If the system finds you a problem, if you are not shot in the back of the head outright, or have an accident that looks like suicide, then you will be a prisoner of the system and tortured slowly to death, like poor Julian Assange. The aim is to send a message to other potential whistle-blowers, to not blow their whistle.
  https://www.rt.com/news/481096-doctors-worry-assange-condition/

“Over 100 doctors are urging the UK government to stop the "psychological torture" of Julian Assange, and send him to a hospital. It's their fourth such letter since the journalist appeared in court. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may die in a UK prison, having "effectively been tortured to death," claim Doctors for Assange, a group of 117 doctors from 18 countries, in a recent letter published in The Lancet, a leading medical journal. The letter says that Assange requires urgent medical care, and has been exposed to “prolonged psychological torture”. The group once again asks for him to be moved to a university teaching hospital for medical assessment and treatment. WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson on the other hand has claimed that Assange’s health is improving and he is no longer being held in solitary confinement. Hrafnsson spoke to journalists ahead of next week’s court hearing on the US extradition request. Assange’s health has been worrying his supporters for a while now. Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, visited Assange in prison in May 2019, and reported that the journalist showed “all the symptoms typical of prolonged exposure to psychological torture”.

     President Trump has done nothing to fulfil his election promises, and as far as immigration goes, has done exactly the opposite, inflaming the pro-immigration forces to turn up the heat. But, at least we know where we stand. But, he has been useful as a speaker, saying things that others cannot say in this world of unending censorship, especially about Europe. While we have heard much about knife attacks in London, France too, has a knife attack problem, with an average of 120 attacks a day:
  https://gellerreport.com/2020/02/france-sees-average-of-120-knife-attacks-per-day.html/
  https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/02/18/france-sees-average-120-knife-attacks-per-day/

“As violent crime continues to surge across France, it is estimated that as many as 120 knife attacks occur on average per day across the country. The figures, which come from the National Observatory of Delinquency and Criminal Responses (ONDRP), claim that between 2015 and 2017 there were around 44,000 victims of knife crime each year, or an average of 120 per day. On average, 118,000 people in France say they were victims of some sort of violent crime involving an attacker who they were not living with such as assaults in public areas, schools, nightclubs, and other venues, Le Figaro reports. Knives are the most common weapons reported in violent crime cases, followed by 34 per cent who say they were attacked with a blunt object or rock, and around nine per cent who were attacked with a firearm. In cases of fatal violence, the trend remains largely the same, with edged weapons seen in 34 per cent of cases, followed by firearms at 28 per cent. … According to a senior Paris police official, stabbings were a common occurrence at makeshift migrant camps in the north of the city. “There were many fights in the migrant camps, between Afghans, Eritreans and Somalis in particular, which ended with stabbings, in the north of Paris. The dismantling of these fixing points has been beneficial,” the official said. The makeshift migrant camps had become so dangerous in recent years that the aid group Solidarité Migrants Wilson shut down their operations due to the threat posed to their workers in 2018.”

     This is interesting, from Michael Smith News, quoting a Work Bank report that found that 7.5 percent of aid goes into foreign bank accounts:
  http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/493201582052636710/Elite-Capture-of-Foreign-Aid-Evidence-from-Offshore-Bank-Accounts
  https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2020/02/we-ask-dfat-for-comment-on-world-bank-finding-that-75-of-aid-goes-into-secret-private-accounts.html

Elite Capture of Foreign Aid Evidence from Offshore Bank Accounts Jørgen Juel Andersen Niels Johannesen Bob Rijkers  Policy Research Working Paper 9150
“Do elites capture foreign aid? This paper documents that aid disbursements to highly aid-dependent countries coincide with sharp increases in bank deposits in offshore financial centers known for bank secrecy and private wealth management, but not in other financial centers. The estimates are not confounded by contemporaneous shocks such as civil conflicts, natural disasters, and financial crises, and are robust to instrumenting with predetermined aid commitments. The implied leakage rate is around 7.5 percent at the sample mean and tends to increase with the ratio of aid to GDP. The findings are consistent with aid capture in the most aid-dependent countries. … We document that aid disbursements to the most aid-dependent countries coincide with significant increases in deposits held in offshore financial centers known for bank secrecy and private wealth management. Aid capture by ruling politicians, bureaucrats and their cronies is consistent with the totality of observed patterns: it can explain why aid does not trigger flows to non-havens, why the capital outflows occur precisely in the same quarter as the aid inflows and why the estimated effects are larger for more corrupt countries. Other explanations are possible but we find them harder to reconcile with all the patterns in the data. We cannot exclude that firms benefiting from aid-sponsored spending receive payments in quarters with aid disbursements and deposit the funds with foreign banks; however, this mechanism cannot explain why the money only flows to havens. It seems even less likely that the results reflect profit shifting by multinational firms, the effect of aid on income through aggregate demand and portfolio adjustments by commercial and central banks. Our estimates suggest a leakage rate of around 7.5% for the average highly aid-dependent country.”

     Dr Bob Birrell predicts a flood of elderly migrants to Australia. Good grief, what next!
  https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2019/05/labor-visa-earthquake-to-trigger-elderly-migrant-tsunami/

“An alarmist headline? Not really. This judgement follows from an analysis of Labor’s proposed temporary visa for parents of existing migrants, entitled, a ‘Fairer Long stay parent visa for Australia’s migrant and multicultural communities’. The proposal was announced on 22 April, 2019. Labor’s proposal is for an uncapped, low cost, temporary parent visa open to all migrant families who are citizens or are permanent residents. It will cost $2,500 for five years regardless of sponsors’ income or capacity to provide for their parents. All four parents in each household can be sponsored. The children eligible to sponsor their parents include all those who are permanent residents or citizens of Australia. The visa will be renewable thus enabling parents to stay in Australia for ten years without having to leave. This means it is a de facto permanent entry visa since, as sponsors will know, it is highly unlikely that parents who have lived here for a decade will be required to return home. Labor’s ‘temporary’ parent visa is an unprecedented offer. No other western country provides any similar parent visa. The trend across Western Europe is to tighten already stringent rules on parents’  access to obtain permanent residence status. The US, though it allows adult migrant children to sponsor their parents, has many hurdles, including that the sponsor must be a citizen and must meet financial capacity guidelines. Even Canada, the most overtly welcoming migration country in the west, has an annual cap of 17,000 on parent visas and, as with the US, sponsors must prove that they can meet stringent financial capacity criteria. As we will see, Labor’s parent proposal dismantles all the careful rules successive Australian governments have, over thirty years, put in place to control parent migration. The door is now wide open for parent sponsorship. This is an especially attractive prospect of Australia’s more recently arrived Asian and Middle-Eastern communities. And here it should be noted that Australia’s Asian-born population (at just over 10 per cent) is higher than any other western country.

     The US Democrats have been pushed to show their true colour, commo red, by President Trump, perhaps the only useful thing this president has done for America, although he has done much more for foreign powers. In particular, the Democrats are now, to a man, woman and transgendered person, determined to take away guns from the ordinary people, while setting up a totalitarian police state, to keep the peasants in line, as if they need to:
  https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/gun-seizures-could-lead-to-civil-war/

““Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15,” declared “Beto” O’Rourke at a Democratic party presidential candidate debate in September. Compelling Americans to surrender their so-called assault weapons is “the newest purity test” for Democratic presidential candidates, according to the Washington Post. O’Rourke and other Democratic presidential candidates, including Cory Booker, Kristin Gillibrand, and Bill de Blasio (now withdrawn from the race, as are Gillibrand and O’Rourke) have all endorsed mandatory buy-backs of assault weapons. Though such proposals are momentarily politically profitable, they could start a cascade of public-policy dominoes that ends in civil war. When Australia and New Zealand mandated buy-backs of assault weapons, most gun owners ignored the decrees despite politicians repeatedly ratcheting up their threats. Similar noncompliance to laws requiring surrender or registration of assault weapons has occurred in California, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and elsewhere. Congress passed an assault-weapons ban in 1994 that lasted for a decade. The original assault-weapons ban protected Americans from being shot with rifles that included features such as grenade launchers, bayonet lugs, or other detailing whose primary impact was to fuel the phobias of gun haters. Shortly after the 1994 ban was passed, a Washington Post editorial admitted, “Assault weapons play a part in only a small percentage of crime. The provision is mainly symbolic; its virtue will be if it turns out to be, as hoped, a stepping stone to broader gun control.” Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, in an article headlined, “Disarm the Citizenry. But Not Yet,” explained the “real logic of the ban”: “Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation.” Krauthammer, who was revered by much of the nation’s mainstream media, trumpeted his support for “real steps” on gun control including “the banning of handguns.”

     Who is promoting the push to a cashless society and why? Whose interests are served by this? Certainly not those of the little people, like me, who get to struggle to pay bills, through putting the odd shrapnel of cash into containers to try and meet specific bills on time:
  https://www.alt-market.com/index.php/articles/4013-the-rush-to-a-cashless-society-only-serves-globalist-interests

“In 2017 I published an article called 'The Globalist One World Currency Will Look A Lot Like Bitcoin'. In it, I warned that the trendy marketing of cryptocurrencies to the general public by the mainstream media was extremely suspicious and contrary to the notion that the establishment was “terrified” of Bitcoin or blockchain tech putting them out of business. I also warned of the deep involvement of international banks like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan in the progress of blockchain infrastructure and more specifically Goldman Sachs and the IMF's love affair with digital monetary systems. Goldman Sachs even referred to the blockchain as “the new technology of trust...” Clearly, the banking elites are not worried about this technology. In fact, they have been investing in it heavily. But why?  I have long held that current popular cryptocurrencies are nothing more than a beta test for a global digital currency system controlled by the elites. This is not to say that many people are familiar with using Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. In fact, only a tiny percentage of the population ever comes into contact with or trades crypto. What I am saying is, the terminology, the idea of cryptocurrencies, is now widespread. Thanks to a vast amount of media attention, Bitcoin is a household brand even though most people have never owned a bitcoin (or a portion of a bitcoin). Whale investors have hyperinflated the price of Bitcoin and certain other coins to levels beyond all reason as demand by the investment world and average people for the mechanism is minimal at best. These price explosions, though brief, have spurred public curiosity. And, in the minds of many if something is considered valuable, no matter how ethereal or arbitrary the measure, there must be a reason...right? Therefore, in the minds of bitcoin cheerleaders high market prices prove by default that Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are necessary and desirable and anyone who is critical or skeptical is merely “upset” that they “missed out on the opportunity”.

     The technocrats really know how to knock us, by using our term, “social credit,” which now describes the Chinese system of state surveillance and accountability of all subjects, which could not be further from the freedom philosophy of Douglas social credit. But, this Chinese idea has been now exported to the West, coming to a street near you, and we have Google to thanks for this form of modern surveillance:
  https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/02/12/google-social-credit-system.aspx?cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1HL&cid=20200212Z1&et_cid=DM455650&et_rid=809082137

“Google, of course, is a perfect fit for this kind of Orwellian surveillance scheme. It is, by far, the largest monopoly the world has ever seen, and its data-siphoning tentacles reach deep into our everyday lives, collecting data on every move you make and conversation you have, whether online or in the real world. Google actually tracks your movements online, even when you don't think you are using their products. Most websites you visit use the 'free' Google Analytics program to track everything you do on a website.   Google purchased Urchin Software back in 2005, and by giving it away were able to integrate this important surveillance tool into most of the internet. Google Analytics integrates with Google's ad network monopoly, as well as the largest email service Gmail. These systems are not free, they are a tightly integrated package of surveillance tools - selling your data, selling ads served to you, and manipulating content to direct your behavior. These tools collect data along with other Google products like the Android 'smart' phones, the Nest home security system, and even Google's Home Assistant.  You can expect these surveillance products to become free over time as the absolute goal is to exploit every bit of data they can collect from you. A 2015 Wired article3 revealed some of the details of how Google's online empire is built, noting "One of the company's cluster switches provides about 40 terabits per second of bandwidth — the equivalent of 40 million home internet connections," and "Google now sends more information between its data centers than it trades with the internet as a whole."

     Have children; be honourable and of good name, and realise that life is a struggle. Not ground shaking news, but this guy is very relaxed, and the videos shot out in the woods have a rustic appeal. All of his gear, tent, stove, sleep system, fits into a back pack, which I admire very much; a quick getaway when bugging out. He has gone for lightness and mobility, for short stays, while the tent I live in is bulkier, designed for the long term. But, each his own. I feel almost like making an Australian version of this, featuring me ranting and raving, but I am too ugly for film, so my viewers, no matter how good my info, would be low. So, this done, I will have a good shot of whiskey, maybe another snooze, as life flows on by, here in my tent lost in the woods.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA920SlIyvI

     And a bit of new axe fighting action, since we are in a Viking kind of mood today:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgQzAfA41bY
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3B9sQeKvp4

     Hands up those who don’t believe in conspiracies nowadays? I thought so, nobody. The whole world runs on it, and conspiracies run from the top to the bottom of the system. Let’s take paedophile Epstein’s amazing vanishing bank account for example:
  https://themindunleashed.com/2020/02/no-one-knows-why-epsteins-secret-bank-account-moved-millions-since-his-death.html

“A judge in the Virgin Islands has recently questioned the lawyers of Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, after an old bank account registered to Epstein received millions of dollars from the estate in the months since his death. The account was opened by Epstein in the Virgin Islands in 2014 and was reportedly intended to be used for an international banking firm that he planned to develop. On his application, Epstein said that he wanted to pursue the “dynamic discipline of international banking.” Meanwhile, on that same application he glossed over his very serious criminal history and his status as a registered sex offender, saying that he dealt with a previous legal challenge but the case was discontinued. The account in the Virgin Islands sat dormant with very little activity for many years, and it is unclear whether or not his international banking firm ever brought on clients. Local authorities suspect it was used as some type of shell company for his criminal enterprise. Despite the lack of activity and Epstein’s criminal record the bank renewed his license every year since he was first approved. The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the bank had $693,157 in assets when Epstein died back in August but received roughly $12.9 million in the months since. The account was cleared out and left with just under a half-million dollars around the first of the year.”

     Dr Finkel (Australia’s Chief Scientist) is wrong - hydrogen will never be a “hero fuel source”. Australia has no gas wells producing hydrogen – every bit of hydrogen we use must be generated by electrolysis of water or manufactured from natural gas or coal. These processes consume energy some of which could be recovered by using the hydrogen as a fuel to power cars or generate electricity. We could use solar or wind energy to generate hydrogen, but then they cannot generate electricity for consumers, industry and the millions of electric cars our political scientist also supports. Burning hydrogen fuel is not even a zero-sum energy game – it is a negative-sum game, Dr Finkel. We can never get back the energy used to make the hydrogen. And as for using hydrogen as a fuel for long distance trucks how does he propose to confine this dangerous, elusive, hard-to-handle, explosive gas without a complete replacement of everything in our massive diesel-powered transport industry including service stations, fuel lines, tanks and motors? It will create jobs, but only while the sucker cash lasts. Hydrogen is the fuel of the sun, but not a net source of energy for Earth.

     Academics have a low opinion of us, and we should likewise reciprocate the feeling:
  https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/cardiff-university-students-conservatives-tory-general-election-a9248701.html

“Cardiff University lecturers have been criticised by students for suggesting people who vote Conservative are “vermin” and lack a “social conscience”. The Cardiff University Conservative Association, a student society, has spoken out against the comments by academics, saying is a “real shame” to see young Conservatives being “attacked” by senior lecturers. The students are calling on the university to ensure classes are taught in an “impartial manner”. It comes after Dr Andy Williams, senior lecturer at the university's school of journalism, media and culture came under fire for branding Conservative voters “vermin” after the general election. Dr Williams referred to polling data suggesting that men and older voters were more likely to back Conservatives. He tweeted: “British men & boomers [are] statistically more likely to be vermin than women & the young.”

     Former US president B. Hussein Obama, being Black, was given a joyful run by the woke media, but there is case against him at least from a logical point of view: he made sexist statement!
  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50805822

“If women ran every country in the world there would be a general improvement in living standards and outcomes, former US President Barack Obama has said. Speaking in Singapore, he said women aren't perfect, but are "indisputably better" than men. He said most of the problems in the world came from old people, mostly men, holding onto positions of power. He also spoke about political polarisation and the use of social media to spread falsehoods. Speaking at a private event on leadership, Mr Obama said while in office he had mused what a world run by women would look like. "Now women, I just want you to know; you are not perfect, but what I can say pretty indisputably is that you're better than us [men]. "I'm absolutely confident that for two years if every nation on earth was run by women, you would see a significant improvement across the board on just about everything... living standards and outcomes."

     With the US Democrats getting ready to have their legal thugs going door to door, kicking down doors to take guns, it is good to see that a gun sanctuary movement is growing, like a healthy tree:
  https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/uprising-90-of-virginia-counties-join-gun-sanctuary-movement-expands-to-9-states

“Stirred awake by Democratic proposals to take, register, and possibly seize their legally obtained weapons, Virginia gun owners in just 43 days have pushed 90% of the state’s counties to become gun “sanctuaries,” the latest three on Monday night.Since the Nov. 5 election that gave Democrats control of Richmond, an “organic,” pro-gun movement has prompted the governments of 86 of Virginia’s 95 counties, as well as 15 towns and cities, to adopt some type of sanctuary language, putting Gov. Ralph Northam and other liberals on notice that their gun control plans aren’t welcome. “I did not think it would be that high of a number,” said sanctuary advocate and Culpeper County Sheriff Scott Jenkins. “It’s an organic thing that just took off after Election Day. Elections have consequences, and this is the result. This has truly rocked the conservative, libertarian group's core. It has really shook a lot of them awake. They are fully awake,” he told Secrets. Remarkably, the effort has not seen a big push from the National Rifle Association. Local groups, notably the Virginia Citizens Defense League, have led the campaign that has brought thousands of gun-rights advocates to county board meetings. It has also become the national model for the movement that has now reached Illinois, Washington, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, New Jersey, Florida, and Tennessee. Illinois is credited with starting the movement.”

     We have heard a lot about the English paedophilic rape grooming gangs, and how the police let it happen because not looking racist today is more important than law enforcement, unless it involves dealing with the thought crimes of whites, to keep them in line. What about Scotland? Has their response been any better than England?
  https://www.jihadwatch.org/2020/02/scotland-until-we-get-more-accurate-descriptions-of-paedophiles-the-media-are-complicit-in-the-rape-of-young-girls?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the_2020_02_07_jihad_watch_daily_digest&utm_term=2020-02-08
  https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/5215881/police-scotland-glasgow-grooming-gang-secret/

“COPS took down a huge asylum seeker grooming gang in Glasgow - but kept it secret. The gang preyed on vulnerable young girls in the city, and had at lest 44 victims, including a core group of six youngsters who were all known to each other. t's believed one may have been abused by 28 men, with another linked to 23. 55 suspected members of the vile group were identified by officers, with 46 positively identified. All were asylum seekers from the Kurdish, Afghani, Egyptian, Moroccan, Turkish, Pakistani or Iraqi communities. Operation Cerrar was kept under wraps by Police Scotland, and has now come to light after an investigation by the Daily Express. Cops say 19 members were reported to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal, but its unknown how many were convicted. Briefings from the 2016 operation are stored in the archives of the Glasgow Child Protection Committee. The horrifying extent of the gang's activities was laid bare in a National Child Abuse Investigation Unit report by Detective Inspector Sarah Taylor. 22 of the suspects were still living in Glasgow at the time, with a further eight still thought be in the UK. 14 had been deported, with another awaiting deportation and one in prison. Under the heading 'Victims', the report states: "Girl 1 - 28 suspects, Girl 2 - 23 suspects, Girl 3 - 9 suspects, Girl 4 - 8 suspects, Girl 5 - 4 suspects, Girl 6 - 1 suspect. All are known to one another. 20 other named girls believed to be victims. A further 18 girls were identified through the course of the current investigation."

     A US man gets at least 15 years in prison for burning the LGBT flag! What does that tell you? Let us investigate more:
  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50861259
  https://www.zerohedge.com/political/iowa-man-gets-16-years-burning-lgbt-flag

“A US judge has handed down a sentence of at least 15 years to a man who stole an LGBT pride flag from a church and burned it outside a strip club. Adolfo Martinez, 30, admitted to the media that he took the flag from Ames United Church of Christ due to his animosity towards homosexuals. He was found guilty last month of hate crime harassment, reckless use of fire and being a habitual offender. The incident occurred around midnight on 11 June in downtown Ames, Iowa. Police say the crime spree began at Dangerous Curves, a strip club, when police were called because a man was making threats. By the time they arrived, he had already been kicked out by bar staff. After leaving the club, Martinez then travelled to the church and ripped down its flag. He then returned to the strip club where he used lighter fluid to burn the flag in the street. He also threatened to burn down the bar. He was arrested later that day, and told local media in a jail house interview that he was "guilty as charged". "It was an honour to do that. It's a blessing from the Lord," he said, explaining that he did it because he "opposed homosexuality". "I burned down their pride, plain and simple," he told KCCI-TV. The interview was entered into the trial as evidence against him. Church pastor Eileen Gebbie, who identifies as gay woman, says she agrees that Martinez' actions were motivated by hatred. "I often experienced Ames as not being as progressive as many people believe it is, and there still is a very large closeted queer community here," she told the Des Moines Register when he was convicted in November. "But 12 people that I don't know, who have no investment in me or this congregation, said this man committed a crime, and it was a crime borne of bigotry and hatred." Story County Attorney Jessica Reynolds said Martinez was the first person in the county's history to be convicted of a hate crime. "The hard reality is there are people who target individuals and commit crimes against individuals because of their race, gender, sexual orientation," she told the Ames Tribune. "And when that happens it's so important that as a society we stand up and people have severe consequences for those actions."”

     The coronavirus continues to spread across the world with the first American dying, and five Britons have been diagnosed. However, the main event naturally continues to be China, where the death toll, or at least the official lie, is now standing at 805, surpassing the 2003 SARS outbreak. Crematoriums are working around the clock burning bodies, indicating that things are much worse than the communist government is letting on.
  https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/first-american-citizen-dies-coronavirus-wuhan-5-britons-diagnosed-french-ski-town
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7982445/Coronavirus-death-toll-hits-805-virus-claims-lives-2003-SARS-outbreak.html?ico=pushly-notifcation-small
  http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-coronavirus-outbreak-shows-no-signs-of-slowing-as-crematoriums-burn-bodies-24-hours-a-day
  https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/02/07/report-china-crematorium-funeral-homes-burning-coronavirus-patients/

“A shocking report published Saturday local time by the Epoch Times revealed that crematoriums in China are struggling to keep up with the hundreds of bodies they are receiving, suggesting Beijing is undercounting the number of coronavirus deaths in the country. The Epoch Times, a Chinese-American anti-communist newspaper, sent journalists to speak with the heads of several funeral homes and crematoriums in Hubei province – whose capital, Wuhan, is the epicenter of the current novel coronavirus outbreak. The newspaper found that adding up the total number of people cremated per day in several funeral homes yielded a significantly larger number than the official number of deaths tallied since the outbreak began in December. The Chinese Communist Party alerted the world to the discovery of a new type of coronavirus on January 20, over a month after locals became aware of a disease spreading and 20 days after local officials shut down a wild meat market in Wuhan where the virus is believed to have originated. According to the Epoch Times, the crematoria were handling “4-5 times the usual cremation volume” per day.

     Africa is certainly becoming a dark continent as far as Christians are concerned, with rising levels of persecution:
  https://www.breitbart.com/africa/2019/12/11/report-islamic-persecution-of-christians-gaining-traction-in-africa/

“Christians are experiencing “genocidal, religious-based violence” in many parts of Africa as Islamic terror groups gain greater traction on the continent, according to Save the Persecuted Christians, a U.S.-based charity. The West needs to come to terms with the fact that what is going on in Africa is “genocidal, religious-based violence, enacted against Christians by Sharia supremacist extremist groups,” said Dede Laugesen, executive director of Save the Persecuted Christians, in an interview published Wednesday with Crux, an international Catholic news outlet. “They must also come to terms with the fact that the Islamic State has not been defeated, but has merely moved to new territory in Africa and is a growing threat not only there but, if allowed to flourish, to the interests of the United States, Europe and the world,” Mr. Laugesen said. Several factors are contributing to the increase of Christian persecution in Africa, he said, not least of which is the steady growth of Christianity itself. “Because Christianity is experiencing its greatest growth in Africa, Christians are increasingly seen as a threat to Muslim-dominated lands and governments,” Laugesen said. “Mass territories of uninhabited, ungoverned regions provide easy cover for Islamic terror group activities.”

To The Age         The Victorian Government is entering areas more appropriately left to the federal government ("State flags new native title deal for spiritual loss", 15/2). The business of treaty-making is properly left to the national government, representing all Australians, all of whose interests are at stake. Operating at state level, as the Andrews government is doing,  is potentially divisive for Australia in a most serious way. One suspects that state governments are acting this way simply because they know a Coalition federal government will not inappropriately squander millions of dollars of taxpayers' money on dubious claims about "spiritual loss" or in other unjustifiable ways.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

To The Australian        Marcia Langton correctly states ("Ancient cultural 'belonging', more than race, is the issue", 15-16/2) that "a cultural and historical view of indigenous peoples, their antiquity and their belonging, is key to getting constitutional issues right." This is true, but leads to a conclusion different from those she draws. No living Australian has been here for 65,000 years or carries within himself or herself the dignity of the whole of Aboriginal history and culture. Constitutional matters can and should only deal with present-day and future Australians, not "the Aboriginal people or peoples" (abstractions). In this respect the past is a closed book. Moreover, the law should firmly recognise that every living Australian citizen should be regarded as an Australian first, before his or her ethnicity is considered. This means that, as regards proposed constitutional reforms of any kind, citizenship should be the primary aspect considered, not ethnicity, nor the longevity of the existence here of some of one's ancestors. The current three-part definition of an Aboriginal person may have "worked well as an administrative guideline" but should not be inappropriately applied in constitutional contexts to the detriment of "non-indigenous" citizens.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

     We do not get searching critiques, at least from economists, of the Australian university system, perhaps because the universities’ main role here is to bring in migrants for the Great Replacement, as I have argued in previous articles, so immigration has become a sacred cow of the anti-us system. Anyway, in the US context:
  https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/college-worth-it-one-study-says-maybe-not

“The unjustifiably high cost of college tuition in the US has dragged a whole generation into debt slavery. The average cost of a 4-year degree in the US is 3x higher than it was in 1990. Even tuition at in-state schools is climbing more quickly than incomes. As more people are forced to go into deep levels of debt to afford an education, more would-be students are being forced to take a hard look and reevaluate the ROI on a college degree. And as college tuition continues to outpace wage growth, for a growing number of people, the answer to 'is college worth it?' is going to be no. A reporter at Clever.com did some digging, and tabulated the ROI on different types of degrees: the bachelor's, master's and doctorate. Generally speaking, people with at least a bachelor's degree typically earn more money over their lifetime than those who never attended college, and it's also easier to get a job with a degree. But while Americans with a bachelor's degree might be on to something, those who earn a Master's and PHD-level degrees can't say the same. While nearly half the population has a bachelor's degree, only 13% of Americans have a master's or Phd-level degree. And according to Clever's analysis, many higher-level degrees may not be worth the time and money that students spend. In fact, the longer someone spends in school, the more the value of their degrees diminishes. Of course, ROI changes depending on the subject that an individual studies. Clever found that the best bachelor's degrees, unsurprisingly, tend to be in the STEM area: operations research, petroleum engineering, biological and physical sciences, biopsychology and gerontology.”