This story got me so hungry that I broke off a bit more plastic to eat. Wait, I will bring readers up to date. There are so many families dumpster diving now, that to survive needed another food source. So, I took up eating plastic. What, you say, Uncle Len, you are not an insect, how can you survive on plastic alone? But, I am not alone, for we all are eating heaps of plastic and doing fine too:
  https://www.msn.com/en-au/health/medical/we-eat-a-credit-card-worth-of-plastic-a-week-do-water-filters-help/ar-AAGkuJt?ocid=NL_ENAU_A2_20190829_8_2

“A new review by the World Health Organisation (WHO) has found that the potential health risks from consuming microplastics in our drinking water are not yet known. Microplastics are “ubiquitous” in the food we eat and in drinking water, both bottled and tap, the report said. Australian research revealed in June that, on average, we could ingest about five grams of plastic every week which is the equivalent weight of a credit card. However, the health impact is unclear and requires further research. “We urgently need to know more about the health impact of microplastics because they are everywhere – including in our drinking-water,” says Dr Maria Neira, director of the Department of Public Health, Environment and Social Determinants of Health at WHO. “Based on the limited information we have, microplastics in drinking water don’t appear to pose a health risk at current levels. But we need to find out more. We also need to stop the rise in plastic pollution worldwide.” Associate Professor Duncan McGillivray from the School of Chemical Sciences at the University of Auckland said we are more exposed to microplastics than we think.

     Someone, I think Jimmy Reed, did a review of The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt – no, I should have checked, it is not up yet, but may be when you read this. Anyway, the book is the usual liberal stuff, the common theme being that even though it is bad that dumbing down is occurring, still the baked goods can be pulled from the fire, with much preserved. Nevertheless, there is some hint that all may not be well in liberal town, as we find John Derbyshire over at American Renaissance, the place where East Asian IQ rules the waves, and we are but a poor second best, observing:

“I am now very pessimistic. I think there is a very good chance American democracy will fail, that in the next 30 years we will have a catastrophic failure of our democracy. The current political civil war is between two groups of educated white people with radically different views about what the country is, what morality is and what we need to do to move forward. Most Americans are non-political, but in the age of social media they have become like dark matter. The modern civil war is being fought by the extremes … We just don't know what a democracy looks like when you drain all the trust out of the system.”

     Trump himself made a big thing about this illegal migrant killing Kate Steinle with a stolen handgun which he just happened to find, and which just happened to fire itself:
  https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/sole-conviction-against-alleged-killer-of-kate-steinle-overturned-in-california-court

“The only conviction against a man accused of killing Kate Steinle in 2015 was overturned in the 1st District Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Friday. Jose Inez Garcia-Zarate was accused of shooting Steinle while she was walking with her father and friend on the San Francisco waterfront. Garcia-Zarate, a Mexican national, was in the U.S. illegally at the time of the shooting. He had previously been deported five times, and it was not known when he reentered the country. Steinle was 32 at the time of her death. Garcia-Zarate maintained that the shooting was accidental and that he did not mean to discharge the firearm he says he found wrapped in a T-shirt. The gun was stolen one week earlier from the parked car of a Bureau of Land Management ranger. Garcia-Zarate was acquitted of all but one charge in November of 2017, more than two years after Steinle's death. The jury at the time found him "not guilty" of assault with a semi-automatic weapon, first and second-degree murder, and involuntary manslaughter. He was convicted only of being a felon in possession of a firearm. That conviction was overturned on Friday when the California court found that a judge failed to instruct the jury on one of Garcia-Zarate's defenses. He will remain in custody while awaiting trial on federal gun charges. The family of Steinle filed a wrongful death suit against San Francisco earlier this year alleging the city's status as an immigrant sanctuary unduly put their daughter at risk. The suit was dismissed by the lower court and that decision was upheld by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The suit also named San Francisco County Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi as responsible for the death of Steinle. The sheriff's office had Garcia-Zarate in custody just three months prior to the shooting but released him when the drug charges against him were dropped. The office ignored a request by federal authorities to hold Garcia-Zarate until they could take him into custody, an issue that became a flashpoint in the case.

     Expect Italy to now be flooded extra fast by migrants as payback for daring to resist for only a little while, before hubris led to the one man who tried to stop the flood, falling on his own political, sword:
  https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/italys-salvini-partied-beach-while-rivals-plotted-his-overthrow

“What's the Italian word for 'hubris'? Somebody should ask League leader Matteo Salvini. In a report published Friday, Bloomberg examines the circumstances surrounding Salvini's failed political gambit, which the Interior Minister and Deputy PM had hoped would install him as prime minister of Italy, but instead resulted in his political rivals joining forces to outmaneuver him. Less than a month ago, Salvini was out partying at Papeete Beach. At one point, he stepped up to the decks during a music festival, where the man who was until very recently the most powerful politician in Italy was surrounded by dancing bikini-clad women. This was Salvini at the height of his power. But little did he realize that, while he was partying, his rivals were busy plotting his downfall, and within weeks, his hopes of taking over as prime minister would be crushed. The public didn't know yet, but he had finally acquiesced to his party's demands to withdraw his support for the coalition government that had seen his League govern with the Five Star Movement (M5S) for more than a year. Salvini believed that by forcing an election, he could capitalize on his popularity and return with a new conservative coalition that would more readily support his party's platform of anti-immigrant measures combined with tax cuts that antagonized Brussels. And instead of serving as co-deputy PM, he would be prime minister.

     No, Generation Z or the millennials is not the most historically informed of all generations; in fact, they are even worse than the boomers, which is saying something:
  https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/aocs-latest-instagram-video-shows-her-most-hilarious-lie-millennials-most-informed-historically-literate-generation

“For conservative commentators, upstart socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the gift that keeps on giving. The New York Democrat’s social media feed offers up a constant stream of clueless left-wing commentary that’s ripe for debunking. The latest instance is a recent Instagram live video, in which she claims that “young people are more informed and dynamic than their predecessors.” The social media starlet goes on to say “this new generation is very profound ... They actually take time to read and understand our history.” This, frankly, is absurd to the point of hilarity. Nothing could be further from the truth: The millennial generation and Generation Z behind them, of which I am part, is uniquely disengaged from history and woefully uninformed. Which she went on to prove, naturally. In praising the new generation as the first "wiling to go to the streets" and protest, she appears to have forgotten about the 1960s. Oops! But she disproves her own point in more ways than one. Young people increasingly identify as socialist, which on its own shows that they are woefully ignorant of history. That ideology of failure and oppression has a very dark past of which few are aware. And only 16% of millennials are even able to define socialism in the first place. As far as broader historical literacy goes, two of three millennials, the same generation that Ocasio-Cortez deems “informed and dynamic,” do not even know what Auschwitz is. Ignorance of the Nazi death camp is bad enough, but 1 in 5 millennials aren’t even aware of the Holocaust at all. This isn’t exactly a surprise, when you look at young peoples’ habits. According to Business Insider, “Millennials spend far less time consuming news overall than older adults, and the time they do spend is concentrated on digital consumption. Millennials ages 21-37 consume only about 30% of the amount of news as adults age 38 and older.” Plus, many young people don’t read books. At all.”

     First, by way of disclosure my one personal belief, is that after this Melbourne winter, if anything, we are heading towards a new ice age, and that increasing our carbon footprint through coal, oil, and glorious fossil fuels and anything that burns cannot be too bad. That over, let’s get down to business, bashing global warming in the morning:
  https://dcdirtylaundry.com/nasa-admits-that-climate-change-occurs-because-of-changes-in-earths-solar-orbit-and-not-because-of-suvs-and-fossil-fuels/
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-08-30-nasa-admits-climate-change-not-caused-by-suvs-fossil-fuels.html

     Well, I read the article at Natural News looking for a juicy quote, but only found a discussion about the geometry of Milankovitch cycles, variations in the Earth’s orbit, that can cause ice ages. But nothing much about NASA saying that climate change is not caused by fossil fuels, sadly. Very disappointing; in fact NASA has a whole website on climate change, all conventional stuff:
  https://climate.nasa.gov/

     Why does every city have to have a China town? Well, keep wondering because now this concept is being applied to the Australian country side as well:
  https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-31/foreign-investor-plan-to-create-rural-chinatown-in-geraldton/8537422

“Foreign investors have purchased hundreds of hectares of land in WA's Midwest with a view to establishing a rural Chinatown, including an English-language school. City of Greater Geraldton Mayor Shane Van Styn revealed the bold plan by developer PIP Holdings to create the suburb in the city's eastern fringe. It includes building homes specifically for Chinese migrants and associated service industries to cater to their needs. Cr Van Styn said foreign investment could be just the ticket to revitalise the region's main city, located 400 kilometres north of Perth. But there are questions about whether the proposed development will help or hinder the region. Geraldton, a once-thriving city built on agriculture and lobster fishing, enjoyed a boom through iron ore mining and exploration but is now battling a shrinking population and rising unemployment. It was for this reason that Cr Van Styn said he believed overseas investment would be the key to revitalising the struggling region. "They're proposing anywhere up to 1,500 houses, a commercial centre, and that school in the centre," he said. "This is proposing building two years' worth of houses in one single development, so it would be a building boom unlike anything ever seen.

     Science and the bizarre … did you call me?
  https://www.livescience.com/teens-twin-found-inside-adbomen-fetus-in-fetu.html?utm_source=ls-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20190829-ls

“A teenager in India was discovered to have a bizarre mass of bone, teeth and "hairy cheesy material" in her abdomen, according to a new report of the case. It was her own "twin" growing inside her, the result of an extremely rare condition called "fetus in fetu." The 17-year-old went to the doctor after developing a lump in her abdomen that had been gradually increasing in size over the last five years, according to the report, published Aug. 12 in the journal BMJ Case Reports. The teen told doctors that she sometimes experienced abdominal pain and a feeling of fullness, even when she had not eaten much food. A CT scan revealed that the teen had a large mass in her abdomen that appeared to contain multiple bones "resembling the shape of vertebrae, ribs and long bones," the authors wrote. Doctors diagnosed the teen with fetus in fetu, a condition that is estimated to occur in only about 1 in 500,000 people worldwide.”

To The Age        Barry Lizmore's claim (6/9) that "democracy is still healthy in Britain", thanks to the parliament's frustration of the government's Brexit plan, is the opposite of the truth. The ongoing efforts of Remainers to dishonour the clear 2016 referendum result show this beyond all doubt. Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay is right ("Brexit in the hands of the Lords") to accuse the Conservative rebels and opposition of "attempting to stop Brexit altogether". The scaremongering objections to a no-deal departure from the EU are a ploy only, an attempt to hide the dishonesty involved.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave

To The Australian         Henry Ergas ("Brexit reveals what Parliament thinks of the people", 6/9) cites an important statement in 1734 by John Wilkes that the whole power of electors is devolved upon MPs who must "regard only the public good in general". Parliament may indeed be sovereign constitutionally, as Ergas shows, but, once elected, MPs must seek to act honourably and righteously to defend the welfare of the nation. There is good reason to feel that many of the MPs who have voted to frustrate the Government's Brexit plan were not regarding the public good in general, but serving an unelected elite and/or furthering their own careers. As regards the incorporation of the UK in the EU, there is a long history of deception of the public by MPs and elements in the mass media. The duplicity of Remainers has indeed “shattered the complex web of make-believe" that has hidden UK political realities. It turns out that, when the chips are down, Britain is not a democracy but an oligarchy.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

     Forget about the battle to stop rural Australia from being made into one huge Chinese shopping mall, a fundamental attack has been made upon our culture. Americans think that our talk about going to the toilet is weird and they prefer “bathroom.”
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7404881/American-Emily-Keefe-living-Australia-lists-bizarre-things-shes-noticed-country.html?ico=pushly-notifcation-small

“Instead of referring to the 'restroom' or 'bathroom', Australians tend to excuse themselves for the 'toilet'. 'First and foremost is the use of the word "toilet". In Australia, instead of saying "bathroom", everybody says "toilet",' Emily said. 'Being a teacher, I would get asked every seven seconds "miss can I go toilet" and because the word "toilet" was just the word that was being used, it was the word that I started using. 'Then I came back... it's just awkward when you use the word "toilet" in the United States... I don't know it just feels weird coming out of your mouth.'”

     God save the Queen! And may He protect her from the insane globalists, who have invoked something of a historical threat:
  https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/08/29/off-with-her-head-soros-funded-best-for-britain-group-threatens-queen-over-brexit/

“The EU loyalist Best for Britain group appeared to invoke the fate of the beheaded King Charles I after Queen Elizabeth II agreed to prorogue (temporarily suspend) Parliament for a few weeks before the Brexit deadline. Following news that the Queen rubber-stamped Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s request to suspend the parliamentary session — the longest-running for almost 400 years — so that his government can bring forward a new legislative programme on October 14th, the George Soros-funded group tweeted that it would “make no sense for the Queen to back this deeply undemocratic, unconstitutional and fundamentally political manoeuvre from the government,” in comments later attributed to its CEO, Naomi Smith. “If the Queen is asked to help, she would do well to remember history doesn’t look too kindly on royals who aid and abet the suspension of democracy,” the anti-Brexit group added darkly, appearing to allude to the fate of the monarch’s ancestor Charles I, who tried to govern without Parliament and was in the end publicly beheaded.”

     It is not often that we see an article where the climate experts let all of the cats out of the bag about their agenda of eliminating consumption, but here it is, I found it:
  https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49499521

“People must use less transport, eat less red meat and buy fewer clothes if the UK is to virtually halt greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the government's chief environment scientist has warned. Prof Sir Ian Boyd said the public had little idea of the scale of the challenge from the so-called Net Zero emissions target. However, he said technology would help. The conundrum facing the UK - and elsewhere - was how we shift ourselves away from consuming, he added. In an interview with BBC News, Sir Ian warned that persuasive political leadership was needed to carry the public through the challenge. Asked whether Boris Johnson would deliver that leadership, he declined to comment. Mr Johnson has already been accused by environmentalists of talking up electric cars whilst reputedly planning a cut in driving taxes that would increase emissions and undermine the electric car market.”

     Most of those collapseologists who argue that the number is up for techno-industrial civilisation make use of global warming nonsense. But that is hardly going to bring the temple down, maybe make a few plants grow. However, there are those who reject global warming but still see the end as nigh, and Natural News is along these lines, having many critiques of global warming, but still publishing searching articles like this one:
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-08-29-the-decline-of-industrial-civilization-has-already-begun.html

“Experts insist that the decline of industrial civilization has already begun, and its signs all echo the events that happened in the past, albeit with some differences. Notice how every single civilization and empire in the past had collapsed – Chinese, Egyptians, Incas, Greeks, Mayans, Mongols, and Romans? These civilizations showed common “symptoms” or trends during their decline: the destruction of the natural world, depletion of crucial resources (water, fertile soil, forests, etc.), famine, overpopulation, financial crisis, inequality, social and political unrest, invasion or war, and disease. Sound familiar? Indeed, these things are already happening today, and at an alarming rate. Our global industrial system currently has no room for expansion, the natural world is in crisis, and the logistics that keep our civilization running are now so complex that they are more fragile than ever.

     Look, as traitorous and disappointing as Trump is, surely we Americans must vote for him again since what a delight it is to see how the liberal progressives just go crazy over everything he does, or does not do:
  https://thinkprogress.org/trump-campaign-launches-new-video-complete-with-white-supremacist-symbol-56e7353a7a62/

“President Donald Trump promoted a new video Wednesday that featured some of his favorite hits. Job creation, stock market growth, low unemployment rates, regulatory rollbacks, high approval rating among Republicans — all pretty obvious content. Trump himself posted the video on Twitter, with the comment “Thank you for your support as we MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” But toward the end of the video, the video uses a symbol of a lion’s head, which, as writer Dustin Giebel and former Snopes managing editor Brooke Binkowski first noted on Twitter, was also used by the far-right publication VDARE. VDARE, which describes itself as “America’s Immigration Voice,” was founded by white nationalist Peter Brimelow and has regularly published the work of prominent far-right extremists, including Jared Taylor, a well-known figure in white nationalism for decades. Jason Kessler, who organized the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was also a contributor.”

     Here is a summary about what is happening here in England, whatever that is now, brought to us by our furry friends at the BBC (just think like your ABC only much worse):
  https://www.bbc.com/news/live/uk-politics-49495567

•    “Prime Minister Boris Johnson set in motion the process to suspend the UK Parliament - which limits the time MPs have to block a no-deal Brexit
•    The suspension - also called prorogation - will happen no earlier than 9 September and no later than 12 September
•    The new parliamentary session will begin on 14 October
•    The UK is set to leave the EU on 31 October with, or without a deal
•    Mr Johnson said suggestions the suspension was motivated by a desire to force through a no deal were "completely untrue"
•    His decision was criticised by Speaker John Bercow who said it was a "constitutional outrage"
•    Jeremy Corbyn called the move "a smash and grab" on democracy and promised to bring forward legislation "to prevent what [the PM] is doing", followed by a vote of no confidence "at some point"
•    Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said "it is not democracy, it’s dictatorship" and Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson said it was "a dangerous and unacceptable course"
•    But Leader of the House Jacob Rees-Mogg said the move was a "completely proper constitutional procedure"
•    MPs return from recess on 3 September.”

     This is not a trick question; the answer is “yes,” of course, and even the British people, whoever they are now, agree:
  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/08/23/political-correctness-has-gone-far-exceeds-common-sense-three/

“Political correctness has gone too far and “exceeds common sense”, three quarters of Britons have said in a wide-ranging study. More than half of people also said political correctness is “eroding the expression of Britain’s values and traditions” in a report by the LSE using findings from Opinium. In the report due to be published next week, 76 per cent of people agreed political correctness “sometimes goes too far and exceeds common sense”. Only 17 per cent of people surveyed said they want to see politicians determining what is or isn’t politically correct. When asked who should be responsible for adjudicating the boundaries of acceptable language and behaviour, a majority of Britons said this responsibility should lie with “ordinary people” and society as a whole. Younger people were more likely to defend political correctness. Nearly 40 per cent of men under 35 said they think it “protects people like me”. In addition, 40 per cent of people said political correctness “helps to create a fairer society by enabling more citizens to feel comfortable and participate to their fullest extent”. One in three said it is a “small price to pay for a more equal society”. The survey’s respondents were also asked to assess a range of statements, with 13 per cent saying it was “negative” to say “The British Empire was a force for good as well as bad.” Nearly half of respondents said it as acceptable to say that “High levels of immigration are eroding British culture, values and traditions”. Sophia Gaston, Visiting Research Fellow at the LSE, who carried out the study, said: “The rise of social media has also added a tremendous degree of fuel to the fire in the ‘culture wars’ between progressives and conservatives.” Writing in the Telegraph, Ms Gaston says: “It is rare in these polarised times of ‘snowflakes’ and ‘saboteurs’ to find an issue that brings the country together, but the British people find a surprising point of unity on the very topic supposed to evoke their most ardent divisions.” Ms Gaston adds: “More than half of the country blames political correctness for eroding the expression of Britain’s values and traditions, and believes it has enabled politicians to avoid addressing sensitive social issues, such as integration. In this light, political correctness has come to stand for political failure.”

     Most people probably think that Epstein the paedophile who had the dirt on the globalist paedophilic elites, was murdered to shut him up. I mean, come now, wouldn’t it be disappointing if they did not knock this guy off? Like, here he is in a cage, and you didn’t kill him, now you too are in a cage, afraid to go down to the shower block. What sort of lords of Darkness are you to screw up so badly? Of course, they did not, they never do:
  https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-28/epsteins-own-lawyers-tell-court-he-likely-died-assault-federal-case-dropped

“Epstein's own defense team doesn't buy the suicide narrative, apparently, as one of his lawyers on Tuesday voiced deep skepticism that he hanged himself while addressing a final hearing in a Manhattan US District Court on Tuesday, which was held to formally dismiss the charges as is typical when the accused is deceased, but also to still allow testimony of some of the victims. Defense lawyer Reid Weingarten told Judge Richard Berman during the hearing that Epstein's injuries are “far more consistent with assault” than suicide, especially given the broken bones in his neck discovered during the autopsy after he was found dead in his jail cell on Aug. 10. This after it was previously revealed that Epstein's defense attorneys had successfully lobbied for him to be taken off suicide watch on July 29, about a week before he was found dead in his cell, according to ABC News.

    While Big Tech continues its advancing wave upon wave of censorship of anyone they do not like, those on the Left are free as birds to drop wherever they like, the excreta of death threats:
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-08-28-washington-post-writer-declares-burn-down-the-republican-party.html

“As the 2020 presidential election gets closer and closer, the NeverTrump crowd of RINO journalists are increasingly sounding as loony – and dangerous – as their colleagues on the Left. In recent days during an interview on MSNBC’s “AM Joy” program, Washington Post ‘Republican’ columnist Jennifer Rubin used language to call for the destruction of the GOP and President Donald Trump that echoes previous Marxist revolutionaries. In calling for the shunning and shaming of all 63-plus million supporters of President Donald Trump – all of whom are American citizens, by the way – Rubin said it was all part of a grand scheme to “burn down” the Republican Party. “It’s not only that Trump has to lose, but that all his enablers have to lose,” she said. “We have to collectively, in essence, burn down the Republican Party. We have to level them because if there are survivors — if there are people who weather this storm, they will do it again. “They will take this as confirmation that, ‘Hey, it just pays to ride the wave – look at me, I’ve made it through.’ Up and down the ticket – federal, state and local offices – the country has to repudiate this,” she actually said. “Survivors?” “Burn down?” “Level them?” “Weather this storm?”

     Here is a great article by our freedom-loving, gun-carrying American friends smashing with the bullets of reason the Left notion that the weapon must be punished. I wish that I could write as well, but who cares when one can quote the magic:
  https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/blog/guns-knives-and-accelerant-control-why-the-weapons-are-not-responsible-for-the-crimes/

“An attacker screaming “Drop dead!” and “DIE!” recently murdered 34 people and injured three dozen more in a brutal attack. This terrible tragedy occurred only a few months after another rampage in which a man attacked 17 elementary school children and two adults — leaving two dead. It followed yet another mass killing in which a deranged individual wrote a letter claiming that “all disabled should cease to exist.” He then went on to murder 19 people and wound 25 more, the youngest 19 years old and the oldest 70, at a facility for the mentally disabled. The mainstream, anti-gun bandwagon would claim that these are just three recent examples showing the need for “common-sense laws” and stricter gun control. Surely red flag laws and background checks could have played a significant part in thwarting these evil men. If assault weapons were out of the picture entirely and wait lists were enacted, these horrific attacks could have been prevented … and 55 innocent lives would have been saved.