I have been reporting for some months on the frightening military advances made by Russia, but China is competing in the scary stakes, now having almost science fiction weapons, mounted and ready to roll:
  http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/war-ready-chinese-warship-set-sail-armed-with-electromagnetic-railgun_01022019

“The Type 072II Yuting-class tank landing ship Haiyangshan has set sail for possible testing in the open ocean.  The navy warship is equipped with what appears to be an electromagnetic railgun. According to Science Alert, the weapon mounted on the warship was seen along the Yangtze River at the Wuchang Shipyard in Wuhan earlier this year. According to a separate report by Task & Purpose, the latest photos of the test bed ship, which appeared on social media a few days ago, show the ship mounted with the suspected railgun on the vessel as it roams the high seas. China’s futuristic electromagnetic railgun may already be the most powerful cannon to ever roam the high seas and is ahead of schedule. New photos appear to show the railgun perched on the bow of its test ship at sea. Chinese media outlets, such as the state-affiliated Global Times, revealed in March that nearly two months after the first pictures of what was dubbed the “Yangtze River Monster” showed up online, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy is “making notable achievements on advanced weapons, including sea tests of electromagnetic railguns.”

     One of the most disgusting, indeed shameful things to be spewed from the university system in the West is a culture of victimhood, which is a by-product of political correctness. People lose their identity as individuals and pursue resources through claiming minority status. Often this means lying about ethno-racial origins, and sometimes these rotters come unstuck. Anyway, there is a new book all about this.
  https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/01/05/sociology-professors-examine-victimhood-culture-in-new-book-2/

“Two sociology professors from across the country teamed up last year to publish a book on “victimhood culture.” The book, entitled The Rise of Victimhood Culture, was published in 2018 by Professor Bradley Campbell of Cal State Los Angeles and Professor Jason Manning of West Virginia University. The book addresses the “victimhood culture” trend that is especially popular on college campuses. Young Americans now proudly exploit their minority statuses for personal gain. Those who support this new cultural development believe that there is something noble about belonging to a minority group. As a result, some young people use their minority status to destroy others for minor and even accidental slights. The book was highlighted by a recent report by The College Fix. The two professors argue that “victimhood culture” is the new source of cultural pride for American youth. In previous eras, pride was derived from one’s financial status, honor, or dignity.”
https://www.thecollegefix.com/two-sociologists-detail-the-rise-of-victimhood-culture-and-how-its-used-for-social-control/

     This item is important because it shows the bias and perpetuation of “false news” by the mainstream media, in this case the New York Times, against President Trump:
  https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2019/01/02/nolte-fired-editor-jill-abramson-rips-the-nyts-trump-derangement-syndrome/

“Jill Abramson, the former executive editor of the far-left New York Times, the same triggered loon who carries an Obama doll in her purse to “comfort” her wounded soul in Trump’s America, is accusing the Times of being a gang of money-hungry hacks who have sold their souls to the anti-Trump Resistance. Howard Kurtz at Fox News reports that in her upcoming book,  Merchants of Truth, Abramson blasts away at her successor, Dean Baquet. “Though Baquet said publicly he didn’t want the Times to be the opposition party, his news pages were unmistakably anti-Trump,” Abramson writes. “Some headlines contained raw opinion, as did some of the stories that were labelled as news analysis.”

     OK dear  feminists, I know that at morning tea, when you eat your cream cakes, you flick on the internet to see if I have written any further critiques of your weird worldview, and laugh at me the  “silly old so and so.” So, now that you are comfortable in your genre gender neutral arm chair, consider this challenge; that a case has been made that men are now the disadvantaged sex in the West:
  https://metro.co.uk/2019/01/04/men-disadvantaged-women-uk-us-europe-scientists-claim-8309361/?utm

“Scientists have invented a new way of measuring gender equality and claimed it shows men are more disadvantaged than women in most developed countries. Researchers from the University of Missouri and University of Essex in the United Kingdom said previous ways of measuring inequality are ‘biased to highlight women’s issues’. Their Basic Index of Gender Inequality (BIGI) instead measures three factors: educational opportunities, healthy life expectancy and overall life satisfaction. The academics calculated scores for 134 nations and used the results to suggest men are more disadvantaged than women in 91 nations.

     This article caught my eye; the typical gender agenda attack upon some sacred institution, this time breast-feeding. Saying that breast-feeding is natural, which it is, reinforces gender roles. That to me is a good thing, but for the progressives, it is “unethical,” according to their weird paradigm:
  http://www.iwf.org/news/2803518/Study:-Describing-Breastfeeding-as-%E2%80%98Natural%E2%80%99-Is-Unethical-Because-It-Reinforces-Gender-Roles?fbclid=IwAR0zdWCZM-iKVAlpDoyBhaHoUZ5jRuJDehV1C411Ed17Bl-hLtXCv7C8C2c

“It’s “ethically inappropriate” for government and medical organizations to describe breastfeeding as “natural” because the term enforces rigid notions about gender roles, claims a new study in Pediatrics. “Coupling nature with motherhood… can inadvertently support biologically deterministic arguments about the roles of men and women in the family (for example, that women should be the primary caretaker,” the study says. The study notes that in recent years, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the World Health Organization, and several state departments of health have all promoted breastfeeding over bottle-feeding, using the term “natural.” “Referencing the ‘natural’ in breastfeeding promotion… may inadvertently endorse a set of values about family life and gender roles, which would be ethically inappropriate,” the study says. Unless such public-service announcements “make transparent the ‘values and beliefs that underlie them,’” they should quit describing breastfeeding as “natural.”

     Hollywood is big on the banning of the private ownership of firearms, yet in all the Hollywood movies produced, there may be more rounds fired through guns that ever occurred in a war. Actors who have made a living playing tough guy gunmen, proclaim the evils of guns. Just imagine if the same thing as done with cigarettes, that one cried about the evils of smoking, while growing tobacco.
  https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2019/01/06/golden-globes-anti-gun-hollywood-surrounded-by-security-walls-and-armed-guards/

“Anti-gun Hollywood celebrities enjoyed presidential-level protection by barricades, bomb-sniffing dogs, armed guards, LAPD officers, and numerous security checkpoints as they arrived for the 2019 Golden Globes. Security was reportedly ramped up after last month’s triple stabbing at a Manchester railway station on New Year’s Eve. “The recent attacks in Europe only reinforce that nothing can be left to chance tactically and strategically,” a Los Angeles law enforcement official told Deadline. “Our plan is to have eyes everywhere and shut down any possible disturbance that could arise long before it gets anywhere near the venue or the event.”

     Here is an example of society in free fall; the UK army has recruitment ads targeting “me, me, me, millennials, class clowns, binge gamers, phone zombies, snow flakes and selfie addicts.” Did they miss anyone?
  https://www.rt.com/uk/447993-uk-army-recruit-young-snowflakes/
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFGHEZMSek4&feature=youtu.be

“The British Army has come under fire for its latest recruitment drive targeting young people with posters calling on “snowflakes, selfie addicts, class clowns, phone zombies, and me, me, millennials” to join the military. The campaign is a bid to attract young people to join the UK forces by claiming the army is looking for special skills in order to convince young people that their snowflake attitudes, obsession with their phones, and passion for video games make them right for a career in combat. The campaign’s television ads show young people being undervalued in their jobs, and claims the army is looking for such people as it recognises their potential. The drab work scenes are cut with exciting scenes of soldiers delivering humanitarian aid and other military moments. The recruitment drive is targeting 16 to 25-year-olds, also known as Generation Z (those born between 1995-2015), to join the army’s ranks. In the UK, 16-year-olds are allowed to join the army. Between 2015-2016, more than a fifth of new recruits were under 18.”

     If one wanted any more proof that politically correct politics rules almost everything in this insane world, consider the 2009 Nobel peace prize given to President Obama, for what? Being a multiracial? Clearly, he was at the start of his presidency, and had not done much at all. Anyway, the truth is now out about this, for the record:
  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34277960

“Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama in 2009 failed to achieve what the committee hoped it would, its ex-secretary has said. Geir Lundestad told the AP news agency that the committee hoped the award would strengthen Mr Obama. Instead, the decision was met with criticism in the US. Many argued he had not had any impact worthy of the award. Mr Lundestad, writing in his memoir, Secretary of Peace, said even Mr Obama himself had been surprised. "No Nobel Peace Prize ever elicited more attention than the 2009 prize to Barack Obama," Mr Lundestad writes. "Even many of Obama's supporters believed that the prize was a mistake," he says. "In that sense the committee didn't achieve what it had hoped for".

     What are now defined as fringe works, described the ancient Aryans, a Nordic sub-race of the white race, as they called themselves, and were described, moving in great waves, conquering country after country, but ultimately fading away, as their people mixed genes with the locals. Look, let’s ask the Indians about this, as reported in an article, “How Genetics is Settling the Aryan Migration Debate”:
  https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/how-genetics-is-settling-the-aryan-migration-debate/article19090301.ece?fbclid=IwAR0ja0UrKIK12mpfP4tKllOhDhIZBO4P4JVMQd4BTJ6e0pBqRCtM90T0pKY

“New DNA evidence is solving the most fought-over question in Indian history. And you will be surprised at how sure-footed the answer is, writes Tony Joseph. The thorniest, most fought-over question in Indian history is slowly but surely getting answered: did Indo-European language speakers, who called themselves Aryans, stream into India sometime around 2,000 BC – 1,500 BC when the Indus Valley civilisation came to an end, bringing with them Sanskrit and a distinctive set of cultural practices? Genetic research based on an avalanche of new DNA evidence is making scientists around the world converge on an unambiguous answer: yes, they did. This may come as a surprise to many — and a shock to some — because the dominant narrative in recent years has been that genetics research had thoroughly disproved the Aryan migration theory. This interpretation was always a bit of a stretch as anyone who read the nuanced scientific papers in the original knew. But now it has broken apart altogether under a flood of new data on Y-chromosomes (or chromosomes that are transmitted through the male parental line, from father to son).

     The Left want to empty the camps and open the borders letting everyone in, because, well, that is just the socialist thing to do. So, how will that one go?
  https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/immigration/labors-asylum-vow-you-can-stay/news-story/e8fcc88cde3eaf53c967c4b831569581?login=1

“More than 10,000 asylum-seekers, who arrived in Australia under the open-border policies of the Rudd and Gillard governments and are still being processed almost a ¬decade later, would be given permanent protection and a pathway to ¬citizenship under a Shorten ¬government. The pledge to end Labor’s boat arrivals hangover by offering the remaining asylum-seekers permanent residency through the abolition of the government’s temporary protection visa system came as The Australianestablished that the cost of managing the ongoing caseload of applicants had reached more than $2 billion. Figures obtained by The Australian through the Department of Home Affairs showed that, at the end of last month, 10,600 asylum-seeker cases,  Bill Shorten’s office said that under the Opposition Leader’s policy, which is expected to be ¬reconfirmed at next week’s ALP national conference in Adelaide, the “legacy caseload” of asylum-¬seekers would be granted permanent protection under a Labor government. This would give immediate permanent residency with full work and welfare rights to the remaining asylum-seekers — regarded by the Morrison government as illegal arrivals because they travelled by boat. It would also end the last remnants of Labor’s 2008 policy, which has been widely recognised — even within party circles — as a policy and humanitarian disaster.”

“U.S. State Department issues travel advisory for China, warning citizens to 'exercise increased caution ... due to arbitrary enforcement of local laws as well as special restrictions on dual U.S.-Chinese nationals.” Here is the full buff from the US State Department:
China Travel Advisory
Travel Advisory
January 3, 2019
China - Level 2: Exercise Increased Caution

     Exercise increased caution in China due to arbitrary enforcement of local laws as well as special restrictions on dual U.S.-Chinese nationals. Chinese authorities have asserted broad authority to prohibit U.S. citizens from leaving China by using ‘exit bans,’ sometimes keeping U.S. citizens in China for years. China uses exit bans coercively:

     With the undermining of traditional manhood ideas, boys may be turning to adopting female ideals, although not necessarily going transgender. There does seem to be some biological road blocks here, but do not worry, there is an answer to questions like: how do I as a boy menstruate, i.e. have a period?
  https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2018/12/16/schools-eight-year-olds-boys-periods/

“Schools in Brighton have been ordered to teach children as young as eight that people “of all genders” can have periods, as well as to install sanitary waste disposal units in every toilet room. The instructions were included in guidelines published by the local council earlier this month on ‘Taking a Period Positive Approach in Brighton & Hove Schools’, which assert there is “more work to do across all settings to prevent and reduce stigma related to periods and talking about periods”. Under the subheading ‘key messages’, teachers are told to stress to pupils that “trans boys and men and non-binary people may have periods” as well as that “periods are something to celebrate and we can see this in ceremonies and celebrations across the world.”

     Ah! Now I have your attention, time for a little talk about the birds and the bees, or how extreme right-wingers (note the bird metaphor, i.e. “wings”), have better sex lives than feral drug-soaked Leftoids:
  https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/very-right-wing-europeans-are-the-most-satisfied-with-their-sex-lives/

“As reported by Buzzfeed, a YouGov survey asking five European countries about their sex lives found that those on the far-right of the political spectrum were the most satisfied with their bedroom antics. Generally speaking, those on the left and far-left were among the least satisfied. The survey of more than 19,000 people across the UK, France, Sweden, Germany, and Denmark was conducted for Sex, Lies and the Ballot Box, a new book due out this week. With no exceptions, those describing themselves as “very right wing” were far happier with their frisky frivolities than anyone else on the spectrum. Those considering themselves to be “centrist” were somewhat happier with their sex lives than those on the “right,” but anyone further left tended to be the least happy.

     Talk about feminists being hoisted by their own petard; now we are seeing the end results of the self-destructive illogic of the system working its black magic:
  https://krcrtv.com/north-coast-news/eureka-local-news/organizers-cancel-womens-march-jan-19-due-to-overwhelmingly-white-participants

“The organizers of the Eureka Women’s March in Humboldt County, California, are moving the focus towards an event date on March 9th, in conjunction with International Women's Day, to ensure that the people most impacted by systems of oppression have an opportunity to participate in planning. We failed to have the type of collaboration needed to be inclusive of some of the most underrepresented voices in our community, namely, women of color and people who are gender non-conforming. Our intention with this march is to affect real social change by raising the voices of all women within our community. We recognize the majority of our current leadership team is white, and planning for this event has been centered around our experiences. In recognizing our failure to put enough effort into being more inclusive, we are attempting to make things right by taking this time to create a more balanced leadership team. Our goal moving forward is to ensure the voices of women of color are heard and centered when we come together for the furtherance of the rights and protection of women. Throughout history, women of color have been proven over and over again to be some of the most vulnerable populations. From the suffering of enslaved Black women in early gynecological experiments, to the current epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women across the nation and beyond. Having their voices go unheard can be a matter of life and death, and it is imperative that a safe community is created for everyone.”

     Do not speak of “Great Britain,” for there is little now which is great about this once noble land, as it swiftly, but surely sinks into the muds of history:
  https://www.rt.com/uk/448122-hate-preacher-welfare-taxpayers/

“The UK has reportedly spent over £200,000 ($254,000) on the welfare of a hate preacher deported on terrorism charges. The revelation has raised the ire of the public, and a British pundits didn’t mince their words live on RT. Abu Qatada, who requested asylum in the UK in 1993, was deported to his home country of Jordan in 2013 for posing a threat to national security. Now, it has emerged that Qatada’s meetings with doctors and human rights workers in Jordan were actually funded by UK taxpayers for three years, and cost a hefty £200,000 ($254,000), the Times revealed. A legal battle to deport him is said to have cost more than £1.9million ($2.4 million). “In the first place, Abu Qatada should never have been granted asylum here… And then you think about all the money, all the welfare payments he and those around him have ‘parasited’ of the UK taxpayer,” argued David Vance, a rightwing political commentator. However, he was challenged by Keith Best, a former conservative politician and now CEO of Survivors UK. “Your recipe is one for anarchy,” Best responded, saying that the UK, like other “civilized countries,” is obliged to grant asylum to anyone who fears persecution and oppression. It’s “pretty imbecilic” to look after a “terrorist mastermind” and his safety back in Jordan, Vance insisted. That money could be better spent looking after the victims of terrorist attacks, he said. However, Best noted that Abu Qatada was acquitted of terrorism charges in Jordan because the evidence was tainted.”

     Here is another example of immigration resulting in cultural enrichment:
  https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2018/12/29/swedish-police-expert-says-country-akin-to-state-at-war-due-to-gun-deaths/

“Stockholm police expert Gunnar Appelgren has described Sweden as being like a “state at war” following a record number of 44 fatal shootings across the country this year. Appelgren, who serves as the coordinator of the Stockholm police force’s gang conflict programme, said that the situation regarding gun violence was, “reminiscent of some form of state at war,” Swedish broadcaster SVT reports. Police in Sweden have made 299 arrests from the start of this year until November, compared to a mere 58 arrests during the same period the year before. They have also seized around 825 firearms in 2018, up 30 percent from 2017 and the number of hand grenades seized has also risen. The total number of shootings has reduced from 324 in 2017 to 272 in 2018, though the number of fatal shootings has increased. Stockholm’s police have managed to make inroads into the problem of gun violence, the vast majority of which is related to gang crime, reducing the number of fatal shootings from nineteen in 2017 to eleven so far this year. Police say their efforts in calming tensions among gangs in the heavily migrant-populated no-go suburb of Rinkeby are partially responsible for the lowering levels of violence.”

     You have to hand it to Ireland, it is firing on all politically correct cylinders, with the first waves of abortions soon, and now and extension of domestic violence laws to criminalise emotional abuse:
  https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/02/health/ireland-coercive-control-domestic-abuse-intl/index.html

“Psychological and emotional abuse in intimate relationships is now a crime in Ireland. The Domestic Violence Act 2018 went into effect on Tuesday and provides new protections for victims of "coercive control," a type of emotional and psychological abuse aimed at stripping a person of their self-worth and agency. Although psychological and emotional abuse -- including controlling behavior, isolation, and threats of violence -- can be more difficult to recognize than physical violence, it can be just as damaging, experts say. Ireland's Minister of Justice and Equality Charlie Flanagan said in a statement Wednesday that the new law "recognizes that the effect of non-violent control in an intimate relationship can be as harmful to victims as physical abuse because it is an abuse of the unique trust associated with an intimate relationship."

     I hope that readers are still in holiday mode, because this one shocked even sleepy old me: your high tech car can be hacked and used by terrorists!
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-01-05-cars-already-on-the-road-can-be-hacked.html

“Your laptops, computers, smartphones, or smart appliances are not the only things that are susceptible to hacking. Modern cars could be remotely hacked by terrorists and turned into lethal weapons, a computer scientist has warned. The warning was made by Justin Cappos from New York University. Cappos has stated that cyber criminals working for enemy states could hack and remotely control any car built after 2005 to turn them into weapons that could kill millions of people. Even some cars that were manufactured as far back as 2000 could be susceptible to hacking. “Many of our enemies are nuclear powers, but any nation with the ability to launch a cyberstrike could kill millions of civilians by hacking cars. It’s daunting,” Cappos expressed. Cappos explained that once hackers are connected to the network, they can communicate with any device and can send messages to the brakes to stop and turn off the power steering. He added that car components would not be able to identify where the messages were coming from and would not be able to tell if these messages were true.”

     Here is my update on the latest bit of globo-commo nonsense from the Pope. Rather than doing what Popes should be doing, commenting on issues such as spiritual decline, this Pope reads like some crazy person from a wacko sociology department, eager to have his head patted by those who run such projects:
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/01/07/pope-warns-populism-is-weakening-the-multilateral-system/

“Pope Francis compared today’s emergence of populist and nationalist movements to the days of Nazi Germany in an address to a group of diplomats accredited to the Holy See Monday. The upcoming year will mark the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the League of Nations, the pope said in his annual address, which represented “the beginning of modern multilateral diplomacy, by which states try to remove mutual relations from the logic of oppression that leads to war.” Difficulties with the League of Nations led exactly twenty years after its birth to “a new and more lacerating conflict, which was the Second World War.”

     As the Western anti-colonial forces have driven Western powers out of Africa, the Chinese have walked in, and are conducting an unopposed, by the Western Left that is, colonisation of Africa, beginning with vast loans, and when the inevitable default occurs, outright ownership of resources:
  https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-05/how-china-colonized-entire-continent-without-firing-single-shot

“Back in 1885, to much fanfare, the General Act of the Berlin Conference launched the Scramble for Africa which saw the partition of the continent, formerly a loose aggregation of various tribes, into the countries that currently make up the southern continent, by the dominant superpowers (all of them European) of the day. Subsequently Africa was pillaged, plundered, and in most places, left for dead. The fact that a credit system reliant on petrodollars never managed to take hold only precipitated the "developed world" disappointment with Africa, no matter what various enlightened, humanitarian singer/writer/poet/visionaries claimed otherwise. And so the continent languished....  until 2012 when what we then dubbed as the "Beijing Conference" quietly took place, and to which only Goldman Sachs, which too has been quietly but very aggressively expanding in Africa, was invited. …