Steven Pinker is riding the waves of greatness as the latest leading thinker. No doubt in time he will be replaced by another, for academia is today much like popular music charts. Anyway, he has a new book supposedly defending Enlightenment values, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, (Viking, New York, 2018). While all of that sounds good, and we would expect a sustained critique of political correctness on the university campus, what we find instead is that Pinker defines basically Trump as the greatest threat to Enlightenment values! Yes, not postmodernism, which explicitly undermines scientific rationality, or radical Islam, but nationalists! Does he have an agenda you may ask?
  https://www.counter-currents.com/2018/03/steven-pinkers-anti-enlightenment-attack-on-white-identitarians/

     I would quote a slab of text from the Counter-currents.com site, but every time you cut and paste from them you get a block of black which is not helpful for the promotion of ideas. However, in summary … wait … a kind computer geek suggested going to print mode to overcome the block, and here is the text, straight from author Ricardo Duchesne, who is far better and more coherent that the Peterson guy, and has taken him apart, anyway:

     The TPP has had a zombie existence since President Trump crushed the original plan under foot like crushing the head of a serpent. But, the evil globalist elites never give up in their eternal quest to destroy everything of value and sink the nation state, our heritage and future. However, while the program has crept on, it has had its setbacks, such as a blow delivered by the otherwise weak Centre Alliance:
  https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign-affairs/labor-under-pressure-to-kill-transpacific-partnership/news-story/f77a55523fc814ebdb780580dc9aca47
  https://centrealliance.org.au/media/media/no-deal-centre-alliance-to-reject-tpp-11-enabling-legislation/

“While Centre Alliance supports open and fair trade, the party will not be supporting TPP-11 enabling legislation," said Trade spokesperson Senator Rex Patrick. "The deal that has been negotiated by the Government is, on balance, bad for Australia." Recently released modelling commissioned by Australian industry heavyweights shows that the deal would result in, at best, a 0.5% increase to GDP by 2030. This figure must be tempered by the fact that the Productivity Commission has found that predictions for growth and jobs from Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) have rarely been delivered because the economic models employed exaggerate the benefits, ignores many of the costs and assume away unemployment effects. The modelling shows Australia's grain exports would not change at all under the deal and all other agriculture could decline. It also shows that durable manufacturing, a key sector of interest to Centre Alliance, would actually shrink under TPP-11.

     “Forced labour,” as defined by the International Labor Organization, is “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the threat of a penalty and for which the person has not offered himself or herself voluntarily.”
  https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/definition/lang--en/index.htm

     Forced labour though is precisely what the Liberal government is now forcing on the unemployed, under the guise of helping the farmers:
  https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/dole-bludgers-must-work-on-struggling-farms-or-risk-benefits/ar-BBOiXF5?li=AAgfYrC&ocid=mailsignout

     Everybody seems to be reading Breitbart.com, so here I go to see what I can find on my treasure hunt. For today, there is this gem, where the big rich Koch brothers, who champion unlimited immigration to the US, for all of the reasons our own elites and chatterers do, want migrants even if they go onto welfare! That is a new frontier because migrants are supposed to be all IT experts and rocket scientists, set to pay for boomer pensions:
  https://www.breitbart.com/immigration/2018/10/14/billionaire-koch-brothers-trump-wrong-morally-right-import-foreign-welfare-dependents/

“Through the Koch brothers’ network of organizations—which have campaigned for Democrats’ open borders policies this election cycle—which include the pro-mass immigration LIBRE Initiative and the economic libertarianism group Freedom Partners, the billionaire donors are opposing Trump’s reform to the legal immigration system. Freedom Partners Executive Vice President Nathan Nascimento said in a statement that allowing mass migration of welfare-dependent foreign nationals into the U.S. is “morally right,” calling Trump’s reform “the wrong approach.” “We should always welcome people who desire to come here and contribute because is it both morally right and their efforts benefit our nation, economy, and taxpayers,” Nascimento said. Nascimento also said the U.S. must continue bringing more than 1.5 million immigrants to the country every year because there are not enough American workers willing to do blue-collar jobs, though economic data does not back up the so-called “labor shortage” claims made by the big business lobby and Chamber of Commerce.

     Truly amazing stuff: sensible feminist Camille Paglia says that the sort of feminism based upon destroying men, which is the foul brew spewed from our universities, is poisonous to culture and could bring down civilisation on its own.
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/10/13/camille-paglia-feminism-based-on-destroying-men-is-absolute-poison-to-culture/
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb2JEX8DYYE

“The feminist icon – who prefers the original brand of feminism that won women the right to vote and raised up heroines such as Katharine Hepburn, Amelia Earhart, and Anne Morrow Lindbergh – said the more recent second wave of feminism is “an absolute poison that has spread worldwide.” Paglia said the original feminists “admired what men had done – there was no male-bashing – as became systemic to second-wave feminism.” The brand of feminism recreated by Betty Friedan in the 1960s, Paglia said, is now based on “denigrating men” and “defining men as oppressors and tyrants through history.” “It is an absolute lie,” she said, “an extrapolation of neuroticism on the part of these fanatics.” The author of Sexual Personae, Paglia added the “snowflake generation” is also a result of social media, “where people feel they have so many friends and they want a sense that reality is comforting them and cushioning them and so on.”

     The title of this article is taken from the old 1960s early politically correct, multiracial sci fi Star Trek, with Mr Spock telling Captain Jim, that the crazy stuff they have just found is “life,” but not as we know it. That in itself is crazy, because how else can we conceptualise “life,” but in terms of what we know? It is simply a contradiction in terms. Spock’s hyper-rational irrationalism reminds me of Mr Smartie, all-meat-eater, Jordan Peterson, hero to young men with weak or no father figures. Here is a recent example of Peterson’s Spockism, that Supreme Court judge Brett Kavanaugh should immediately resign:
  https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/10/10/jordan-peterson-attempts-to-explain-his-call-for-kavanaugh-to-step-down/
  https://jordanbpeterson.com/political-correctness/notes-on-my-kavanaugh-tweet/

“I asked myself a question, after reading these posts: “Is there an alternative to confirming or not confirming Kavanaugh?” When a choice appears starkly binary, a third path appears impossible, by definition — but might possibly still be worth seeking. I tried to place myself in Kavanaugh’s position, while generating a potential answer (and think that I can do so with some justification, having been publicly identified as reprehensible by many people—prominent journalists, activists, and academics among them). I thought, “He can’t withdraw, prior to the nomination, because his reputation has been savaged so badly that withdrawal would not only mean loss of the Supreme Court nomination, but demolition of his entire career and future life.” So the only way for Kavanaugh was forward, through the FBI investigation, on to the nomination hearing, and the hope that he would be… what? Cleared? Not cleared, because it is too late for that, even given the favorable or at least not damning FBI report.

     A comment if I may on James Reed's excellent piece on Socialism and the Intellectuals. There is a very interesting but disturbing new report by Mike Adams on Natural News titled Is demonic possession now sweeping America, claiming that the Democrats evidenced by their behaviour and actions are the "demoncrats", and suggesting a wave of demon possession amoungst their ranks. This gives clear proof of the words from Ephesians 6:12 We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. It is well worth a re-read of the rest of the passage.

     James, I take hope in the work of Dr Christine Jones whom we heard speak very recently here at Inverell on plants (weeds included) and their role in creating health in our soil. Weeds only thrive in the vaccuum you spoke of, they fill a void, but eventually create in the soil the conditions for the "good seed" to germinate, grow and eventually take the place of the weed. (The mills of God grind slowly but the do grind) The good seed will eventually out-compete the weed in the long term. I do not wish to postulate on the way the current crop of weeds is going to bring about health in society, (not sure they would make for healthy compost even),except to to remember Eric Butlers words, they have within them the seeds of their own destruction. Lets keep lighting candles because darkness cannot compete with light. It will be very interesting to observe our new Prime Ministers dance as he tries to serve God and Mammon.
  David Smith

     Basically, I love anything that makes consumer goods and life more comfortable, in this age of plenty. Consumption is everything. One can never have enough, and if God did not want this to be so, then He would not have given us infinite resources.  But, this age of plenty requires energy, and plenty of it, or it would not, by definition be an “age of plenty.” Sure, we have enough oil and gas to burn until the sun explodes in a trillion years, but some people feel that nuclear is better. Radiation is felt to be a problem, when mega-storms destroy nuclear power plants. That is why we need these guys to eat up all of the radioactive baddies, like pac men:
  https://sputniknews.com/science/201810081068701682-nuclear-waste-neutralizing-bacteria/

“The unique bacteria, discovered in a nuclear waste storage site in Siberia, shows promise as a tool for the creation of a natural barrier to the spread of radionuclides. Researchers from the Moscow-based Frumkin Institute of Physical Chemistry and the Russian Academy of Sciences' Federal Research Center for Biotechnology have been able to isolate microorganisms which can be used to safeguard the surrounding environment from liquid radioactive waste. Scientists made the discovery while conducting microbiological studies of the groundwater at the Seversky deep radiation burial site in Seversk, Tomsk region, Siberia, where liquid radioactive waste from the Siberian Chemical Combine, which supplies and reprocesses low enriched uranium for nuclear fuel, is stored.

     I have long believed that the social welfare system would eventually be eliminated, dying the death of a thousand cuts. This has slowly happened with the dole and other benefits. Now the mangy cat is out of the bag on the end of pensions:
  https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/federal-treasurer-warns-welfare-not-guaranteed-for-future-generations/news-story/c667fa3140cd3cfa8c4f47a2ac981cc0

“There is no guarantee the pension will be available for future generations, federal Treasurer Scott Morrison warned yesterday. Mr Morrison said Australia could not take for granted its generous safety net or assume it would always be there. At a post-Budget breakfast in Brisbane, he said Australia needed to keep growing the economy and had to be globally competitive. “We owe to future generations (to pay for) health, schools, pensions, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme,” he said. ‘‘There are no guarantees about that.” Mr Morrison said the Federal Government was committed to ensuring pensions and essential services would be there in the future, through good financial management. Pushing the need for corporate tax cuts for the big end of town, he warned that the US, UK and France could soon all be more competitive than Australia.”

     It was a bad computer day at the community centre down the road from where I live, and where I work on this exciting material, not owning a lippy, flippy, lappy top. Everything seemed to freeze up, and I could not even save the manuscript that I was working on. The computer was so frozen that icicles began to form on it, and the temperature of the room dropped. Was this global warming in reverse; the start of a new ice age, as speculated on the net?
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYsQ6vy1WkA

     Who would not trust a bald-headed man with a flowing moustache? It was only after a desperate phone call to the editor in Adelaide, who calmed me down, was I able to think my way out of the cyber-prison where I had been put. Just accept that the essay, one of my most brilliant, had disappeared down the IT toilet, and that I needed to dust the dust of my dusty sandals and then get more dust back on them, working somewhere else, where I am now, namely another community centre, reachable only by bus, but with much cleaner computers. Then, my heart dropped when I got this via electronic carrier pigeon:
  https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45784482

     Bad news, but it is to be expected given mass immigration from non-Christian countries:
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6244645/Christianity-plummets-Australia-Sikhism-Hinduism-Islam-grow.html

“Religion in Australia is steadily changing, with the number of people turning to Sikhism, Hinduism and Islam rising. The 2016 Census showed almost a third of Australia's population identify as having 'no religion,' although many of those still see themselves as spiritual. While Christianity's popularity has plummeted, down from 96.9 per cent of the population in 1921 to just scraping half of today's citizens at 52 per cent, Sikhism and Hinduism have steadily risen. In 2011, Hinduism and Sikhism had a combined 350,000 practitioners. The Australian Bureau of Statistics Census found that number had risen by over 200,000 people by the year 2016, with 80 per cent of those practitioners born overseas.”

     The US power elites are rolling out their secret weapons, with ultra-skinny pop music icon Taylor Swift coming out in favour of the Democrats, and continuing the politically correct narrative that the rest of the chatterers have begun.
  https://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2018/10/07/taylor-swift-marsha-blackburn-tennessee-senate-race/
  https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/10/08/donald-trump-shuns-taylor-swift-after-marsha-blackburn-smear/
  https://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2018/10/08/taylor-swift-fans-furious-over-democrat-endorsement-be-quiet-and-sing/ 
  https://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2018/10/08/taylor-swift-endorses-democrat-who-supports-brett-kavanaugh/

     Here is what the singing canary said:

     If you do not let your son put on makeup and a dress, then watch out, because Big Sister is going to swat you:
  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/10/04/parents-wont-let-son-wear-skirt-may-have-referred-social-services/

“Parents who refuse to let their son wear a skirt to school may need to be referred to social services, a council’s guidance has advised schools. Mothers and fathers who dismiss a “gender questioning” child’s requests to change their name could also be a trigger for concern, according to Brighton and Hove City Council’s “Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit”. It comes after warnings that schools are "sowing confusion" in children's minds by over-promoting transgender issues, and that children are being encouraged to “unlearn” the difference between boys and girls. The guidance advises teachers on how to handle a number of different scenarios, including if parents say: “I refuse to allow my son to change his name or wear skirts”. Schools are advised that some parents may “struggle” to accept their child’s gender identity and it may be a long time before they accept the change. “If a setting has a significant concern about the child’s wellbeing and or safety in relation to how the parents or carers are managing the exploration of the child’s gender identity it may be necessary and advisable to follow safeguarding procedures,” schools are told.”

     I had to read the title of the article numerous times, then ponder the question of whether it was false news, but finally decided, that given the world is now insane, of course, it must be true, how could it not be?
  https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/9kvkj3/australias-satanists-are-asking-for-blood-donations

“The Satanists of Australia are gathering blood. Not to drink, or bathe in, but because they believe that offering blood aligns with the first of the Seven Tenets of The Satanic Temple: that “One should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards all creatures in accordance with reason.” By the Red Cross’ estimations, they’ve saved 15 lives this month alone. The Blood for Satan donation drive is the country’s first Satanic charity event. In association with The Red Cross, Satanic Australia—the “nontheistic religious” group behind the plasma gathering—are encouraging members of the public to roll up their sleeves, cop a jab to the arm and donate in the name of the Devil. To be clear, these aren't the robe-wearing, witchcraft-practicing Satanists you might be used to. “Satanists care for our fellow humans,” a spokesperson for Satanic Australia told VICE via Facebook.

     With the cult of the Left dominating the universities, it is a good thing that students do not know how to get stamps to post off their voting registration, because anything not on-line is simply beyond the little dears:
  https://cnycentral.com/news/nation-world/college-students-allegedly-struggling-to-vote-because-some-dont-know-how-to-obtain-stamps

“An official for Fairfax County, Va. said she has noticed that many young people studying in a state other than the one they are formally registered are not completing the voting process because "they don't know where to get stamps." Lisa Connors, who works at the Fair County Office of Public Affairs, said the apparent problem was brought up in a focus group consisting of college students interning for the area's government agencies. "One thing that came up, which I had heard from my own kids but I thought they were just nerdy, was that the students will go through the process of applying for a mail-in absentee ballot, they will fill out the ballot, and then, they don't know where to get stamps," Connors said, according to WTOP. "That seems to be like a hump that they can't get across."

     This is a fantastic paper that brings together perhaps the last sane voices in the academy to talk about the “Grievance Studies Affair,” where a group of academics wrote politically correct absurd papers, submitted them to Leftist journals and got many of them accepted, and published. There are some juicy quotes made by the largely philosophical critics about how postmodernism, the name given to the core destructive philosophy behind modern Leftism, has moved to dominate university culture, and even is making a move into the STEM areas of science. I think that disciplines like biology and medicine have been taken over decades ago, and it is only fields like mathematics, physics and chemistry, have yet to fall:
  https://quillette.com/2018/10/01/the-grievance-studies-scandal-five-academics-respond/

     The philosopher, Jonathan Anomaly, a good name for a philosopher, says in his piece, “The Grievance University”:

     “Queen” Ann Coulter says it better than anyone does:
  https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/10/08/watch-ann-coulter-constant-immigration-will-lead-to-no-culture-across-the-globe/

“New York Times best-selling author and populist conservative columnist Ann Coulter says “constant immigration” to the United States and other countries will lead to “no difference” between countries and “no culture” around the world. During an interview on the Swedish television show Skavlan, Coulter said mass immigration to the U.S. makes the world less diverse, as countries begin to lose their culture and heritage. “I feel like I’m the only one who really wants diversity,” Coulter said. “If all we’re going to have is this constant churning and constant immigration, we’re all going to be … we’re all going to look alike, there will be no difference, there will be no culture.”

     Consider:

“In a Twitter rant over the weekend, Google design lead Dave Hogue claimed Republicans will “descend into the flames” of hell, and described members of the GOP as “treasonous” and “evil” following the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. “You are finished, @GOP. You polished the final nail for your own coffins. F**K. YOU. ALL. TO. HELL,” posted Hogue. “I hope the last images burned into your slimy, evil, treasonous retinas are millions of women laughing and clapping and celebrating as your souls descend into the flames.” Hogue soon deleted the post and made a follow-up tweet condemning the Republican Party while also adding that he “should have been more eloquent and less condemning” in the previous post.”
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/10/08/google-design-lead-david-hogue-evil-republicans-will-descend-into-flames-of-hell/

     In a previous article on the state of universities, I think James Reed said that the discipline of physics has held out against the current political correctness mania. He was wrong:
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2018-10-10-science-under-attack-by-libtards-physics-isnt-sexist.html

“A physics professor at the University of Pisa in Italy recently became the subject of an “ethics investigation” at his school following a lecture he gave about how modern leftist dogma that blames “sexism” for allegedly keeping women from succeeding in the sciences is absolute bunk. Alessandro Strumia boldly and unequivocally stated that “cultural Marxism” is responsible for pushing this ridiculous feminist propaganda, highlighting the fact that common leftist buzzwords like “microaggression,” “gaslighting,” and “mansplaining” are perpetuating the lie that men are somehow “mobilizing their masculinity” to keep women from achieving scientific success. Entitled, “High Energy Theory and Gender,” Strumia’s lecture, which took place at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland, was quickly criticized by leftists involved with Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, also known as STEM, for allegedly being “discriminatory” against women.

     Keeping with the spirit of previous articles at your fine site, which have asked questions such as: will the Left burn in the fires of hell, we need to consider an important prior question. Mike Adams has hypothesized that the Left may be demonically possessed. At first I thought that this was ridiculous, but I spoke about this to my paster, who thought that he may be onto something:
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2018-10-10-democrats-possessed-by-demonic-forces-thought-experiment.html
  https://www.infowars.com/billionaire-minecraft-creator-says-the-left-has-literally-been-taken-over-by-evil/

“Markus Persson, the creator of Minecraft, just pointed out that the political Left has “literally been taken over by evil.” It turns out he’s more correct than even he might realize. Over the last several years, Leftists have morphed into an irrational, hate-filled violent mob of “Demoncrats” that don’t even resemble conscious human beings. Operating like a zombie swarm of mindless lunatics, they are now taking over entire cities like Portland, Oregon, where even the local police now stand down and allow deranged Left-wing mobs to run the city. Watch this astonishing video where an elderly white man is being harassed, racially verbally assaulted and then has his vehicle windows smashed by deranged left-wing lunatics who have taken over the city of Portland, apparently with the full permission of the snowflake mayor and the pathetic, spineless Portland Police: