The ultra-paranoid John Steele has come to the big smoke for a few days, and he is with me now, both of us drunk on the cheap alcohol he went out and brought. I do not complain, being so poor I can’t’ afford a dentist, or to get my fridge fixed (which seems to have the motor run for 15 minutes, then stop, for another 15 minutes, then run again, running up my power bill), so getting drunk is my only temporary release. Anyway, onto the joint masterpiece, not my whinging …

    With global nuclear annihilation, one possible future, the question arises as to what the remnant will eat in the post-apocalyptic wasteland:
  https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/10744317/doomsday-diet-revealed-nuclear-apocalypse/

     Many municipalities in Germany are clambering, indeed, falling over themselves to get more magical refugees, whom they believe will pay boomer pensions, I suppose. The idea is that as always, migrants will solve every problem, being, well, magical.
  https://www.dw.com/en/german-municipalities-demand-action-refugees-mediterranean/a-51990144

     But, maybe not:
  https://www.dw.com/en/immigration-not-going-to-stop-germanys-demographic-problem/a-18993548

This is just a light-hearted piece, that occurred to me when reading about men who have their backs to the wall, and facing losing everything, requested by the court, trial by combat. And, of course, such a request is thought, wrongly, to be incompatible with modern law, but not all law.
  https://nypost.com/2020/01/15/kansas-man-wants-to-settle-ugly-custody-battle-with-trial-by-combat-with-japanese-swords/
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_by_combat

“Unlike trial by ordeal in general, which is known to many cultures worldwide, trial by combat is known primarily from the customs of the Germanic peoples. It was in use among the ancient Burgundians, Ripuarian Franks, Alamans, Lombards, and Swedes. It was unknown in Anglo-Saxon law, Roman law and Irish Brehon Law and it does not figure in the traditions of Middle Eastern antiquity such as the code of Hammurabi or the Torah.
The practice is regulated in various Germanic legal codes. Being rooted in Germanic tribal law, the various regional laws of the Frankish Empire (and the later Holy Roman Empire) prescribed different particulars, such as equipment and rules of combat. The Lex Alamannorum (recension Lantfridana 81, dated to 712–730 AD) prescribes a trial by combat in the event of two families disputing the boundary between their lands. A handful of earth taken from the disputed piece of land is put between the contestants and they are required to touch it with their swords, each swearing that their claim is lawful. The losing party besides forfeiting their claim to the land is required to pay a fine. Capitularies governing its use appear from the year 803 onwards. Louis the Pious prescribed combat between witnesses of each side, rather than between the accuser and the accused, and briefly allowed for the Ordeal of the Cross in cases involving clerics. In medieval Scandinavia, the practice survived throughout the Viking Age in the form of the Holmgang. An unusual variant, the marital duel, involved combat between a husband and wife, with the former physically handicapped in some way. The loser was killed.”

     I have always felt uneasy about X-rays, I mean, it is quite unnatural to be able to see inside one’s body. Surely if God wanted this, He would have made us with zippers, or transparent! 
And, now that we, well, maybe not me, but scientists, know about DNA and mutations, there are other questions to ask:
  https://www.studyfinds.org/radiation-levels-comparable-to-x-rays-cause-mutations-in-lab-grown-human-cells/

“X-rays have been a staple of modern medicine for a long time, and any doctor or radiologist is quick to tell their patients that there are absolutely no risks or harmful side effects associated with the radiation necessary to perform an X-ray. Now, researchers from Erasmus University Medical Center and Oncode Institute in the Netherlands have discovered that low doses of radiation, long believed to be safe, did in fact create breaks in lab grown human cells that allowed additional DNA to enter the chromosome. In more simplistic terms, the radiation caused mutations on the cellular level. To be clear, these findings do not mean that going to have an X-ray is going to harm you, and extensive further research is necessary involving actual living animals, and eventually humans, before any real conclusions can be drawn. Still, the results of this study at the very least are concerning, and seem to indicate that there are still some aspects of how radiation interacts with our bodies, on a cellular level, that science has yet to fully understand.

     The annual Women’s March has occurred in the US, basically a Leftist, feminist, anti-Trump event, with a mast song in Spanish, America’s soon to be national language, titled, “A Rapist in Your Path”:
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/17/womens-march-promotes-2020-rallies-spanish-language-song-titled-rapist-your-path/

“The anti-Trump inspired Women’s March is taking place on Saturday in Washington, DC, with “patriarchy” and “rape” as themes, according to the event’s website. “Three years of marching, training, organizing, and building power – it’s all been leading up to this. In 2020, we have the chance to strengthen the movement we started three years, and to unite together in the face of continued attacks on our bodies, our rights, our immigrant communities, and our planet,” the website states. “This year, we aren’t just marching. We’re putting our bodies on the line hand in hand with other mass movements.”

     Albert Einstein once complained in a letter about how pushed around American men were by their women, and he did it in tones that would be howled down today; but he was right. I can’t quickly find the letter on the net, but Einstein has been in hot water for realistic portrayal of various nations in his travels at the time.
  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/12/einsteins-travel-diaries-reveal-shocking-xenophobia

     Now the tide turns, and the claim of his wife Mileva Maric Einstein, to his intellectual contribution is being made:
  https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-forgotten-life-of-einsteins-first-wife/

     Not everything is going swimmingly for China. First, there are demographic woes, even given the country’s pro-natalist policies:
  https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202001/18/WS5e22494fa310128217271d58.html

“The birthrate on the Chinese mainland reached a record low last year, figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Friday showed. The total number of babies born last year was 14.65 million, a decrease of 580,000 from the previous year, while the birthrate stood at 10.48 per 1,000 population－the lowest over the past seven decades, according to the bureau. Meanwhile, total population on the mainland narrowly exceeded 1.4 billion by the end of last year, an increase of 4.7 million year-on-year. Last year marked the third consecutive year of falling births on the mainland despite the universal second-child policy having been adopted at the beginning of 2016. The policy, which encourages all couples to have two children, was designed to boost births to cope with rapid population aging. Births reached 17.86 million in 2016, the highest since 2000, according to the National Health Commission, but they fell to 17.23 million in 2017 and to 15.23 million in 2018. Ning Jizhe, head of the NBS, said at a news conference on Friday that despite the decrease, the total number of births last year on the mainland was still very big, and the universal second-child policy has played a very important role in encouraging births. The decrease last year was the smallest, he said. Births fell by 630,000 in 2017 and by 2 million in 2018. "Of all babies born last year, 59.5 percent were the second or more child, with the percentage rising over the past few years," Ning said. The percentage has remained at about 50 percent since the universal second-child policy was enacted, according to the National Health Commission. Despite the policy, many couples in China were not willing to have a second baby, for reasons such as the high cost of raising children and a lack of nursery facilities, according to a survey organized by the commission.”

     Here is more on water mining. This is the latest aspect of economic imperialism, as our governments give away vital water resources in the driest continent on earth:
  https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/outrage-over-chinese-water-mine-plan-in-southern-downs/news-story/e6a5f4f0c1e7ca2e67acf25b934c82f6?fbclid=IwAR2MyxvczQY5LrJCRrDIi2WXZPNYsWAtJ0_iuOw_35EKn9MHHSTYcajP5ls

“Farmers and landholders in the drought-hit Southern Downs region of Queensland are furious over the lack of government and council opposition to a Chinese-owned company’s plan to mine nearly 100 million litres of local groundwater a year and sell it off, at a time when local towns are so dry they are relying on trucked-in water to keep their taps running. Southern Downs Regional Council last month voted to approve planned works associated with the project, which could take up to 96 million litres of water a year from an aquifer beneath the Cherrabah Resort near Warwick and truck it to the Gold Coast for commercial plastic bottling. The approval came as the council was preparing residents to get used to using just 80 litres of water per person a day and to adopt practices such as three-minute showers and washing clothes only every third day. The drought has drained the town of Stanthorpe of its water supply, leaving residents to rely on a convoy of trucks carting water from a dam 75km away. The Chinese-owned Royal Duke Holdings, operator of the Cherrabah Resort, has succeeded in winning approval for its groundwater mining venture on various conditions, including upgrading nearby roads. According to its application to council, the company wants to build a “water extraction and distribution facility” using underground water from a fractured rock aquifer and sell the product to commercial water bottlers on the Gold Coast.”

     The climate change fanatics have been up and at it, not only about the terrible bushfires, but the on-going 100-year floods along the east coast, which they call extreme weather events, even though all of this has happened before. And, as this great article referenced below indicates, as usual incompetence and obfuscation have more to do with the bushfires that any grand climate change:
  https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2020/01/an-inferno-of-incompetence-and-obfuscation/

“I reject the ‘blame it on climate change” position because it has two killer flaws: firstly, it ignores fuels, which are the main contributor to uncontrollable fires during a drought; secondly, it provides no practical solutions to the immediate problem. Both of these factors render the climate change argument utterly unsustainable, indeed ridiculous. It is very obvious who the people are who should be held accountable for the current mess. At the top of the list are the premiers and ministers responsible for land management, such as it is, and bushfire policy, and the public servants in their departments with jurisdiction over forests and national parks. State governments in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria have palpably failed to do the most important job they were elected to do: protect the lives and livelihoods of their citizens and the health of their environment. And their public servants have failed to do the job they are being paid to do: serve the public. Under the Australian Constitution land management, and therefore bushfire management, is the responsibility of the states. It is state governments which decide how crown land will be managed, and how the protection of communities and their assets from bushfire damage will be organised.

     Nordic neo-Viking bushman, Bjorn Andreas Bull-Hansen gives another great talk, in his signature relaxed fashion about the war on masculinity. In short, masculine men are self-reliant, and in today’s feminised society, geared around globalism and consumption, such a man does not fit in, as people must be easy to rule, and do what they are told, as obedient slaves and passive consumers. We have heard this all before, but I like these sorts of videos, and it may reach people that the written word is just too tiring to pursue.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yReeJHJd4qo

     Fortunately the Royal Family has responded with a little bit of survival savvy, at the 11th hour, having first thought that it would be a good idea for the Firm, to have some diversity, allowing Meghan Merkle to enter the family, marrying IQ-challenged Harry. Stories had Meg fighting with other members of the Family, and being generally disruptive. That was not good. So, diversity is one thing, but sinking the entire ship, is another.  Hence, this statement by Her Majesty the Queen, long live the Queen:

"The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are grateful to Her Majesty and the Royal Family for their ongoing support as they embark on the next chapter of their lives. "As agreed in this new arrangement, they understand that they are required to step back from royal duties, including official military appointments. They will no longer receive public funds for royal duties. "With The Queen's blessing, the Sussexes will continue to maintain their private patronages and associations. While they can no longer formally represent The Queen, the Sussexes have made clear that everything they do will continue to uphold the values of Her Majesty. "The Sussexes will not use their HRH titles as they are no longer working members of the Royal Family. "The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have shared their wish to repay Sovereign Grant expenditure for the refurbishment of Frogmore Cottage, which will remain their UK family home. "Buckingham Palace does not comment on the details of security arrangements. There are well established independent processes to determine the need for publicly-funded security. "This new model will take effect in the spring of 2020."

     If diversity, only produced by the magical migrant, can solve all of the problems in the universe, then not only should people be laying palm leaves in the street, but they certainly should not be conducting a white fright exodus, of Biblical standards. But, consider the case of Germany:
  https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/01/16/hundreds-thousands-germans-left-germany-three-years-migrant-crisis/
  https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/plus205011766/Migrationsbericht-Hunderttausende-Deutsche-verlassen-das-Land.html

“Hundreds of thousands of German citizens have left the country in the three years since the height of the 2015 migrant crisis, according to statistics from the German federal government’s newly-released 2018 migration report. From 2005 to 2015, the year of the migrant crisis, Germany saw an average negative emigrant balance — the total number of German nationals leaving against those returning to the country — of around 39,000 but that number has ballooned in recent years to nearly 100,000 per year from 2016 to 2018, Die Welt reports. 2018 also saw a high level of net immigration with 460,000 more immigrants than emigrants. The largest group, 195,000 people, came from other European Union member-states, while Syrians topped the list for countries in Asia. According to the Central Register of Foreigners (AZR), a total of 526,000 non-EU foreigners moved to Germany in 2018, 97,000 coming via “family reunification” — chain migration. Around 170,000 of the total were asylum seekers or refugees from EU quota programmes. Part of the reason for the huge growth in the number of emigrants has been a change in how the federal government records statistics, a change that is viewed as more reliable and brings into question if the statistics prior to 2016 were lower than reality.’

     This is interesting, as unlike say 9/11, where actionists had to fight to get the good word out, the information about the murder of Jeff Epstein, who had girls as young as 11-years, for the 1 percenters to rape on his paedo island, keeps flowing.
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/16/pathologist-jeffrey-epstein-burst-capillaries-in-eyeballs-suggests-he-was-strangled/

“Dr. Michael Baden, a former New York City medical examiner, alleged Thursday that autopsy photos of Jeffrey Epstein show he had burst capillaries in his eyes, which is a more common occurrence with strangulation than with hanging. In a Dr. Oz clip obtained by the Daily Mail, Baden, who was hired by Epstein’s brother to observe the autopsy performed by New York City officials after the deceased pedophile’s death, said there are “red flags” suggesting foul play. Particularly, the pathologist pointed to the burst capillaries and Epstein’s legs not appearing purple — a coloration that often happens with hangings — as two occurrences that could raise questions about the once-high flying investor’s death. “In a hanging, the arteries and the blood vessels, the veins are both clogged off and the person is pale. The face is pale,” Dr. Baden told Dr. Oz. “It suffocates you, no blood goes up there,” Dr. Oz replied. “That’s right. No blood coming in or out… with a manual strangulation, there’s a backup of a pressure and the little capillaries can rupture and they’re best seen in the eye,” Dr. Baden responded. Dr. Baden then explained what concerned him about Epstein’s pale leg color. “The blood settles after we die. The so-called lividity, if your hanging, the lividity is on the lower part on the legs,” he said. “These would be like maroon/purple, front and back and they aren’t.” The pathologist went on to reiterate that the manner in which officials ruled Epstein’s cause of death was “very unusual.”

     I have been saying for a long time, that China is an existential threat to the West.  With respect to Australia, as I will detail in another article, some Australians are going to be lucky to even have enough water in the future. But for now, consider:
  https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2020/01/16/human-rights-watch-china-poses-existential-threat-rights-people-worldwide/

“An unchallenged China will herald in “a dystopian future in which no one is beyond the reach of Chinese censors, and an international human rights system so weakened that it no longer serves as a check on government repression,” Human Rights Watch warned in its annual report on the country published Wednesday. The 2020 China report from the non-governmental organization (NGO) accused both states friendly to China and corporations that do business with it of “enabling” China’s increased use of violence and systematic state repression to silence political dissidents, religious groups, and ethnic minorities. Human Rights Watch published the report shortly after Beijing banned its executive director, Kenneth Roth, from traveling to Hong Kong for an event to release it. Roth presented the report at an event in New York at the United Nations headquarters instead, despite the report being heavily critical of the U.N. as an institution. The report also attempted to criticize President Donald Trump for referring in friendly terms to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, but ultimately conceded that “the Trump administration is one government that has been willing to stand up to China, best evidenced by its October 2019 imposition of sanctions on the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau and eight Chinese technology companies for their complicity in human rights violations.”

     I have been waiting for someone to use postmodernism and social deconstruction, the trendy philosophies of the Humanities that hold that all is relative and socially contingent, as a legal defence. And, now here it is, a paedophile who identifies as a child:
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-01-15-45-year-old-man-claims-he-identifies-as-8-year-old-girl.html
  https://www.infowars.com/45-year-old-man-claims-he-identifies-as-8-year-old-girl-in-child-porn-defense/

“A Michigan man facing charges for possessing child pornography defended himself by claiming he identifies as an eight-year-old girl and therefore should have his rights protected under the First Amendment. Police found child pornography at the Grand Rapids home of Joseph Gobrick, 45, back in 2018 after he was arrested when a missing 17-year-old Ohio girl turned up at his house. Gobrick’s collection reportedly contained over 50 pornographic images of everything from infants to 5-year-olds, and police were able to identify at least eight victims who were sexually assaulted. Last week at a sentencing trial, Gobrick continued to defend his actions by mounting an unusual defense. “I’ve always been an 8-year-old girl,” Gobrick told a judge. “And even my drawings and fantasies, I am always an 8-year-old girl.” “Whenever we did this, there are adults having sex with me in an online forum as an eight-year-old,” he stated.’

     I like all of these UFO stories, being a sci fi fan. Little green men from Mars, and exotic space women from Venus … who knows?
  https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxe54z/the-navy-has-secret-classified-video-of-an-infamous-ufo-incident

“The Pentagon has Top Secret-classified briefings and a Secret-classified video about an infamous UFO incident, the U.S. Navy said in response to a public records request. The files concern the 2004 encounter between the USS Nimitz and a with strange unknown aerial objects. In 2017 and 2018, three videos of bizarre aircraft taken by Navy pilots from their fighter planes made national news. In December 2017, The New York Times ran a story about Navy pilots who intercepted a strange object off the coast of San Diego on November 14th, 2004, and managed to shoot video of the object with their F-18’s gun camera. In September of 2019, Motherboard reported that the Navy confirmed the videos contained footage of “unknown aerial phenomena.” In response to a Freedom of Information Act request sent by researcher Christian Lambright seeking more information on the incident, the Navy said it had “discovered certain briefing slides that are classified TOP SECRET. A review of these materials indicates that are currently and appropriate Marked and Classified TOP SECRET under Executive Order 13526, and the Original Classification Authority has determined that the release of these materials would cause exceptionally grave damage to the National Security of the United States.”

     Anti-racism and woke political correctness can get mighty confusing; at some point, even the most careful, and brownest of nosed sycophants, falls afoul of our insane system. It can also give one a mighty thirst, but let’s leave that one:
  https://summit.news/2020/01/15/uk-university-says-complaining-about-everything-becoming-a-race-issue-is-a-racist-microaggression/

“The University of Sheffield in the UK is to pay its own students to patrol thought crimes, one of which is the common complaint that everything is becoming a race issue, which the university considers to be a racist microaggression. Checkmate, bigots. “A university is to hire 20 of its own students to challenge language on campus that could be seen as racist,” reports the BBC. “The University of Sheffield is to pay students to tackle so-called “microaggressions” – which it describes as “subtle but offensive comments.” According to the university, examples of these microaggressions include;

     It is hard to believe that a country not crushed by war, could descend to such levels, allowing its children to be raped in the thousands, all in support of a brainwashed doctrine. This is something past generations would have been astonished about, let alone the ancients. Always ask yourself; what would Plato have thought? Even better: Jesus.
  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/14/police-officers-knowingly-neglected-girls-exploited-grooming/?

“An Asian grooming gang was free to roam the streets and abuse young girls because police officers were told to “find other ethnicities” to investigate, a detective has claimed. At least 57 young girls are thought to have been exploited by a paedophile network of around 100 suspected perpetrators based in south Manchester in the 2000s. The gang, mainly comprised of Asian men, hooked their victims on drugs, groomed, and sexually abused them. One girl, aged 15, died after being injected with heroin by a 50-year-old man. Following a two-year inquiry, commissioned by Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, into the historic failings of police and social workers, a report was published today which concluded that vulnerable girls in care were groomed and abused in "plain sight". The report found multiple failings at the hands of GMP, including how fears over race relations appear to have played a part in senior police thinking when tackling grooming gangs comprised of predominantly Asian men. It added that officers were aware of "many sensitive community issues" around policing in south Manchester in 2002 and 2003.”

To The Age          It is good to know that the Nazi flag flown in Beulah has been taken down ("No reason to go soft on hate", 18/1). If I had been a neighbour, I would have pleaded with those flying it to consider the loss of amenity it caused to me and others in the neighbourhood. I would have suggested other ways they could express their views in a less intrusive way. I would have referred to the need to take into consideration the general public perception of Nazism, even if their view differed. However, the episode has encouraged Tim Soutphommasane to continue his campaign to limit "hate speech" in Australia ("No reason to go soft on hate", 18/1) and I shiver a little when he writes that "there are just some things we mustn't tolerate." He deplores the fact that the flying of a Nazi flag involved "the advocacy of Nazism." Yes, but not everything about Nazism was or is unreservedly bad. We should continue to beware of any attempts to limit speech in contexts where there is no clear threat of violence. Flying a flag is in that category.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

     The most frequent question I have received over the last month is “who is to blame for the bushfire mess up and down the east coast?” There is a school of thought, mostly put about by state premiers, that the blame game is bad form. We should put the whole bushfire business behind us and move on, they say. Forget the past, the future will be wonderful. I reject this concept, because in any disaster situation lessons must be learned (or rather re-learned) and those lessons applied to improving the way things are done. I also believe those who need to be accountable for the current mess must be identified and the ways they have let us down highlighted.

     The trouble with side-stepping accountability is that mistakes are perpetuated. The same people go back to business as usual, and the same disasters re-occur. If nobody has done anything wrong, as the premiers maintain, no changes need to be made.