I have not followed the story beyond the superficial details, because the boys do the immigration stuff, but some woman has barricaded herself in a hotel room, and wants to come to Australia as a refugee. Ok, her and 20 billion others, and I suppose they will all be let in eventually. What interests this old lady is a protest which was done by a gaggle – I think they called naked ladies that – who were offering support. No, wrong word, not much “support” there I am afraid:

         It is not just the US which is suffering from migrant/globalisation overload; Australia is too. Consider the costs now imposed by tourists, foreign workers and international students on our collapsing public hospitals:

         There is a problem; you identify as a woman and want to have a cervical smear test, but you have male genitals, and hence no cervix. Well if you are in Britain, you can be accommodated:

         The poverty level in Australia is $ 433 a week, but few people on social security benefits get that, and the millions doing casual work, and exploited foreign labour would also fall below it. Even so, people who live about the poverty line are falling increasingly into debt, with Australia’s personal debt being the highest in the world, the ratio of household debt to income more than doubling between 1995 and 2015, going from 104% to 212%, according to the 2015 OECD data.  Thus, if the average person earns $80,000 net, they are spending $169,600 per year. That is not usually luxury spending but just getting by, with the myriad of expenses that having a family brings, especially having children.

         The mainstream media not only selectively distorts facts, but now they distort even images!

If the British government had produced a deal that involved a genuine Brexit, it would have gained acceptance in the House of Commons this week, possibly by a similar margin to that by which May's motion has been defeated; and there would be no crisis. It seems clear that the government has been captured by pro-EU forces and corrupted. This is the latest stage in the deceit that has been worked on the British people since the "Common Market" strategy of half a century ago.

To The Age        Amanda Vanstone favours a second referendum on Brexit ("Wishing well is more than a feeling", 21/1), but the 2016 referendum was understood on both sides at the time to be final. Moreover, we do not call for second elections in Australia just because our preferred result has not been obtained.  Of course, other nations in the EU were forced to have second referendums to prevent their leaving the EU, which just shows what an anti-democratic monster it really is. As for blaming "the Brexiteers" for not having a specific plan of departure from the EU, that's nonsense. We don't expect ordinary citizens to have detailed knowledge of how to implement policies they've voted for. We leave it to the professionals. Exiting the EU may be complicated, but not impossibly so. The real culprits for the present mess are those "Remain" persons and interests who have refused to honourably accept the people's call.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

(22/01/2019)      Carbon dioxide must be an almighty gas – it gets blamed for almost every human disaster. Now we have the alarmist Climate Council blaming bushfires on carbon dioxide and global warming. Focussing on the wrong problem is doing more harm than good. It is disappointing to see respected firefighters like Greg Mullins now blaming “climate change” for more and worse bushfires, and now even promoting the misguided Climate Council. We have heat waves, dry spells and bushfires in Australia every year - bushfires were burning all up the coast when Captain Cook sailed by in 1770.  But today we know what causes dangerous fires. It needs deliberate political mismanagement to create disastrous wild-fires which destroy everything - houses, sheds, fences, wildlife and mature trees.

     A good wet season can result in nature building up a dangerously large fuel load. In the past this was usually removed safely by many small fires lit by lightning strikes, aboriginals, graziers or foresters. Today massive fuels loads are too often allowed to accumulate for more than one season in forests, reserves, parks and around suburbs. Then one match or spark on a windy day can produce massive fires. Today’s stupid green policies that discourage and prohibit burning-off, encourage the accumulation of bushfire fuel and exclude grazing animals from large areas of parks and reserves are making uncontrollable wildfires more common.

     Now the corporates are showing their true colour, namely red, and openly engaging in the cultural wars. Where better to start then to attack men where it hurts, namely, the face:
  https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/01/14/pg-urges-men-to-lose-their-toxic-masculinity-in-gilette-razor-ad/

“Proctor & Gamble is urging men to shave their “toxic masculinity” in a new ad for Gillette razors. The ad shows men fighting, cooking barbecue, and verbally harassing women, interspersed with news reports about the #MeToo movement. A new ad from P&G razor brand Gillette encourages men to reexamine themselves and the way that they raise young boys. The ad, which is called “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be,” is essentially a two-minute broad generalization about the way that men act and think.”

     Well, I guess everyone who rattles on for long enough on a topic wants to release a book about it. It is surprising how the amount of material piles up, much like dust in your house which can bury you if you are not careful.
  https://www.breitbart.com/immigration/2019/01/17/vatican-publishes-500-page-collection-of-popes-words-on-immigration/

“The Vatican department for migrants and refugees has published the collected teachings of Pope Francis on the issue of immigration, reiterating the pontiff’s appeal for a greater openness to migrants. The massive 488-page tome, titled Lights on the Ways of Hope: Pope Francis Teaching on Migrants, Refugees and Human Trafficking, gathers together the pope’s addresses on immigration, underscoring how central this topic has been to his six-year pontificate. Immigration and the care of migrants has not only been vital to the pope’s agenda, he has also insisted that it should be of key importance to every Christian and not considered a second-tier issue.

     Last year the generally Left Polity Press published the book  by Salvatore Babones, The New Authoritarianism: Trump, Populism, and the Tyranny of Experts. Dr Babones is an America academic with an position  in Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney. What is of interest to us is the central thesis of the book, that there has been a potential conflict between liberalism and democracy throughout the Western political tradition. At present, liberalism is on the rise, if not out of control, but he does see merit in the presidency of Donald Trump in stopping the overwhelming influence of liberalism, and turning the pendulum back towards democracy. The subtitle of the book mentions the tyranny of experts, and here the central conflict between liberalism and democracy gets murky, because the technocrats are neither liberal, nor democratic, but, as I see it a sui genesis power group. The politically correct liberal is guided by fanatical ideology, but the technocrat is concerned solely with social control and the smooth operation of the social control mechanisms. However there is an alternative position that should be considered:
  https://www.counter-currents.com/2019/01/trump-vs-the-tyranny-of-experts/#more-89408

“Babones is correct that modern liberalism requires deference to expert (or pseudo-expert) authority. The people are the passive recipients of those rights the experts deem them to possess. As the domain of rights expands, experts end up making more and more of the decisions in an ever-increasing number of the most important aspects of public life: economic policy, criminal justice, what’s taught in schools, who’s allowed to enter the country, what diseases will be cured, even who will have the opportunity to run for elective office. The areas reserved to expert adjudication seem only to expand. Previously depoliticized domains rarely return to the realm of democratic determination. University instruction, medical research councils, disaster relief agencies, courts of law and (in America) the Federal Reserve Bank are just some institutions financed by government (i.e., taxpayers) but protected from democratic political oversight. In every case, the rational is that only those with the relevant professional expertise should be permitted to make decisions effecting such institutions.

     The new class say that the information tech highway is all clear and that no-one has placed landmines on the tracks. Ask Google though what they have got up to under the cover of electronic darkness:
  https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/01/16/google-youtube-search-blacklist-smoking-gun/

“In sworn testimony, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told Congress last month that his company does not “manually intervene” on any particular search result. Yet an internal discussion thread leaked to Breitbart News reveals Google regularly intervenes in search results on its YouTube video platform – including a recent intervention that pushed pro-life videos out of the top ten search results for “abortion.” The term “abortion” was added to a “blacklist” file for “controversial YouTube queries,” which contains a list of search terms that the company considers sensitive. According to the leak, these include some of these search terms related to: abortion, abortions, the Irish abortion referendum, Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and anti-gun activist David Hogg. The existence of the blacklist was revealed in an internal Google discussion thread leaked to Breitbart News by a source inside the company who wishes to remain anonymous. A partial list of blacklisted terms was also leaked to Breitbart by another Google source.”

     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.