

“I have had nearly enough bullsh*t. The manure has piled up so deep in the hallways, classrooms, and administration buildings of American higher education that I am not sure how much longer I can wade through it and retain my sanity and integrity. Even worse, the accumulated effects of all the academic BS are contributing to this country’s disastrous political condition and, ultimately, putting at risk the very viability and character of decent civilization. What do I mean by BS? BS is the university’s loss of capacity to grapple with life’s Big Questions, because of our crisis of faith in truth, reality, reason, evidence, argument, civility, and our common humanity. BS is the farce of what are actually "fragmentversities" claiming to be universities, of hyperspecialization and academic disciplines unable to talk with each other about obvious shared concerns. BS is the expectation that a good education can be provided by institutions modeled organizationally on factories, state bureaucracies, and shopping malls — that is, by enormous universities processing hordes of students as if they were livestock, numbers waiting in line, and shopping consumers.

     The article is in French, but that did not stop this talented journalist, who with just an application of Google Translator, and my old dog-eared French-English dictionary, soon got to the bottom of things.
  https://www.vice.com/fr/article/3k9m35/ces-francais-qui-ont-choisi-la-sterilisation-volontaire-pour-sauver-le-monde

“I see having children as an egotistical choice.” Florence, 24, had her tubes tied in April 2018 so she would never become pregnant. And the reason, when the Intergovernmental Report on Climate Change was released on 8 October last year, the AFP, via Twitter, published an infographic making it clear that “having one child less” would reduce CO2 emissions. Contacted via the Facebook Groups « Stérilisation volontaire (Ligature, Essure, Vasectomie) » [Voluntary sterilisation (Tubes, Essure, Vasectomy] and « VHEMT Francophone (Movement for the voluntary extinction of humanity), the men and women I interviewed have chosen voluntary sterilisation to respond to the environmental emergency. Sylvain, 34, wants to have a vasectomy. For this small farmer, if the global population has gone from 1.6 billion inhabitants in 1900 to almost 8 billion today, it’s “only because Man found ways of massively exploiting fossil fuels.” But he is convinced: “These energies will run out and there will come a time when we can no longer extract them from the soil cheaply.”…

     The latest Womens’March showed how profound and truly intellectual feminism is, and why men should prick up their ears and listen when feminists speak:

“Body parts, foul language, and hate speech took center stage at the third Women’s March in Washington, DC, on Saturday. Women and men clad in pussy hats carried signs cursing President Donald Trump and praising female genitalia and reproductive organs.”

     North Korea has moved beyond the nuclear holocaust stuff, which I admit gets a bit boring, and upped the ante, to going for biochemical weapons, a whole new level of terror:
  https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2019/01/18/study-north-korea-pursuing-biochemical-weapons-could-wipe-humanity/

“North Korea’s biochemical weapons capabilities may be even more dangerous than its nuclear missile program with weapons that could “wipe out all of humanity,” the conservative South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported Thursday, citing the New York Times. The revelations were reportedly in a study by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies published in December, suggesting that disarming its illegal nuclear program would not end the threat North Korea poses to the world, and that biological weapons may pose a more challenging one than nuclear bombs. “A single gallon of anthrax, if suitably distributed, could end human life on Earth,” the New York Times noted. “Even so, the Trump administration has given scant attention to North Korea’s pursuit of living weapons — a threat that analysts describe as more immediate than its nuclear arms, which Pyongyang and Washington have been discussing for more than six months.”

     Paleogenomics, the study of ancient DNA, is upsetting the politically correct establishment, by threatening the mythology that genetically diverse populations, races, simply peacefully blended together, rather than confronted each other in violent conflict, leading to women being captured by the opposing team, and mated:
  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/magazine/ancient-dna-paleogenomics.html 
  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/24/opinion/dna-nature-genetics-education.html

“College education is a fault line in American society. Men who didn’t graduate from college have not had real gains in wages since the 1960s, and white Americans without a college degree are increasingly dying “deaths of despair” — liver disease from alcoholism, overdoses from opioids, suicides. Now new research has found that college graduation, with all its advantages, is partly the outcome of a genetic lottery. On Monday, scientists published a study in Nature Genetics that analyzed the genes of 1.1 million people of European ancestry, including over 300,000 23andMe customers. Over 99 percent of our DNA is identical in all humans, but researchers focused on the remaining 1 percent and found thousands of DNA variants that are correlated with educational attainment. This information can be combined into a single number, called a polygenic score. In Americans with European ancestry, just over 10 percent of people with a low polygenic score completed college, compared with 55 percent of people with a high polygenic score. This genetic disparity in college completion is as big as the disparity between rich and poor students in America.”

To The Age        So UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has buckled to pressure and announced that he will support a second referendum on Brexit. Meanwhile the Speaker of the House of Commons has torn up years of precedent to facilitate a plot to render a "no deal" exit impossible, while the Clerk of Bills has conspired with former attorney-general Dominic Grieve to suspend Britain's departure from the EU. A second referendum would see disproportionate resources allotted to the "Remain" alternative urged by almost the whole of the UK political establishment. There would be no level playing field. There are well-publicized "Remain" proposals to rig the vote. If the British people are to retain their traditional free way of life and escape from the tyranny and bureaucracy of the EU, they may need to resort to massive civil disobedience or even civil war. The stakes are that high.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

To The Australian        The dishonourable, if not treacherous, campaign to derail Brexit continues to gather momentum ("Corbyn to back new plebiscite on Brexit", 23/1) with Jeremy Corbyn's turnabout endorsement of a second referendum. Did he really bow "to pressure from rank-and-file party members and MPs" or to coercion from powerful interests behind the scenes? We have learned how John Bercow, the House of Commons Speaker, tore up years of precedent to allow MPs to control the business of the House, thus facilitating the plot to make a "no deal" exit impossible. There has also been the revelation that Colin Lee, the clerk of bills, has secretly conspired with former attorney-general Dominic Grieve to suspend Britain's departure from the EU. A second referendum would see disproportionate resources allotted to the "Remain" camp. There would be no level playing field. Greg Sheridan has reported ("Battle for Britain: People v Commons", 19-20/1) that such a referendum would be "much less democratic than it looks" and that "there are myriad Remain proposals to rig such a vote."
A time is approaching when the British people, to retain their traditional free way of life, may have to resort to massive civil disobedience or even civil war. The stakes are that high.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

To The Age        Establishing a block of "Indigenous" seats in the Senate would be a constitutional blunder and fundamentally inequitable ("Abbott idea worth heeding", 22/1). It is right for us to especially honour the Aboriginal people and their culture, because of their long period of custodianship of the continent. It is also good that we use some of our taxes to advance the welfare of Aboriginals experiencing poverty or long-range results of the cultural dislocation they have experienced as a people. However, legislation today needs to be founded on the equality, constitutionally, of all Australians, no matter what their ethnic and cultural origins and ancestry. The Abbott idea, like all other proposals for "constitutional recognition", is foolishly divisive and ethically unfair.
Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

     The East Asians are a highly intelligent and cultured people who seem to be aware of the forces of darkness and degeneracy destroying the West. It is obvious to outsiders that we have big problems, especial with the gender agenda. Thus, when a sweet Japanese woman puts on a show to train women in how to do traditionally womanly things, why, the feminists are besides themselves. They have to be careful of the race barrier, but I think in terms of “cool” politically correct politics, the gender/transgender issue gets a higher rating. Hence, an Asian person like Marie Kondo, a real live Shinto maiden (where are maidens in the West?) gets openly attacked:
  https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2019/jan/13/marie-kondo-wars-netflix-clutter-consultant-sparking-domestic-unrest 
  https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/magazine/marie-kondo-and-the-ruthless-war-on-stuff.html

     Here is The Guardian, a Leftist paper, with its take on this, done as a dialogue to show that dealing with materialism and consumerism, is a feminist issue, like being fat:

     I am fascinated by China, especially how despite grasping Western science and technology, and even Western imports such as Marxist communism, the nation still aims to preserve its people, unlike the West, where its elites seek only to make the world into something out of The Walking Dead, after all profits have been extracted. For example:
  https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/18/asia/china-mens-earrings-blurred-intl/index.html

“Chinese TV personality Jing Boran has something on his ear that authorities don't want you to see. In the latest episode of the popular Chinese reality TV show "I, Actor," the young star's face is digitally altered to blur out his earrings. Jing, who held lead roles in Chinese box office hits "Monster Hunt" and "Time Raiders," is not the only victim of the alleged "earring ban." Images circulating on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, show several other young male stars with blurred circles on their ears. It's unclear if Chinese regulators have issued a specific directive barring men from being shown wearing earrings, or whether TV stations are reacting to a shift in what is considered culturally appropriate. Last year, China's media regulator banned TV stations from featuring actors with tattoos. Depictions of "hip hop culture, sub-culture and immoral culture," were also banned according to Chinese state media. Grace Leung, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong's School of Journalism and Communications, said the decision to blur earrings is likely influenced by the government's desire to minimize Western impact in China's pop culture.

     Here is what a US airline is doing, showing that the “races do not exist” mantra, is just propaganda:
  https://www.dw.com/en/airline-ad-offers-discounts-to-americans-with-mexican-dna/a-47148053?utm

“As the US-Mexico border row continues to rage, AeroMexico is offering US travelers a "DNA discount" to visit their closest neighbor. An ad detailing the perk has gone viral on social media. An airline commercial widely shared on social media is taking on the prejudice that many Americans feel towards Mexico, their neighbor to the south. The two-minute ad for Aeromexico shows Americans explaining how they wouldn't consider traveling to Mexico, with one of them saying "No way!" Another, when asked whether they like tequila and burritos, answers "Yes," but when asked whether he likes Mexico, he replies "No." Having then apparently conducted DNA profiling on those featured, the ad's narrator then rewards them with discounts on flights to Mexico, based on the results. "The more Mexican they are, the more discount they get." One woman, named as Charlotte, looks disturbed when told she is 14.4 percent Mexican. When an elderly man hears he is 22 percent Mexican and therefore eligible for a 22 percent discount to visit Mexico, he replies: "That's bullsh*t, that is bullsh*t!" The ad later shows the respondents warming to the idea of visiting the country because as one woman put it: "I love discounts."

     This brief post by Brett Stevens, pretty much sums up the present crisis in a nutshell:

“Diversity everywhere seems to result in the same mixture of lack of social unity plus low grade ethnic warfare: vandalism, rape, corruption, theft, white flight, and periodic race riots. South Africa proves no exception. It turns out that when your society has diversity problems, the solution is not to simply give the minority groups a seat at the table; it is to send them away. Diversity does not work — in any form: religious, ethnic, cultural, racial — and it splinters civilizations into warring special interest groups who take focus away from the future and reality and turn it toward self-referential infighting, at which point society collapses and all of the ethnic groups are destroyed, leaving behind a cultureless grey mixed race.”

     Out here in the Victorian scrub, where I live in my tent, I sometimes need to clear areas so that I do not step on brown snakes, who can get upset when some big clod puts a boot on their back. I do not blame them, as I would too. Anyway, I have a Cold Steel Latin machete that has served me well, but is now so ground down it looks more like a kitchen knife. I am taking my time deciding on what brand to choose next, just to ad variety to my plain, uneventful  life. I went on EBay, and stumbled upon this nice bit of home spun philosophy by the fantastic blade makers, Gerber:

“When did we decide campgrounds needed laundromats? When the car stalled, whose bright idea was it to reach for a cell phone instead of a tool? There was a time when the words "quick" and "fix" were never found together in the same sentence. When our homes needed to be built, we grabbed brothers, fathers and hammers, not a mouse that clicked on Mr. On-line Contractor. Our nation's great accomplishments were a testament to hard work, sweat and ingenuity. After all, we not only put a man on the moon, but built him a rover to drive while he was up there. What will we achieve today? Can we turn our cheek to the enemy known as convenience before it makes us helpless? Do we have what it takes to depend solely on ourselves? As you ponder these questions, we invite you to join us on our mission. We're Gerber®. We design the tools, knives and outdoor gear that are essential, not only for the task at hand, but for bringing back something lost: our self-reliance. Gerber. Fend For Yourself.”