Look, we will be in the same situation soon. Have you tried to see a doctor, only to find them all booked up, and when you do get in, they dismiss your pains, those pins and needles sensations in your toes, write a prescription for some proton potion and send you out to hustle in then, the next billable patient? Well over in Venezuela, some people think that they have the answer to this problem:
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7549571/Venezuelans-turn-shamans-spiritual-healers-treatment-amid-shortage-critical-medicine.html

“A chronic medicine shortage in Venezuela is seeing more people turn to alternative medicine for treatment. It is a move that could put thousands of chronically-ill people in the crisis-wracked South American nation at risk of dying. However, with Venezuela's chronic medicine shortages and hyperinflation there seems to be little choice for those desperately in need of treatment. Humanitarian aid in recent months has led to a small improvement in the availability of medical supplies - but those working in the sector say shortages continue to plague the health-care system. The country's pharmacists' federation say pharmacies and hospitals have on average only about 20 per cent of the medicine stock needed. And as a result Venezuela's opposition parties say some 300,000 chronically ill people are in danger of dying from the shortages of medicines. All across Venezuela, but particularly in poor areas like Petare, patients cannot hope to afford the price of medicines that due to the economic crisis, have become exceedingly rare and expensive. And so they are looking to alternatives for treatment.”

To The Age         Lorenza Nolan claims (18/10) that "we" (the term is vague) "stole" the land of what is now Victoria from "the First Nations people". She supports the signing of a treaty to redress the situation. There is idealism in this view of things, but also folly and injustice. In another way of looking at things the Aboriginal tribes living here failed to defend their territory from the incoming settlers. The world of Nature, of which mankind is a part, operates continually in a mode of contest between stronger and weaker individuals and groups. This pattern is not necessarily of itself to be condemned as immoral or unethical. An eternal crying over spilt milk is unhelpful. The profound development that has occurred on this continent in the last three centuries cannot be undone. It can, and should be, shared by all Australians, not stolen in a new kind of theft by a few ideologues to satisfy political fantasies and what is really self-aggrandising politicking.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave 

     Hey man, cool it, people will think that you’re crazy, a fellow protester said to me at the Melbourne climate protests. Yes, being pathologically lonely and bored I decided to have a day trip and meet some furry people. It was fun jumping up and down and screaming, until I started to get pains in my chest. The same guy said: hey man if you keep that up you are going to have a heart attack and maybe be the first person here to die as a climate hero! No, it was just dehydration, and after a drink from the fountain (well ducks drink it so it must be good) I was off again, until the police said that I needed to stop ranting because I was scaring shoppers. Did I get on YouTube? No, didn’t make it. Sigh.

     The big question though is whether protesters who block roads and hold up the flow of commerce should be made into road humps or starved to death in gaol (leaving aside the possibility in both cases of being eaten alive by giant rats)?
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7552533/Kerri-Anne-Kennerley-rants-Extinction-Rebellion-climate-change-protesters-Studio-10.html?ico=pushly-notifcation-small

To The Australian        Your editorial ("Only viable Brexit deal on offer", 19-20/10) must be one of the worst in the history of your newspaper and is deeply disappointing to those of us who advocate a genuine Brexit that unequivocally honours the 2016 referendum result. In advising acceptance of what seems to be another pseudo-Brexit proposal you manage somehow to omit any reference to the two key issues, which are the restoration of full national sovereignty and the protection of the principle of free speech which has been fatally cast aside by the EU's Court of Human Rights. As to the latter, that court's recent dismissal of an appeal by German politician Udo Pastore against an unjust conviction for speaking his mind in parliament on a controversial topic is the latest example of tyranny riding rampant through a context of legal dishonesty and chicanery. Those "28 hardline Brexit 'Spartans'" are surely right that Boris Johnson has compromised with the EU too much. This piddling withdrawal deal should be defeated emphatically in the House of Commons.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave

     While a feeding frenzy is being beat up about the illusion of climate change, there are still existential threats that humanity faces that are not being publicly examined because of all the hot air. Like asteroid strikes:
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-10-12-nasa-chief-asteroid-strikes-prepare-for-impact.html

“The chief of NASA has warned that the threat of an asteroid impact is all too real. During a conference on the matter of planetary defense, he called for funding and working plans to stop killer asteroids from hitting the U.S. and the rest of Earth. Jim Bridenstine was one of the speakers at the 2019 Planetary Defense Conference. He brought up the critical need for the U.S. to develop credible defenses against asteroids and other cosmic impacts. Without a working planetary defense system, the Chelyabinsk meteor incident of 2013 might repeat itself in the future, potentially over U.S. soil. During the meeting, NASA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and other organizations agreed to hold a planetary defense drill. They considered the potential effects of an asteroid as it approached Earth. “We have to make sure that people understand that this is not about Hollywood, it’s not about the movies,” stated Bridenstine. “This is about ultimately protecting the only planet we know, right now, to host life and that is the planet Earth.”

To The Age         It is good to read that "there are a lot of ideologues on the hard Brexit wing who care more for principle than consequences" ("Brexit deal hangs in the balance", 19/10). Such a position is ethically valid. It sounds as though Nigel Farage is correct in stating that Boris Johnson's withdrawal agreement with the EU "isn't Brexit." In that case, let's hope it is defeated in the House of Commons as were its Theresa May prototypes. Britons eager to have their nation reclaim its full sovereignty and traditional protection of free speech must not let themselves be fooled by threats or cajolery. They should note the recent EU Court of Human Rights dismissal of an appeal by German politician Udo Pastore against an unjust conviction for speaking his mind in parliament. That is what lies ahead for them, too, if they let slip this chance for escape from totalitarianism.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave

     A soothing cup of hot tea may be just what your body needs to boost phytochemicals and other nutrients. But did you know you may also be drinking 11.6 billion microplastic pieces and 3.1 billion nanoplastics with every cup of tea? Researchers from McGill University recently published the results of a study4 in which they analyzed plastic pollution released from tea bags. They questioned whether plastic tea bags were releasing microplastics or nanoplastics after being submerged in hot water during the brewing process.5 They used four commercial products packaged in plastic tea bags. The tea leaves were removed to ensure any plastic particles in the tea did not contaminate the analysis of the tea bags. The empty bags were then placed in hot water to simulate the brewing process. The water was evaluated using an electron microscope, in which the team found a single bag released billions of particles. The researchers report this contamination is at a level thousands of times greater than has been reported with other foods and beverages. In addition to analyzing the amount of plastic released, the team also sought to determine the effect the particles may have on small aquatic organisms. Using water fleas, which are commonly used to model organisms in environmental studies, the researchers found that when treated with the microparticles and nanoparticles from the tea bags, the organisms survived but demonstrated anatomical and behavioral abnormalities.

     Heres some lighter refreshments;- ie student bloopers

     For over 15 years the global warmists have become progressively more outspoken with their scare stories, and less careful with facts and science. But their latest tactics of promoting Extinction Hellions and exploiting a teenage Swedish Doomsayer represent alarmist over-reach. Ordinary people are becoming suspicious: “If their science is sound, why do they resort to media scare stories, traffic disruption, street rebellions, school truants, religious zealots and academic purging?” We are close to the peak of this global warming madness. Their models and forecasts have failed and consumers suffer soaring electricity cost and blackouts while tenured academics produce Play-School plans for 100% “Green” power. Climate sense is finally starting to ooze through the cracks in the stone wall built to keep Skeptics out of the flimsy marquee that shelters the warming nobility. It is downhill from here for the alarmists and bad news for their academic mercenaries, Hollywood backers, Rebellion puppets, business vested interests and alarmist propaganda machines like Australia’s ABC, UK’s BBC and Guardian, Canada’s CBC and CNN in USA. They are losing their credibility and their thinking audiences just when they will need them for backpedalling, explanations and apologies.

     It is really a delightful turn of events, for feminism itself is on a theoretical, heretical level, that is spilling out into the public domain, as all these insane academic debates do, is being deconstructed. The basics of feminism 101, is a conspiracy theory, of male domination, based upon, well, it can’t be biology, so feminists are vague about how it happens, but it does. Men eternally oppress them. Thus, women are the ultimate victims, and some feminists even define a “woman” based upon such victim qualities. Yet feminism has also now embraced postmodern relativism, that see reality as a social construction. Thus, the concept of womanhood is a social construction, and from a relativist position lacks objective reality. Hence a man who identifies as a woman, and has a beard, and a functional penis, is a woman. Even Hillary Clinton had a bit of trouble with that one:
  https://www.dailywire.com/news/hillary-chelsea-clinton-have-awkward-moment-over-whether-a-person-with-a-beard-and-a-penis-can-identify-as-a-woman

“Hillary, 71, and Chelsea, 39, sat down with a British reporter over the weekend, and the differences in their worldviews were on display. In an interview with The Sunday Times, journalist Decca Aitkenhead asked the pair if a person with a beard and a penis can be a “woman.” Chelsea quickly answered “yes,” but Hillary looked “uneasy,” the Daily Mail reports. “Errr. I’m just learning about this,” Hillary said. “It’s a very big generational discussion, because this is not something I grew up with or ever saw. It’s going to take a lot more time and effort to understand what it means to be defining yourself differently.” In her piece, Aitkenhead tells Hillary that many British feminists of Hillary’s generation “have a problem with the idea that a ‘lesbian who doesn’t want to sleep with someone who has a penis is transphobic.'”

     The Left have not spoken a word about this, but anything challenging open borders is racist, and hell, it makes you fit for being bashed to death, which is the  way of the radical Left, as seen by vicious attacks upon innocent Trump supporters:
  https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/1964152/ugly-bloody-scenes-san-jose-protesters-attack-trump

     Then there is what has been called, “China’s genocide’:
  https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/08/inside-chinas-re-education-camps-women-raped-sterilised-10879874/

     I used to swallow down a tablet of Zantac, 150 mgs of Ranitidine, when heartburn struck, until I read this:
  https://www.9news.com.au/health/medical-news-heartburn-drug-zantac-pulled-from-shelves-over-cancer-concern/89a1e116-faf4-423c-b1e0-217265f2426e

“A popular heartburn drug has been withdrawn from sale after it was found to carry a cancer-causing substance. Zantac – sold over the counter - is among eight types of the heartburn drug ranitidine that have been recalled from pharmacies, supermarkets, online stores and other retail outlets. The products were contaminated with an impurity called N nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA). As well as heartburn, the ranitidine products can be used to treat stomach acid, reflux and ulcers. The move came after concerns long-term exposure to NDMA was found to increase a person's chances of developing cancer. The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) is advising people to consider alternative medicines.’

     Here is bs story the New York Times ran with, I did not find other sources following it up. Look how crazy and racist Trump is, he wants to make a border moat with snakes and crocodiles:
  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/us/politics/trump-border-wars.html

“The Oval Office meeting this past March began, as so many had, with President Trump fuming about migrants. But this time he had a solution. As White House advisers listened astonished, he ordered them to shut down the entire 2,000-mile border with Mexico — by noon the next day. The advisers feared the president’s edict would trap American tourists in Mexico, strand children at schools on both sides of the border and create an economic meltdown in two countries. Yet they also knew how much the president’s zeal to stop immigration had sent him lurching for solutions, one more extreme than the next. Privately, the president had often talked about fortifying a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate. He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh. After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal. But later in a meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down. That’s not allowed either, they told him. “The president was frustrated and I think he took that moment to hit the reset button,” said Thomas D. Homan, who had served as Mr. Trump’s acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, recalling that week in March. “The president wanted it to be fixed quickly.”

     Follow the money trail – that is always good advice about getting to the bottom of things, of who has greased whose palms. The climate zealots, for example, seem to be on a good wicket:
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7566515/Extinction-Rebellion-files-reveal-climate-zealots-paid-400-week.html
  https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/10/13/extinction-rebellion-members-paid-400-per-week-to-shut-down-britain/

“Extinction Rebellion is paying activists up to £400 a week to lead the protests that have brought chaos to the streets of Britain, documents seen by The Mail on Sunday reveal. Protesters have received payments totalling more than £70,000 in four months alone. But the eco-protest group privately fears it could face a six-figure tax bill if the money, which is given as expenses, is deemed to be payment for work done on XR's behalf. Last night, one Tory MP called on HMRC to launch an immediate investigation into the movement's tax affairs. Most of the thousands of activists who brought chaos to London last week were unpaid volunteers, but a select number are claiming the funds which enable them to dedicate their efforts to the protest group, also known as XR. This newspaper has seen claims for expenses from 168 activists, including Tamsin Omond, a baronet's granddaughter who has appeared in Tatler and rubbed shoulders with Boris Johnson – and who asked for money after ditching some public relations clients to concentrate on protests. A dossier of files from within XR reveals the inner workings of the protest movement and its finances.

     Anti-Trumper, and free trader economic rationalist supremo, Paul Krugman, has now admitted that globalists like him made a bit of a boo-boo with economic globalisation:
  https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-10/inequality-globalization-and-the-missteps-of-1990s-economics
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/10/13/free-trader-paul-krugman-admits-failure-of-globalization-for-american-workers-major-mistake/

“In a column for Bloomberg titled “What Economists (Including Me) Got Wrong About Globalization,” Krugman admits that the economic consensus for free trade that has prevailed for decades has failed to recognize how globalization has skyrocketed inequality for America’s working and middle class workers.

     For over 15 years the global warmists have become progressively more outspoken with their scare stories, and less careful with facts and science. But their latest tactics of promoting Extinction Hellions and exploiting a teenage Swedish Doomsayer represent alarmist over-reach. Ordinary people are becoming suspicious: “If their science is sound, why do they resort to media scare stories, traffic disruption, street rebellions, school truants, religious zealots and academic purging?” We are close to the peak of this global warming madness. Their models and forecasts have failed and consumers suffer soaring electricity cost and blackouts while tenured academics produce Play-School plans for 100% “Green” power. Climate sense is finally starting to ooze through the cracks in the stone wall built to keep Skeptics out of the flimsy marquee that shelters the warming nobility. It is downhill from here for the alarmists and bad news for their academic mercenaries, Hollywood backers, Rebellion puppets, business vested interests and alarmist propaganda machines like Australia’s ABC, UK’s BBC and Guardian, Canada’s CBC and CNN in USA. They are losing their credibility and their thinking audiences just when they will need them for backpedalling, explanations and apologies.

     President Trump in his election speeches has been using the example of Venezuela as a case study of how socialist societies break down, ultimately collapsing into a modern hellscape. But how bad is Venezuela, actually? Answer: worse than we imagined. Here are some extracts from a persona account of life under socialism by Venezuelan writer, Christian Caruzo:
  https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2019/10/13/my-socialist-hell-20-years-of-decay-in-venezuela/

“This is a personal account of what has my life become after twenty years of Bolivarian Revolution— 20 years that comprise two-thirds of my life. I’ve done so many bread lines that I’ve lost count, I’ve engaged in bartering of food and medicine, I’m actively taking expired meds because it’s simply better than nothing, and I’ve adapted every aspect of my livelihood around the tribulations inherent to living in Socialist Venezuela while taking care of my younger brother who can’t fend for himself given his mental condition. It hasn’t been easy since we’re two socially inept siblings, but we keep going no matter what. … Socialism has slowly eroded the functional existence of every aspect of our lives, from our freedom of speech to our economic liberties, our access to healthcare and personal documents to our water supply. Each of these structural collapses – the absence of healthcare, the worthlessness of our currency, systemic corruption in the government and military, and widespread censorship – have affected me personally. Socialism is a trendy topic in the United States at the moment, which means my story is relevant beyond Venezuela’s borders. Over the course of this series, I hope to inform American readers about the realities of existence – and survival – in a socialist country. And I hope that by reading my stories, Americans will be forewarned enough that they remain distant stories, rather than firsthand experiences. …

     There are some photographs take in in the early part of the 20th century, when the West still believed in itself, and had a more homogeneous population, that have to be seen to be believed.
  http://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2014/10/the-story-of-painters-on-brooklyn.html

     The painters on the Brooklyn Bridge show a number of men hanging onto the steel wires suspended perhaps 40 metres above the ground. That does not seem much until you see the men standing on wires. It is enough to make one dizzy, and fall, even sitting down! The political, or metapolitical point is that this sort of world not longer exists, at least in the West:
  https://gellerreport.com/2019/10/death-of-america.html/

     Here is an interesting one, showing the power of the internet to deflate and deconstruct nonsense put out by the mainstream media:
  https://www.forbes.com/sites/breannawilson/2019/10/11/this-popular-solo-female-travel-vlogger-thinks-pakistan-could-be-the-worlds-1-tourism-destination/?utm_source=TWITTER&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2730307720&utm_campaign=sprinklrForbesMainTwitter#514893612707
  https://twitter.com/Forbes/status/1182996846496702465?s=20

Forbes
@Forbes

Why Pakistan should be on every solo female traveler's bucket list http://on.forbes.com/601911XJW

     There is so little criticism of the sorts of dangerous experiments that high energy physicists engage in, mainly because the ordinary people know so little about elementary particle physics and high energy collisions. However, the potential does exist to destroy not only the Earth, but by a chain reaction, the entire universe.
  https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/meet-mad-scientists-performing-universe-breaking-experiments

“CERN is currently working on a lofty plan to revamp its “flagship accelerator complex” over the course of the next two decades. But a more powerful particle accelerator could be the very last thing the world needs, according to British cosmologist Martin Rees. Rees, a well-respected expert in his field, issued a grave warning to the scientific community about particle accelerator experiments gone awry in his book On The Future: Prospects for Humanity published late last year. These experiments meant to push the boundaries of nature and physics, he writes, “might do something far worse — destroy the Earth or even the entire universe.” As alarmist as it sounds, this is no crackpot notion. Rees writes that, "Maybe a black hole could form, and then suck in everything around it [...] The second scary possibility is that the quarks would reassemble themselves into compressed objects called strangelets. That in itself would be harmless. However, under some hypotheses a strangelet could, by contagion, convert anything else it encounters into a new form of matter, transforming the entire earth in a hyperdense sphere about one hundred metres across."

     This one is from America, which is at the front line in the descent into madness. Thus, while 40 million people, vastly more that the population of all Australia, do not have enough food to eat, the Democrat are championing sex reassignment surgery as a human right. Wow, one would have thought that having enough to eat came way before that:
  https://www.zerohedge.com/health/40-million-americans-already-dont-have-enough-food-eat-and-its-about-get-lot-worse
  https://www.zerohedge.com/political/waffling-warren-confirms-gender-reassignment-surgery-now-right

“At a recent LGBTQ town hall meeting, Warren received thundering applause for stating that the gender reassignment surgery should be provided free of charge to transgender prisoners: “gender-affirming surgery,” she said was “important and the appropriate medical care.” This is a direct about-face from her 2012 statement: “I don’t think it’s a good use of taxpayer dollars.” Fauxcahontas backpaddled and asked forgiveness for the earlier statement, saying it had been a “bad answer.” “I believe that everyone is entitled to medical care and medical care that they need and that includes people who are transgender who – it is the time for them to have gender-affirming surgery.” But is reassignment surgery a medical necessity? Opposers relegate the surgery as akin to aesthetic procedures such as face-lifts or breast augmentation. A female with a small bust may feel inadequate and uncomfortable and may choose to enlarge her breasts. Is this necessary for the continued health of the individual? No, not physically. But it plays a part in mental health, which is what Warren and those who support such nonsense base their logic on. However, this same female, who is satisfied with her birth sex, would not get the equal option to surgically adjust her physical appearance. Although, if she identified as a male, supporters like Warren would be howling at the moon, demanding taxpayers to pay for her change. As a born female, this woman’s insecurities and desire to physically alter her body while in prison would be considered nothing more than cosmetic. And the incarcerated are not there to have their wishes and desires met; they are there for punishment for a crime against society – the same society Warren expects to foot the bill for their physical alterations.”