I have been following articles on the net about the likelihood of World War III following Trump’s order of the assassination of Iran’s Soleimani. The neo cons have been quite openly rejoicing about the coming global war, for they are usually evangelical Christians, hoping that this Armageddon will bring on the Second Coming.
  https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/world-war-iii-trending-twitter-iran-hawks-rejoice
  https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/red-flag-jihad-raised-1000s-mourn-death-suleimani-baghdad
  https://saraacarter.com/president-trump-to-iran-if-you-retaliate-we-will-hit-you-very-fast-and-very-hard/?utm_source=izooto&utm_medium=push_notifications&utm_campaign=iran&utm_content=&utm_term=

     The fear of a new draft, or what we call conscription, led to the Selective Service System website crashing, as anxious young people sought information. Hopefully World War III will be over quickly this time, and people left alive will be able to pick up the radioactive fragments of Western civilisation and see if anything can be put back together. Probably not.
  https://www.zerohedge.com/political/selective-service-website-crashes-amid-wwiii-draft-fears 
  https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/no-more-threats-trump-warns-iran-52-targets-will-be-hit-very-fast-hard

To The Australian        Commenting on monarchy (11-12/1), Michael Schilling expresses a dislike of its "degree of social elitism and inequality by birth that should not be part of an ideal world." However, the truth is that human societies always need to enshrine their leaders in a blaze of glory that inevitably contradicts the foolish advocacy of political equality. People need elites to brighten their lives and stimulate their dreams. Think the wealthy, think celebrities of all kinds, think heroes and heroines. Schilling's invocation of "contemporary reality" and "individualism" is also questionable. Some realities do not change with time and the glory of monarchy is one of them. There is no comparable glory of republics. As for individualism, this is sometimes good but sometimes not. We must not confuse worthwhile creativity and courageous independence with selfishness.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

     With all the nonsense talk about extinction from climate change it is good that former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan is focusing on the real extinction threat facing the West, which is coming up real fast now. The death of the West is happening right now, in real time:
  https://buchanan.org/blog/our-real-existential-crisis-extinction-137964

“For many First World countries, there are more compelling concerns. High among them is population decline, and, if birth rates do not rise, the near-extinction of many Western peoples by this century’s end. Consider. The number of births in Japan fell in 2019 to a level unseen since 1874, around 900,000. But there were 1.4 million deaths for a net loss of 512,000 Japanese. An even larger loss in Japan’s population is expected this year. Japan’s population has been shrinking since 2007, when deaths first exceeded births by 18,000. And with 28% of its population over 65, and fewer births every passing year, Japan is aging, shrinking and dying — with no respite in sight. Across Japan, writes The New York Times: “Whole villages are vanishing as young people choose not to have children or move to urban areas … The Government estimates that the population could shrink by about 16 million people — or nearly 13 percent — over the next 25 years.” South Korea has an even lower birth rate, and its population is expected to start diminishing this year. But it is Eastern Europe where the population crisis is most advanced.

To The Age        John Pinniger is wrong (11/1) to describe our monarchy as "a failing organisation that is becoming less relevant by the day". Perhaps the truth is the other way around: that there is a danger of the Australian people failing the Crown. Our constitutional monarchy brings a special grace into our lives that no republic can ever do. It calls on us to bow to the sacred and to live lives for the benefit of the common good rather than for selfish pleasure. It helps maintain a national memory of our history, its grandeur and the examples of our heroes. It offers a focus of national unity beyond party politics. It is a fair bet that if the republicans triumph here, it will not be long before a sizable majority of Australians yearn for a return of the monarchy; but by then the stable door will have been long opened and the horse bolted, alas!
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave

     I wish that I had a dollar for every time I read or heard that the bushfires were a product of climate change. Why, I would buy enough alcohol to put myself well and truly out of this misery, perhaps permanently! Just joking. Seriously though, the bushfires are a product of lack of clearly of vegetation, and having crazy fire bugs lighting up the place.
  https://phys.org/news/2020-01-wildlife-ravaged-australia-decades-recover.html
  https://summit.news/2020/01/03/australian-police-say-arsonists-lightning-to-blame-for-bushfires-not-climate-change/

“Authorities in Australia are working on the premise that arsonists and lightning strikes are to blame for bushfires that have devastated numerous areas of the country, not “climate change” as many global warming alarmists have claimed. Since November, the fires have struck various regions of the state of New South Wales, destroying thousands of buildings and killing at least 22 people. Despite the fact that bushfires are not uncommon in Australia, the severity of the damage led numerous climate change alarmists to blame the disaster on man-made global warming. Earlier this week, Bernie Sanders blamed those who were “delaying action on climate change” for “the blood-red sky and unbreathable air in Australia because of raging forest fires.” However, according to those tasked with investigating the fires, climate change has nothing to do with it. “Police are now working on the premise arson is to blame for much of the devastation caused this bushfire season,” reports 7 News Sydney. Authorities in the country have formed Strike Force Indarra, comprising of detectives from homicide and arson units in an attempt to find the culprits. Other causes for the fires include lightning strikes and a natural weather phenomenon called Dipole, again neither of which have anything to do with man-made climate change. Many bushfires are also actually caused by environmentalist ‘green’ policies which prevent land owners from clearing their own vegetation to protect themselves. “Governments appeasing the green beast have ignored numerous state and federal bushfire inquiries over the past decade, almost all of which have recommended increasing the practice of “prescribed burning,” writes Miranda Devine. “Also known as “hazard reduction”, it is a methodical regime of burning off flammable ground cover in cooler months, in a controlled fashion, so it does not fuel the inevitable summer bushfires.”

     The resource war, especially the battle for water is now on, and China is making sure that it does not get thirsty. As for the local Aussies on water rations, well the governments will be doing all they can to do precisely nothing, and allow China first, second and third drink, as is the law of the New World Order:
  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/02/queensland-government-was-warned-about-risks-of-chinese-companys-water-extraction

“Queensland government experts raised repeated warnings about the long-term sustainability of groundwater extraction at a southern Queensland property which has since been approved to operate as a commercial water mine. The approval for the 96m litre a year bottled water extraction operation at Cherrabah – in a severely drought-hit area where locals are on water rations and communities at imminent risk of running dry – has raised significant questions about the oversight and regulation of critical water resources in Queensland. Documents obtained by Guardian Australia show how longstanding concerns about groundwater security at Cherrabah were overridden by changes to Queensland law enacted by Campbell Newman’s government in 2013. Under the changes, the Chinese-owned company Joyful View Garden Real Estate Development Resort Pty Ltd was automatically granted a 94-year extraction permit at Cherrabah when a short-term allocation expired in 2017. Written concerns outlined in the documents obtained by Guardian Australia include the expert review of a study commissioned by Joyful View in 2009 that was the basis for its subsequent water extraction applications. The study contained repeated qualifications that its modelling could not be relied upon for a period longer than 12 months.

     The multicultural elite are jumping for joy at news that England’s Muslim population has now topped 3 million, which exceeds the total population of Wales or Northern Ireland in the 2011 census:
  https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/01/04/englands-muslim-population-3-million-tops-populations-wales-ni/

“Office for National Statistics (ONS) research based on the Annual Population Survey (APS), a new a data collection method based on a “continuous household survey, comprising the Labour Force Survey (LFS) supplemented by sample boosts in England, Wales and Scotland to ensure small areas are sufficiently sampled”, indicates that the Muslim population of England and Wales increased by over 400,000 — 16 per cent — between the 2011 census and 2016. The Muslim population in England alone is thought have reached around 3,092,000 by 2016, greater than the total populations, including Muslims and all other minority groups, recorded for Wales (3,063,456) or Northern Ireland (1,810,863) in the 2011 census, according to coverage of the research in the Daily Mail. If accurate, the APS data — which naturally does not account for people resident in Britain illegally, or for people who live in “communal establishments” such as prisons rather than households — would put the Muslim share of England’s population in 2016 at 5.6 per cent. However, the impact on the country’s culture, demographics, and social cohesion is likely to be much greater than this figure would suggest, given the Muslim population has “tended to be concentrated in particular areas of England”, according to the last national census. “In over half of local authorities the proportion of the population who were Muslim was under one per cent,” the 2011 census reported noted — but added that in areas with “the highest proportion of Muslims” — namely Tower Hamlets and Newham in London, now governed by Muslim left-winger Sadiq Khan — their share of the population was far higher, at “34.5 per cent and 32.0 per cent respectively.”

     I have written before that new world countries like Australia and America are social experiments in liberalism, to see if the fundamental natural laws that have governed human societies since the beginning of their existence can be over-ridden in favour of money economies, and the rule of commerce. That being so, this idea of a grand experiment has been taken even further by the car man, Jeremy Clarkson, who likes to say crazy things, but things which still have a serious sting to them:
  https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10668071/australia-is-gods-laboratory-and-people-were-not-actually-meant-to-live-there/

“I’VE suspected for some time God didn’t want people to live in Australia. He created it as a continent far, far away where he could house all his experiments that had gone wrong. It was his under-the-stairs cupboard for stuff he wanted to forget about. Like, for instance, the saltwater crocodile. He designed it, built it then realised it was far too savage and bitey to live in, say, Milton Keynes. Or the poisonous redback spider which likes to hide under lavatory seats so it can bite a man’s penis when he sits down to do his number twos. No way could God have that living in Europe or the US. He also made a lot of snakes. Some are very pretty and some are very impressive. But occasionally it all went wrong and he ended up with something that could kill a fully-grown man with one small bite. And again, these could not live in populated areas. He needed a home for all these things, so he made Australia. And to make sure people didn’t go there, he put a huge coral reef on the approaches and filled the interior with a sea of sand that goes on for ever. He even used this remote outpost to house some of his more ridiculous ideas. Stuff he came up with when he was drunk. Like those birds that can’t fly and that otter with a beak. Then you have the kangaroo, which gets about by bouncing, and the koala, which is permanently stoned and catches chlamydia if anyone ever picks it up. For millions of years, this big, sandy cupboard under the stairs went unnoticed. But then along came Captain Cook and now the world knows all about Oz and its stupid, dangerous creatures. Plainly, God is embarrassed. Because he’s decided to set fire to it. It’s been argued the fires raging across the country were caused by global warming or out-of-control barbies. But when you look at the footage, you know something biblical is going on. Those things are huge.”

     Yet more material proclaiming Sweden’s collapse. However, the metaphor used in this news piece is one of dissolution, bringing to mind acid reactions. Political scientist, whatever that means, Tommy Möller has said to a Swedish newspaper that Sweden’s mass immigration could result in the unravelling of Sweden’s Democratic welfare society:
  https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/01/02/professor-sweden-society-dissolving-due-to-mass-migration/

“No matter what happens, no one can deny that our society has undergone significant changes as a result of the extensive immigration, and these demographic changes will permeate Swedish politics for the foreseeable future,” Moller said and highlighted the rise of the anti-mass migration Sweden Democrats (SD) who have topped recent opinion polls. “Problems in health care and school, the municipalities’ increased costs for supply support, housing shortages and, not least, the accelerating gang crime – all of these are problems and some of them have been linked by SD with immigration,” he said. Mass migration has been linked to several of those issues such as in the southern city of Malmo where the vast majority of shooting suspects in a Swedish media report released earlier this year were from migrant backgrounds. Municipalities who took in large shares of asylum seekers and migrants since the height of the 2015 migrant crisis have also seen financial difficulties, such as the municipality of Bengtsfors which claimed it risked bankruptcy earlier this year.”

     New Zealand is small, but is run by a socialist, so we do our best to keep up with the rest of the West in the politically correct steeple chase. Like this:

  https://english.alarabiya.net/en/sports/2019/11/29/Rugby-Crusaders-keep-name-but-change-logo-after-Christchurch-massacre.html

     Yes, the old bag lady of globalism is still there working to bury what remains of traditional Germany. 

“German Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed the Bundestag recently to warn the German parliament about the dangers of free speech. “We have freedom of expression in our country,” Merkel argued. “For all those who claim that they can no longer express their opinion, I say to them: If you express a pronounced opinion, you must live with the fact that you will be contradicted. Expressing an opinion does not come at zero cost.” In 2018, Germany enacted a strict ban on certain speech that elites of the day consider “hateful.” Under the new law, sites can be fined up to 50 million euros, around $55 million, for not promptly removing so-called “hate speech” from their platform. “But freedom of expression has its limits,” Merkel warned. “Those limits begin where hatred is spread. They begin where the dignity of other people is violated. This house will and must oppose extreme speech. Otherwise, our society will no longer be the free society that it was.” Merkel’s speech was considered unusually emotional for the German chancellor and also confusing to everyone who knows that you either have free speech in a country or you have politicians with the power to ban whatever speech they don't like. Merkel’s concerns over free speech have everything to do with silencing critics of Merkel’s open-door immigration policies.”  

     One part of the global warming agenda, to destroy the West, is to make universal income redistribution … no, not to poor deplorables like you and me, but to the non-West:

  https://www.technocracy.news/global-warming-swindle-a-scheme-to-redistribute-wealth/

To The Age          A key player in the exposure of the fraud of the fake Hitler diaries ("Editor who took the rap for fake Hitler diaries", 7/1) was David Irving. It is a pity that this is not mentioned in the New York Times obituary you have republished. Its unworthy omission of reference to his dramatic intervention at a German press conference is no doubt a result of the current disgraceful taboo on this distinguished historian's writings. Which reminds us that it is high time that the Australian Government terminated any restrictions on Irving's entry into Australia. Those restrictions, some of which were enacted precisely to keep him out, were never justified. The fact that a UK High Court decision later found some errors in some of his works does not change that reality.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

     You are not paranoid if they really do want to kill you, and the liberal Left are quite open about it:

  https://americanactionnews.com/articles/liberal-teacher-calls-for-targeted-killings-of-trump-supporters

To The Australian        Andrew Bragg, a supporter of Aboriginal constitutional recognition, states that it must "strengthen national unity" ("Let's get this job done on indigenous recognition", 7/1), but nowhere in his discussion is there any indication of how that could possibly be. There is ample evidence on the public record that this project is seen by key players as a means to eventually establishing two nations on this continent, something that can only be done by massive injustice to the majority of Australians, those who make no claim to Aboriginality. Bragg favours the establishment of "local and regional bodies for the various indigenous communities around Australia", this to be followed by voluntary affiliation "to create a national body." No one else, he adds, "should tell these people how to set up their bodies." However, the Australian people as a whole are no doubt expected to foot the bill for costs. Finally, Bragg is setting up a straw man when he claims that constitutional recognition would not create a third chamber of parliament. It might not, but it would certainly give undue power and influence to a mere tiny majority of Australians, many of whose claims to indigenous status are questionable anyway.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

     I just knew it; if I looked long enough I knew that I would find the claim that white racism led to the London Bridge knife jihad! How could it not, since it is also well known that white racism led to the extinction of the dinosaurs (reverse causation and time travel of course):

  https://www.jihadwatch.org/2019/12/uks-guardian-london-bridge-jihadi-was-reacting-to-racism-muslims-are-the-real-victims-of-his-massacre 

To The Australian          Steve Chavura rightly focuses on "a deeper uneasiness about what we stand for" and on public confusion about what is in the best interests of Australians as a whole and the best deliverer of harmony in our political order ("Religious bill to test our identity", 8/1). He contrasts the pre-1960s "strong Christian underpinning of public morality" with "a post-Christian humanism" that has tended more and more to undervalue freedom of speech. He asks how a religious freedom bill can possibly reconcile the adherents of these two very different worldviews. The answer is that it should be based on a third option - a radically different and reformed understanding of Christian sacred tradition. Antiquated and exclusivist theology needs to be abandoned. Legislation needs to be based on what Rene Guenon called "the transcendent unity of religions." Such a perennialist approach can safeguard us from the twin evils of relapse into inquisitorial mediaevalism and sinking into the mire of hedonistic and ultimately repressive selfishness. It is a new idealism, based on the mystery of the holy rather than on ecclesiastical dogmatism, that can protect our free way of life and unite Australians.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

     Global warming is a truly amazing thing, it leads to the elimination of a meat diet, and everything else about the West including …  us. Get ready now, along with the African exodus, for 400 million Chinese climate refugees:

  https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/by-2070-heatwave-could-force-up-to-400-million-chinese-to-find-refuge-in-the-south/news-story/8857ecf48576fb2f35eb2bf1e87fba8b 

     It is a pity that our knowledge of History and Science is at such a low level in the community that we are being led to believe that we have a climate emergency and that CO2 is the villain! Australia's Hottest Day on Record 1828. Not 2019, BUT 1828 at a blistering 53.9 °C. Back before man-made climate change was frying Australia, when CO2 was around 300ppm, the continent savoured an ideal pre-industrial climate... RIGHT? This is the kind of climate we are spending $10bn per annum to get back to... Right again? We are told today's climate has more records and more extremes than times gone by, but the few records we have from the early 1800s are eye-popping. Things were not just hotter, but so wildly hot it burst thermometers. The earliest temperature records we have show that Australia was a land of shocking heatwaves and droughts, except for when it was bitterly cold or raging in flood. In other words, nothing has changed, except possibly things might not be quite so hot now! Silliggy (Lance Pidgeon) has been researching records from early explorers and from newspapers. What he's uncovered is fascinating!   It's as if history is being erased!

     For all that we hear about recent record-breaking climate extremes, records that are equally extreme, and sometimes even more so, are ignored. In January 1896 a savage blast "like a furnace" stretched across Australia from east to west and lasted for weeks. The death toll reached 437 people in the eastern states. Newspaper reports showed that in Bourke the heat approached 120°F (48.9°C) on three days.

     Green Folly locked up 11% of Australia in a tinder-box of bushfire fuel, much of which is now burnt or burning. Green Folly closed forest tracks and gates, expelled foresters and timber-workers and prevented property owners from removing flammable fuel from their own land and adjacent roads, parks and forests. Those responsible for these follies should face Class Action. Green Folly promotes electric vehicles but not one fire truck, dozer, water bomber, helicopter, ambulance or naval vessel ran on batteries. They all used hydro-carbon fuels - diesel, petrol or avgas. And with so many power lines down, electric toys could not have recharged their batteries anyway. Green Folly believed that widely scattered wind turbines, solar panels and their spider-webs of transmission lines would continue to produce power in gale-force firestorms and thick smoke. Many will be burnt. Blackouts are inevitable. Green Folly promotes “green” building materials like timber which adds fuel to fires while using fake CO2 scares to denigrate steel and concrete which won’t burn. For decades, Green Folly opposed every new dam proposal and wasted stored water on another Green Folly – “Environmental Flows”. Dams were emptied, farmers suffered, towns ran out of water, food prices increased and some fire-fighting water bombers had to take water from private dams. It was criminal Green Folly that babbled on about “the Climate Emergency” while they sponsored forest conditions that caused agonizing deaths for so many innocents - residents, firefighters, live-stock, koalas and other native animals, birds and insects. Australia cannot afford any more Green Follies. Politicians must stop sacrificing Australians on the Green altar.