Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) accelerate, with a new tool  allowing AI to learn to do almost anything on a computer, learning to use Apps like humans do: https://www.wired.com/2016/12/openais-universe-computers-learn-to-use-apps-like-humans/.
Open AI, the Ai lab backed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has released “Universe,” a virtual world for AI to learn, which covers any software, everything that a human can do with a computer. Universe is thus a software platform, software for running other software, and in principle this will lead to AI being able to solve any problem, better than humans can do. This is early days yet, but that was so with facial and digital image representation previously.

A recent article in The Australian: “Future Shock: What Happens When Robots Take Our Jobs” (January 17, 2017, p. 9) discusses the idea of a universal income scheme for dealing with the “end of work” problem. A side bar discussion notes that India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, after scrapping two high-value bank notes which account for 86 percent of India’s currency by value, now wants to introduce a universal basic income which directly gives cash to India’s poorest. His goal is, apparently, to control corruption in India.
India, after Russia, is the world’s second most unequal country, where the top 1 percent own 60 percent of the wealth.

A disturbing article in The Express: “Sweden Crumbling: Demands for Military Intervention as Thugs Turn Malmo into “No-Go Zone””: http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/755997/Sweden-Malmo-military-intervention-no-go-zone-crime-surge.

Opposition politician, Magnus Olsson, has said that crime, murders shootouts and even grenade attacks, have made Malmo, a migrant city, into a “no-go zone” and that the military need to be called in to stop violent crimes.

Australia Day, January 26, is basically the Aussie equivalent of America’s Fourth of July. It is called “Invasion Day” by the usual university types, leftoids and radical Left Aboriginalists. In Sydney this year, a man tried to burn the Australian flag, and violence erupted with protestors duplicating Black Lives matter-style battles with police. See the action shots here: http://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/news/violence-at-invasion-day-protest-in-sydney/news-story/5501ab73659c57e2a2936cf24eaac591

The protestors see Australia as an illegitimate nation, founded on invasion (which makes most nations illegitimate), a “day of killing” and of “genocide” which is “still going on today.” It seems that the majority of the protestors were whites, as we have come to expect from the 1960s on, the offspring of those who committed genocide.
Should they therefore engage in acts of “self-punishment” as comfortable US academics have advised their students, while these academics sit back and feel morally superior? Should they emigrate from Australia, and to where? Should all of the infrastructure and buildings in Australia be levelled and an attempt made to return the land to what it might have been prior to European settlement? Or should the white liberals just wait for Australia to fall into communist China, so that a really good society is created, as they see it? It is hard to work out their demands beyond the baby elites’ desire for violence and assaulting police. And in a few years’ time, these folk will rule us, no doubt growing up and becoming globalists. Better to follow Trump and dish out 10-year gaol terms, to put the evil day off.

To The Age
Jane Sullivan's meditation on the centenary of James Joyce's novel 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' ('Turning pages', 28/1) fails to make the most important point about the novel: that it is composed in language of astonishing brilliance and freshness. 'Dubliners' is a marvellous collection of short stories, written in an unaffected and traditional style; but 'Portrait' is a step up and reveals an extraordinarily innovative genius. Whether or not one considers 'Ulysses' and 'Finnegan's Wake' to be further steps upwards or disastrous blunderings into eccentricity, it is clear that T. S. Eliot was right to champion Joyce as the outstanding imaginative prose writer of his time.
NJ, Belgrave, Vic

To The Australian
Alas! I looked in vain for some admission by former UK Conservative MP Matthew Parris ('May must champion citizens of the world, not Little Englanders', 30/1) that the idealistic agitation of do-gooders (which he applauds) against the decent and honourable Rhodesian Front government of Ian Smith, contributed to the thirty-eight years' horror of the Mugabe tyranny.
No thanks, Mr Parris, I don't buy your luvvy-luvvy internationalism and misguided claim that 'no nation is sovereign'. I hope that just as President Trump is aiming to strengthen American national integrity, so Theresa May will fight for true British independence and a firm Brexit. Strong national sovereignty is a much better bet for freedom and prosperity than ceding power to entities such as the UN and the IMF.
NJ, Belgrave, Vic                      

One of the shameful things I do is to get emails from a variety of geek sites because… well… you never know, something useful might come up. Quoro.com is a bit too Left for my taste but sometimes something catches my eye before I hit the delete icon.
In response to the question: “Which Weapon of Japan did U.S. Fear Most in WWII,” William Tait MacDonald, resident of Japan replies: methamphetamine:

“I noticed with interest that many of the people writing here have written about the Japanese soldier’s willingness to die for their country, but have wrongly attributed it to love for Japan, love for the Emperor, honor, bushido or being just plain suicidal.
The answer is far more interesting, and is relevant here because it was also one of Japan’s greatest weapon. The answer is methamphetamine.
Methamphetamine was a Japanese invention, first synthesised back in 1893 by Nagai Nagayoshi, a Japanese chemist, but was relatively obscure until World War II when the Japanese government began to mass produce crystal meth in quantities that would make Walter White blush, under the name hiropon ヒロポン.
It was issued as part of the standard ration to everyone from soldiers to factory workers. For factory workers it suppressed hunger (no snack breaks!), gave them energy, and allowed them to focus on boring and repetitive tasks without losing concentration for insanely long periods. This contributed to Japan’s incredibly high military-industrial output.
The soldiers also received crystal meth, and this is probably the source of their reputation for great energy, ferocity and willingness to die. Simply put, they weren’t any braver than the average Joe, they were just high as kites.
Note that I am not denigrating the bravery or loyalty of the Japanese soldiers - even without drugs they were probably as committed to their country as the soldiers from the U.S. and other countries.
What I am trying to debunk is this notion that persists in fiction and history that the key to the Japanese soldiers’ amazing acts of bravery and suicidal ferocity can somehow be attributed to loyalty, bushido, bloodline or other such nonsense.
They were probably brave, well-trained and loyal soldiers for the most part who were committed to their countries and their comrades, but one cannot ignore the fact that Japanese soldiers were high on crystal meth in most major engagements, and this explains their exceptional performance far more rationally and elegantly than any quasi-mystical ideas about bushido or samurai ancestry.
It should also be noted that other countries toyed with giving their soldiers drugs - the Germans also used crystal meth and the U.S. gave their soldiers benzos - however no other nation did it to the extent that Japan did.
In summary, one of Japan’s most feared (and hidden) secret weapons was their wide-spread use of crystal meth during WW2.”

Boxer Anthony Mundine has said that he will refuse to acknowledge the “racist” Australian national anthem in his match with Danny Green at the Adelaide Oval, something which he has said before:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/09/30/anthony-mundine-says-boycott-anthem-buddy-says-dont-be-stupid/; “Mundine’s Anthem Slur,” The Advertiser, January 30, 2017, pp. 1, 6.

Mundine is certainly a controversial figure. Here is some of the things he has got up to from the Wikipedia page on him:

“In an interview in October 2001, Mundine said of the 11 September terrorist attacks, "They call it an act of terrorism, but if you can understand religion, and our way of life, it’s not about terrorism. It’s about fighting for God’s law, and America’s brought it upon themselves".

Time crystals have been created by two physics labs: http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-just-announced-a-brand-new-form-of-matter-time-crystals

While most matter is in a state of equilibrium, time crystals are not. While ordinary matter may have a crystalline structure repeated in space, like diamonds, time crystals have a structure repeated in time: N. Y. Yao (et al.), “Discrete Time Crystals: Rigidity, Criticality, and Realizations,” Physical Review Letters, January 20, 2017.

This is one way the future could go! There is a great concern in the medical community about the shortages of human organs for transplant purposes. Some advocate a free market trade in organs (i.e. the freedom to sell a kidney), while others hope that advances in science, such as the recent creation of a pig with human cells, could lead to new organs being grown from human stem cells:
http://www.sciencealert.com/it-s-alive-the-first-human-pig-hybrid-has-been-created-in-the-lab.

France, however, passed a law that took effect on January 1, 2017, that gives “presumed consent” to organ donation. Thus, everyone is presumed to be an organ donor, unless they object and enter their names on a National Rejection Register:
http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-01-26-new-law-in-france-presumed-consent-means-everyone-automatically-becomes-an-organ-donor-you-have-to-opt-out.html

‘In the long run, men are moved more by fantasy than by tractarian polemics,’ declared the great American conservative scholar, Dr Russell Kirk, in his monumental study of the battle between truth and ideology, Enemies of the Permanent Things (Arlington House, USA, 1969). Kirk devoted a whole chapter of his book (‘Rediscovering Norms through Fantasy’, pp 109-124) to stressing the important contribution that fantasy can make to the safe-guarding of a nation.

     Kirk pointed out that ‘the modern masters of fantasy’ have an ethical purpose of ‘rousing the moral imagination of a people long ensnared by idols.’ The strangeness of fantasy induces a sense of wonder, and ‘the shock of the fantastic is intended to wake us from dullness and complacency.’ A myth, argued Kirk, ‘is a poetic representation of hidden reality’, and great works of fantasy have similar characteristics. ‘If we are arrested in our march towards Logicalism and its inhumane universalism, our rescuers may be the authors of true tales of wonder, not the theologians of our schools.’

The chattering and scribbling class need to have a constant stream of horse manure circulating to keep the gardens of illusion of the capitalism class growing strongly, and the plants of deception alive.
Gerard Baker, editor-in-chief of the The Wall Street Journal (“Trump, Lies and the Challenge for Honest Traditional Journalism,” The Australian, January 6, 2017, p. 8), says that “Trump certainly has a penchant for saying things whose truthfulness is, shall we say for now, challengeable.”
Leaving that to one side, not a word in the article is voiced about Hillary Clinton’s outright lies and deception, matters about which whole books have now been written.

Baker feels superior to other establishment journalists because he doesn’t call Trump a liar in his high class rag. Oh, Trumps “untruths” are that there were substantial votes cast illegally in the presidential election (even though Obama himself recommended that illegals vote) and Obama’s supposed foreign birth. Leaving the issue of revelations of computer alternations of the Obama birth certificate, Trump did say in late 2016 that he believed that Obama was a “natural born” citizen. Any “honest traditional journalism” would have checked this out. This is the sort of distortion and false/fake news, or if you prefer – lies – that has undermined the limited credibility of the mainstream press.

Mrs Vera West’s latest “beef,” is that we remain in the mess that we are in because of a decline in manhood, and manhood has declined because of falling testosterone levels and sperm counts as well: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/active/mens-health/10695991/Why-are-mens-sperm-rates-falling.html.
There is no doubt that there is great concern about the loss of manhood – even from certain leading feminist figures! Camille Paglia, an “Amazon feminist,” is quoted as expressing concern in a Wall Street Journal article, “Camille Paglia: A Feminist Defense of Masculine Virtues” (December 28, 2013) at http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303997604579240022857012920.

The devaluing of manual labour and the military and the denying of biological differences between men and women is “undermining Western civilization,” “What you’re seeing is how a civilization commits suicide.” This is from the feminist academic who early in her career in her PhD thesis Sexual Personae said: “If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.”
She is also quoted as saying: “Masculinity is just becoming something that is imitated from the movies. There’s nothing left. There’s no room for anything manly right now.”
In another article Paglia is quoted as saying that the rise of transgenderism is a symptom of the West’s cultural decline: “Nothing… better defines the decadence of the West to the jihadists than our toleration of open homosexuality and this transgender mania now”:
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/sam-dorman/camille-paglia-transgender-mania-symptom-cultural-collapse.

Ageing pop icon Madonna, has been leading the assault on Trump. At the girl’s march the other day, she said that she had thought about blowing up the White House. It’s surprising how these anti-gunners, suddenly become violent when they don’t get what they want. They are still children, and horrible ones at that.

Speaking of pathetic spoilt socialists, the Washington DC protestors who went mad and did the usual rioting will be, at long last, charged with felony rioting which has a 10-year gaol term and a US $ 25,000 fine. The punks are part of DisruptJ20, funded by George Soros: http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/soros-funded-domestic-terror-group-disruptj20-plans-shutdown-donald-trumps-inauguration/.
Soros is the one that needs to be gone after using the USA Patriot Act.

Source: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/01/24/rep-steve-king-files-federal-pro-life-heartbeat-bill-if-a-heartbeat-is-detected-the-baby-is-protected/

Rep. Steve King Files Federal Pro-Life Heartbeat Bill: ‘If a Heartbeat Is Detected, the Baby Is Protected’

To the Sunday Age
I fear that One Nation's populist simplification about Islam threatens to make Muslims 'the new Jews' in Australia ('Right-hand drive as One Nation puts the foot down', 29/1). The claim that Islam 'is not a religion', not a valid sacred tradition, is ridiculous. Consider the profound history of Sufi mysticism and the world class intelligence of many Muslim sages and saints, such as Rumi and Ibn Arabi. Note also the inspired and comprehensive books on metaphysics penned last century by the Perennialist school of Rene Guenon and Frithjof Schuon. Observe, finally, the wonderful portrait of a humble Muslim worshipper in Rom Landau's chapter on 'The Marabout' in his book 'Personalia'.
Yes, some Muslims interpret their tradition too rigidly and can justly be described as 'theocratic' and 'totalitarian'; but Christian history, too, has its share of such bigots. Subtle and fair-minded analysis of the different manifestations of Islam is needed to avoid future persecution of the innocent majority.
NJ, Belgrave, Vic

It is hardly necessary to draw attention to the insistence with which we are told that in order to pay for the war we must produce more manufactured goods than ever before--a powerful section of the Press would have the whole military, political, social and industrial policy of the Allied Governments directed to the purpose, that, when by a complete victory we have acquired control of raw material and disposed of our most dangerous competitor, we may adjust our internal differences and settle down to an unfettered era of commercial activity, from which all other desirable things will, it is suggested, proceed naturally.

There are an almost infinite number of aspects to this proposition which is not dissimilar, so far as it goes, from that with which Germany went to war: it is possible to attack it from the point of view of the historian, the psychologist, or even the physiologist. It is even possible that certain quite indispensable suffrages have still to be obtained for it. But it is sufficiently interesting to take it as it stands on a frankly material, "practical" basis, and see what are its logical consequences.

from: The Social Crediter Saturday, June 26, 1943.
William Aberhart was Premier of the Province of Alberta, Western Canada, from 1935 until his death which occurred very shortly after he made this broadcast, transmitted on 6 May 1943. The Social Credit Government which he led swept to power in 1935, taking 56 of the 63 seats in the Provincial Legislature. Both before the election and during his years as Premier, Aberhart mobilised support for Social Credit ideas and policies through his broadcasts which informed and encouraged the many, many Social Credit study groups which met throughout the scattered population of the province.

The Plan for World Control
A few nights ago I was listening to one of those "quiz" programmes which have become so popular with radio stations; and it struck me very forcibly that it was but another example of how people are being taught today to guess rather than to think for themselves. The kind of questions being asked were: "Who is the Minister of Agriculture?" "Is Moscow further North or further South than Quebec?" and so forth. The participant either knew the answers or he had to guess them. I cannot recall a single question that would have the effect of making people think. Has it ever occurred to you that it is becoming very much the same in regard to all phases of our national life?

To the Sunday Age
The gentle and affirmative spirit of Bishop Philip Huggins (22/1) is admirable, as is his call for ‘leadership marked by courage, imagination and compassion.’ However, our leaders will also require a new realism of outlook which necessarily qualifies his summary of the condition of Australia. Despite his optimism, there are dangerous disharmonies within our social and political structure: diversity without understanding and the honouring of truth will result in future conflict. Then again, as the debate over section 18C shows, we lack adequate intellectual freedom and, in many quarters, even respect for the principle of free speech. As for Church renewal, yes, that is essential, but not so much in regard to sexual misdemeanours of some priests as in the field of basic theology which needs the repudiation of erroneous doctrines still at the centre of ‘orthodoxy’.
NJ, Belgrave, Vic

Our enemies say that we are conspiracy theorists. But what exactly is wrong with a conspiratorial thesis? A conspiracy is simply a secret plan or agreement to carry out a harmful act, with a political motive. A conspiracy theorist holds that insofar as human history is shaped by conscious, intentional and purposive human behaviour rather than chance events, it is conspiratorial in that sense. Those with money and power typically shape history. They have plans for what they want to achieve and they rightly believe that secrecy or semi-secrecy is the best way of achieving it.

We know that important conspiracies have occurred which have left their mark on the history of nations as well as on personal history. For example, there is good reason to believe that President Franklin D. Roosevelt provoked US entry into Pacific War, knowing full well that the Japanese intended to attack at Pearl Harbor. See: Eric Rusbridge, Betrayal at Pearl Harbor, (Summit Books, New York, 1991) and R. P. Forbes and G. Fowler, Pearl Harbor and the Secret of Lanakai and Isabel, The Barnes Review, vol. 11, 1996, pp. 19-22. He did this because of political pressure put on him by wealthy elites who wanted the US to destroy Germany.

In India millions of people are already in revolt against new anti-cash laws which has led to hundreds of millions of poor people being unable to access their savings:
http://yournewswire.com/india-millions-protest-new-world-order-ban-cash/

The global financial elites want to eliminate cash as this will give them even more control over the ordinary people, and India is being used as a test-run for what is planned across the world. Without cash the New World Order overlords can readily control what one buys and what one does.
The Australian government, following calls from multinational finance companies, is examining abolishing the Australian hundred-dollar note, done under the guise of reducing the “black market economy”:
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2016/12117/cross-post-john-adams-we-must-resist-the-war-on-cash/
As Mike Adams points out, the attack on cash is part of a globalist offensive on freedom, including freedom of the internet (Natural News.com, December 5, 2016) There is already censorship of the social media in German:
http://collapse.news/2016-12-05-german-governments-fear-of-hate-speech-leading-to-full-throttle-censorship-on-facebook.html