Air quality across the world has reached toxic levels, and although much publicity is given to Beijing’s life-threatening air,  London is even worse with 197 micrograms of particulate per cubic metre, almost enough to eat it:
https://www.naturalnews.com/2017-02-15-air-quality-across-the-world-has-reached-toxic-levels.html

     The World health organisation recommends that particular matter in the air stay below 25-50 micrograms per cubic litre in a 24 hour period, but 92 percent of the world’s population live in areas where this air quality is not met:
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs313/en/

to THE AUSTRALIAN
     There are indeed great benefits to be gained from membership of  ‘a rich social and cultural identity’ and, like Simon Haines (‘From slaves to senators, we’re all human’, 9/11),  I’m proud and grateful to be part of the civilization of Western Europe.  His richly referenced meditation on the relevance to us all of Terence and his famous inclusive statement about human nature does honour to our tradition.
     However, there is also a place for political activity based on race, gender, class and power.  I cherish my British ethnicity (sometimes against ‘anti-racists’); I am ready to defend manhood against over-the-top feminism; I am comfortable being a middle class person by both inheritance and my own efforts; and I actively seek to extend my power (letters to the editor, for example) in reasonable ways.  Variety is the spice of life and too much cosmopolitanism can be enervating to the spirit.
     NJ, Belgrave, Vic.

to THE AGE
     Who are these ‘Ngunnawal elders’ who are ‘asserting their ownership’ over land in Canberra’s parliamentary triangle (‘Talks fail over Indigenous activists’ occupation of eatery’, 9/11)?  I question their authenticity as well as their claim and behaviour, especially when their spokesperson bears two European names.
     The Aboriginal people lost control of this continent long ago and nothing can be done to reverse that historic change.  Today’s descendants of those tribes must accept that reality.  The huge folly of the ‘constitutional recognition’ campaign, now exposed for all to see, has alerted most Australians to the danger of separatist movements.  We need to defend our nation and the full force of the law should be brought to bear on these public nuisances in our capital.
     NJ, Belgrave, Vic

to THE AGE
     Magnanimity towards a loser is an important aspect of our cultural tradition. That is why, if the postal survey results in a clear yes for same-sex marriage, the Government should move cautiously and judiciously in framing enabling legislation.
     This is not a situation of ‘those who opposed change seeking to be the authors of a bill for change’  (‘”Blizzard” of changes likely for bill’, 10/11), but of reasonable requests for adequate and fair protections for dissidents being incorporated as part of the bill.  It is not a matter of further attempts to ‘delay the inevitable’, but of respecting the substantial number of no voters.
     Waleed Ali is misleading (‘When yes means yes but’) in suggesting that the no campaign has ‘lost’ on its key themes of ‘protections for parents, freedom of speech and religious freedom.’ It is more likely that the yes campaign has won on what was perceived as fairness to same-sex couples. Thus these key themes should be weighed carefully by those framing legislation.
     Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

     Whilst the following is aimed at America, it applies equally well in Australia.  Our politicians have succumbed to the temptations of evil Power and are dragging us along with them!

to THE AUSTRALIAN
     Dyson Heydon rightly states (‘Faith’s implacable enemies’, 4-5/11) that religion ‘looks for windows into another world.’  He is on less safe ground in claiming that Jesus ‘taught that all human beings were equal before God, and all could enter the kingdom of God.’  Much of the Gospel teaching asserts that the way to the kingdom is difficult and that few are able to find it. This accords with the wisdom of the other great sacred traditions, all of which differentiate between the life of piety (open to all people) and the way of gnosis or attainment (obtainable only by a few).
     Why is it important to keep before human communities an awareness that there is a mysterious ‘other world’ of which saints and sages bear strange witness? It seems that from that world flows an ineffable quality - truth - which cannot be summed up or defined in any words or logical propositions, but which is essential for the continual renewing of society and the political order.  Old-fashioned Christianity, such as Heydon expounds, has been steadily losing its power to open those windows.  Damning the intolerance of atheistic elites is easy but does not confront the profound challenge Christianity faces to recover from its many past mistakes.
     NJ, Belgrave, Vic

to THE AGE
     There are good arguments both for and against allowing people to climb Uluru (Letters 4/11). The practice of making pilgrimage to sacred mountains and climbing them is found all around the world; but such must not be confused with mere tourist sight-seeing.  On the other hand, there are also traditions of sacred places which are taboo or not to be approached by ordinary folk - such as the Holy of Holies (only entered by the high priest) or the Kaaba (only entered by Muslims).  These places act as physical testimonies of the divine mystery.
     In the present case, abiding by the wishes of the current owners or guardians of Uluru may be one good way of affording recognition of our ‘first peoples’, their culture and history, which does not inequitably jeopardise the rights and welfare of others.  We can still walk around it and honour its beauty and sanctity from ground level.  It can be at the same time both an Aboriginal sacred place and a shrine for all.
     NJ, Belgrave, Vic

to SUNDAY AGE
     The Government is right to have rejected the Uluru Statement from the Heart’s recommendation for a constitutionally enshrined ‘indigenous Voice to Parliament’ (‘Coalition contempt for our first peoples’, 5/11).  The proposal is fundamentally inequitable and endangers the integrity of the nation.
     A distinction needs to be made between ‘the Aboriginal people’ (meaning those of the past, the present and the future) and living Australians who have some or whole Aboriginal ancestry.  No one has dispossessed anyone in the latter group; nor are they the only indigenous Australians.  As for the dispossession of ‘the Aboriginal people’, it is a fact of history that no-one can undo in any way.  No one living today can justifiably be blamed for it.
    There is widespread goodwill towards contemporary Aboriginals, and Aboriginal culture and history are rightly recognized and celebrated throughout the land.  Thus reconciliation needs no tampering with the Constitution.
     NJ, Belgrave, Vic

     Snoop Dogg album cover:
https://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2017/11/snoop-dogg-jokes-about-death-of-trump-incurs-ire-of-number-maga/
continues his meme of a dead Trump.  It is all rather amazing since Obama sent the secret service to hound down even kids making jokes about his assassination, but here it is openly celebrated as a commercial enterprise:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_threats_against_Barack_Obama

     It just goes to show how cucked the “Rump” presidency is.  I imagine that each day he survives without being impeached must be crossed of his calendar as a victory.  As Trump would say: “Sad.”

      Pepe the frog once was an Alt Right meme, used to troll and upset the Left.  Pepe certainly got under the nose of  Hillary Clinton during the US election.  But, all humorous things come to an end in a world without smiles, as the creator of the meme is now asserting his IP rights.  This means that those who have used the meme on say book covers, such as Andrew Fraser in Dissident Dispatches, will have to cease using the artwork.  That entails that books with Pepe on the cover will have to be withdrawn, and I think that some have been.

     I could see this coming a mile away.  Taking some IP and using it for non-Left, anti-system purposes, will always leave open the immediate remedy of IP violation.  So, the Alt Right should stop being lazy and do some work getting new memes.  How about a big white fluffy rabbit?  Or, at the other end of the spectrum, a fat hog, or a mangy rat?  The animal kingdom offers enormous diversity for political satire, so the young lads need to get creative, or get sued:
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2017/10/29/who-owns-bishop-pepe/

     Sunday was some sort of multicultural diversity day in the mall, with people from all races doing wonderful colourful things.  How drab Anglo-Saxon culture is/was, and how wonderful that migration has finally brought civilisation to this land, which did not exist before 1946.  Oh, it did exist before British colonisation, which was truly evil, bringing white privilege to this land, which migrants helped overcome because they are fantastic.  Not like my kind. 

     The good thing though is that highly educated university types are exposing White privilege, such as seen in the creation of mathematics, whatever that is:
http://awmamerica.com/professor-thinks-we-should-stop-teaching-kids-math-claims-it-perpetuates-white-privilege/?utm_medium=partners&utm_source=cclu
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-math-minecraft-chess-williams-psychology-technology-perspec-0410-jm-20150409-story.html

     The New York terrorist attack is business as usual for the decline and fall of the West:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/11/02/trump-nyc-terrorist-point-contact-23-immigrants/
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/11/02/tom-cotton-nyc-terror-attack-entirely-preventable-if-not-for-diversity-visa-lottery-program
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/11/02/uk-1m-day-foreign-aid-asylum-seekers-illegal-migrants-britain/

     As Trump noted, the terrorist, who was a lucky winner in the Green Card lottery, brought in another 23 people, as part of his chain migration. This diversity lottery is just another means of diluting America.  Better yet, in the absurdist stakes, the mosque where the mass murder had worshipped had been under police surveillance but this was dismantled on the grounds of anti-racism and political correctness:
https://pamelageller.com/2017/11/nyc-mosque-nypd-surveillane.html/

     The neo-con hawks who always have been itching for the US bully boy to fight Iran, must have been delighted by this:
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/11/02/cia-release-bin-laden-files-renews-interest-in-iran-links.html

“The CIA’s release of documents seized during the 2011 raid that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has again raised questions about Iran’s support of the extremist network leading up to the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

     In a recent post Brett Stevens waded into controversy, attacking both ethnic and racial diversity, sacred cows of our age:
http://www.amerika.org/politics/how-ethnic-diversity-leads-to-racial-diversity/

“In short: “At this point it has dawned on most in the modern West that diversity causes civilizations to decompose from within through internal ethnic conflicts, race guilt and the massive costs of a permanent underclass.

to THE AGE
     There have been monarchies and republics for thousands of years, so neither model is more ‘anachronistic’ than the other (‘Symbolism matters: why I’m a staunch republican’, 6/11). Nor is it true that our monarchs have ruled ‘through no other merit than birth’; they had good genetic endowments and long periods of training to prepare them for their arduous responsibilities.
     Then again, Her Majesty the Queen is not accurately described as an ‘unelected foreign monarch.’  She shares her ethnicity with most of us; she is constitutionally an Australian as well as a Briton; and she has been chosen (‘elected’) by a respected system, even if it is not by the kind we use to change our governments.
     I wonder why Dan Crowley is so enamoured of having a national president subservient to popular whims and vested financial interests, rather than a leader bequeathed by a process rich in tradition and sanctified by religion.
     NJ, Belgrave, Vic

to THE AUSTRALIAN
     The current state of ‘moves towards indigenous constitutional recognition’ has not ‘reached a damaging impasse’  (‘Angry Pearson turns on Turnbull’, 6/11).  Rather, it has been fruitfully clarified by the Government’s sensible and well argued rejection of the ‘voice to Parliament’ and then by the dogmatic and intemperate responses of those disappointed by the result, including Noel Pearson.
     Greg Sheridan summed up the situation well  (‘Just being Australian is good enough for us all’, 2/11).  Opponents of constitutional recognition have proved justified in their fears that there would be ‘no end point to the process’, since any concession would be followed by demands for more, leading to an inexorable slide towards the division of the continent into two nations.
     NJ, Belgrave, Vic.

     Surely, there are no sane people out there that do not embrace conspiracies as the norm in politics?  Consider the latest:
http://www.shtfplan.com/conspiracy-fact-and-theory/jfk-files-the-cia-planned-to-murder-american-citizens-in-miami-and-blame-it-on-cuba-during-operation-mongoose_10282017
https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32112987.pdf

     Here is proof, from the recently released JFK files, that the CIA contemplated murdering American citizens in Miami and would set out to blame it on Cuba during Operation Mongoose.
    They did not do it, but that the record exists makes it all the more plausible to accept the claims made by the alternative media, of the other wicked things that the globalists do to  establish their New World order, because, (1) they are criminally insane, and (2) they have the power and rule us with an iron fist in an iron glove.

 http://theconversation.com/social-media-study-points-to-a-close-result-in-the-same-sex-marriage-vote-84436
     The Yes site may need help from Yoko Ono, the woman who made a major contribution to the world by helping to break up the Beatles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6vnXJVAnu8

     The statistical argument, stripped down, is that Tweets mentioning the same sex marriage issue were looked at.  Once those making multiple references were removed, this brought the Yes number down to 57 percent. But, then over 55-year olds were under-represented, so once the adjustments were made, the Yes figure went to 49 percent.
     I think though that this team did not factor in the multicult factor, of Chinese and Muslim opposition to same sex marriage. That will bring the percentage down even more.
     Hopefully, the Yes side will be defeated soundly. But, don’t slack off, you are doing well with your phone calls and door-knocking. Give yourself a big hug and pat on the back!

     Those who have put their money in Bitcoin defend it with a religious fanaticism, I have found. They delight at how much money they have made from, not nothing, but very little. But, all fanatical cults inevitably come unstuck.
http://bitcoincrash.news/2017-10-31-china-leaps-ahead-of-usa-on-quantum-computing-research-could-spell-end-to-encryption-demolishing-crypto-currencies-and-national-security.html

     From what I understand crypto-currencies such as bitcoin are “mined’ using mathematical algorithms. China had made advances in quantum computing that will enable it to have one million times more computing power than all of the computers in the world today, meaning that crypto currency security, and any other sort of computer security will be gone.

     You find these sorts of meats on pizzas, fast foods and small goods; deli meats, but they are far from being health foods:
https://www.naturalnews.com/2017-11-02-which-gives-you-cancer-sooner-cigarettes-or-deli-meats-new-research-reveals-theyre-both-class-1-a-carcinogens.html

“Surely you wouldn’t put cigarettes on a sandwich and eat it, because then you’d be consuming ammonia, bleach, aluminum, formaldehyde and insecticide. But, if you eat American processed meats, you’ve just consumed all of those carcinogens anyway. Did you just pack a BLT or a ham and cheese sandwich in your child’s school lunch box? If so, you could be doing some serious damage to … their health.
The WHO has made the declaration that eating processed meats regularly is just as dangerous to your health as smoking cigarettes, when it comes to the main causes of cancer. Wonder why? Well for one, the nitrites and nitrates used to preserve meats and protect their color are precursors to N-nitroso compounds (NOCs) that induce tumors in several organs in multiple animal species.
In fact, a study published in the journal Cancer links these preserved cold cut meats to bladder cancer at a 30 percent higher risk for those who consume them. The study used over 300,000 men and women from eight U.S. states over an eight-year period.
What’s worse is that when humans consume sodium nitrite it forms some of the most highly carcinogenic chemical compounds EVER RECORDED in the nutrition world (they’re called nitrosamines). Therefore, feeding your child cold cuts regularly is just as bad as buying them a pack of cigarettes each week and saying, “smoke up!””