Following in the aftermath of the glorious victory for human rights in the same sex marriage vote, something which the entire history of humanity has been building up to, there has been other noteworthy achievements in previously, somewhat slow Australia, namely:

“It’s a big win for transgender teens today in Australia.
Australia was the last place in the world transgender children needed court authorisation to receive Stage 2 hormone treatment, even if they or their parents consented to the procedure.
That’s now no longer the case thanks to a landmark decision in the country’s Family Court on Thursday, ending the need for the unnecessary and stressful legal process.
Since 2013, it’s been a requirement that courts need to approve Stage 2 treatment.
Stage 2 hormone treatment involves the administration of oestrogen or testosterone, allowing an adolescent to develop the pubertal characteristics of the gender they associate with. It follows Stage 1 hormone treatment, which delays puberty.”
http://mashable.com/2017/11/30/transgender-teens-ruling-australia/#VMuQyMJzeaq8

     Hey, you know that you are really poor when all you have left to sell is your blood plasma, as many millennials now face:
https://www.naturalnews.com/2017-12-18-lacking-any-real-job-skills-broke-millennials-are-now-donating-blood-plasma-as-a-routine-source-of-income.html

“One former community college student spoke about how she visits an Oregon plasma donation center twice a week following a reduction in her hours at work.  At the center, people who donate plasma can earn anywhere from $25 to $150 per week over a maximum of eight visits per month.
The center she frequents markets itself to millennials, touting its close location to the University of Oregon on its website and mentioning that students are able to do their homework while donating. Around a third of the donors at that Eugene center are estimated to be under the age of 24.
It’s a popular approach, with ABC News reporting that 94 percent of the plasma in the world comes from the U.S.  It’s a $16.8 billion global industry that is still growing. Not surprisingly, four-fifths of the nation’s plasma centers are found in poor neighborhoods. The plasma is used for therapies to treat various diseases.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-10/plasma-pay-broke-millennials-sell-blood-just-survive

     Mike Adams has been keeping us informed about all aspects of the Bitcoin bubble and its coming crash.  What I find interesting is how the Bitcoin young folk, who have invested their money, maintain the faith even in the face of a coming crash.  Sure, it will go down, but it will go back up again.  Yet, the false premise here is that the gangster banksters are going to let that happen.  Already, there are moves underway across the world to control crypto currencies and pull them into central control:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-12/gold-guys-view-crypto-bitcoin-and-blockchain

     Here are some Bitcoin problems:

     Mike Adams continues his outpouring of critique on Bitcoin:
http://collapse.news/2017-12-05-federal-reserve-vice-chairman-declares-bitcoin-a-serious-risk-to-financial-stability-crypto-markets-plunge.html
http://collapse.news/2017-12-04-bitcoin-now-consuming-more-electricity-than-12-u-s-states-as-inefficient-mining-heads-for-collapse.html
http://collapse.news/2017-12-03-how-to-explain-the-bitcoin-bubble-to-young-people.html

     I have no competency on this matter, but I find his articles informative, and personally, if I had money to invest, which I do not, I would not be acting as many young people are, and having faith in this cryptocurrency, just because it is gee whiz, high tech, computer based. I do not see what prevents the entire system from collapsing. The reply is that conventional fiat currency faces the same problem.

    The following article by Israel Shamir is so politically incorrect, it is steaming, but is based on little discussed events in Saudi Arabia:
http://www.unz.com/ishamir/the-dog-that-didnt-bark-2/
     One wonders how Mr Shamir would conduct an Australian banking inquiry?

     As Alan Jones has Tweeted:
“Labor will win power narrowly in Queensland as a result of the Coalition preferencing Labor over One Nation. The Coalition must have a death wish. More Coalition voters completely angered.”

     This is a spot on observation, which has now been shown to be utterly true. The media were lightening quick off the mark to proclaim that One Nation had done poorly in the Queensland election, even though the facts show that the projected swing was + 12.8 percent, good by any measure, taking 14 percent of the vote:
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/so-which-party-does-the-media-say-flopped/news-story/0079b0f93e1711d9e239e2014295eb1b
     One Nation would have returned a much better result if the major parties had not done the usual and put them last:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/nov/27/malcolm-turnbull-says-a-vote-for-one-nation-is-a-vote-for-labor

     This is the future of Western cities, where social decay is leading to social hysteria, and the willingness of people to accept New World Order policing and social control:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-22/out-control-genicide-baltimore-residents-support-martial-law

     It can’t happen in Australia, the land of same sex marriage, one might conjecture? Think again, for the poverty of Baltimore is fast coming to Australia as another brilliant article at the same site explains:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-15/why-australias-economy-house-cards

to THE AUSTRALIAN
     The latest report of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (‘Attacks on Jews a threat to all society’, 27/11) needs to be taken with caution, as it has not been prepared by an impartial and objective body. For example, it may exaggerate the significance of Antipodean Resistance, which is very likely an annoying gnat rather than a dangerous tiger.
     While it goes without saying that anti-Semitic fanaticism needs to be both publicly condemned and checked by appropriate legal safeguards, Jewish groups at times engage in unwise public actions and statements which unnecessarily draw opposition to Jews generally. Responsible conservative opinion is at times defamed under coloured language such as ‘far right’ and ‘neo-Nazi’. The belated and protracted campaign against ‘Nazi war criminals’, the persecution of revisionist historians and attempts to discount the reality of formidable Jewish political and financial power in the modern world have not helped win friends.
  NJ, Belgrave, Vic

To the Numurkah Leader
     Please allow me to comment on the article ‘No spilt milk for dairy farmers’, (Leader, November 8, 2017). This report is another tragedy in the sorry saga of Australian industry.
     Murray Goulburn Cooperative Dairy Company started on the faith of a few farmers and dedicated executives about 60 years ago in Cobram to become one of the greatest dairy cooperatives in the Southern Hemisphere. Now the final chapter is being written by Saputo—why?

     Not long ago it was Ardmona Fruit Preserving Company, a world leader in its class, and Shepparton Preserving Company (SPC) being amalgamated then finally being downsized in a takeover by an ‘international conglomeration’.
All three companies were leaders in their class and managed by ‘smart’ people but some extraneous force they could not understand finally overcame their efforts to remain ‘financially viable’.
     This same ‘force’ has been involved in the destruction of many primary and secondary industries which is accompanied by misery and heartbreak for individuals and their families.

     Oh, shock! horror! so it seems that mass coral bleaching is killing off Australian coral reefs, and we should care:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171108102233.htm

“Researchers from The University of Western Australia (UWA), ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, and Western Australian Marine Science Institution have examined the impact of the 2016 mass bleaching event on reefs in Western Australia (WA). They found significant bleaching occurred in the inshore Kimberley region, despite Kimberley corals being known as exceptionally stress resistant. They also found mild bleaching at Rottnest Island and that the Ningaloo Reef escaped bleaching.
The 2016 mass bleaching event is the most severe global bleaching event to ever be recorded.
Coral bleaching occurs as the result of abnormal environmental conditions, such as heightened sea temperatures that cause corals to expel tiny photosynthetic algae, called ‘zooxanthellae.’ The loss of these colourful algae causes the corals to turn white, and ‘bleach’. Bleached corals can recover if the temperature drops and zooxanthellae are able to recolonise the coral, otherwise the coral may die.”

     The rich are getting richer, and the poor, poorer, what else is new?  The top 1 percenters now own over 50 percent of the goodies:
  “The wealthiest one percent owned 42.5 percent of global wealth in 2008, the bank reports.

     “The downward trend reversed after 2008 and the share of the top one percent has been on an upward path ever since, passing the 2000 level in 2013 and achieving new peaks every year thereafter. According to our latest estimates, the top one percent own 50.1 percent of all household wealth in the world,” the report said.

Back to Bolted-Down Industries
     Once upon a time Australia was attractive to processing, refining and manufacturing industries using our abundant mineral and food resources, our reliable low-cost coal-fired electricity and a workforce trained in technical skills.  No longer.

     Australia used to have 11 oil refineries, spread around the country. There are just 4 left, all over fifty years old, and all in danger of closing down. Green barriers to oil exploration have forced most of them to rely on costly imported crude oil.
     Now, for the first time in at least 60 years Australia no longer produces motor vehicles.

     There is considerable evidence that the world is heading towards another global financial crises, more severe than the 2008 version. Many people are preparing this time by going the way of investing in cryptocurrencies, which appears to the decentralisation financial movement.
http://collapse.news/2017-11-08-cryptocurrency-vanishes-user-error-10-reasons-gold-better-than-bitcoin.html

     But, 300 million in Ether currency recently vanished due to a wallet error committed by just one user:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/08/cryptocurrency-300m-dollars-stolen-bug-ether

     If we belong to the West anymore, then we should be concerned, deeply concerned about the direction which modern China is taking, which is something quite alien to Western rational thought.

     Right next to a full-page ad celebrating an AFL game in Shanghai (The Australian, October 25, 2017, p.8), we have the story of Xi joining Mao and Deng in the Communist Party pantheon, with the elevation of Xi Jinping, Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, a strategy of building a modern socialist China. People will be required to conscientiously study this profound document, probably even us, down the track. Here are its key points:

     Libertarianism is a popular philosophy among free market loving folk in America, especially, but what does the doctrine really mean? Here we have a leading libertarian, Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe,  sum it all up:

“The theoretical, irrefutable core of the libertarian doctrine is simple and straightforward and I have explained it already repeatedly at this place. If there were no scarcity in the world, human conflicts, or more precisely physical clashes, would be impossible. Interpersonal conflicts are always conflicts concerning scarce things. 
I want to do A with a given thing and you want to do B with the same thing. Because of such conflicts—and because we are able to communicate and argue with each other—we seek out norms of behavior with the purpose of avoiding these conflicts. The purpose of norms is conflict-avoidance. If we did not want to avoid conflicts, the search for norms of conduct would be senseless. We would simply fight and struggle. 
Absent a perfect harmony of all interests, conflicts regarding scarce resources can only be avoided if all scarce resources are assigned as private, exclusive property to some specified individual or group of individuals. Only then can I act independently, with my own things, from you, with your own things, without you and me clashing.”
http://www.vdare.com/articles/hans-hoppe-libertarianism-the-alt-right-and-antifa-a-libertarian-strategy-for-social-change

     Lives of Our Own (Createspace, 2017), is a brilliant new book by leading social credit theorist and philosopher, M. Oliver Heydorn. The subtitle of the book aptly sums up what this treatise is about: Social Credit, Catholicism, and a Distributist Social Order.

     The tone of the book is set with an epigraph from Hilaire Belloc, published in 1934, expressing his support for the rationality and morality of the social credit agenda, of overcoming restricted purchasing power, freeing people from wage-slavery, and ensuring that people are “to be fully fed, well housed, well clothed and given manifold opportunity for the enjoyment of life.” This is no longer a truism, because our world of 2017 is quickly approaching that of the Great Depression era, with record numbers of homeless and unemployed.

     Honoré de Balzac is reputed to have said: “Behind every great fortune there is a great crime.” This alleged quote came to mind when reading James Petras, “How Billionaires become Billionaires,” at http://www.unz.com/jpetras/how-billionaires-become-billionaires/.

     One of the ways they do it is because the taxation system is set up to benefit the hyper-rich who have deduction opportunities far beyond the normal tax payer. Then there is outright tax evasion, rather than tax minimisation:

     Here is how migration changes a culture, fundamentally:  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37518289
     http://speisa.com/modules/articles/index.php/item.844/swedish-authorities-approved-of-child-marriage.html

     Sweden has legalised child marriages for Muslim immigrants, who have children wives.  This is due to the huge influx of migrants, and many girls, as young as 14, are pregnant:  https://sputniknews.com/europe/201709251057665752-sweden-migrants-child-marriage/

     Mike Adams has been conducting an extensive critique of Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency, generated by a mathematical algorithm, which has taken decentralised money folk by storm. The basic idea is that no central bank can control this cyber-currency, so people have a freedom that normal fiat currency denies them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency

     I don’t understand how the algorithm actually works, and how “mining’ occurs: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_hashing_algorithm
 but the one person I know who swears by it, doesn’t either, but has put most of his savings in it. I referred him to the Mike Adams critiques which he savaged, and made him aggressive, but I suspect that Adams would have a come-back. Maybe he is right, and that this really is a cult. Stranger things happen today, by the minute.

To On Target
     Thanks for printing the brilliant letter in the September 1st. issue of the “On Target” from Peter Davis to Senator Dastyari. Peter has presented a paper that spells out the problem with our financial system and includes an answer.

     Most people know that the system is ‘broke’ but not many know what to do about it, or know the history as Peter Davis has presented it. We do hope that the Senator will make use of the information. I wonder if he has replied to the letter.
     We are looking forward to hearing Peter speak at the National Weekend in October.
Doug and Jean Holmes.  S.A.