As an example of the extreme deracination of modern times, a Scandinavian airline, SAS put out an ad saying that there is nothing Scandinavian, and that everything is copied. It is the standard politically correct anti-Nordic thing to do, but the interesting thing is that the ad was pulled after massive criticism.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShfsBPrNcTI&feature=emb_title
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4UF40bGotk&feature=emb_title
  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51478279

“A Scandinavian airline has pulled an advert after it was criticised by anti-immigration parties for belittling the region's history and culture. "What is truly Scandinavian? Absolutely nothing. Everything is copied," the SAS advert begins. The iconic Swedish meatball, Danish pastry, and Scandinavian parental leave are then attributed to Turkey, Austria and Switzerland. SAS said they believe they were the target of a co-ordinated online attack. The advert pointed out that liquorice came from China, windmills were invented in Iran, and that the progressive politics the Nordics are known for originated in Greece and the US. "We take everything we like on our trips abroad, adjust it a little bit, and it's a unique Scandinavian thing," the advert, which was taken down on Wednesday, claimed. Danish & Co Noa agency produced the campaign, which SAS defended as highlighting how travel "inspires individuals and societies." Politicians with Danish and Swedish anti-immigration populist parties criticised the message.”

     Here is material of relevance to race realist, that there are traces of ancient humans who lived in Africa, about 500,000 years ago, who contributed their genes to humans living today:
  https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/feb/12/scientists-find-evidence-of-ghost-population-of-ancient-humans

“Scientists have found evidence for a mysterious “ghost population” of ancient humans that lived in Africa about half a million years ago and whose genes live on in people today. Traces of the unknown ancestor emerged when researchers analysed genomes from west African populations and found that up to a fifth of their DNA appeared to have come from the missing relatives. Geneticists suspect that the ancestors of modern west Africans interbred with the yet-to-be-discovered archaic humans tens of thousands of years ago, much as ancient Europeans once mated with Neanderthals. “In the west Africans we looked at, all have ancestry from this unknown archaic population,” said Sriram Sankararaman, a computational biologist who led the research at the University of California in Los Angeles. Unlike today, the world was once home to many related species or subspecies of human. And when they stumbled upon one another, mating was not out of the question. As a result, modern Europeans carry a smattering of Neanderthal genes, while indigenous Australians, Polynesians and Melanesians carry genes from Denisovans, another group of archaic humans. Previous studies have hinted that other ancient humans once roamed Africa, but without any fossils or DNA to pore over, researchers have struggled to learn more about them. Arun Durvasula and Sankararaman obtained 405 genomes from four west African populations and used statistical techniques to work out whether an influx of genes from interbreeding was likely to have happened in the distant past. The analysis suggested that it had in every case.

     Is this their plan? The hypothesis to be discussed is that the rich will be able to reproduce and have children, being able to get some freedom and protection from environmental toxins, while the poor, people like us, will be swimming in pollutants, and thus will be effectively sterilised. End of story.
  https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/10/gmos-grantham-warns-only-the-rich-will-be-able-to-have-kids-due-to-chemical-toxicity.html

“Investor Jeremy Grantham warned in a letter that falling birth rates in the developed world could accelerate in coming years due to increasing chemical toxicity, allowing only wealthy people to have children. In recent years, economists have raised concern about the impact on economic growth of slowing birth rates in the developed world. Grantham, who co-founded GMO in the 1970s and is famous for calling the last two major market bubbles, said that trend is poised to accelerate due to increased chemical toxicity in the environment and food products. “This interference is growing at such a rapid rate that if left alone it is likely to leave us sterile in a few decades with only the rich able to easily afford the healthy lifestyles and the exotic medical help required to have babies,” Grantham said. While acknowledging that changes in lifestyle choices is responsible for at least some of the slowing birth rates, Graham said increased chemical toxicity is making it harder for women to conceive and lowering sperm counts in men. “The net effect of choice and postponement combined with the recent decade of ‘help’ from toxicity has been an unexpected and accelerating decline in delivered fertility in developed countries, as well as the critically important China and India, with new annual cohorts of babies already declining in absolute numbers, not just growth rates,” Grantham said. He also pointed to dramatic population declines in some species of insects as an example of how increased chemicals in the environment can hurt reproduction rates. He ended his letter by warning that major chemical companies could soon be hit by widespread bans on some of their key products. “The bottom line is this: either endocrine disrupting chemicals will go out of business or we will!” Grantham wrote.

To The Australian         Two different responses to the High Court decision in Love and Thoms are provided (21/2) by Henry Ergas ("Foolish ruling widens indigenous gap into a chasm") and Shireen Morris ("A voice for First Nations should be beyond the reach of the judiciary"). Only that by Ergas is likely to have the approval of the majority of Australians. He recommends that we "erase all racial references from Australia's constitution." This approach would treat all Australian citizens, no matter what their ethnicity, on an equal footing. It would thus be fundamentally unifying and would enhance internal stability and external security. Norris cleverly tries to turn the similar approach of the Institute of Public Affairs on its head; but the mere inclusion in her title of the contentious term "First Nations" shows that she wants us to play with loaded dice. So does her assertion that "we must also heed how indigenous people want to be recognised." That is the way of division and, if taken far enough, constitutional separatism. Australians are not lemmings. They won't buy it.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

     This is good to see, when so much hype is being sprayed about an alleged climate crisis, that at least some bodies of scientists are standing up and saying: No! And, they are standing up to the tyrannical UN:
  https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/there-is-no-climate-emergency-say-500-experts-in-letter-to-the-united-nations/

“On the same day last week that Greta Thunberg made an impassioned speech to the United Nations about her fears of a climate emergency, a group of 500 prominent scientists and professionals, led by the CLINTEL co-founder Guus Berkhout, sent this registered letter to the United Nations Secretary-General stating that there is no climate emergency and climate policies should be designed to benefit the lives of people. Here’s the press release, here’ the list of 500 signees, and here’s the opening of the letter:

     Last I heard, the  South African government was going slow on taking land from Whites and giving it to Blacks, when President Trump tweeted about the need for the US to investigate this. But, things are now full speed ahead:
  https://www.biznews.com/undictated/2020/01/27/clarification-bank-loans-expropriation-daily-friend

“The Institute of Race Relations launched an open-letter campaign last week asking prominent banks in South Africa to clarify the implications of expropriation without compensation. What the IRR wants to know is; who would pay off bonds of property that gets expropriated, the banks or the mortgage holder? With the debt-to asset ratio in the agricultural sector being particularly high; it could prove to be a tricky situation if the state decides to expropriate farms. Farmers will not be able to service the loans they take out and for the banks there would be nothing to repossess as the property is now owned by the state. The Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development recently revealed it had no discussions with the country’s banks about being compensated for loans against property that is expropriated with Agriculture Minister Thoko Didiza indicating that she was waiting for the bill to be finalised. Nicholas Babaya writes in the Daily Friend that CEOs should be more vocal “in their opposition to the constitutional amendment which is proposed” and is accusing the banks of “playing along” to avoid being in the firing line. – Linda van Tilburg

     We here at Alor.org,, being Christians, primarily support monogamy, and that is marriage between a man and a woman, because of good religious reasons. But that does not mean that there cannot be scientific reasons also given as supplement.  Thus, multiple sexual partners expose people to a greater chance of coming into contact with dangerous organisms, and mechanisms that lead to diseases like cancer.
  https://inews.co.uk/news/health/multiple-sexual-partners-cancer-health-risk-1675815

“Playing the field could be putting people at much greater risk of being diagnosed with cancer, a study reveals. Those most likely to be diagnosed are people with ten or more sexual partners throughout their lifetime. And among women, a higher number of sexual partners is also linked to heightened odds of reporting a limiting long term condition, the findings indicate. Few studies have looked at the potential impact of the number of sexual partners on wider health outcomes, so researchers from Anglia Ruskin University drew on information gathered for the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, a nationally representative tracking study of adults aged 50 and above living in England. Almost 6,000 people with an average age of 64 were asked to rate their own health and report any long standing conditions. The average age of participants was 64, and almost three out of four were married. Some 28.5 per cent of men said they had had 0-1 sexual partners to date; 29 per cent said they had had 2-4; 20 per cent reported 5-9; while 22 per cent said 10 or more. The equivalent figures for women were: just under 41 per cent; 35.5 per cent; just under 16 per cent; and just under 8 per cent. Those who reported a higher tally of sexual partners were more likely to smoke, drink frequently, and do more vigorous physical activity on a weekly basis. Compared with women who reported 0-1 sexual partners, those who said they had had 10 or more, were 91 per cent more likely to have been diagnosed with cancer. Among the men, those who reported 2-4 lifetime sexual partners were 57 per cent more likely to have been diagnosed with cancer than were those who reported 0-1. And those who reported 10 or more, were 69 per cent more likely to have been diagnosed with the disease. While the number of sexual partners was not associated with reported long standing conditions among the men, it was among the women. The findings chime with those of previous studies, implicating sexually transmitted infections in the development of several types of cancer and hepatitis, suggest the researchers.”

22 February 2020,        Entrepreneur Barrie Rogers is planning to import and then manufacture electric aircraft in Australia which he says   “. . . don’t rely on fossil fuels.” The Australian 21 Feb. Where will he get steel, aluminium, lithium, copper, nickel, graphite, cobalt, rare earths, plastics and lubricants for his motors, batteries, aircraft bodies and recharging stations without the hydro-carbons so necessary to mine, refine and manufacture them?

     When you read the list below, it brings home just how much we have lost. How much longer will we tolerate what governments of both persuasions have delivered? They certainly are not reflecting our wishes.
In more robust times, the voters would be assembled at their MP’s office demanding he/she vote for certain things OR face being turfed out at the next poll.  Now we just meekly argue that we better maintain our voting pattern because we don’t want those other b’s getting elected.  Realistically we can see it matters little which party is in power!  Neither are looking after us!  They all parrot the tune orchestrated by globalists around the world. This message below makes it clear that we will certainly have more of the same UNLESS we do something about it.  We owe it to our kids and their kids.  How will we answer them one day when they ask Grandpa, “What did you do to change the disastrous course?” Start tomorrow  -  no that is too late.  Start today and contact your Federal MP (and Senators) irrespective of their party alliance.  Show him/her the message below and politely tell him/her that they will definitely not be getting your vote next election until he/she reverses the present disastrous policies destroying our sovereignty. Gary Matthews who has written the message is unknown to me but he has done us a big favour.  Reward him by taking action.

     I covered articles documenting academics, few that there are with any guts now, and others, who have said that men and women exist, and been destroyed. Now we have the Wall Street Journal saying that sex is binary, and thus launching a critique of transgenderism. As to be expected, there is a pay wall, but who cares about that when Brietbart.com can pay for a subscription, and give us all the goodies?
  https://www.breitbart.com/science/2020/02/14/wsj-no-sex-spectrum-beyond-male-and-female/
  https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dangerous-denial-of-sex-11581638089

“The Wall Street Journal has issued a throwdown to the gender lobby, insisting in an op-ed Thursday that sex is binary and there is no “spectrum.” “In humans, reproductive anatomy is unambiguously male or female at birth more than 99.98% of the time,” note biologists Colin M. Wright and Emma N. Hilton. “The evolutionary function of these two anatomies is to aid in reproduction via the fusion of sperm and ova.” “No third type of sex cell exists in humans, and therefore there is no sex ‘spectrum’ or additional sexes beyond male and female. Sex is binary,” they assert. As the American College of Pediatricians concurred in 2016, the exceedingly rare disorders of sex development “are all medically identifiable deviations from the sexual binary norm, and are rightly recognized as disorders of human design. Individuals with DSDs do not constitute a third sex.” The WSJ writers are responding to what they call a “dangerous and anti-scientific trend toward the outright denial of biological sex,” which sees male and female as “arbitrary groupings.” While sexual ambiguity does occasionally occur, the authors note, “intersex individuals are extremely rare, and they are neither a third sex nor proof that sex is a ‘spectrum’ or a ‘social construct.’” The WSJ essay echoes concerns increasingly being voiced that modern society has rushed into a dangerous social experiment based on less than flimsy scientific foundations. “The concept of changing one’s biological sex is, of course, nonsense, as sex is determined by unalterable chromosomes,” wrote researcher Jane Robbins for Public Discourse last October. “An individual can change his hormone levels and undergo surgery to better imitate the opposite sex, but a male on the day of his conception will remain a male on the day of his death.”

     Things are tough for the small farmer, and getting tougher. The future is likely to be Big Agri run by China, with robots doing the work:
  https://www.technocracy.news/the-future-of-farming-is-robots/

“In a research field off Highway 54 last autumn, corn stalks shimmered in rows 40-feet deep. Girish Chowdhary, an agricultural engineer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, bent to place a small white robot at the edge of a row marked 103. The robot, named TerraSentia, resembled a souped up version of a lawn mower, with all-terrain wheels and a high-resolution camera on each side. In much the same way that self-driving cars “see” their surroundings, TerraSentia navigates a field by sending out thousands of laser pulses to scan its environment. A few clicks on a tablet were all that were needed to orient the robot at the start of the row before it took off, squeaking slightly as it drove over ruts in the field. “It’s going to measure the height of each plant,” Dr. Chowdhary said. It would do that and more. The robot is designed to generate the most detailed portrait possible of a field, from the size and health of the plants, to the number and quality of ears each corn plant will produce by the end of the season, so that agronomists can breed even better crops in the future. In addition to plant height, TerraSentia can measure stem diameter, leaf-area index and “stand count” — the number of live grain- or fruit-producing plants — or all of those traits at once. And Dr. Chowdhary is working on adding even more traits, or phenotypes, to the list with the help of colleagues at EarthSense, a spinoff company that he created to manufacture more robots.

     What can I say?
  http://timesofsweden.com/2020/02/02/sweden-sentences-19-year-old-man-to-75-hours-community-service-for-sex-crime-against-13-year-old-girl/

“A 19 year old man has been convicted by the Swedish court of appeals for “sexually taking advantage” of a 13 year old girl. The prosecutor was looking to get him convicted of rape against a minor, but the Swedish court decided to only convict him of “taking advantage” of the young girl reports Swedish news site Samnytt. The man, who is a citizen of Somalia, had been messaging the girl on Snapchat where he said he wanted to have intercourse with her, despite the girl telling him her age. He had asked to meet up with the girl, and after meeting at a shop they went home to his apartment where he locked the door and proceeded to have intercourse. He had both anal and vaginal intercourse, and according to the girl, she was “biting her tongue” during this because of the pain. She “couldn’t sit down for two days” afterwards and she got anxiety and had trouble sleeping. According to the court, the girl sustained injuries from the intercourse. The age of consent in Sweden is 15. Despite this, the court did not convict 19 year old Hussein of rape against the 13 year old girl, but instead he was convicted of “sexually taking advantage” of her. The man received residence permit in Sweden by the migration authorities on the 13th of April 2016. On the 9th of March 2019 he was arrested by police. On the 6th of May 2019 Mora District court sentenced the man to a suspended sentence, 75 hours community service and ordered to pay SEK 15 000 ($1 579) damages to the girl. On the 6th of December 2019 Svea Appeals court upheld the sentence, but increased the damages to be paid to SEK 25 000 ($2 632). Here is an excerpt of the court ruling translated into English. The prosecutor urged that the court of appeals should convict Hussein for rape against a minor instead of sexually taking advantage of a minor, and for the sentence to be prison. Regarding damages for pain, the court of appeals does not question that the plaintiff has suffered mentally after the event and that it has affected her school work. However the presented evidence is, with taking into account what the plaintiff and her mother has told about her wellbeing before the event in this case, not such that other factors than Husseins can be ruled out to have affected her wellbeing. The court of appeals changes the district court ruling only such that the damages that [name redacted] should pay to NN3 is set to SEK 25 000 and rent as stated by the district court ruling.”

     This is an incredible story from Ireland that readers may not know about, that Ireland, of all places, is set to ban the sale of petrol ands diesel cars by 2030:
  https://www.technocracy.news/ireland-set-to-ban-sale-of-petrol-and-diesel-cars-by-2030/
  https://www.rte.ie/news/2019/1229/1103466-electric-car/

“The Government is drafting new laws that would ban new petrol and diesel car registrations by 2030, as part of a strategy to protect the environment. The aim is to ensure that one third of vehicles on the roads are electric in ten years' time. The Sunday Independent reported that Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment Richard Bruton is planning to publish the law early in the new year. The new measures will be included in the Climate Action Amendment Bill 2019. It is understood that the bill will be developed further in conjunction with other departments. The Government's Climate Action Plan aims to reduce emissions and be carbon neutral by 2050. Transport emissions accounted for over 20% of Ireland's emissions in 2018. The Government is planning to have 936,000 electric vehicles on the roads by 2030, including battery operated and hybrid vehicles. It has promised to double the amount of home chargers installed and further roll-out the nationwide network of on street charging points.”

     The sheer beauty of law suits and litigation has always made my pulse rate increase, and put a smile on my face, however cloudy the day, because in suing, things get decided, and there is certainty in an uncertain, nay, chaotic world. Politics goes around in a circle, but law is constrained by economic necessity and the unending desire to allow the smooth flow of commerce through the alimentary canal and bowels of society. Let’s consider the coming battle between women born with vaginas and other female parts, including genetics, versus transgendered people, as an example of the music of law in action:
  https://apnews.com/8fd300537131153cc44e0cf2ade3244b

“The families of three female high school runners filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday seeking to block transgender athletes in Connecticut from participating in girl’s sports. Selina Soule, a senior at Glastonbury High School, Chelsea Mitchell, a senior at Canton High School and Alanna Smith, a sophomore at Danbury High School are represented by the conservative nonprofit organization Alliance Defending Freedom. They argue that allowing athletes with male anatomy to compete has deprived them of track titles and scholarship opportunities. “Mentally and physically, we know the outcome before the race even starts,” said Smith, who is the daughter of former Major League pitcher Lee Smith. “That biological unfairness doesn’t go away because of what someone believes about gender identity. All girls deserve the chance to compete on a level playing field.” The lawsuit was filed against the Connecticut Association of Schools-Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference and the boards of education in Bloomfield, Cromwell, Glastonbury, Canton and Danbury. “Forcing girls to be spectators in their own sports is completely at odds with Title IX, a federal law designed to create equal opportunities for women in education and athletics,” attorney Christiana Holcomb said. “Connecticut’s policy violates that law and reverses nearly 50 years of advances for women.”

     I think it was Bobby Hawke who wanted Australia to be the nuclear waste dump of the world. Well, I guess the gear has to go somewhere and Australians are ants on the world stage, so what does it matter if we get irradiated? One past proposal had it that there would be a waste dump in South Australia, left uncovered until enough dough was saved up to properly cover it. By that time all the glowing goodies would have blown over to multicult New South Walers, radiationally enriching it with diverse radiation. Anyway, onto today’s main presentation:
  https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/kimba-welcomes-nuclear-dump-announcement/news-story/53531d82101ae5dd558c6a564de8b938?type=curated&position=1&overallPos=1&utm_source=AdelaideNow&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial

“It is an expanse of paddocks as far as the eye can see but this stretch of brown dirt represents a new hope for a tiny Eyre Peninsula town. The Napandee farming property, on Kimba’s northwestern outskirts, is earmarked as the location for Australia’s newest nuclear waste site, 465km from Adelaide. Yesterday’s contentious announcement, made after nearly five years of consultation, reviews, protests and angst, has also sparked a new wave of optimism for the Eyre Peninsula town of just 629 people. Against the backdrop of declining population growth, farming challenges and a severe drought, supporters say the Federal Government’s decision gives the town a real chance to succeed and stave off extinction. However, several hundred opponents protested on Sunday and vowed the fight would continue. Locals in favour of the radioactive storage facility hope it will generate a multimillion-dollar economic boon, together with a much-needed cash injection into health services, education and infrastructure. Grandfather Jeff Baldock, 62, who operates a 7500 ha cereal and sheep farm with his three children, told the Sunday Mail the facility would help secure the area’s future. “Imagine the money that will flow through the wider Eyre Peninsula community,” he said. “It will be hundreds of millions of dollars. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a supply of jobs bringing more money that we can use to create other industries. “This is good for the future of Kimba. We are absolutely thrilled for the community. It provides another industry in town that doesn’t rely on farming, which is huge.” His sons, father of four Andrew, 37, and father of two Mark, 35, said the risks were minimal compared with the rewards. “If small towns don’t think outside the box and diversify their economy, they will continue to decline,” said Andrew, a former carpenter who returned to the family farm from Adelaide, where he met his wife Dale, 33. “We are doing this so our kids and their kids and then their kids can have a future. “I can’t think of another industry that will be guaranteed for 100 years. “The future now looks bright for Kimba in the long term. And we just want a sustainable future for our community.”

     This is a little story from America, the land of the free - HA! – which illustrates the lack of freedom of speech on campuses. Thus, a pretty right-wing girl, who champions gun rights, gets attacked by crazed left-wingers, while she is trying to give a talk. Examine this closely, because the same could happen here in Australia, only we don’t have gun rights, freedom of speech, or anything else much, in a moth-eaten country:
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/02/18/kent-state-gun-girl-kaitlin-bennett-confronted-by-protest-mob-at-ohio-university/

“Kent State “gun girl” Kaitlin Bennett was confronted by a mob of protesters during her visit to Ohio University on Monday. According to the university, “She drew a large crowd of people, many with opposing viewpoints, who also chose to exercise their first amendment rights.” According to a report by USA Today, conservative activist Kaitlin Bennett was mobbed by a group of students during a visit this week to Ohio Univerity. Bennett is perhaps best known for posing with a gun for graduation photos in 2018. Since then, Bennett has traveled to campuses around the country to discuss hot-button issues with progressive college students. Bennett posted a video of her encounter with the Ohio University mob to her Twitter account on Monday. In the video, hundreds of students circle around Bennett as she tries to make her way through campus in a car driven by a black student. At one point, the video shows a member of the mob splashing the vehicle’s occupants with liquid. At one point during her visit, Bennett announced that she would encourage President Trump to strip federal funding from universities that don’t protect students from outrage mobs. “This is what happens when a Trump supporter goes to a college campus,” Bennett said during the video. “I think @realDonaldTrump should strip funding from universities like this that harbor terrorists.”

     Welcome to the new Cold War, with China now taking the place of the USSR:
  https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/chinas-growth-marks-the-start-of-a-second-cold-war/news-story/3305a336c6d988db3a7ba2fb61790b41

“It’s the world’s second largest economy in nominal GDP and, with 1.4 billion people, the most populous nation. It boasts the world’s largest military force with 2.2 million active personnel and another 510,000 in reserve. It has financially colonised much of the South Pacific, central Asia and Africa. Now it is buying influence in Europe, with heavy investments in Greece, including ownership of the port of Piraeus. China is home to the world’s most extensive expressways and high-speed railways. There are 298 airlines and 235 airports. According to Credit Suisse, for the first time there are more rich people in China than in the US. Of the world’s wealthiest 10 per cent, 100 million are Chinese, 99 million are American. China is also home to 12 of the 100 largest companies in the world. Yet the UN still recognises China as a “developing” country. At the World Trade Organisation, it enjoys the same “special and differential treatment” as Zimbabwe and Haiti. Naturally, Beijing sees no reason to give up this self-declared status, claiming the preferential treatment it enjoys is a “fundamental right”. Commerce ministry spokesman Gao Feng recently -described China as the “largest developing country in the world”. That it certainly is. The WTO does not define a developed or developing country. Nor does it provide benchmarks or guidance. This is left entirely to the discretion of -individual members.

     One of the remarkable results of the saga regarding amending the property rights section of the Constitution is the relative silence coming from corporate top-brass at South Africa’s financial institutions. Banks and other financial institutions are – in the vast majority of cases – the way South Africans finance expensive property such as houses, agricultural land, vehicles, factories, and many other assets. Many have tried to frame the proposed constitutional amendment in terms of some kind of focus on agricultural land, but really when one understands this change in policy in light of the National Democratic Revolution of the governing African National Congress (ANC), it is clear that this is very much about property in general. The ANC’s policies have been progressively more and more about state control. Poor black South Africans living in RDP houses do not own the title deeds to the land on which they live. Failing state-owned enterprises are kept afloat by getting pumped full of taxpayers’ rands. In just over ten years, Eskom’s debt securities and borrowings have increased by over 1000%. Now Fikile Mbalula has announced the government is looking to establish another state-owned enterprise (SOE), this time a shipping carrier – largely for the purposes of transformation. Given the unmitigated failure to make a profit at so many other SOEs, this might seem insane, but it’s not insane if the purpose was never to make a profit in the first place. Fundamentally, the ANC believes in state intervention in the economy to drive social engineering – the dead loss is of no concern. I remember hearing Malusi Gigaba express these sentiments in a speech he gave at my alma mater Rhodes University last year. It was not that SAA was unsuccessful, we were just viewing “success” according to the imperialist Washington Consensus.

     When translating this view of “success” into the realm of property ownership, the implications of potential government expropriation of property should be making alarm bells go off  for financial institutions which grant loans against property as collateral. Should a person’s property be expropriated with compensation, is that person still liable to pay off their bond? It would be a bizarre situation in which people might default on their debt while having little to be repossessed by the bank. Nedbank CEO Mike Brown himself has stated that EWC could cause “a classical banking crisis.” So why then have CEOs of financial institutions not been more vocal in their opposition to the constitutional amendment which is proposed? Surely these intelligent CEOs and board members of banks must be aware of the serious consequences which expropriation of property without compensation will have on their clients? Unfortunately this fits in with a general trend of business cosying up to government in the hope that they might get a seat at the negotiating table. The agricultural community has perhaps already seen this, with Dan Kriek initially getting a seat at Cyril Ramaphosa’s 2018 Advisory Panel on Land Reform but later distancing himself from that panel’s recommendations for EWC. Kriek has since resigned (the official statement said it was “due to health and stress-related reasons”), and now farmers are facing terrible drought on one hand and government threatening to steal their property on the other. It is certainly understandable that big business in South Africa would want to have a good relationship with government. Government spending makes up a large proportion of GDP and the ANC is constantly finding new ways of involving itself in the economy, either through more failing SOEs or harsh regulatory environments – especially in the case of mining and infrastructure development, the latter of which consists of many government tenders. Perhaps big businesses in South Africa believe that by cosying up to the bureaucrats in Pretoria and “playing along” in the legislative process they may avoid being in the firing line. Take a look at this interview with Mike Brown from Nedbank, and how he gingerly mentions his opposition to EWC while still sounding supportive of “the process.”

     Todd Bensmamn published a backgrounder monograph, What Terrorist Migration Over European Borders Can Teach About American Border Security in November 2019. The key findings are relevant not only to the United States, but for all countries in the West, struggling to survive the black magic of migration. The key points are summarised:
  https://cis.org/Report/Terrorist-Migration-Over-European-Borders
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmdQEDJfAWo&feature=emb_title

“At least 104 Islamist extremists entered the European Union’s (EU) external borders using long-haul irregular migration methods between 2014-2018, establishing proof-of-concept for a previously theoretical terrorism travel tactic over borders. • Of the 104 migrant terrorists identified for the 2014-2018 period, 28 successfully completed attacks that claimed the lives of 170 victims and wounded 878. An additional 37 were arrested or killed plotting attacks, and 39 others were arrested for illegal involvement with foreign terrorist organizations. • A majority of the 104 terrorists applied for international protections such as asylum and were able to remain in European nations for an average of 11 months before attacks or arrests for plots, demonstrating that asylum processes accommodated plot incubation. • While total numbers of migrant-terrorists were a fraction of overall irregular migration, their activities demonstrate that small numbers present outsized threats to the United States should only a few strike here. In Europe, a relative few upended longstanding political power balances, prompted a major military campaign, forced massive public expenditures on new security policies, prompted the UK vote to exit the European Union, and disrupted the free movement of people within the Schengen zone. • American security and counter-terrorism intelligence measures likely have prevented some migrant-terrorists from conducting attacks and may partly explain the absence of attacks to date from over the U.S. southern border. However, an elevated threat of terrorist infiltration via the border persists due to neglect and exploitable flaws in the American measures.”

     The view of evangelist Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, after having his planned tour of the UK objected to on “hate” grounds by LGBTQ+, is that The Lobby is intolerant of traditional Christianity:
  https://www.breitbart.com/faith/2020/02/17/franklin-graham-lgbtq-activists-intolerant-of-traditional-christianity/

“Prominent evangelical pastor Franklin Graham said Sunday that LGBTQ activists are trying to ban “the truth of the Gospel” from British society by having him barred from preaching in the UK. In parallel posts on Facebook and Twitter, Rev. Graham lamented efforts “by LGBTQ activists” to have his eight-city evangelistic tour across the UK cancelled. Opposition to the Gospel shouldn’t really surprise us. Jesus warned that it would come,” Graham wrote. “As you may know, my eight-city evangelistic tour across the UK has been met with resistance by LGBTQ activists who inaccurately claim that I am homophobic, Islamophobic, and say that I speak hate.” “Anyone who knows me or has heard me speak knows that this really isn’t true — but, I DO preach the TRUTH of the Gospel. Could it be, rather, that these folks are truthophobic or free-speech-ophobic?” Graham asks. Like many Christians, Rev. Graham has not hesitated to voice his disagreement with the 2015 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to impose same-sex marriage on the nation in Obergefell v. Hodges. Appealing to biblical morality, Graham has continued to assert that marriage is the union of one man and one woman, which was the predominant belief of humanity for all of history. In his dissent from Obergefell, Justice Samuel Alito presciently wrote that the decision would be used to hurt Americans who may not share a contemporary view of marriage as a malleable, fluid arrangement between an unspecified number of unspecified persons. “It will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy,” he wrote. In his Facebook post Sunday, Rev. Graham cites Australian Martyn Iles who asks if society “has become so ‘tolerant’ that it is now intolerant of mainstream Christianity.” “This is really a fight for truth, and the Gospel is what is really being ‘banned’ from these venues,” Graham writes. “It really boils down to the fact that they disagree with the message.” Speaking the truth of Christianity to people, even when the message is unwelcome, is “love speech,” Graham asserts, the opposite of hate speech.”