President Trump in his election speeches has been using the example of Venezuela as a case study of how socialist societies break down, ultimately collapsing into a modern hellscape. But how bad is Venezuela, actually? Answer: worse than we imagined. Here are some extracts from a persona account of life under socialism by Venezuelan writer, Christian Caruzo:
  https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2019/10/13/my-socialist-hell-20-years-of-decay-in-venezuela/

“This is a personal account of what has my life become after twenty years of Bolivarian Revolution— 20 years that comprise two-thirds of my life. I’ve done so many bread lines that I’ve lost count, I’ve engaged in bartering of food and medicine, I’m actively taking expired meds because it’s simply better than nothing, and I’ve adapted every aspect of my livelihood around the tribulations inherent to living in Socialist Venezuela while taking care of my younger brother who can’t fend for himself given his mental condition. It hasn’t been easy since we’re two socially inept siblings, but we keep going no matter what. … Socialism has slowly eroded the functional existence of every aspect of our lives, from our freedom of speech to our economic liberties, our access to healthcare and personal documents to our water supply. Each of these structural collapses – the absence of healthcare, the worthlessness of our currency, systemic corruption in the government and military, and widespread censorship – have affected me personally. Socialism is a trendy topic in the United States at the moment, which means my story is relevant beyond Venezuela’s borders. Over the course of this series, I hope to inform American readers about the realities of existence – and survival – in a socialist country. And I hope that by reading my stories, Americans will be forewarned enough that they remain distant stories, rather than firsthand experiences. …

     There are some photographs take in in the early part of the 20th century, when the West still believed in itself, and had a more homogeneous population, that have to be seen to be believed.
  http://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2014/10/the-story-of-painters-on-brooklyn.html

     The painters on the Brooklyn Bridge show a number of men hanging onto the steel wires suspended perhaps 40 metres above the ground. That does not seem much until you see the men standing on wires. It is enough to make one dizzy, and fall, even sitting down! The political, or metapolitical point is that this sort of world not longer exists, at least in the West:
  https://gellerreport.com/2019/10/death-of-america.html/

     Here is an interesting one, showing the power of the internet to deflate and deconstruct nonsense put out by the mainstream media:
  https://www.forbes.com/sites/breannawilson/2019/10/11/this-popular-solo-female-travel-vlogger-thinks-pakistan-could-be-the-worlds-1-tourism-destination/?utm_source=TWITTER&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2730307720&utm_campaign=sprinklrForbesMainTwitter#514893612707
  https://twitter.com/Forbes/status/1182996846496702465?s=20

Forbes
@Forbes

Why Pakistan should be on every solo female traveler's bucket list http://on.forbes.com/601911XJW

     There is so little criticism of the sorts of dangerous experiments that high energy physicists engage in, mainly because the ordinary people know so little about elementary particle physics and high energy collisions. However, the potential does exist to destroy not only the Earth, but by a chain reaction, the entire universe.
  https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/meet-mad-scientists-performing-universe-breaking-experiments

“CERN is currently working on a lofty plan to revamp its “flagship accelerator complex” over the course of the next two decades. But a more powerful particle accelerator could be the very last thing the world needs, according to British cosmologist Martin Rees. Rees, a well-respected expert in his field, issued a grave warning to the scientific community about particle accelerator experiments gone awry in his book On The Future: Prospects for Humanity published late last year. These experiments meant to push the boundaries of nature and physics, he writes, “might do something far worse — destroy the Earth or even the entire universe.” As alarmist as it sounds, this is no crackpot notion. Rees writes that, "Maybe a black hole could form, and then suck in everything around it [...] The second scary possibility is that the quarks would reassemble themselves into compressed objects called strangelets. That in itself would be harmless. However, under some hypotheses a strangelet could, by contagion, convert anything else it encounters into a new form of matter, transforming the entire earth in a hyperdense sphere about one hundred metres across."

     This one is from America, which is at the front line in the descent into madness. Thus, while 40 million people, vastly more that the population of all Australia, do not have enough food to eat, the Democrat are championing sex reassignment surgery as a human right. Wow, one would have thought that having enough to eat came way before that:
  https://www.zerohedge.com/health/40-million-americans-already-dont-have-enough-food-eat-and-its-about-get-lot-worse
  https://www.zerohedge.com/political/waffling-warren-confirms-gender-reassignment-surgery-now-right

“At a recent LGBTQ town hall meeting, Warren received thundering applause for stating that the gender reassignment surgery should be provided free of charge to transgender prisoners: “gender-affirming surgery,” she said was “important and the appropriate medical care.” This is a direct about-face from her 2012 statement: “I don’t think it’s a good use of taxpayer dollars.” Fauxcahontas backpaddled and asked forgiveness for the earlier statement, saying it had been a “bad answer.” “I believe that everyone is entitled to medical care and medical care that they need and that includes people who are transgender who – it is the time for them to have gender-affirming surgery.” But is reassignment surgery a medical necessity? Opposers relegate the surgery as akin to aesthetic procedures such as face-lifts or breast augmentation. A female with a small bust may feel inadequate and uncomfortable and may choose to enlarge her breasts. Is this necessary for the continued health of the individual? No, not physically. But it plays a part in mental health, which is what Warren and those who support such nonsense base their logic on. However, this same female, who is satisfied with her birth sex, would not get the equal option to surgically adjust her physical appearance. Although, if she identified as a male, supporters like Warren would be howling at the moon, demanding taxpayers to pay for her change. As a born female, this woman’s insecurities and desire to physically alter her body while in prison would be considered nothing more than cosmetic. And the incarcerated are not there to have their wishes and desires met; they are there for punishment for a crime against society – the same society Warren expects to foot the bill for their physical alterations.”

     Here, at last is an utterly irrefutable reason for impeaching Trump …muh racism:
  https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-policies-racism-may-cause-some-black-womens-weight-problems-professor-says

“Do President Trump’s policies make me look fat? That’s the sort of question some black women may be asking themselves, a Rutgers University professor suggested during a recent appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Network. Although, more accurately, the problem may be the stress and anxiety caused by the policies than the policies themselves, Brittney Cooper, who teaches gender studies at the New Jersey-based university, said on a recent episode of “Black Women OWN the Conversation.” Research shows black women lose weight more slowly than white women, and the Trump presidency may be exacerbating the situation, Cooper said on the program, according to CampusReform.org. “We are living in the Trump era,” she said, “and look, those policies kill our people. You can’t get access to good health care, good insurance.”

     Nothing fills the gut better than a plate of red meat with plenty of vegetables to wash the divine food down. Of course, eating red meat, indeed, any meat, has come under attack in recent times from crazed feral Greenies, furry vegans and other vectors of the modern regime. But despair not, for not all red meat news is bad, or “red.” First, comes methodological problems in meat research, or at least the critique of meat:
  https://apnews.com/968e18606fba4a3c8084d2c83e0ffe56

“A team of international researchers recently rattled the nutrition world by saying there isn’t enough evidence to tell people to cut back on red or processed meat, seemingly contradicting advice from prominent health experts and groups including the American Cancer Society and American Heart Association. …The dispute lays bare problems with nutrition research long acknowledged in the scientific world: Nutrition studies are almost never conclusive, and whatever supposed risk and benefits there are to any food are often oversimplified. “People like bumper sticker guidance,” said Dr. Walter Willett, a professor of nutrition at Harvard who has led studies tying meat to bad health. Now health experts are wrestling with how solid scientific findings should be before guidance is issued, how to address biases that might skew conclusions and whether the pleasure we get from eating should be considered. The scrutiny is likely to spill over to other dietary advice as obesity becomes an ever more critical public health concern, and people become increasingly frustrated with flip-flopping messages.

     We have been fed an enormous amount of bs about the 97 percent of scientists who believe in the global warming, or is it now global climate change, hypothesis. But how objective is this science? Is it value and politically neutral? Well, looked at as an ordinary civilian, I have my doubts:
  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-scientists-idUSKBN1WS01K

“Almost 400 scientists have endorsed a civil disobedience campaign aimed at forcing governments to take rapid action to tackle climate change, warning that failure could inflict “incalculable human suffering.” In a joint declaration, climate scientists, physicists, biologists, engineers and others from at least 20 countries broke with the caution traditionally associated with academia to side with peaceful protesters courting arrest from Amsterdam to Melbourne. Wearing white laboratory coats to symbolize their research credentials, a group of about 20 of the signatories gathered on Saturday to read out the text outside London’s century-old Science Museum in the city’s upmarket Kensington district. “We believe that the continued governmental inaction over the climate and ecological crisis now justifies peaceful and non-violent protest and direct action, even if this goes beyond the bounds of the current law,” said Emily Grossman, a science broadcaster with a PhD in molecular biology. She read the declaration on behalf of the group. “We therefore support those who are rising up peacefully against governments around the world that are failing to act proportionately to the scale of the crisis,” she said. The declaration was coordinated by a group of scientists who support Extinction Rebellion, a civil disobedience campaign that formed in Britain a year ago and has since sparked offshoots in dozens of countries. The group launched a fresh wave of international actions on Monday, aiming to get governments to address an ecological crisis caused by climate change and accelerating extinctions of plant and animal species. A total of 1,307 volunteers had since been arrested at various protests in London by 2030 GMT on Saturday, Extinction Rebellion said. A further 1,463 volunteers have been arrested in the past week in another 20 cities, including Brussels, Amsterdam, New York, Sydney and Toronto, according to the group’s tally. More protests in this latest wave are due in the coming days. While many scientists have shunned overt political debate, fearing that being perceived as activists might undermine their claims to objectivity, the 395 academics who had signed the declaration by 1100 GMT on Sunday chose to defy convention.”

     Here is one of the strongest men in the world, competing against the alleged strongest women in the world, and the woman wins, of course. Not just wins, but thrashes the giant guy, who has deadlifted 500 kg. No, this is a pound for pound contest, and the lighter person always wins, so it was set up from the beginning. I used to watch the antics of big Ed but now he makes me ill. Men can have nothing in this world, not even physical strength. Will, one day, men get angry, and stamp their feet, and maybe kick the can along the road, or write a strongly worded letter to their newspaper?
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGWfRQr0e-E

     Gasp! It is amazing to think that Western Europe still has some sort of existence, and has not yet dissolved like an aspirin in water, but patience, it will happen, and as the world exodus begins, it will not be for long for oblivion, and the final tragedy of the commons.
  https://www.jihadwatch.org/2019/10/video-from-bosnia-thousands-of-muslim-migrants-scream-allahu-akbar-as-they-head-to-western-europe
  https://searchlight-germany.blogspot.com/2019/10/bosnia-thousands-of-migrants-shouting.html

     The Left and all matter of progressives need to think through the coming demographics and ask themselves what will ultimately happen to the nuclear weapons, and even the nuclear power reactors, once the entirety of Europe does a Sweden, and beyond.

     In the good old days, I could be sure that anytime I saw an article by Greg Sheridan I would disagree with it, and immediately would have copy, something to write about, someone to refute. But, then one day, maybe I changed, he changed, we both changed, or the world changed, and I could see that it was far too simplistic to view him as an enemy, but rather, he was a complex thinker, always with an interesting point of view, that sometimes was surprising. Take the rise of China for example:
  https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/world/while-unlikely-to-be-realised-soon-chinese-threat-shouldnt-be-ignored/news-story/5d86ace47ef871e37790fa9128671f9b?utm_source=The%20Australian&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_content=TodaySHeadlines

“China’s President Xi Jinping never leaves you in any doubt what he thinks. So his warning is typically stark. Any effort to prise a region away from China will result in “in crushed bodies and shattered bones”. This is a very direct threat to the protesters of Hong Kong, although he has not addressed the Hong Kong disturbances directly by name. Nonetheless, the balance of probability would have to be that the mainland Chinese forces are not likely to undertake a massive 1989 Tiananmen massacre style intervention in Hong Kong, at least not yet. They will intervene if they feel they have to. Although any such intervention will be very tough, it will still likely involve a much more sophisticated and discriminate use of force than Tiananmen did. However, Beijing scored a big victory on Hong Kong recently. Donald Trump in announcing, prematurely, that he and Beijing have come to a trade deal, also remarked that he thought the troubles in Hong Kong were subsiding and the Chinese government would handle them fine. In one way, Trump’s remarks are prudent enough. International leaders should be very careful what they say about Hong Kong, because if Beijing does intervene there, not a single foreigner will go to help the local Hong Kongers. However, Trump was capable of applying some leverage to Beijing, and now he’s chosen not to. He hasn’t, as he did with the Turks, given Beijing a green light for action, but he has said more or less that he isn’t much concerned with what’s happening in Hong Kong.

     Old Zucky has been busy writing in The Wall Street Journal saying yeah to free speech, while censoring conservatives, because basic human rights are only given out those whom the Left decide are human. Let’s ask Pam, one of the leading victims of Big Tech, what she thinks about this:
  https://gellerreport.com/2019/10/shocker-facebooks-mark-zuckerberg-makes-the-case-for-free-speech-in-wsj-oped-while-censoring-and-banning-conservatives.html/

“In an extraordinary oped in the Wall Street Journal, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg makes the case for freedom of speech and freedom of expression. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Extraordinary because Zuckerberg’s Facebook has systematically censored, blocked and banned my colleagues and me on what is the most influential news portal in the world. My newsfeed is still in lockdown. Mr. Zuckerberg, let my thoughts and ideas be free. I have a million and a half followers on Facebook – and that is just my page. That does not include my groups AFDI, SIOA and the other SIO groups. At one time my organic traffic from Facebook was 100,000+ a day, now – because of bans, blocks and shadowbanning the Geller Report newsfeed, it barely reaches 2000. Never Trumpers, on the hand, have enjoyed the benevolence of the little dictator as have left-wing media pages. Facebook has instituted a fake news meter – which is nothing short of digital authoritarianism..  And now Zuckerberg is announcing the creation of an independent Oversight Board that will make binding decisions on what content stays up and comes down. Who will be on this board? … Zuckerberg claims that Facebook is “going to appoint members to this board who have a diversity of views and backgrounds, but who each hold free expression as a paramount value.” Who is that? Outside of my colleagues and I, no one on the left or the RINO right believes in free expression.  On whose side did the elites come down when jihadis opened fire on my free speech event in Garland, Texas.”

    As readers may know, as an ex-Catholic I cover events associated with our present commo Pope who has brought the Faith into disgrace. As a protest I no longer go to mass and will not until the Pope of political correctness is removed. For example, there is controversy at the moment about whether or not the Popeye, sorry, Pope, blame Word spell check, denied the divinity of Jesus Christ:
  https://www.breitbart.com/faith/2019/10/10/vatican-refutes-popes-denial-of-christs-divinity/
  https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2019/10/09/vatican-synod-amazon-proposes-recognition-ecological-sins/

“Participants in the Vatican synod on the Amazon region proposed adding “sins against the environment” to lists of traditionally recognized sins in their second day of discussions and deliberations. Synod fathers called for an “ecological conversion” that would allow people to see “the gravity of sins against the environment as sins against God, against our neighbour, and against future generations,” Vatican News reported Wednesday. “This would imply a need to produce and spread more widely a theological literature that would include ‘ecological sins’ alongside traditional sins,” the report stated.”

     The Japanese are clear thinking and do not go in for our brand of economic prostitution, that we trade with X, therefore we worship X, or pretend to be their toadies. Trade is trade for the much more rational, still far from deracinated Japanese, who are difficult not to admire. Their culture is everything our is not, but once was.
  https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-27/japan-promotes-china-as-bigger-threat-than-nuclear-armed-north/11554880

“China's growing military might has replaced North Korean belligerence as the main security threat to Japan, according to Tokyo's annual defence review — this despite signs that Pyongyang could have nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles. Key Points:

     Music for this post, Singin’ in the Rain, an oldie but goodie, with great dancing by Gene Kelly Aaaaah, music, how is has sunk into the trash, since even the 1950s. Just look at the second clip celebrating murdering a white woman by one of today’s top “stars,” Rihanna:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1ZYhVpdXbQ
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3eAMGXFw1o

     Over in the home of racial suicide, Scandinavia, Norwegians have been told by Big sister to pee in the shower to save water, to help with global warming blah, blah:
  https://summit.news/2019/10/17/norwegians-told-to-pee-in-the-shower-to-save-water/

     Is, or was there, life on Mars? One line of thought has it that life has been discovered but covered up because it would be too threatening to orthodox beliefs, such as religion.
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-10-16-life-on-mars-in-1976-nasa-banned-experiments-hide-science.html

However, I very much doubt that the discovery of bacteria on another planet really threatens Christianity in any way. After all, we deal with evolution here and all that, so bacteria on another world should not be a problem. Even in the case of the encounter with an advanced alien civilisation, that does not mean much about the foundations of religion. If their bug-eyed theologians disagree, then that is just like the debates on Earth with our bug-eyed theologians. But if the aliens were human-like, and also believed in Christianity, that would be a startling confirmation of Christianity, making it simply irrational not to believe, because the probability of that religion arising by chance in two distinct worlds is infinitesimal. It would still mean that a lot of questions would be raised, but no more than theology does now.

     Now that I have an audience … it has been proposed that low levels of EMF radiation, does not turn one into a super-hero, but causes a leak in the blood-brain barrier, which is not good, no, not good at all.
  https://www.technocracy.news/neurosurgeon-low-levels-of-emf-radiation-can-cause-leak-in-blood-brain-barrier/

“Neurosurgeon and researcher Dr. Leif Salford has conducted many studies on radio frequency radiation and its effects on the brain. Dr. Salford called the potential implications of some of his research “terrifying.” Some of the most concerning conclusions result from the fact that the weakest exposure levels to wireless radiation caused the greatest effect in causing the blood brain barrier to leak. Since he began his line of research in 1988, Dr. Leif Salford and his colleagues at Lund University Hospital in Sweden has exposed over 1,600 experimental animals to low-level radiation. Their results were consistent and worrisome: radiation, including that from cell phones, caused the blood-brain barrier–the brain’s first line of defense against infections and toxic chemicals–to leak. Researchers in 13 other laboratories in 6 different countries had reported the same effect, but no one had proven whether it would lead to any damage in the long term. In a study published June 2003 in Environmental Health Perspectives, Salford’s team repeated the experiment on 32 additional animals, but this time waited eight weeks before sacrificing them and examining their brains. In those animals that had been exposed to a cell phone, up to two percent of the neurons in all areas of the brain were shrunken and degenerated.

     Why do American toilets smell so bad? Garbage in; garbage out.
  https://www.studyfinds.org/stunning-survey-reveals-1-in-4-adults-has-never-eaten-vegetables/

“The most popular vegetable in America is — corn! That’s according to a survey of 2,000 Americans who were asked which vegetables they liked and disliked the most. However, it turns out the most surprising result of the study may be that a staggering number of adults haven’t eaten any vegetables their entire lives. Overall, a whopping 91.4% of respondents enjoy eating corn. Potatoes came in an extremely close second at 91.2%, while carrots and tomatoes were tied for the third-most-liked vegetable at 89%. Rounding out the top five are onions and green beans, which tied as the fifth-most popular veggies (87%) according to the survey, which was commissioned on behalf of VeggieTracker.com by Dr. Praeger’s. On the other side of the spectrum, the most hated vegetable is turnips. Nearly three in ten respondents (27%) say they dislike the root veggie. Beets were a close second on the dislike list, at 26%, with radishes (23%), and brussels sprouts (21%) rounding out the bottom four. The survey also reveals some shocking numbers — and perhaps a telling truth about the American diet. One in four respondents say they’ve actually never eaten a vegetable at all! And of those who do eat vegetables, the average person only includes veggies in a third of their meals. “Most of us already know they should be eating more vegetables. While more and more people are adopting plant-based diets, there’s still a long way to go toward reaching recommended consumption levels,” says Larry Praeger, CEO of Dr. Praeger’s, in a statement.”

     What has become known as Trump Derangement Syndrome, has certainly gripped the US Democrats, where after the candidate’s debate all they could agree upon is that Trump needs to be impeached because it is just not right that American whites should exist, I think. Thus, it is a hanging offence to ask the Ukrainian president to investigate possible crook actions by the Biden’s because, well, Democrats are always permitted to do crook things, as Hillary has done, and the worst crime is taking about it, and exposing it.
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/10/11/trump-democrats-pursuing-unconstitutional-impeachment/
  https://vdare.com/articles/patrick-j-buchanan-ukrainegate-and-impeachment-more-deep-state-sabotage-of-trump-s-agenda
  https://vdare.com/articles/ann-coulter-on-impeachment-luckily-dems-never-have-personal-political-motives

“Today we will answer the question: May a president ask a foreign country to investigate corruption if it serves his "personal, political" interests? The "personal, political" angle is the last gasp of the impeachment hysterics. (I'm looking at you, Sens. Rob Portman (Ohio), Susan Collins (Maine), Mitt Romney (Utah) and Ben Sasse (Nebraska).) Yes, Donald Trump is, technically, "president," and, yes, former Vice President Joe Biden used his government position to withhold foreign aid until the president of Ukraine fired a prosecutor looking into a company paying Biden's drug addict son millions of dollars for mysterious reasons. But, the impeachment fanatics assert, by asking a foreign leader to assist in an otherwise legitimate corruption investigation, Trump has committed a monstrous crime—because he was pursuing a "personal political interest." To wit: Trump was trying to harm his political opponent, Joe Biden. Apart from the blindingly obvious fact that you can't commit crimes and then escape justice simply by running for president, Democrats take official government action for "personal, political" reasons all the time. Frequently, they do so for the sole purpose of harming their political opponents.”

To The Australian         Criticisms of British PM Boris Johnson by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Justin Welby, should be taken with a large grain of salt ("Johnson 'pouring petrol on division'", 28/10). Archbishop Welby has a track record of favouring the contemporary, pro-Remain elite culture in the UK that is supported by the benighted left but opposed by advocates for Brexit. As an Australian Anglican, I do not have confidence in his political views. Moreover, the language used by Johnson, which he attacks, has been more than matched by that of commentators on the left. There is a mystery surrounding this archbishop that is comparable to that surrounding French leader Emmanuel Macron. Each, as it were, appeared from nowhere and rose to a great height with astonishing speed. A book on how they achieved their success and what they really stand for might be very interesting.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic